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

“A little bit. But we’re onto better things, and we’re not moving far away.”

“I suppose it’s only across the wasteland.”

“It just makes sense, Jahn. We move my dungeon to Ray’s lair. After all, he’s not using it anymore. We’ll be far enough from town that we won’t be distracted, and whatever trouble finds us, won’t end up with the town getting wrapped up in it. It’s for the best.”

“I suppose. But what about essence? You need it to build a dungeon. For monsters and traps and stuff.”

“I’ve got that covered.”

“No, Beno!”

“What?”

“You can’t use Ray’s black essence.”

“Not that,” I said. “Tomlin took cuttings of my vines in case they ever got destroyed. We had Maginhart make a solution to preserve them. I’ll be able to strip out the black essence and start growing new vines.”

“Maginhart is so clever. He passed his apprenticeship, didn’t he?”

“Everyone in the dungeon is very proud of him,” I said.

“It was smart to preserve the vines. But why can’t you just stay here?”

“We need to focus, Jahn. We can’t have the distractions of the town being right above us. This is going to be tough, finding all those old cores.”

“I wish you and Overseer Bolton wouldn’t keep saying how hard it will be.”

“We’re not trying to scare you. We’ll be here for you, you know? That’s the whole point. That’s why I’m leaving my dungeon and building a new one.”

“That, and your essence vines were destroyed,” said Jahn.

“I prefer to think that I’m helping a friend. Doing something worthwhile with my second life. What’s the point of resurrection if you just waste it?”

Later that day, Jopvitz visited my core chamber.

“Hey, Anvil!” I said.

Despite wearing his spy hood and trying to look mysterious, he couldn’t help but smile.

“Dark Lord,” he said.

“What brings my best spy here this afternoon?”

A bigger smile. “Overseer Bolton wants to see you, Dark Lord.”

The overseer couldn’t come to my core chamber and announce himself, of course. He still had his stupid need to be powerful, to have people come to him. Even when he was in my dungeon.

That was the thing, though. I was done caring what Bolton thought. It seemed ridiculous that I’d even lied to him about Riston and the dungeon. That I’d tried to make myself look better in front of him. I simply couldn’t give a damn anymore.

So, I went to see him. He was in a chamber in the northwest. It used to have an acid trap in it. I’d done some of my best hero melting in there. For the last few days, Anna had been sleeping inside. She was lucky she didn’t get her head ripped off in her sleep by a kobold.

Outside the chamber, I overheard her and Bolton talking.

“I’m ready, Overseer,” said Anna.

Her tone was unbelievably polite. It made me think of brain parasites we’d learned about in the academy. Ones who seized control of a person’s mind. I really wasn’t ready for more mental problems.

She carried on. “I’m ready to walk the path.”

“It’s not one path,” answered Bolton. “But dozens. Hundreds. Every step, you will be asked to choose a direction. Tempted onto routes good and bad. You will need to listen to your heart.”

“Gods! I said I’d walk the path, didn’t I? I tried to be all humble and mystical like you wanted.”

“Anna, just this moment you have placed a foot onto one of those wrong paths.”

She huffed. “Sorry, Overseer. I want to do this. For Utta. I’ll become a Chosen One for real. I’ll work as hard as it takes. Try to be good. I’ll help both those cores. The stupid one, and the mean one.”

“Beno is not mean,” said Bolton. “He just cares for his friends and his dungeon creatures and is ruthless in his protection of them. That is a very different thing to being mean, though the two ideals may seem like siblings at first. You would do well to apologize to him, Anna.”

“For what I did to the kobold?”

“Yes.”

“Some things don’t get fixed with sorry.”

“Without an apology they might not get fixed at all. Would Utta want you to-”

“No!” shouted Anna. “Don’t ever use him against me to prove a point. That’s not a fair thing to do.”

Silence.

“I’m sorry, Anna. It seems even overseers are capable of choosing the wrong route. You can stray from a path sometimes. Get lost. Wander into the wrong horizon. But as long as you don’t stray too far, there’s always a chance you can turn back. It will be hard for you to undo the things you did. But there’s always a chance.”

“Why did it have to be Utta, though? Why couldn’t the arrows have hit me? Or both of us? Why just him? I don’t want to be here when Utta isn’t.”

“You know the answer to that, Anna.”

“Being chosen. That’s stupid. Utta was chosen too.”

“We know that not everyone stays that way.”

“I don’t deserve to stay as chosen. At least if the arrows got us both, he wouldn’t be alone. I wouldn’t be alone.”

I had never heard Anna talk this way. Tell the truth, I hadn’t thought her capable of concern for anyone else. I certainly didn’t think she’d have chosen someone else’s life over her own.

“Yet, we can’t go back and make it so. The best thing you can do is respect Utta, and make something of being chosen,” said Bolton.

Feeling bad for listening in, I floated into the archway so they could see me.

“Beno!” said Bolton. “Thank you for agreeing to see me.”

Hmm. It looked like Bolton had learned to be humble. Maybe not everything he did was about power games.

Anna stared at me. She looked a shell of her former self. She’d been crying. A lot.