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

far as I could see there was only a desert wasteland, the ground dry and cracked and baking under the orange sky.

It sure as all hells wasn’t the Endless Gardens in the King’s palace, let me tell you. Then again, I’m a dungeon core. Home comforts mean as much to me as a towel means to a fish.

It gave me a weird feeling deep inside my core. As if I was floating at a great height and scared of falling. Maybe it was anxiety because it had been so long since I was outside.

Yes, I still get anxious. All cores have their quirks. Anxiety is a remnant of my first life that sometimes creeps back into my second, or so the academy core physician once explained.

The most breath-taking thing was the crowd staring at me. There must have been more than a hundred people. Judging from their varying shapes and sizes I guessed that not all of them were human.

Guessed, Beno? I hear you ask. How can you not know for sure? Surely it’s easy to tell a human from a non-human?

It is, with some notable human exceptions. But these people were wearing suits of a thin metal. Liquid metal, I suppose I’d call it, in that it seemed to reshape itself when they moved. These liquid metal suits covered them head to toe, with only a semi-transparent panel in front of their faces giving me any indication of what they looked like.

I turned to Jahn now, who was also held aloft, also held by this same person.

“The people can’t survive on the surface,” I told him. “See the sky? The air, the way it seems to shimmer and burn? And their suits…”

“Overseer Bolton told us about something like this. Gas? No…no…come on, Jahn! Think! I hate it when things get stuck in my brain.”

“Don’t worry, Jahn, I don’t have a clue either.”

I felt myself lurch, and the person holding me lifted me higher, and every suited person looked up at me and Jahn now.

“My friends, my family,” said the benefactor, and I realized she was a woman. A woman with big hands, apparently. “We gather today on the surface of our dying land, a gathering we have not undertaken for many, many moons. I have returned from the west with our salvation.”

Salvation? That didn’t sound good. I had never had to bear the burden of being someone’s salvation before.

Wait – did this mean these people believed that a dungeon core could adapt the surface atmosphere? That we could make this placed hospitable again, or something?

Oh, no. I hoped they hadn’t paid much for us, because they were in for a surprise. Nah, they wouldn’t have paid much for two failed cores…right? I mean, cores were rare, yes. But we were classed as failures. That had to have come with a discount.

I felt a little more reassured now. There was no way these people had paid a fortune for us hoping that’d we’d save them or something.

Willful self-delusional is a powerful medicine, by the way.

“We have all sold everything we owned, we have put all our hopes and dreams on this,” continued the woman. “All our dreams of the future, our very existence as a people.”

I felt an imaginary lump form in my imaginary throat now.

“Hail the Cores!” shouted a person in the crowd.

“Hail the Cores!” the others said, all of them carrying the chant until it became quite uncomfortable. Jahn and I exchanged looks, but Jahn seemed to be basking in it.

The woman slowly lowered us onto two metal rods fixed into the ground, with little holders on top. We fit snugly into them.

Half the crowd bowed to us, while the other half folded their arms, or scrutinized us with looks that seemed intended to bore deep into our gem souls. Not everyone was as hopeful about us, it seemed.

I decided it was time to address my benefactor now.

“I suppose we haven’t been introduced,” I said. “I am Core Beno, and this is Core Jahn. We are grateful that you saved us from being pulverized into gem dust. It’s a sure way to become my friend. But please, let me ask; what is it you would like us to do?”

She stared back at me now. She wiped the dust off her face panel, and I saw her eyes. Wide, blue, and with a kindness in them. “It is simple, honorable gems,” she told me. “You and Core Jahn will save our people.”

CHAPTER 2

“I am Galatee,” she said next. “Second-leaf of the Godwin tree.”

“Galatee…Galatee…” said Jahn. “Yeah! I remember. Galatee; she was the god of fortune.”

Galatee smiled at him. It was hard to see through the mask film on her face, but her lips definitely creased. “You are as knowledgeable as they promised, little core. I hope your friend is as wise as you.”

I looked at Jahn now, wondering where in all hells he plucked that information from. Then I remembered; Jahn was the class joker, he never listened, and he couldn’t read you the rules of coredom from memory if you paid him all the gold in the King’s vault. But, his memory worked in such a strange way that certain facts stuck to him like pollen on a bee’s arse.

“You will now receive your gifts,” said Galatee. She addressed the crowd. “The five-leaves will begin, and then fourth, third, and thus.”

The crowd began to approach us, each person bowing respectfully and leaving a present at the base of the rods we rested on. None of them spoke and few of them even looked at us, though some of the younger ones sneaked a glance.

Galatee had said the five-leaves should go first, then the fourth. At first, I had no idea what this meant, and then I realized that the crowd was approaching us in