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

into sections, and working on each section independently of the others without losing any brain capacity.

Unfortunately, losing brain capacity was the least of my problems. Because my current capacity wasn’t suggesting much of an answer to me.

“Shadow,” I said. “I want you to go and talk to Eric the barbarian. Take Rusty and a couple of the fire beetles and go find Tomlin. When you reach them, I want you to find out how much gold the bandits want to let the carriage pass safely.”

“You’re going to pay them, Beno?”

“No. Find out how much gold they are demanding, and shove have an equal amount of rocks up their arses until they are completely plugged up. Escort Tomlin to his exam. For demons’ sake, be nice to him. You know how cowardly he is. He’ll be shivering his arse off.”

Shadow, who used to be so rebellious and sarcastic to me, gave a salute that she could only have learned from Wylie, and spun on her heels. “Leave it with me, Beno.”

That was one problem sorted. Unfortunately, that was the easiest one. Bandits were often unorganized, drunken louts, who shirked getting a real job in favor of attacking people traveling through the wasteland. They didn’t pose a threat to a barbarian and rogue assassin like Eric and Shadow.

But a drunken, missing overseer? That was much more of an issue.

Gulliver closed his notebook. “I can find the esteemed Overseer Gill,” he said.

“You can?”

He nodded. “You forget – I had a rather passionate romance with Kathryn, the head of the Hogsfeate guards. She’ll locate Gill for us.”

“You’re sure she’ll help us?” I said. “I mean, most of your old flames aren’t too inclined to talk to you, let alone help you. On account of them hating your guts.”

“Kathryn is different,” Gulliver said.

“Yeah,” said Anna. “She dumped him, not the other way around.”

“She didn’t dump me… We agreed to spend some time apart. The rest of our lives. And yes, I wasn’t too happy about the fact. But still…"

“Gulliver, if you can sort this out for me, I’ll buy you a brand-new wardrobe. I’ll furnish it was as many pantaloons and winklepickers as you can ever wear.”

“No offense, Beno, but I wouldn’t trust you to have the right taste in fashion. All the same, leave it to me.”

Gulliver dashed off to find a shard crystal, so he could communicate with Kathryn. I watched him leave, rushing past Shadow, who was on her way to get Eric. I was glad to have such helpful and resourceful friends.

The inspector from the permit office was a surprisingly pleasant chap named Helmut. After spending much of his life issuing permits to fly fishermen, he had recently been promoted to permit office 129. We were the first academy he had been asked to visit, because new dungeon core academies didn’t open up very often. As such, it was a novelty for him to visit a dungeon.

He spent two hours crossing through various chambers and tunnels, inspecting all of the traps and puzzles that I had created to kill heroes. Obviously, I deactivated them for the duration of his tour. Although… if he didn’t issue a permit, perhaps a trap would accidentally come to life. And then, with Helmut taken care of, I could have my mimic assume his form, and…

No. Helmut wasn’t a hero, and as such, killing him in my dungeon would feel dirty. Not only that, but empire bureaucrats were often protected against mimicry. It was only backwater mayors like Sir Dullbright who left themselves open to such easy deception.

Helmut didn’t seem to mind me following him around the dungeon on his inspection, and I found him a surprisingly pleasant chap. Always remarking on how fascinating things were.

“And what is this?” he said in his southern accent.

“That is a trap of Hellish Reflection,” I told him. “If you look in the wrong mirror, it spawns an evil reflection of yourself that hopefully murders you on the spot.”

He clapped his hands. “Wonderful! Wonderful! Thank you for the tour. Now, we must get to business. I understand you have hired an overseer?”

Using my inner core voice, which Helmut wouldn’t hear, I spoke to Gulliver. “Is everything sorted with Gill?”

“He’s on his way,” said Gulliver, replying to me using a shard I’d given him so we could always communicate in secret. “Apparently, he was so nervous about becoming an overseer again, that he went for a drink to give him courage. One drink became twenty, as it often does. He caused a scene by stripping to the waist and singing soprano from his belly, and a guard dragged him into the cells. Kathryn let him out when I asked her to.”

“How long before he gets here?”

“I splurged on a mana-carriage, which I expect to be compensated for.”

“Sure. But first, you’ll compensate me for all the tea and biscuits you consumed from my dungeon stockpile that is supposed to be for guests.”

“Call it quits?”

“Done. “

I turned my attention back to Helmut. “If you don’t mind, inspector. I’d like you to meet Wrench, our first student. After that, I will introduce you to our esteemed overseer Gill, and our F-class cultivator, Mr. Tomlin.”

Helmut gave one of his beaming smiles. “Very good, core, very good.”

I used my core voice, this time talking to Shadow. “Shadow? How’s it going out there?”

There was no answer for a moment. And then Shadow spoke with a grunt that sounded like she was fighting.

“Nearly done, Beno. Just a couple more bandits to murder. Eric is snapping one of their next right now, and then we should be done.”

“Tomlin is going to be too late.”

“Not at all. We sent him off to the exam ages ago. We’re just taking care of the bandits for fun.”

“Any word?”

“He’s on his way back