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

an overseer tournament,” I said. “Put a dozen jumped up overseers into an arena, and get them to battle each other using the sticks that are usually shoved firmly up their arses.”

“Oh, don’t be so sensitive, Beno.”

It was then that I realized Anna had been following the conversation with unusual interest. She normally ignored anything that wasn’t a discussion on how to hurt things in various ways.

“Yeah, well, I heard that the Shielded Republic still exists,” she said. “And if they do, maybe they’ll come back and stick a shield up the emperor’s fat bum.”

Bolton scoffed. “Impossible. They were wiped out.”

“I don’t know,” said Gulliver. “I’ve collected a few legends about it over the years, and you’d be surprised how many people think they are coming back. Course, the problem with legends is that they are usually lies told in fancy words. But who knows? Stranger things have happened than for the remnants of an old republic to be lying in wait somewhere.”

“Fanciful thoughts for people dissatisfied with the empire. When a farmer’s cows get sick and he loses his farm, he dreams of the Shielded Republic changing his fortune. I don’t believe a word of it,” said Bolton.

Chapter 3

Vike

After yet another set of bruises from his father’s fists, Vike Alby had finally had enough.

In his room, he took the leather satchel his tanner uncle had made for his birthday just months before he died. Vike filled it with anything that would be useful. Changes of clothes, his flint stick, his pocketknife.

Sneaking downstairs, he raided the pantry for as many dried foods as he could, stuffing raisins, nuts, and beans into his sack.

Outside, he took one last look at his childhood home, and he left it for the last time.

His lonesome journey took him across fields and pastures. Through forests and alongside rivers. He trudged up mountains and hiked through valleys. He built up a wealth of survival knowledge as he went, learning how much the world of Xynnar offered to those who only knew where to look.

One day, months after any thoughts of his father’s fists were just memories, he came to a set of ruins.

Now, this was a sight to see. He looked at the broken stone podiums, each of them etched with rune marks. He wished he’d stolen a rune book from the shop in the last town he’d visited. He would have loved to have known what the runes meant.

He approached one rune and kneeled beside it, trying to imagine who might have built such a place. Who had erected these stone pillars? Had they left here of their own accord, or had a brutal war forced them to leave it behind, until it fell into disuse?

Something metal pressed into his neck.

He wanted to turn around and look, but a voice soon put paid to that.

“Don’t move a muscle. A person’s neck is a tender thing. Very easily cut.”

Was it a bandit? Vike had seen plenty of bandits during his travels. He normally fled from them. But sometimes his father’s temper came upon him. As much as he hated it, he had inherited that from the man.

On those occasions, he’d let the bandits approach, and then he’d pray to the God of Fate, gripping his knife or whatever weapon he had handy. When the bandits were close, he let his rage free.

If the people holding a knife to his neck were bandits, he was sure he could find a way out of this. But what if his new friends were the ones who had built the ruins, perhaps? That would make them an entirely unknown proposition.

There were three men and a lady, he learned as he listened to them bicker. Two of the men argued that Vike should be killed for entering the ruins. The third was undecided, while the woman argued for blindfolding him, binding his arms and legs, and taking him miles away from the ruins and leaving him.

“That’s as good as killing him,” said one.

“It’ll do the same job,” said the woman. “Only we won’t have any blood to wash from our palms.”

It seemed like a very good idea to the others, so that was what they did. They wrapped a smelly cloth around his eyes and tied something around his arms and ankles so that he could barely move. One of the men slung him over their shoulder and they took him far away from the ruins. After hours of traveling, they threw Vike onto the ground.

Alone and tied up, Vike felt the night steal upon wherever it was they’d left him. The air turned cold, and he began to hear noises.

The sniffs and cries of animals. The sound of footsteps crunching over twigs. Finally, the howling of wolves.

He realized that unless he got free, he would be blinded, unable to move, and soon surrounded by a hungry pack of wolves. They would no doubt be searching for meat to fuel their bellies against winter.

When his best efforts to free his hands failed, he became desperate. When the howls sounded even closer, his desperation grew.

After much wriggling, he realized the only way to free himself would be to dislocate one of his wrists. He dismissed the idea out of hand.

But then the wolves howled, and they sounded even closer.

He had no choice.

He bit the collar of his shirt.

In his head, he counted to three.

One…

Two…

His cry of pain filled the air, rivaling the sound of the wolves.

After stealing an alchemical lotion from an alchemist in a nearby town, it took his wrist three months to heal. During that time, Vike also stole a rune book, a crossbow, and a shield. Finally, he stole a shirt, trousers, and as much hay as he could get away with.

The hay was very important. It would