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

all people - Overseer Gill. When a dungeon core creates monsters, traps, or puzzles, he uses essence to do it. That essence is then replenished by the essence vines growing in his dungeon. A sensible core will hire or train the best cultivators who can take care of their essence plants and give them the best chance of replenishing quickly.

Many cores, and overseers, believed that replenishing essence was a passive process. That a core simply stayed in his dungeon and waited for the leaves to send the essence to him.

Gill had different ideas about that. He came to see me, wearing a robe that was open in the middle with his bare flesh on show. His belly lips opened gave a great burp, and then he spoke to me.

“I have something to show you,” he said.

“I’m not sure I would want to see anything that you would show me, Gill. No offense.”

“I owe you gratitude, Beno. You didn’t jump in with the accusations like some of the others did, before the mimic was discovered. You have no reason to trust me, but you didn’t cast judgment. One turn deserves another, and I said I would be an overseer in your academy, did I not?”

“I didn’t mean that you would be teaching me.”

“Oh? Just because you left the Dungeon Core Academy, you have stopped learning, have you?”

He had me there. The more I thought about it, the more my attitude had changed since I left the academy. Back when I was a student, I devoured every book in the library. I picked my overseers’ brains incessantly. Not literally, I should add.

But since leaving the academy and getting my own dungeon, I had grown lax. Sure, I always put all my efforts into battling the heroic morons who raided my lair. But I had slowed in my pursuit of new knowledge and new techniques.

In short, I was in danger of becoming what I had always poked fun at: a core, who became set in his ways and didn’t move with the times.

“Okay… What did you want to show-”

Gill was gone.

After searching, I found him in the essence cultivation chamber, chatting to Tomlin. Seeing me enter, Gill beckoned me over.

“Most cores wait for their essence to replenish over days or weeks. Even months, if their essence cultivation is especially bad. Which isn’t the case with you, by the way. Tomlin has done an excellent job.”

“Tomlin is an F class cultivator,” said Tomlin. “His standards are the highest.”

Gill continued. “Rather than just wait for your essence to replenish, you can actively pursue it. You can pulse essence in and out of your core body, much like a human breathes. Crucially, this isn’t just important for when you spend essence and need to replenish it. Pulsing your essence is also like working your muscles. The more you do it, the stronger your essence replenishment becomes. In turn, the essence you use will be more potent. That means…”

I was amazed. “That the monsters I create from essence will be stronger.”

Gill smiled. “Exactly! Now, this fancy core quality test might be all the rage among academics. But in the academy I used to oversee, we had a crude form of the test years before anyone else. We spent a long time studying core quality.”

“Does that mean you can tell me what it means?”

Gill laughed. “You might as well ask me to explain fate. Much of it is unknowable, at least with the methods available to us today. But what I can tell you, is that a core’s core quality affects their use of essence. A core with a core quality of MidBase upwards would produce creatures more powerful than you, Beno.

Let’s say you, a base-core, created a kobold. Then, a core with a foundation-quality core created one. Their kobold would be stronger even if both kobolds are of the same level.”

“Then I’m screwed before I even begin. Other cores will always have an advantage over me.”

“What is an advantage, but a difficulty you must overcome? Even locks forged by the gods can be picked with enough time and technique.”

I was amazed. Who was this man? He didn’t seem like an old drunk anymore. At this moment, he seemed even wiser than Bolton, who I’d always looked up to.

“The more you practice pulsing your essence, the better your essence use will be. If you train enough, then your level one creatures would be more powerful than another core’s level one creatures. Your level five creatures would compare with another core’s level ten. And so on. Core quality is just a foundation, and every foundation must be built on or it is useless. You must never stop working, Beno. No matter what hand chance has dealt you.”

The possibilities raced through my mind. All of a sudden, I wished that I had years before the next round, so I could stay in here and pulse my essence like crazy, growing more and more powerful. Unfortunately, I only had days. I couldn’t cheat time, could I?

Unless…

I had Tomlin fetch me the Glade of Rest. He set it on the ground. I floated over it, but nothing happened. I floated down so that the bottom of my core rested on it.

The dungeon transformed. Soon, I found myself in a sunlit field, where the grass grew waist-high and swayed under a gentle breeze. A feeling of relaxation came upon me.

Instead of relaxing, I began pulsing essence in and out of my core in the way that Gill had shown me. It was much like how a barbarian might lift weights. Every cycle was a repetition, and every repetition would make me stronger.

Because of the time dilation in the Glade of Rest, a dozen hours’ worth of practice here was the equivalent of just one hour of real-time.

I pulsed until my core