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

the books to memory. I only spared myself from memorizing trivial books. Stuff like ‘Overseer Tarnbuckle’s Guide to the Fields of Xynnar’ and ‘The Autobiography of Overseer Tarnbuckle.’ Basically, anything authored by the man who was about to test me.

Tarnbuckle began asking the questions, addressing the other four cores in turn. He asked them stuff like:

What are the essential components of a successful boulder-dash trap?

Name five creatures with toxic blood.

Which core pioneered the reverse, twice-blind tile puzzle?

Those were good questions. I would easily have answered them, given how much I’d studied core-related stuff. The more I heard, the more excited I was to show my knowledge. To prove that a core of Base core quality could study just as well, if not better, than the rest.

Not to mention that I had successfully created two dungeons since I had left the academy. I had core experience these academy students could only dream of.

Then came my turn. I did my best to hold my smugness inside, but was nevertheless keen to show off my knowledge.

“Core Beno,” said Tarnbuckle. “According to ‘Overseer Tarnbuckle’s Guide to the Fields of Xynnar’, where might one find swigbuckle buds growing in copious quantities in the autumn?”

Oh, hells.

Tarnbuckle eyed me with a subtle grin on his face, no doubt sensing that I was in trouble. Although cores don’t usually betray the rare emotions they have, overseers are gifted with the talent to read a core’s feelings.

I wasn’t going to fall at so low a hurdle. I just had to think about this. Although I hadn’t read Tarnbuckle’s stupid book, there were plenty of tomes in the academy library that dealt with herbs and botany.

Time to enter my memory palace.

Swigbuckle was the chief ingredient in the Mind Philter potion. I knew this from helping Maginhart study for his alchemy apprenticeship tests. And according to a book by James Crick, titled ‘Industry and Xynnar’, the Mind Philter potion was a vital piece of the economy of a place named Bamburgh. It stood to reason that if the potion was brewed in vast quantities in Bamburgh, then there would probably be copious quantities of swigbuckle nearby.

“Bamburgh,” I answered.

Tarnbuckle said nothing for a moment. I sensed the other cores watching me.

“Correct,” he growled.

The red core was the loser of the knowledge round, which meant that me, Blue, Green, and Grey passed on to the second round of evaluations. We were taken to separate chambers in the academy, where our essence was drained from us by the overseers.

Alone in my chamber, a voice spoke to me.

“Your next task is to create the best that trap possible using the little essence that we leave you. You have thirty minutes. The trap will be judged by Overseer Yuren. You may begin.”

Reaching into my core, I checked my essence. Normally, I would have 5100 essence points. This was quite a lot, and certainly, more than the non-graduated cores would have. The academy was a place of theory, and cores didn’t level up much until they left it.

No doubt sensing my advantage, the overseers had drained most of our essence and left us all with the same amount.

Essence: 300 / 5100

300? It had been a long time since I had to work with such a paltry amount of essence. Nevertheless, I could, and I would. The overseers could throw whatever they wanted at me, and I’d find a way.

My instinct was to create the most lethal trap possible with the essence available to me. That was the point of a dungeon trap, after all. To kill things.

However, 300 essence wouldn’t get me a very sophisticated trap. I had to be clever about this. I thought about it for a while. In fact, I thought about it for too long.

Soon, I realized I only had five minutes left.

Bloody hell!

I began thinking about boulders and lava traps, and so on. Just as I was about to knock together the most lethal trap I could, something occurred to me.

It wasn’t just the trap that was key here. It was also important who was judging.

Overseer Yuren was one of the oldest in the academy. Easily older than Bolton, probably older than death itself. Death had probably come to claim Yuren plenty of times, only to take pity on him just because of how bloody ancient he looked.

With that age became a different attitude than some of the younger overseers, like Tarnbuckle. They took their jobs more seriously because they had more to prove. Yuren was at the point in his life where he didn’t just want to earn his gold. He wanted to have fun, too. That meant he’d always been the most humorous of our overseers. The most tolerant of misbehaving cores, the overseer who laughed at our stupid core jokes.

Yuren wouldn’t just want a lethal trap. He’d want one that made him laugh. Knowing this, I got to work.

Three minutes later, with thirty seconds to spare, my trap was complete. A voice filled the chamber.

“Your traps will be tested in turn by a reanimated cadaver. Overseer Yuren will be watching. Further work or maintenance on your trap is prohibited, even if it fails.”

It made sense that they’d use a reanimated. While true resurrection was possible - and was the occupation of the League of Necromancers - reanimation was different. A reanimated corpse was just a big bag of flesh and guts. Not quite dead yet not alive, and certainly not possessing a brain, mind, or anything that would mark it as a living being. This was why I often thought that a reanimated could do an overseer’s job.

Reanimated corpses didn’t have feelings, hopes, dreams, and certainly didn’t experience pain. Perfect for testing traps on.

I anxiously awaited my turn, hearing the distant slamming of iron and the ominous whirring of something mechanical from the other chambers.

Soon,