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

convert it into actual, physical things. Monsters, traps, tables, rugs – you name it. A whole dungeon is built from essence.

During the assessment, we were expected to cultivate the patch of essence moss, turning it into essence vines that grew on our dungeon walls and gave off essence to replenish us. Grown this way, the vines were self-sustaining and rewarded us with an endless supply of essence.

Core Jahn, however, had the bright idea of fully absorbing the essence moss before cultivating it. In effect, in core terms, he ate the moss, and this left none to cultivate.

It’d be a little like a farmer planting an apple seed, caring for the tree until it finally grew an apple…and then eating the apple and burning the damn tree to cinders. It meant he had no means of regenerating essence, and no way to build a dungeon.

Yeah, Core Jahn failed his evaluation in the most miserable way, and the academy was going to smash him into dust just like me. I was so happy that he’d been spared.

“I’m glad you’re here, Jahn,” I said. “But I thought you were a potion bottle. You tinkle like one.”

“I was sleeping, Beno. Didn’t the evaluation tire you out?”

“We’re cores. We don’t get hungry, sleepy, or anything like that.”

“I do.”

“Impossible.”

“I promise! I learned how to separate a tiny sliver of myself away, Beno. In that, I locked my sleepiness. I said to myself when they resurrected me, if I have to spend eternity as a dungeon core, then I still want my sleep.”

“Separating part of yourself? How? Jahn, that technique…I haven’t even heard of master cores doing that.”

“I can’t explain how. I just did what felt right.”

Unbelievable. If Jahn was telling the truth, then this core who didn’t even think to cultivate essence, had managed to trap a part of his old humanity in himself. There was more to Jahn than me or anyone else gave him credit for. Interesting, very interesting. But that was something to delve deeper into later when I knew what was going on.

“Where are we going?” he asked me.

“I’ve been thinking about it. For one, you have to be rich to buy a dungeon core. Two cores, in fact. After all, the Forgers at the academy grind up failed cores and use them to make new ones. Finding fresh core dust is hard, so I’m told.”

“That makes me feel better, Beno. That we’re worth something.”

“We’re worth a lot of somethings. The overseers would have made our new owner pay. And anyway, about he or she…the way I see it, the only reason you buy a dungeon core is because you need them to create and maintain a dungeon of some kind. And why do you do that?”

“Could be a supervillain, Beno. Like Lord Saurgoth or the Shadow of the Dark Mountain. One who wants to kill heroes.”

“They wouldn’t sell us to someone overtly evil. We might kill heroes, but we adhere to guidelines when we do so. No, our new owner needs a dungeon or the thing a dungeon represents.”

“Huh?”

“Protection. Security. I think we’ve been bought to guard something, Core Jahn.”

“I’m worried.”

“You’ll be fine,” I said, feeling bad for him. “You technically graduated from the academy. Whatever happens next, you can cope.”

“But I failed my evaluation.”

“You failed because you absorbed all your essence moss in one gulp, instead of cultivating it. Just control yourself.”

“Thanks, Beno.”

Suddenly, daylight emerged above me. Colors streamed in. A bright orange sky that looked like it was burning. Orange sky…where in the world of Xynnar had an orange sky?

Wherever it was, someone had opened the rucksack to let the outside air in. I chose to allow myself to feel it. This was something that cores could do; our default state was a kind of numb void, but we could choose to feel heat and cold. We could choose to smell things. I kept my senses working as much as possible, though it was advisable to mute them when dealing with certain dungeon creatures. I mean, come on…you’ve smelled a kobold after he’s spent hours digging tunnels, right?

Still, it was a good trait to be able to ignore my senses, for a time. See, dungeons cores spend quite a lot of time in dungeons. And dungeons are cold. Being able to willfully shut the cold out helps a lot. They don’t make gem core-sized wool coats.

Note: Future business venture to explore.

So I enjoyed the breeze now, and I looked up at the orange sky above and tried to remember how long it was since I had even seen a sky. It was probably when I was still a man, and I couldn’t remember that.

The sky was then replaced by a kind of black mass. Dark, impenetrable, and completely covering the newly created opening in the bag. Like the soul of night itself, some evil, all-encompassing presence here to spread doom and desolation over everything.

“Core Beno?” asked Jahn. “What…argh!”

Jahn was lifted from the bag, leaving me alone.

Only when a hand reached inside and pulled me out of the bag, did I realize that the dark mass was a face covered by something, and it belonged to a person.

Two metal hands lifted me aloft so fast that I felt a phantom queasiness. I was about to protest at how much I hated being picked up like a puppy, when I stopped.

The sight before me took my imaginary breath away.

There, held up so high, I could see my new surroundings. I was in a bazaar of some sort, with dozens of market stalls all around. One stall had scented candles and incense sticks, and another stall had a cauldron with steam rising from it, which must have accounted for the stew smell.

But there were no houses around. No buildings whatsoever. In fact, for as