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

“A healer! Get us a healer!” she shouted.

The boy’s father looked at Wylie, then at Gary in the far corner of the room. “Which beast did this?” he shouted, his voice thundery.

“If everyone could calm down,” said Gary, lifting a leech leg and holding it high in the air. “We can straighten up this mishap. A calm mind is a mind that can cast itself on the winds of thought.”

“Mishap??”

“He doesn’t mean it that way,” I said. “He’s a boss monster. Empathy isn’t his strongest skill.”

“It’s no mishap,” said First-Leaf Godwin. “It is murder.”

“A healer! A healer!” cried the mother.

Godwin shook his head. “Your son is dead.”

“Then get him to the mana spring.”

“The spring extends life; it cannot restore it.”

“I say, I want both creatures killed on the spot!” said the eldest Goatief. His voice was strange, his words coated in a mixture of anger and grief so that he was half-screaming, half-shouting the words.

I could tell he hadn’t processed what had happened. He was in shock, and his shock response was to demand anger and retribution.

This didn’t seem right. I was certain that neither Wylie nor Gary had killed this boy. For one, I had ordered Wylie to escort the boy safely around the dungeon. Even if he had decided to go against his nature and deceive me, he was hardly a ferocious beast. I didn’t see how Wylie could have done it.

Gary, on the other hand…I was going to have a hard time explaining how Gary couldn’t have done it. I knew he was a delightful guy, but he looked like a hideous freak. In the nicest possible way.

The only fact I clung to was that the boy’s wounds didn’t match up with Gary or Wylie doing it. He had three long cuts across his chest, from which blood poured freely and gave my dungeon floor a rather pleasing crimson hue. Actually. It really set the room off. I’d need to look into…

Not the time for planning decorations!

“Look at him,” I said. “Slashes across his chest. Gary couldn’t have done that; he’d have left bite marks, not slashes.”

Godwin, still pointing his glowing staff at Gary, fixed me with a stare hotter than fire. “Do you think they want to know how your monster killed him? Do you think this is the time to draw attention to the horror? You’re a menace. To think, we welcomed you into our caves.”

“I want the monsters dead,” said the boy’s father. His face was paler than ice.

“And you shall.”

I heard a pounding inside my head. It was though I had a pulse again, and that pulse was racing and racing, building into a toxic mix of rage and adrenaline.

“If either of my monsters are harmed without establishing the facts, I’ll unleash everything in my dungeon and set them loose on your people,” I said.

The words left my mouth and seemed to take on a weight of their own. I could hardly believe I had said it. Like it or not, every core has a duty, and my given duty was to defend these people, not hurt them.

I guessed it was just my own shock response. I was worried about my friends.

It seemed that the threat was enough. I could see in all the Rushden’s’ faces that my words had affected them. Even Godwin looked a little worried.

He nodded at a younger Rushden. She was older than the dead boy, but younger than the eldest goatief. A fourth leaf, perhaps.

“Fetch Galatee and five strong men and women. We will take the monsters away until we learn the truth,” Godwin said.

“No you won’t,” I said.

“Core, you are lucky that the Seekers are still out there, because it means we cannot afford to remove you yet. But the truth of this will out. I will not stand for added danger in our caverns, and certainly not from our own defense system.”

My mind was a crazy blast of thoughts now. Of the questions I should ask, things I should say.

I knew Gary or Wylie hadn’t done this, but that certainty led to the bigger question; who had done it?

“Gary?” I said. “What did you see?”

Godwin raised his staff and pointed it at Gary. A blast of foul-smelling black smoke left it, drifting over to Gary and then splattering against his mouth. It formed a barrier over it, preventing him from talking. Before I could ask Wylie, Godwin did the same to him.

What in all hells was he doing?

I kept the question to myself. I sensed that the First-Leaf was up to something now, and I felt it was in my best interest to get him out of the dungeon, even if it meant taking Gary and Wylie away.

I needed time to think and to plan, without the First-Leaf being there.

That was why I said little as reinforcements arrived, and the Wrotun took Wylie and Gary out of my dungeon. I didn’t want to look at Wylie’s scared face but I forced myself to, and I tried to appear as confident as possible.

“Don’t worry,” I said to him and Gary. “You’ll be back before you know it.”

“I wouldn’t count on that,” said the First-Leaf. He pointed at Warrane. “Fifth-Leaf get back to the caverns. There will be a general meeting tonight.”

“This leaf will stay. It is his duty.”

“He will go where his First-Leaf tells him to. Caverns. Now.”

CHAPTER 20

I’ll be honest with you. I couldn’t have cared any less about the dead goatief boy. Even if you’d said to me, “Beno I will pay you all the gold in Xynnar if you just shed a tear for the goatief”, then I still wouldn’t be able to. It’s just not in my nature to care.

Part of the forging process