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

And an unusual squelching noise.

“This way,” Galatee said.

I was curious now. No, not curious. Wildly intrigued. It had been a while since someone had gotten me a surprise. I held it in, though. It isn’t very core-like to show too much excitement.

“Dark Lord!” cried a voice.

And then…then I forgot any notion of stupid core decorum.

“Tomlin!” I shouted.

I couldn’t believe it. Two kobolds burst into the room, followed by a spider-troll-leech monstrosity, whose leech legs made a slurping sound as he walked.

It was Tomlin, Wylie, and Gary. As I stared at them, questions formed and then died in my mind. I was so happy to see them.

Tomlin had been my first ever kobold. He was a loyal kobold who shirked manual labor whenever he could, and who loved to study.

Wylie was my second kobold. Not as studious as Tomlin by a long shot, but he’d happily dig through five thousand miles of mud if I asked him too.

Gary, meanwhile, was no kobold. Truth be told, there was no name for Gary’s race because I had created it. Using the Melding room in my old dungeon, I had combined a spider, leech, and rock-troll to create this magnificent creature. A monstrous meld of species, with the body of a gigantic spider, skin of a rock troll, and eight slurping leeches for legs, complete with the teeth every good leech should have.

He was the kind of monster that invaded your dreams. The sort of nemesis that bards sang about in ballads of the seven hells. A darkness of the soul, corruption of everything dear in the world of Xynnar.

“Delighted to make your acquaintance again, dear core,” he said.

“Gary, the delight is all mine. Get over here! Tomlin, Wylie, you too.”

I could hardly contain happiness at seeing my old friends. “Galatee…how did you do this?”

I noticed that she was grinning too, now. See? I knew there was heart behind that stern gnome face!

“When I purchased you and Jahn, I discovered that the Academy was selling some of their creatures. An overseer, a rather polite balding chap, explained that the King has reduced the academy's budget, and they have to make up the shortfall somewhere. I believe they have begun selling some of their creatures to hero guilds. They required these three creatures to complete a task and promised to send them to us when they were finished. And here they are.”

The academy was selling monsters to hero guilds?

This should have come as a surprise. After all, the purpose of the Dungeon Core Academy was to create and train cores who could kill heroes.

So, why would they purposefully sell creatures to hero guilds? Why would the guilds buy them?

The second question was easy to answer. Heroes would buy these creatures and use them to train their recruits. It was a way to level up their fighters without risking them in a dungeon.

The first question…well, you have to remember that this whole dungeon business is a balancing act. There is an entire strata of Xynnar’s economy based on dungeons and heroes, and one cannot exist without the other.

See, the academy doesn’t hate heroes. Neither do cores, really. We delight in murdering them, sure. That’s our nature. But we don’t hold a deep hatred for them. After all, if there were no heroes to raid dungeons, then there would be no need to create dungeon cores, would there?

Our entire existence relied on heroes being willing to loot dungeons. That meant that the academy’s continuation relied on that too. So, they would have no qualms selling creatures to a heroes’ guild if it meant they could earn money, while ensuring there was a healthy population of heroes to make a dungeon’s existence worthwhile. The whole thing was a big circle you could get lost in if you tried to work out its details.

What it meant was that I had my clanmates back. I was beyond glad that Tomlin, Wylie, and Gary hadn’t been sold off to become training fodder for some fuzz-faced hero to practice one.

“Thank you, Galatee,” I said. “This is a better surprise than I could have hoped for.”

“I am glad, Core Beno, because the gold I used on purchasing them was set aside for buying new carts and pickaxes for the kobold miners, but I believed that a better use would be investing in your chances of success. Now that you have seen the Seekers, I hope you understand their anger. Their ruthlessness. Their utter determination.”

“And their inability to speak kobold,” I said.

Galatee smiled. “I have to go. I hope you can work quicker now; the First-Leaf is incredibly hard to please. We gave up trying to buy him suitable presents for his birthday many decades ago.”

Galatee left. As Warrane and Shadow made their introductions to our newest arrivals, a few messages appeared in front of me.

Monsters added to dungeon:

Tomlin [Kobold Lieutenant Lvl 3]

Wylie [Kobold Miner Lvl 6]

Gary [Boss monster Lvl1]

Things were really beginning to take shape. I now had three kobolds and a boss monster. Tomlin was a lieutenant, but unlike Shadow, this rank didn’t mean much.

See, Tomlin had done all of my dungeon digging in the early days, but he hated it. He had a much more academic brain.

When I created Wylie, who loved digging, I had to appease Tomlin. I named him my dungeon lieutenant, and gave him authority over Wylie. This made him happy, and despite their difference in rank, the two became great friends.

The rank of lieutenant, however, didn’t actually give Tomlin any boosts, since it was one I just made up for him.

Pleased with boosting my monster roster, I dismissed the message and allowed the next one to appear.

You have killed [8] heroes!

A party of