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

in the academy does something to a core’s emotions, and it makes it hard to shed a tear over sad puppies, stories of unrequited love, and pompous goatief boys who decided to explore a dungeon.

Maybe I would have pretended, though. Gold is gold, after all, and if someone was offering all the gold in Xynnar, why not try to cry a little? Then again, who would ever offer that much gold? It’s like the game kids always play. The hypothetical if a mage put a wand to your head, would you kiss a pig’s bottom? You know, that kind of thing.

Anyway, the only thing I was bothered about was Wylie and Gary. Every time I thought about Godwin and the others leading them out of my dungeon, I felt rage boil up inside me.

I could only calm myself down by trying really hard to dredge empathy from the bottom of my core soul. Or if not empathy, then a close imitation of it. How would I feel if my son had died in a dungeon?

Impossible to say. I don’t have a son.

Hmm. Empathy is hard.

Ah, wait a second. How would I feel if I had created a kobold, sent him to the caverns, and someone there had slaughtered him?

I would be angry. I would want to come up with some diabolical plan to wipe them out completely. To make them pay for what they’d done by killing every last one of them, grinding their bodies into gristle, and feeding the slop to my creatures.

And now, after those soothing thoughts, I felt a little more relaxed.

Now that I had calmed down, I tried to approach this rationally. No matter what angle I viewed it from, I couldn’t see how Wylie or Gary had killed the boy. The Wrotun were safe from my creatures unless I willed otherwise, and my creations would only attack them if I gave the order.

What else, then? Could a Seeker have done it?

Doubtful. It didn’t seem logical that a Seeker could sneak in, murder the boy, and then creep out again. For one thing, the timing would be very coincidental. What were the odds that a Seeker would be there near the surface door at the same time the boy was? I mean, Godwin had brought them to me unannounced. It wasn’t a planned visit.

What else could have happened? Could the boy have done it to himself? I didn’t see why or how. He had three long, deep gashes on his chest. He couldn’t have done that to himself. The same logic meant it couldn’t have been an accident of any kind.

Fine, so I wasn’t going to work things out that way. I needed a different approach.

Who could have benefited from this? That was the question.

Well, the Seekers benefited, since I had two less creatures in my dungeon, and Gary had been one of my toughest. There was nobody else who I could think would benefit from this.

I felt a stirring in my core. Somebody was in the dungeon.

Checking my core vision, I saw that Galatee had entered my core room.

I hopped there to find her waiting beside my pedestal. She was wearing a tight set of leathers that made her old gnome body look toned. The leather chest piece looked like it would withstand a sword lunge or two, but it was also trimmed with gold so that it looked nice. Her face was graver than a…than a…a grave?

“Core Beno,” she said. “Your monsters have been placed in two cells near the cavern, where they cannot harm anyone. They will not be destroyed until we are satisfied that we know happened today.”

“Surely you don’t believe they did it?”

“Try to think like someone else would, core. This is a dungeon full of monsters. One of our people died in a room where you had stationed a beast. What is the most likely explanation?”

“The most likely explanation isn’t always the right one.”

She wavered a little now. I could see it in her eyes. She was just parroting what the First-Leaf had told her to say, but at least a part of her didn’t believe it.

“Perhaps not always, but you can forgive a grieving family for latching onto passing debris of logic to keep their minds afloat.”

“Galatee, I-”

“Enough,” she said. She sounded like her father when she said that.

Come to think of it, was the First-Leaf her father? She had never called him that, but I was sure that was how their tree structure worked.

“I have come to give you this, as requested,” she said.

She opened the satchel around her shoulder and produced a crystal. It was the size of an apple and jagged, with a slightly blue tint that stopped it being fully transparent.

“Core Jahn has a crystal in his dungeon, too. This will allow you to speak to him. It is only to be used to coordinate your efforts in the event of an invasion on both doors.”

She placed the crystal on the pedestal.

“Got it. Thank you. I need to ask for one fav-”

Galatee didn’t even answer me. Instead, she just walked away, and soon her footsteps became distant echoes, and then disappeared completely.

I glanced at the crystal that she had left on my pedestal. I could talk to Jahn, at least. It would be good to hear a friendly voice. To find out what he was doing, to…

Wait a second.

I had an idea. There was something I had to do, but I needed to be quick.

“Hello? Beno?” said a voice.

It came from the crystal. It sounded distant, as though he was shouting from across a valley. I could still make out the words.

“Jahn?”

“Beno! Thank the forgers that it’s you! I was worried. They won’t tell me anything about you.”

“Are you okay, Jahn?”

“I’m fine. A little homesick,