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

“A cynical man might say you wanted something from me, Beno.”

“Let’s not pretend. You’re too old for games, and the only ones I enjoy involved wanton hero slaughter. The first requirement of getting my academy license is that I have one at least overseer employed.”

“No, no, no. I told you, I’m done with all of that. I’ve had a lifetime’s worth of teaching bratty dungeon cores. No offense.”

“Not even for the good of the dungeon? For Jahn’s cause? The rewards for winning the tournament are said to be immense. Even placing in the semi-finals can bring lots of powerful trinkets.”

Bolton shoved a forkful of some kind of honeyed fish into his mouth. “Even if I wanted to become an overseer again, my license is expired. It isn’t as if I can just apply for a new one. They would make me repeat the tiresome entrance exams, which last for two weeks straight. I’m an old man approaching the end of my third life, Beno. I don’t wish to waste two weeks of it brushing up on my knowledge of traps and monsters.”

“Is that your final answer?” I said.

“I’m afraid so.”

I used my core voice. “Wylie? Can I see you for a moment?”

Soon, a short, squat kobold darted into the room. “Yes, Dark Lord? You need Wylie?”

“Take the plate away from the overseer, Wylie. He’s done with it. You and Klok and the others can eat it instead. It will do Bolton no harm to lose a bit of weight, anyway.”

There weren’t many places to find academy overseers. The overseers were trained in an academy of their own, cleverly named the Dungeon Core Academy Overseer’s Academy. As Bolton said, their education was grueling, their evaluations rigorous. Given what it took to become an overseer, they commanded hefty wages and expected status. No newly qualified overseer would even consider joining my fledgling academy.

This left me with little option but to forget newly-qualified overseers, and concentrate on old ones. Bolton begrudgingly wrote a list of all the overseers who had retired from the Dungeon Core Academy, both during his tenure there and recently. Despite his reluctance to get involved in overseer life, he still kept his old contacts.

I worked my way through the list, spending the next few days taking mana carriages all over Xynnar. I met retired overseer after retired overseer. Old men, women, goblins, and all kinds of races who had once held overseer licenses.

Unfortunately, none of them would have anything to do with me. Somehow, word had gotten around that I would be calling on them. They had been told that the academy I was trying to tempt them to join wasn’t even licensed yet. Also, they had already been told that as a core, my core quality was as low as it can get. Not only that, but that I was very hard to work with.

Where did anyone get that impression? I was a joy! Each one of my monsters would say so. Yes, they would say so under duress, the threat of having to test my new traps dangling over them. But they would still say that I was a great core to be around.

Nevertheless, word had spread to almost every retired overseer. Some expressed sympathy with what I was trying to do. Some of them were excited by the idea of a core opening an academy, but none of them would work with me.

“Seems to me that our friend Tarnbuckle is behind this,” I told Gulliver. “He must have called in favors or threatened them. I almost admire him for it. There’s nothing better than a good threat.”

“Well, I have some news, Beno. I used to know an overseer. His name is Gill, and he retired fifteen years ago.”

“He must be bloody ancient.”

“He’s not dead, so he has that going for him. It doesn’t seem like you have many options. I ghost-wrote Gill’s biography for him, and I did it at a very low rate. He owes me a favor. Why don’t I set up a meeting?”

We met ex-overseer Gill in a tavern in Hogsfeate, named the Saucy Piglet. His insistence on us paying for a first-class mana-carriage stocked with all condiments should have been my first clue that Gill would be difficult. My second should have been his insistence on meeting a tavern.

Gulliver and I headed in. The tavern wasn’t the nicest of establishments, full of shadowy figures smoking pipes and playing cards, their faces almost hidden behind hoods that billowed over their heads. Barmaids and barmen sauntered in and out of the kitchen, carrying trays of what passed as the food here. Jellied eels, giant pies dripping with gravy, that sort of thing.

“Something I should have mentioned about Gill,” said Gulliver.

“You’re worrying me...”

“Just don’t stare too much when you see him.”

Ominous words. I wondered what could be the matter with the man. What could be so hideous about him that I would need to stare?

I soon found out.

In many ways, old Gill was a normal person. He had arms and legs. Two of each. And a body, which I’m told is quite normal.

He didn’t have a face, however.

Oh, he had a head. A normal-sized and normal shaped head, with wrinkled skin that befitted his age. However, his face was completely blank. I don’t mean that he was docile. He simply didn’t have eyes, a nose, or a mouth.

But Gulliver needn’t have warned me not to stare. As a dungeon core, I was used to meeting all sorts of misfits and monsters. Not that this man was a monster, of course. The fact that someone was a little different didn’t bother me at all.

When Gill saw us, he raised his hand and beckoned us over to his