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

everything this ancient git has done. Some of it himself, some of it through Riston. He’s been kidnapping people in the wasteland. Innocent folks just going about their lives, wanting to get by. Townsfolk, travelers. Women, children. He’s killing them, and turning them into wraiths.”

“I know. I know. But still…if he…if the ancients are my people…”

“That doesn’t make them inherently good. Let’s say that Ray’s story is completely true.”

“It isn’t,” said Bolton.

I ignored him. “Let’s say it is. And that centuries ago, people descended on the core’s settlements and tore them apart. That doesn’t mean the ancient cores were good; it just means they lost. Now, this ancient core has done you a favor, Jahn. He’s made your choice easy. Are you really going to side with the kind of cores who’d kill so many innocents?”

Barely ten minutes had passed, and Ray looked even weaker. More cracks showed along his gem surface. Gaping ones, ones that looked ready to split him apart. He’d been drawing on the black essence while we were gone, and it was killing him.

“We want you to turn the wraiths back,” I said.

“Impossible.”

“Don’t give me that. You turned these people into wraiths, so you can reverse it.”

“Gods, you really are a young core, aren’t you? You’re barely wiser than a little coreling!”

“He’s right,” said Bolton. “He can’t turn them back. It just cannot be done.”

“Then the townsfolk, they’re…they’re stuck like that,” said Jahn.

I wished I could say I was surprised, but this had been a shot in the dark. “And now that the 50 bloody nights are here, they’ll head to Yondersun. They’ll kill everyone. Create even more wraiths.”

“There’s nothing we can do?” said Jahn. “If I’m an ancient core, why can’t I stop it?”

“Because we weren’t all alike,” said Ray. “Some of us could create forests. Some could control the rain. Some could absorb the life from one being and give to another. I can grant death to someone and bring them back stronger. Once I grant that strength, I cannot take it away again.”

“There must be something I can do.”

“There’s nothing! I can see you have chosen the wrong side, ancient one. You have betrayed your own. Sided with the invaders. Those parasites who destroyed us, who-”

“I might be young, on the core side of things,” I said. “But I just thought of one way to stop the wraiths. We can kill you, Ray. When a core dies, the monsters they created die with them. I know you didn’t create the townsfolk, but you turned them into what they are now. If we kill you, the wraiths die, all your weird mosquito things die, too.”

“Kill me? That’s a good one.”

“Look at you! You’re a moron. You must have been so desperate to start all of this when you woke up that you drained from black essence. You’re practically worm food already. It won’t take much to push you the rest of the way. Bolton?”

Bolton took a dagger from his satchel. The sight of it made me sick. The blade was coated in an incredibly rare substance nicknamed corespite, on account of it being one of the few things deadly to a core. A simple dagger wouldn’t usually have been enough; you’d need a full-sized sword forged by a master and covered with corespite to end a core. But Ray was almost gone already.

He seemed to realize it now. “That dagger! Centuries ago, when the people descended on us, they wielded weapons such as that…”

“We didn’t descend on you,” said Bolton. “Can’t you stop your lies, even in death?”

“Kill me, but I’m not the last. Not by far. The awakeners will find the rest of us. We will rise, we will…”

“You’ll be quiet.”

Bolton thrust the dagger into Ray.

His core exploded, shattering into hundreds of pieces. One shard whipped past Bolton’s face, cutting a great gouge in his cheek. He cried out, dropping his dagger.

The pieces of Ray settled on the core chamber floor. All that was left of him was a black mist above the pedestal. It wasn’t him, exactly. I didn’t know what it was. His aura, maybe? Something of him left behind in death?

Bolton wiped the blood from his face, smearing it on his palm. “That is Ray’s power,” he said. “The essence of his ability to create wraiths. It is yours, Jahn. You need to take it.”

“Take it? Me? I’m scared!”

“Draw on it as you would with essence.”

“I don’t want a power like that! I don’t want to turn people into those…things.”

“A time will come when you’ll need it. When we leave here, we’ll try to find as many ancient ones as we can. We’ll get to some before their awakeners do, but Xynnar is a big place. Lots of tombs, lots of hiding places. We won’t get to them all, Jahn. When enough of them wake, we’ll need every power we can get.”

“I want Beno to take it. He’s stronger than me.”

I laughed. “I’m nothing compared to you. You told me as much.”

“I would never say that.”

“Not in as many words. In the academy, I knew parts of my old humanity were coming out, but I fought them. I fought against my instincts because I was scared that showing more of my human side made me weaker than other cores. But showing my human side wasn’t what made me weaker; it was hiding it. Like I was a kid with a guilty secret. You never did that. No matter what anyone said, you never hid yourself. You’re stronger than I ever will be.”

“Besides that,” said Bolton, in as kindly a voice as I’d ever heard from him, “Beno is not like you. He cannot take the power.”

Jahn drew the black mist from the pedestal. It wrapped around him. He seemed to grow; not