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

the Forked Sting, I could tell that their core’s quality rank was better than mine. It was the shine on their core. The way their essence reacted to their commands. Now that I was aware of core quality, I could see how it affected cores.

Suddenly, I wished I had never gone back to the Dungeon Core Academy. The old saying was right. Ignorance really was bliss.

The fact was that I was in trouble, and coming to watch the cores sparring had proven that to me.

I was about to leave when one of the Academy of the Forked Sting overseers in the arena looked up at me.

He called the attention of the other overseers and then pointed in my direction. I activated my core hearing, which allowed me to listen to them.

“That’s him! The core who founded his own academy.”

“Not very impressive, is he?”

“Doesn’t even have an emblem!”

They soon bored of talking about me and left the arena with their core. Alone with my thoughts, all I could think was that it would be a miracle to get past round one.

If I fought fairly, of course.

That was the answer - I just needed to cheat. And to do that, I needed a new plan.

Chapter 16

Vike

The folks who lived under the ruins called themselves the Shielded Republic. Vike stayed with them for a while, enjoying the company and warm meals. A while became months, and months became years.

Their hospitality wasn’t free, but warm meals and shelter weren’t the only things on offer. All the elders ever talked about was how much promise Vike showed. That it felt as if he had lived among the Shielded Republic all his life.

They made him do all sorts of tests. Ones that evaluated his strength, others his mind. Even some strange ones that concerned his spirit. Vike didn’t mind. The tests weren’t difficult, and a meal was a meal.

One day, an elder approached Vike while he was collecting logs in the forest near the ruins.

“It is time that you advanced in your training, Vike.”

“Sure, why not?”

“Don’t be so hasty to agree. There will be no going back from it, boy. Some paths close behind you when you place your feet upon them.”

“Fine by me.”

The training they put him through pushed him beyond the limits of pain and tiredness. Such base emotions soon became lost to Vike, so often did he experience them.

Their grueling exercises and relentless mentoring almost killed him. Every time things got tough, Vike remembered some of the worst beatings his father had given him. Thoughts of the life he’d left behind pushed him through whatever the elders could throw at him.

The only thing that made him waver were the tremors he would sometimes get after meals. Although extremely painful, they would only last for a few hours at a time.

The sect healers checked him several times, always confirming there was nothing wrong with his body. Gradually, the tremors and spells of pain began to lessen, until Vike barely felt them at all.

A year later his training was finally over. Vike was initiated into the sect as a fully-fledged member of the Shielded Republic.

 But that wasn’t everything.

Approaching the end of his initiation, an elder offered him a bowl full of some kind of dust.

“You must ingest the core, Fledgling Vike,” he said.

“Core? Do you mean a dungeon core? I read about them. People have tried to eat cores before, to earn their powers. They always died.”

“But they were not as prepared as you,” said the elder.

“Eating core dust? I am not prepared for anything of the sort.”

The elder smiled. “Do you remember the tremors you used to have after eating?”

Suddenly, Vike understood. He leaped to his feet.

“You were feeding me core dust?” he shouted, barely controlling his anger.

“Everything we have done, every task we set you, had a reason behind it. The hardships you were put through were only to make you stronger. Never through anger, like your last guardians. You have a choice now, Vike. Complete your initiation, or say farewell to your time here. If you do that, we will part as friends and not enemies. But the doors to the ruins would forever be closed to you.”

After thinking about it, Vike reached out towards the bowl of core dust.

The core dust that the members of the Shielded Republic ingested didn’t give them the full powers of a dungeon core. They would need to ingest a full core for that. No amount of preparation would make such a feat survivable.

But it wasn’t without its benefits. As his real training began following his initiation, Vike discovered that the Shielded Republic could use the core dust inside them to conjure shields from nothing.

If he thought their last training was relentless, then this was on another level. One of their more popular exercises was to line up in front of him, a dozen at a time, and pepper him with rocks. Vike could either conjure shield after shield or suffer the onslaught of stone.

For sixty days of training in this exercise, he barely had a centimeter of skin that wasn’t bruised. And yet all the same, they felt different from the bruises he used to get back at home. It felt like there was a point to them.

From then on, Vike saw every bruise and painful cut as a mark of pride.

 Vike soon became the best in the sect at using his power, even at such a young age, and after coming upon this life much later than many others. Year after year he trained and trained and trained, always rising through the ranks.

Thirty years after he had seen the ruins for the first time, everything changed.

By that time, the three men who had first found him had died. Two of