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

them in battles, one to illness. The woman who had accompanied them was now Vike’s wife. Though she was fifteen years older than Vike, they were happy.

But when the sect’s head elder died, the ruins fell into chaos. As with every time a head elder succumbed to their mortality, the sect was destined to be plunged into years of squabbles and power grabs that escalated in severity. This would continue until either a new elder was chosen, or the clan was irrevocably damaged.

By this time, however, Vike had amassed a great collection of books. When he wasn’t training his shield powers or caring for his family, he spent time by the ruins, translating the strange marks.

That was how Vike Arby learned that his old family was not his family at all. That the father who used to beat him shared no blood whatsoever with him.

According to the runes, the first elder of the Shielded Republic, the true elder, had a very interesting characteristic. He had heterochromia. One of his eyes was green, the other bright red. All of his descendants had had such eyes.

This was very interesting to Vike. Because the reason his father used to beat him was that he always believed his mother had slept with another man. Ever since Vike was born, his father had believed him to be the product of betrayal.

And why did he believe that?

Because one of Vike’s eyes was bright red, and the other was green.

The translation of the runes ended any potential feuds within the clan. The others agreed it was no coincidence that Vike shared a rare condition with the true elders of the Shielded Republic. Nor was it a coincidence that he had left home and traveled in a random direction, and had somehow stumbled upon the ruins.

With an almost unanimous vote, Vike Arby was made head elder of the Shielded Republic. Along with another bowl of core dust to ingest, Vike was given his true name.

Henceforth, he would be known as Vike Stonecroft.

Gone was his old name. Gone were the horrible memories of a family to who he didn’t belong. He never found out how any of this came to be. How he had grown up with a family that wasn’t of his blood. But that didn’t matter now.

He had a real family. A family with a history.

And a grudge toward the empire.

Vike made a vow. Under his stewardship, the Shielded Republic would grow as powerful as they had been before the empire beat them down. Before the empire had employed dungeon cores to turn the tide of the great battle.

And he already knew the path to accomplishing this.

The first step was a tournament. One held every decade, where dozens of dungeon cores would gather, waiting to be destroyed.

Chapter 17

The tournament began in earnest the next day. For the opening ceremony, the grand arena at the very top of God’s Fist was opened the first time. It was deceptively big. The arena itself could easily fit several thousand people, and every single seat was filled today.

Surrounding the arena were 32 flagpoles. Each of them displayed the emblems of all the academies who would compete. The last flag was blank. That was ours, of course. In my rush to register my academy, I hadn’t had time to even think of making us an emblem.

 The crowd chanted and yelled and jeered as they waited for the event to begin. From a recess in the arena, a bard and his band played stirring music. Tense beats, quick strings. Music that made your blood pump. If you had blood, that was.

I wasn’t even fighting today, yet I felt nervous.

Gulliver must have sensed it. “Don’t worry, Beno. I used to be a playwright, you know. Occasionally I would stand in for one of the actors if they got sick. Stage fright passes quickly. The waiting is the worst thing. Once you’re fighting, you’ll be fine.”

“Thanks, Gull.”

An announcer dressed in golden robes strutted into the center of the arena. Silence fell among the crowd. Four gates surrounding the arena clanked open. When the arena was so quiet that you could have heard a hero sob, the announcer spoke.

“Ladies and gentlemen from all over Xynnar. I welcome you to this decade’s Battle of the Five Stars. A tournament steeped in the history of our world. Prestigious beyond all other events. An exhibition of legend, where…”

His opening speech ran for ten minutes, steadily working the crowd into a frenzy until finally, he shouted, “And now, it is time to meet the academies and the cores competing in our tournament!”

The crowd was so excited that they got to their feet, some of them screaming.

“First is the Academy of the Arcane,” said the announcer.

From one of the gates floated a core. Shaped rather like an axe, and pure purple, much like essence vines. Mystical light gathered around it. The core was flanked by purple-robed overseers who strode with dignity.

The Academy of the Arcane, I knew, was an old institution. They taught their cores to rely on summoning monsters with arcane powers. This would leave them open to attacks from physical creatures, as well as from other disciplines of magic. However, they were so good at their arcane specialization, that it wasn’t as simple as sending the biggest, toughest monster to battle them.

Seeing the Academy of the Arcane and their core, as well as remembering yesterday’s sparring with the Academy of the Forked Sting, really brought home how impossible this would be.

Could I compete with these cores? Would I embarrass myself and my friends? All I could do was push my doubts aside.

One by one, the announcer introduced each academy and its cores. We saw the Academy of the One Red Eye, the Academy of Spun Silk, Fire Embers Academy. On and on they went,