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

The bigger goblin took a breath and swung his warhammer at the door again and again, the sound ringing out through the dungeon.

Nothing.

The ranger goblin, with his squirrels climbing over him, didn’t appear to have tried anything. But then, rangers are fairly useless in a dungeon, aren’t they? I don’t even know why they brought him.

Finally, I felt a little more assured that they wouldn’t break through the door and come looking for me, so I focused on other things.

I wondered if I could free the humans who the goblins had used as trap bait. It was clear they were slaves or prisoners, since you wouldn’t force an equal to walk into a trap-strewn tunnel.

How would I do that, though? I thought about opening a riddle door and calling the humans over, but that was just as likely to get the goblin’s attention.

The other option was to speak to them all. Try and broker a deal with the goblins that they would release their prisoners if I let them leave the dungeon. That, however, went against everything I stood for, every principle that the academy had hammered into me again and again.

I had already let someone flee one of my dungeons. If I did it again, I would start to get a reputation.

Still, I couldn’t help but think that not only was freeing the humans the right thing to do, but it could be useful. They would have information on the Seekers that the Wrotun could use. It was that line of thinking that made me act.

In my core room, Warrane was sitting on a chair I had allowed him to bring in. He had a blanket draped over his knees, since this place must have been draughty if you could feel such things, and a pile of books by his feet.

“Warrane, I need you to go fetch Galatee,” I said.

“This leaf is glad to have something to do,” said the boy.

Then, I heard a voice.

“Why fetch what is already here?”

Two figures walked into my core room. First was Galatee, and with her was First-Leaf Godwin. Galatee seemed a little tense, but that was nothing to how First-Leaf Godwin looked. His gnome eyes were redder than forge coals, and his skin seemed even more shriveled around his face. He looked like he was clenching his jaw, too. If there was ever a gnome in need of a massage, it was him.

Godwin walked around my core room without a word, and then through the tunnel to my essence room, his staff rapping on the stony ground.

“Seekers arrived,” I said to Galatee. “I didn’t expect them so soon.”

“Neither did we, Core Beno. Their last attack was the greatest yet, and they lost many. I had thought you would have time to build your defenses before they tried again.”

“There were only eight of them. Four humans, four goblins.”

“Ah. Their ferrets.”

“That’s what they called them.”

“It is a tactic they employed a few moons ago. Disarming our traps with care was taking them too long, so they found another means of progressing through our tunnels.”

“Seems a little barbaric. Coming from a dungeon core, that says something.”

“They are ruthless people. I believe they buy their ferrets from the cities far to the south, where criminals are sold as slaves. I told the First-Leaf that we should send a party to those cities and recruit the criminal for our own defense, but First-Leaf insisted that we should spend our last fortune on cores. Now, who is this?”

She nodded at Shadow now, who was drawing something on a patch of dirt in the corner of the core room. I looked closer and saw it was a diagram of the tunnels, one that matched my map inch for inch.

An escape plan?

I supposed you can’t change someone’s nature. Of course, she couldn’t leave the dungeon without my permission; the essence inside her was attuned to me, as her creator. That didn’t stop her plotting.

“Shadow,” I said. “This is Second-Leaf Galatee.”

The kobold and gnome regarded each other. Shadow gave a slight bow.

“Welcome to our home,” said Galatee.

A rhythmic thudding marked Godwin’s return now. He didn’t seem like a jovial kind of gnome by nature, but he was especially displeased today.

“I had expected a dungeon core to be a much faster worker,” he said.

I was about to speak when Galatee addressed her elder. “Core Beno has already repelled a Seeker attack.”

“Well, I didn’t quite say that,” I said. “I’ve stopped them, but I haven’t repelled them yet.”

“They aren’t swarming our tunnels, so I assumed you had defeated them?”

“This is why I was going to get Warrane to bring you here. Let me show you. Shadow, could you carry me, please?”

I led them north of the core room, through a winding tunnel, until we reached the riddle door with a cockatiel’s head as the knocker. Muffled voices came from beyond it.

Godwin tapped it with the base of his staff. “A strange construction. It seems like iron, but there is something different, weird decoration aside.”

“This is a riddle door,” I said. “A complex blend of iron and essence, with an annoying personality. It is with just two doors that I held back a full party of Seekers.”

Strange; I hadn’t planned on saying that, it just came out. It seemed that I wanted to impress the First-Leaf. I guessed it was because of his mage staff and the threat it represented to my second life, that gave me that attitude. Funny what impending death can do.

I addressed both of them now. “There are eight Seekers trapped in this tunnel. Three humans, four goblins. They can’t escape by force, and they haven’t deciphered the riddle that will open the door, thanks to a display of great ingenuity from…never mind. They’re trapped, that’s the extent of it. Now, I