Dungeon Core Academy: Books 1-7 (A LitRPG Series) by Alex Oakchest (book suggestions txt) 📕

I’d always been different.

That was when I knew it was true, that my whole second life had been a lie. My second life hadn’t happened…because I was still in my first life.

I had never been a man. I had never died. Everything I believed was wrong.

It was hard to know how to feel. It was flattering, in a way. That I had never been just a man. That I was part of some ancient race, that…

But I noticed that Bolton was shaking his head.

“No, Beno. You aren’t an ancient core. Jahn is.”

CHAPTER 23

I was astounded. It takes a lot to do that to me, but Ray and Bolton managed it.

Being honest, I felt a little jealous. Sure, there were plus sides to Jahn being the ancient core. Briefly, it seemed like everything I knew about my second life had been a lie, and I don’t know how I would have handled that.

Then again, it meant I was a lesser core. I was just a human soul forged into gemstone. Whereas Jahn was a true core. He was like Ray. An ancient one, a being that had always been a core, and nothing else.

Why had Bolton hidden this from us? What was the academy’s angle in all of this? Why had they let Jahn believe he was like the other cores in the academy?

That was when I realized the truth, and it made me uneasy.

Some of the ancient cores had been dormant for centuries until they were found by the people searching for them underground. It was obvious now; someone from the academy had discovered Jahn.

Waking up after centuries of sleep, he didn’t even know which way was up. The academy seized on his confusion, and they enrolled him in the school. They fed him the same story as everyone else. A story that was true for cores like me, but not for Jahn.

They’d woken a slumbering core and they’d hammered a lie into his mind. They’d done it so that they’d have full control over him. So he’d feel that his loyalties were with the academy. After all, if someone tells you they resurrected you from death, you kinda feel like you owe them something.

This just brought up a whole bunch of questions.

“You’re wondering why the academy failed you and Jahn, and why we kicked you out, aren’t you?” said Bolton. “I know this is a lot to take in.”

I thought back to my academy test. I had built a dungeon and used it to kill a hero. I should have passed my test, but the overseers failed me. They gave me some technicality crap as an excuse, but it had never felt true.

“You kicked me out because I broke rules in my test, remember?” I said.

“Broke the rules. Yes, that’s what you’ve always had to believe, isn’t it? You know, Beno, you and Anna really ought to have a chat.”

“I’d rather kiss a hero’s arse.”

“It’s all a rather delicate matter. We conditioned Jahn into serving the academy,” said Bolton. “And we suppressed his ancient memories to do so. In doing that, we also repressed his natural talents. We made him less effective as a core. That went against the whole point. The best thing for him to do was to leave the academy and to re-learn his ancient skills. We needed someone to watch over him while he did.”

“Ah. So that’s why you are always lurking around Yondersun. To watch over Jahn.”

“Not me, Beno. You. You never failed the academy test. Not really. Your first dungeon was excellent, and it showed that you’d taken our teachings to heart. You didn’t fail for breaking any rules; you failed because we needed you to.”

All this time, I’d considered myself a failed core. I had studied so hard in the academy, and then I’d messed up my evaluation, and I’d left the academy in disgrace.

If I was honest with myself, it had fueled me to be better. To build my Yondersun dungeon to be as deadly as possible. Now, I’d found out that I hadn’t failed. I wasn’t a letdown, after all.

I thought about what Bolton had told me. It all seemed to make sense.

The ancient cores lived in a village. They made forests, built giant spike towers to live. They’d looked happy. Their lives revolved around creation.

Jahn had studied at the dungeon core academy, but he could barely make a trap deadly enough to kill a fly. Yet, he could use essence on the surface even better than I could underground. He had built most of Yondersun, and he was getting better at it by the day.

There were other things, too. In the academy, we were taught that cores didn’t have emotion. They stripped away as much of our human emotions as possible because cores were supposed to be cold. Emotionless. Being unfeeling strengthened us, whereas emotions were a human thing, and they made us weak.

But that was a lie. Cores had emotions; Ray’s vision made that clear enough.

 The ancient cores had seemed happy when they were creating forests and building towers. In the second vision, with the soldiers charging around, they’d looked scared.

So clearly, emotions weren’t reserved just for people. In the academy, Jahn had shown more emotions than the rest of us cores combined. The academy just couldn’t drill them out of him no matter how much they tried, and this was why. Jahn came from a purer line of cores.

I realized then that the academy didn’t remove our emotions because that was how cores should be.

They did it because if we were emotionless, we were obedient.

“We should bring Jahn in here,” said Bolton.

He left, soon returning with Jahn.

“Hey, Beno,” said Jahn, his voice as pleasant as ever.

I looked at him differently now.