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

about defenses and traps, how they were made, and where I would be looking to place more of them.

The elder Rushden, with his curled tusks almost touching his head, was a little more perceptive than the others. He had a wary manner about him, but the questions he asked me indicated that he at least knew a little bit about cores.

“I say, I say. One last question, if you’ll indulge me,” he said. I had no reason to believe it would be the last, since the twelve preceding questions had begun the same way.

I felt like I was trying to justify my existence, that it was somehow my fault they had spent too much gold buying me.

“One thing that concerns me is the idea that in an emergency, perhaps a fire of some sort, we may need to flee the caves by a different surface door. What if we must use one of the doors protected by our cores? Surely we would all flee straight into our own traps?”

“It makes sense to worry about that,” I answered. “However, Second-Leaf Godwin bought me from the academy, and she is technically my owner, as much as I hate the word. She could command all my traps to deactivate and my monsters to stand down.”

“Ah, very clever.”

The First-Leaf regarded me for a second then, with one eyebrow raised. Then his face relaxed.

Well, relaxed as much as was possible for him. He’d always look like someone had kicked him in the nuts; that was just the way he was.

“A sensible precaution,” said Godwin. “It seems your academy core forgers are sensible fellows.”

“I agree.”

And I would have agreed, if I were telling the truth.

See, there’s no such rule that means our owner can deactivate all our traps. I pulled the fact from my gem arse. I hadn’t planned on lying to the First-Leaf, but it had come to me in a flash of inspiration. It seemed like a good idea to have him rely on something that wasn’t true.

A message appeared before me now, writing itself in spirals of light for me and everyone else to see.

Melding complete.

“I say, melding?” asked the goatief.

“It’s nothing special,” I said. “It just means my boss monster is ready.” I used my inner core voice now. “Tomlin, are you around?”

“Tomlin is working on the red essence.”

“Really? Have you cultivated it yet?”

“He has not, but he is close.”

“Good job! Listen, can you go open the melding room door for me?”

“Melding room, Dark Lord? That is…uh…that is a long way from the essence rooms.”

“It’s right next door! You’re scared, aren’t you? Scared of the idea of a new boss monster. Fine.”

I looked at the Wrotun people. “Kobolds,” I said. “Always acting like cowards.” And then I realized the dialogue with Tomlin had been in my head, so they’d have no idea what I was talking about. I thought better of trying to explain it.

“Something the matter?” asked Godwin. “Is everything under control? I hope this dungeon has not strained your competency.”

“The opposite. Everything’s great. Excuse me a minute.”

I was about to hop to the pedestal in my melding room when I heard a sound.

It was a noise that I didn’t need my inner core to hear, because this was a shriek that wound its way through the dungeon tunnels. A cry of utter pain, one that made even I, a dungeon core, wince.

Something very bad had happened to someone very unlucky.

“What in all hells was that?” said Godwin.

And then the sound came again. A desperate scream of pain.

It sounded for all the world like…like…

“I say! That was my boy!” said the elder goatief.

Godwin gave me a look of pure anger. Anger that had been boiled down to its essence, then mixed with fury and rage to become the expression currently gouged into this old gnome’s features.

“You should pray to your forgers that nothing has happened to Second-Leaf Rushden’s boy,” he told me.

The Rushden family tore off down the tunnels, with the younger third and fourth leaves reaching the entryway first, and the elder leaves and First-Leaf Godwin behind. I knew that the tunnels ahead were still strewn with some of Tavia’s traps, but I hadn’t gotten around to laying my own yet.

“Tomlin, Shadow, everyone; make sure nothing happens to the people currently running through our dungeon Make them aware of any traps.”

There comes a time when it’s okay to panic. To exaggerate. To use harsh words.

This was one of those times, so I will say this; things looked bad.

I just couldn’t understand what had happened. The scream came from way north of us, and it was unmistakably the Rushden boy. Had Wylie failed to lead him away from traps or something?

“Wylie,” I said, using my core voice. “What happened?”

“Wylie didn’t see!”

“Is the boy alive?”

“Wylie doesn’t-”

Wylie shouted something, but I couldn’t hear. I used my core vision to take a look through the dungeon, whizzing through the tunnel until I saw it.

I couldn’t believe the scene in the room near the surface door.

The Rushden family had surrounded Wylie. Two of them restrained him. Wylie had a look of fear and confusion on his face. On the opposite side of the room, First-Leaf Godwin had backed Gary into the corner, using his glowing staff as a threat.

And then there was an older female Goatief in the center of the room. She was kneeling beside a body. It was the body of the fifth-leaf of the Rushden family.

CHAPTER 19

I hopped to the room next to the surface door. It was hard to know what to focus on. Two goatiefs were restraining Wylie, bending his arms behind his back. The boy was lying dead in the center of the room. His mother kept shaking his