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

weren’t supposed to crack like that. Not from a single gnome mage’s spell. It would usually take a party of heroes to even begin to chip away at us, so for the first-leaf to do it so easily…

“We will have our service from you,” said the gnome. “We paid a dear price for you, but you will pay a dearer one for failure. There are some here who will treat you as more than the tools you are, but mark me; you are nothing but a hammer with a consciousness. A forge with a dim-witted mind. You can be unmade.”

With that, he hobbled out of the lightorium, the base of his staff making a banging sound every time he planted it down.

I realized that Jahn was looking at me now. Cores don’t have eyes, at least not ones you can see when you look at us, but you can feel our gazes. I felt his gaze on me. I sensed the waves of fear coming from him, and fear coming from a core is not a thing you want to experience. He needed reassurance.

I pushed back all my anxieties and all my memories of the pain I had just felt.

“Nice guy,” I said. “I think he likes us.”

Galatee recovered herself. She seemed to have shrunk in the first-leaf’s presence, but now she stood tall now with her back straight and her eyes glowing blue.

“We will take you to your dungeons,” she said. She faced the entrance to the lightorium. “Core bearers? We need you.”

CHAPTER 5

Without even time for a goodbye, Jahn’s bearer lifted him atop his wooden pole and she carried him away, knowing where to take him without being asked.

Galatee looked at me. It was hard to read her expression. Though I hadn’t known her long, it was clear she wasn’t cut from the same cloth as First-Leaf Godwin. They may have been family, but they were different.

When Jahn was far enough away to be out of earshot, Galatee spoke to Warrane. “Can you give us a minute please, Fifth-Leaf?”

Warrane nodded. “This leaf will do so.”

When Warrane walked away, Galatee looked at me.

 “I know about your friend Jahn,” she said. “I know he is not as learned as you. That he couldn’t even apply the little he had learned when your overseers tested him. I didn’t purchase the pair of you in complete ignorance. I hope you did not take offense, Core Beno, but I believed it was best to raise Core Jahn’s confidence rather than highlight his weaknesses.”

“Jahn is…”

“You and Core Jahn are all we could afford, even after sacrificing everything to this plan. We could have purchased a single core with more ability than the pair of you, but we needed two cores, or this is for nothing. Both doors must be guarded.”

“Jahn will learn. They don’t just resurrect anybody,” I said. “They weigh our souls on death. Judge them. There is always a reason a person is made into a core. Jahn just hasn’t unlocked his yet.”

“I hope you are right. The first-leaf is a little…temperamental. He has been clipping not just leaves, but whole branches. For minor things, sometimes. Rumors of betrayal. Or rumors of planned betrayal. Even for spreading wrongful rumors of planned betrayal. He believes everyone is plotting to join the Seekers or to open our doors to them. He’s a man slipping off an icy edge, grasping nothing but snow as he falls.”

“By slipping, do you mean he’s killing people?”

She shook her head. “He isn’t that far gone, and his soul isn’t murderous. It is a great weight on him, keeping us safe. That at least is something that you can count on; the first-leaf’s motives never stray from protecting his people. But his means are something different.”

“Then slipping means casting people out.”

“Correct. Even a second-leaf in his own tree isn’t safe from his fury. I couldn’t leave the academy without two cores, and you and Jahn were all I could buy.”

“Then I’ll try to repay your faith,” I said, feeling a little moved by the sadness on her face.

“It wasn’t faith, Beno. It was a necessity. It was you, or nothing. Warrane? Take Beno to his dungeon please.”

“I’ll need to know more about who I’ll be facing. Their numbers. Weapons. Spells. Anything they can use.”

“Sometimes, the deepest learning is done in deeds, not words,” she said, and walked away.

Sure, that sounded good. It sounded like quite a deep thing to say. In reality, surely it would have been better to just explain a few things to me?

Too late, Galatee had walked away.

I’d just have to adapt. And hope like hell that Jahn didn’t gobble all his essence like a greedy pig this time.

“This leaf will lift you now,” said Warrane, holding a wooden pole in one hand. I looked at him again. I had been too awash with confusion and surprise the first time we’d talked, and I never really tried to work out just what he was.

He was green-skinned like an orc, yet he was tall and slender. Anatomically human, in fact, except for his third eye. I had never seen a race like it.

“Ready?” he asked me.

I was glad he was being so polite about it. Cores hate being carried around. “Let’s go.”

As Warrane carried me to my new dungeon, I had a lot of time to think about what had happened.

Being a core, I was never going to be a master of my destiny. The academy gave me a second life, and they owned it. They owned me. I had rebelled at first when they resurrected me, just like most cores do, but the feeling had eased when memories of my first life left me.

I’d always assumed I would spend my second life working for the academy and killing heroes. I had