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

“I wish the First-Leaf was more like you. Maybe it would be different. It can’t go on, the way he’s behaving.”

“Then you will help?”

She nodded. “It is better for both our peoples that we leave. We aren’t suited for living underground, and if it weren’t for the springs, I don’t think anyone would have stayed. We need fresh pastures. Fertile soil. And you need your rightful home.”

Reginal said a silent thanks to Mage Acton. “Then we will begin. I need to know every trap you have set.”

“A problem with that,” said Tavia. “They brought in two dungeon cores, one guarding each door.”

“Cores? What?” He felt his blood grow hot then, and his chest tightened. “Cores can create traps at will, can they not?”

Tavia nodded.

“Then how will we get past them?”

“You won’t.”

“Ah. So you aren’t as inclined to help as I believed,” said Reginal.

“It isn’t that. You won’t get by the cores, not unless you want to lose half your clan in doing so. No, chief. You need something else. There aren’t many ways to get underground.”

“I know that, trapper. It was our home after all. The door to the caverns was built by us to be completely proofed against invasion. At any sign of an attack through that, the steps can be destructed, making it a sheer drop.”

Tavia nodded. “And the mana spring doors are defended by dungeon cores.”

“Then it’s useless.”

“It's useless to keep banging your head against the same wall and hoping that the next time you hit it, the wall will crack, instead of your skull. But what if there was a fourth door?”

“Impossible. We would have known.”

“Not if the Wrotun made it in secret. Not if it was never, ever used, and put there as an emergency escape. What if you launched an attack on both spring doors to keep the cores busy, yet sent the bulk of your force through the fourth door?”

CHAPTER 17

There had been something nagging me from the back of my mind. Do you know the feeling? Like something niggling you, telling you there was something you forgot to do? A chore that you forgot, that kind of thing.

Ah!

The memory came back to me.

I forgot to take care of the corpses in my dungeon tunnel.

Now, getting rid of corpses was a menial task for a dungeon core. You stripped the heroes of their loot, then you fed their bodies to any meat-eating creatures who lived in your lair. If you didn’t have any, then you would have to get a creature to take the corpses to the surface. But really, what kind of dungeon core doesn’t have any flesh-eating monsters?

Some cores preferred to leave corpses where they were so that their stink would drift through the dungeon. After all, even the most hardened hero would be scared if he entered a dungeon that stunk of death. The drawback was that this could spur some of them on. Make them mad, make them want to destroy the foul core who had created this place. Also, if you were taking this approach, it was advisable to mute your core senses.

I was considering feeding the goblins and humans to Gary when an idea hit me.

“Tomlin, Warrane, Wylie?” I said, using my core voice to reach them wherever they were in the dungeon.

A few minutes later, Tomlin and Wylie came. Warrane didn’t, but I remembered why; I hadn’t created him, so he couldn’t hear my core voice when I used it that way. There was no connection between our minds except a mutual love for the Soul Bard adventure books, as I had recently learned. We were even thinking of starting a book club.

“Warrane?” I shouted.

He heard me now, and the four of us were in my core room.

“I need you to collect the corpses from the tunnel between the riddle doors and take them to the alchemy chamber.”

“Wylie drag corpses!”

Tomlin shook his head. “Tomlin is a cultivator. He does not move corpses.”

“Tomlin does what his core asks,” I said. “Unless you can give me one good reason why you can’t help the others?”

“Tomlin believes that having death on his hands may infect the essence vines. Despite flourishing, they are still fragile. The Dark Lord does not want to take a chance with his essence.”

That didn’t sound right to me, but we’d never gone that deep into essence cultivation in the academy. It was one of those things that sounded like it could be true, but also could be total horse crap. I just didn’t know.

“You have me there, you crafty swine,” I said. “Tomlin, you’re excused. Warrane, how do you feel about dragging a few corpses through the dungeon?”

“This leaf already performed the task dozens of times. He would help Tavia after her traps repelled the invaders. He has no fear of touching the dead.”

“Then two of you leave this core room with honor and my good graces. One of you leaves here as a coward. I’ll let you work out which is which.”

We met in the alchemy chamber two hours later, where Wylie and two of his crew were waiting for me. They had arranged the goblin and human corpses in quite a neat row, actually. It was very efficient.

I eyed the red and blue spheres marked on the alchemy chamber floor. I started to get an excited feeling inside me; a phantom dancing of my nerves.

“What Dark Lord do?” asked Wylie. I noticed that his language skills seemed to be improving the longer he spent with Warrane.

“I’m going to perform some alchemy,” I told him. “Or you will, under my direction.”

“Wylie alchemist?”

I was about to tell him that he would just be doing manual labor and the chamber would perform the actual