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

is a dangerous process, and it can go very, very wrong. That is why few places are licensed to forge dungeon cores, and most are part of a dungeon core academy.

But just because something is rare… doesn’t mean people don’t do it. After all, the law depends upon the existence of criminals. Without them, guards and inspectors wouldn’t have a job. No matter what guards say, they love crime.

And if there is a law for something, then there is also some willing to break it. As such, the more well-known the existence of dungeon cores became, the more rogue alchemists, mages, and artificers tried to learn the secrets of creating one.

This would help me with a requirement of creating a dungeon core academy – having a dungeon core as a student. I had no hope of trying to obtain a dungeon core from an actual academy, created by a fully licensed forger.

My only chance came with the existence of rogue core forgers. When people like this were busted, the cores they had forged were usually put up for auction. After the Empire’s army took the most capable ones, of course. This meant the cores been put up for auction for private bidders were often subpar.

Then again, who was I, the core with ridiculously low core quality, to judge? The fact was that I needed a core who hadn’t yet studied at an academy to enroll as one of my students. A rogue core would be perfect for that.

So, I pulled some of my more presentable monsters away from the dungeon duties and sent them to Hogsfeate, where they would ask visiting merchants and mercenaries for rumors. Gulliver also reached out to his contacts, and Overseer Bolton, when he wasn’t drunk or doing some ridiculous thing, got in touch with his old friends.

We asked everyone the same question: have you heard word of any rogue core forgers?

In this way, we got leads on several undertrained, rogue cores. But every time we tried to get one, the empire or another academy beat us to it.

“This is useless,” I said. “Before we even get a sniff about a core, they get snapped up.”

“Why not just have you or Jahn enroll in your academy?” said Gulliver.

“That wouldn’t work. The requirement is to have at least one core enrolled, and it must be a core who has never previously been a student of a dungeon core academy.”

“What about that weird old core that you keep in the sublevels? Namantep?”

“I don’t keep her in the sublevels, Gull. She just prefers it down there for some strange reason. We can’t use her, either. She isn’t an ancient core. She is very old, yes, but she was once a student at an academy, hundreds of years ago.”

Gulliver drummed his fingers on his notebook. “So we have to get to the next core before anyone else. How to do it…”

An idea occurred to me. “Maybe isn’t about beating the academy to it. It’s about sending the academy on the wrong trail. You must have contacts in city newspapers, yes?”

“A few. Some of the people I studied with at the scribe guild went on to become editors and so on.”

“Can you pull a few strings?”

“What do you have in mind?”

“The next time we get a lead on a core, we find out where it is. Then, I want you to get your newspaper friends to circulate a rumor that a core has been found on the opposite side of the country. That might buy us enough time to get to the core first.”

And so it proved. Through an old overseer that Bolton was friends with, we learned that a rogue core forger in Besteck had been busted. The empire had already picked the best of his cores, leaving just one available for auction. All we had to do was get to the auction and win it before the academy got word of it.

Bolton, Gulliver, Jahn, and I headed to Besteck, this time in a regular carriage, since this whole create-an-academy business was proving very expensive.

The auction took place in an old flour mill. The organizers had set out fifty chairs, no doubt expecting various academies to send their representatives to purchase the core that was for sale.

Unfortunately for them, Gulliver had planted one rumor that a powerful rogue core had been unearthed across the country. He had planted a second rumor that the core discovery in Besteck was a lie. The various academies would learn the truth, of course, but they would be too late.

Since we were the only ones present in the auction, we purchased the core for a very reasonable price. In this case, reasonable meant that much of my gold surplus was now gone. Even so, we had an untrained core.

The organizers brought him out and left us alone with him. This core was shaped like a hexagon, except uneven on one side, as though he had been stretched. His gemstone was a sickly yellow in color.

There was something about him that worried me. Bolton and Gulliver wouldn’t have been able to sense it, but Jahn and I could. This core was scared.

This was an unfortunate side effect of rogue core forgers. They didn’t take the same care in acclimatizing their cores to their second life as the Dungeon Core Academy did. I had to give the academy credit for that.

Jahn and I explained to the core what had happened to him and that we had bought him. He listened but didn’t say anything. When we were done, I still felt tremors of fear coming from him.

“What’s your name?” I said.

“I…don’t remember.”

“Well, would you like to choose one?”

“I just want to go home.”

“Where is home?

“I don’t remember that either.”

“Well, forget that, then,” I said. “You’re coming with us to the dungeon, which