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

With 450 essence points, I could create anything except the mimic, which was a shame. I absolutely love mimics.

Even so, I still had a lot of fun creatures to play with. See, some creatures on the list were unimpressive on their own. A leech, for instance. A minor annoyance, right? Nobody ever died from getting a leech stuck to their arse.

But when I had combined a leech with a spider and a troll, I had gotten Gary, the hideously ugly spider with giant leeches for legs.

I needed to experiment, but there was a problem. Once I created a boss monster, I couldn’t just get rid of him if I didn’t like the melding room’s results. I’d have to either wait until a hero killed my creature, or demote them to just a regular monster like I had with Gary. But not only did that seem to make monsters unhappy, but the demotion weakened their powers.

Besides moral issues, I had my dungeon capacity to think about. I had been so busy lately that with my mining team and my new anti-seeker force, I had 16 monsters in my dungeon. I could only have 18 monsters at any one time.

As a level 6 core, I needed to get this right. At the same time, there was always an element of chance when it came to a melding room. That was its biggest drawback; at least when you bought from a breeder, you knew what you were getting.

The truth was, I already knew what I was going to gamble on. I’d been thinking about it off and on for days, trying to figure all the different combinations of monsters.

The trio I settled on was a strange mix, and I wondered if I was being stupid. But the first guy to ever milk a cow must have thought that, surely? Look how good an idea that turned out to be.

So, for the next two days, I created my monsters, waiting for my essence to regenerate between each one. Finally, late on the second day, I was ready.

There, in the melding room, my three creatures stood before me, dead-center on the markings on the floor.

An angry elemental jelly cube.

A small growth of hivemind shrooms.

Finally, A Bone guy.

You wouldn’t believe how nervous I felt when I commanded the melding room to mix them together and then left. It was like a baker making a cake and then putting it in an oven, unsure how it will turn out.

I was going to go check on Tomlin in the essence growing room while I waited for the meld to complete when I detected a presence in my dungeon.

Not just one presence, though. At least seven people had entered.

My first thought was that the Seekers were back, but no. The intruders had come from the west, the direction of the caverns. I hopped to the pedestal in my core room and then I listened. As the intruders had now walked into one of my excavated dungeon rooms, my core hearing let me pick out their words perfectly.

“Just this way,” said a voice. “I must warn you; his arrogance is astounding. He believes that his dungeon is a work of genius, and will hear no criticism about it. You would think he had designed the Kings Palace.”

The voice belonged to First-Leaf Godwin. Now that I knew it was him, I became more aware of the rat-tap-tap of his staff as he walked.

“Is he dangerous?” asked a younger voice.

“Absolutely. It is an inherent trait in a core, otherwise, he would be of little use to us. Though, after you see his dungeon, you may wonder if he is of any use at all, danger our not.”

“He hasn’t made progress?” asked an older voice.

“My dear Second-Leaf Rushden, if this dungeon core was a man, it would take him 500 years to cross a street.”

They all laughed now. I’ve always been a big believer in that a person should be able to laugh at themselves, but I have to admit that I found it difficult right then.

Imagine if you’d spent a long time painting your home, only for someone to walk by and tell you the color looked like a horse had taken a crap and flung it on your walls. A core can get defensive about his dungeon.

I used my core vision now, navigating through the tunnels until I spotted them. First-Leaf Godwin was leading a procession of the Wrotun, seven of them, through my dungeon.

There was a mix of ages; a few looked close to Godwin’s age, though none had as much strain showing on their faces as the First Leaf, while others looked young. They all had their race in common. With their sea-blue skin and the three curved horns sprouting from their heads, they must have been of the Goatief race.

I wasn’t happy. The First-Leaf looked like he was leading them on a tour. This wasn’t some magical forest wonderland; it was a dungeon of death. You didn’t come here for an outing unless you liked outings that involved bear traps slamming shut on your feet.

This was a test, I decided. The First-Leaf had made it clear that he had some reservations about me, and now he was trying to goad me again.

I checked my dungeon layout, and it looked like they were headed for the core room, where I was floating. Four tunnels led here, but only one that came from their direction.

I faced the opening they would emerge from.

Create riddle door.

An iron door now stood firm where there had once been empty space. The knocker sitting proudly in the center was a pig with an oversized snout.

“Go on then,” it said, snorting at the end of its sentence. “Give me a riddle.”

“Aren’t you going to rhyme?”

“Let’s pretend I did, if