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

never guessed I would end up helping to defend someone’s home. The home of an entire people, in fact.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Was it a higher cause than working for the academy?

Huh. Tough one to answer. I’d never really questioned whether killing heroes was a good or bad thing. It was just what I was taught to do.

But this? It was undeniably a good thing to help defend Galatee’s people.

Then again. The first-leaf was dangerous. I had never felt pain in my second life until he lifted his staff and cast whatever the hell that spell was. He made it clear that morality and opinions had no place here because I wasn’t here through choice. I was a tool, a slave with a task that I succeeded in or faced death.

I was a little worried for myself but more worried about Core Jahn. He would need help defending his door, and I had to work out a way to get that help across to him.

And then a cold shudder ran through me.

If Jahn failed, we were both in trouble. If the Seekers breached Jahn’s door, then we had both failed. My fate was entwined with Jahn’s. Damn.

Warrane carried me through the cavern, where most of the Wrotun folks stopped what they were doing and watch me pass. I tried not to let the weight of their expectations rest on me.

“We will walk through darkness,” said Warrane. “Torches are too much of a luxury for barely traveled tunnels. We must buy oil, wax, or diluted mana from villages far, far away. We cannot make our own. Therefore, we do not light the ways where few feet tread.”

“Cores aren’t so bad with darkness. How will you see?”

“This leaf has walked these passageways many times. He knows their shape even in darkness.”

That would have sounded great, had Warrane not stumbled on a rock and almost fallen. Luckily, he steadied himself, and me, and kept balance. I decided not to mention what effect this had on his previous statement.

After that, Warrane carried me into the black passageways without another misstep. It wasn’t just a single route, either. It seemed that the Wrotun people had carved dozens of different tunnels that led away from their cavern home.

“Did you help make these tunnels, Warrane?”

“This leaf was born decades after they were made, Core Beno. Has a core such as yourself worked out their purpose?”

“They tunneled through so many different ways because they were looking for more mana springs, I would guess.”

“Their original purpose, yes. After failing to find any but the two springs we guard so truly, the tunnels have been given a new task.”

“To confuse intruders. Stop them having a clear route to your home. They’re probably strewn with traps.”

“This leaf knew your mind would be attuned to such things. Not far now.”

‘Not far’ to Warrane was a lot further than I expected. I guessed that he’d walked these tunnels for so long that it must have felt that way to him. When you’re going somewhere new, like I was, it always seems to take more time.

It wasn’t just that, though. I was getting a feeling inside my core. Nervousness. Excitement. It felt the same as the moments before the overseers put me in my first dungeon. A core is created to live and breathe dungeons, and being close to one sets our metaphorical pulses racing.

“Can you feel it now, core?” asked Warrane.

“Feel what?”

“This leaf can feel waves in the air. We are near the mana spring.”

I couldn’t feel it, but then I was attuned to essence, not mana. Two different things. Warrane and his people had been skinny-dipping in the mana spring for years, so they were more adapted to it.

Though I couldn’t feel the mana, it wasn’t long before I saw its glow. It began as a hazy blue light way, way ahead of us. Every time we got nearer, it moved further away as though the light was tricking us. I couldn’t even tell you how far away from the main cavern we were.

Soon the light grew stronger, so much that it reflected on Warrane’s face and glinted off my core surface, and it fully illuminated the tunnels.

Warrane had changed a little. He had lost his air of solemnity and seemed more fidgety, and he was gripping the wooden pole much harder. His three pupils dilated so much they looked like coins. I wondered if all the Wrotun people here felt this way when they were near the mana springs.

“This is it, Core Beno,” said Warrane.

We turned a corner and there it was. The mana spring in all its glory.

Huh? This is it?

It was a small, square-shaped room. Stone walls, a stone floor. There, cut into one of the walls, was a hole barely big enough to put your hand into. A sky-blue liquid trickled out of it, hitting the ground and then running along the wall and disappearing.

“This is it?” I asked. “This is the mana spring? The source of everlasting life? The reason you guys sold everything you had that was worth something?”

“This leaf was told by his father, sometimes the most beautiful pearl comes from the ugliest shell.”

He was right. I was just a little surprised because I’d imagined a mana spring to be more of a pool that one could bath in.

It didn’t really matter if it looked like a leaky tavern gutter or a gushing waterfall, my job was the same.

“We better get to work,” I said.

CHAPTER 6

The first step in constructing any dungeon is to make priorities. I needed two things before I could even think about constructing traps and monsters.

“Let’s see,” I said. “The mana spring is here, and this is ultimately what I need to defend. If the