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

core of this dungeon. I live under various names. The Dark Lord, His Dark Magnificence, The Master of Darkness. You were created to serve as the boss monster in this dungeon, but I may have made a mistake. You appear to be nothing but a growth of talking mushrooms.”

“Just mushrooms? Show him!”

Something suddenly fell onto me then. It balanced on the tip of my core.

A strange feeling shot through me, almost like an invisible arm reaching inside me. It became hard to think.

And then the sensation left, and the thing on top of me rolled off and plopped onto the ground. It was a mushroom. Small, black, entirely unappetizing, even if I still had a desire for food.

It smiled wide with its tiny little mouth. “I did it! I read his thoughts!”

“Ah,” said a mushroom on the ceiling. “The knowledge has just come to me.”

“Me too! He has a strange mind.”

“Ha! Dark Magnificence? Dark Lord? He gave those nicknames to himself!”

“He likes to pretend he is the Soul Bard! I saw it in his mind. He tried to hide it!”

If I had cheeks, they would have reddened. As it was, I hid my minor embarrassment and focused on what was happening.

One mushroom had somehow wrenched thoughts from me, and the others learned the same thoughts just seconds later. That was the power of the hivemind, I supposed. It meant this would be a good monster for gathering intelligence, but how could it ever stage a final battle?

As if in answer, four more mushrooms dropped from the ceiling. When they hit the ground they began to grow, their forms stretching and molding until they became larger shapes.

They would have been chest-height stood next to a man, and their figures were human-like in that they had two normal-proportioned arms and legs and they stood upright. It was only their faces that gave away what they really were.

The four of them wore haunted expressions and had dead eyes, lacking in color and set deep in their sockets. No, they weren’t Dungeon Academy overseers.

They looked like they had visited the shores of death but then had been washed back by the tide just when it was within reach. They were undead, and undead meant bone guys.

Yet, they weren’t made of bone, or even of fungi. Their humanoid forms were made from ooze packed tightly together so that they wobbled when they walked.

Two were glowing red, and heat emanated from them. The other pair was blue, and a chill was cast from their bodies. I understood now. I had seen aspects of the hive fungi and the undead bone guys, and now I could see where the angry elemental jelly cube had come into play.

So, the mass of fungi growing on the melding room roof could not only read minds and spread that intelligence to the others, but they could form big slime shapes with undead characteristics and elemental damage.

Not too shabby at all. Not when you think about what I could have ended up with. Stuff like a giant, bone-hard mushroom. Or tiny mushrooms made from jelly. Or even an undead mushroom that spat out blobs of jelly. Really, the melding room could make a mess of a monster if you were unlucky.

Possibilities raced through my mind now. Perhaps this monster wasn’t so bad after all.

The first fact that stuck out was that the four creatures that formed from the fungi hadn’t added to my total dungeon capacity. It meant an almost endless supply of creatures, right?

I was rich! Rich with monsters! The mushrooms could drop off the ceiling and form something bigger, adding to my army.

But then I noticed something. Each of the newly created forms was shorter than the last.

I decided to try something. “Could you please for two more…uh...jelly men?”

On command, two mushrooms dropped from the ceiling, and these were also shorter than the others.

So, there was a drawback. It seemed that the more of the shapes they formed, the weaker they were. I wasn’t quite so rich. If the mushrooms kept dropping and taking different shapes, they would get smaller and smaller until soon, they were forming ones barely bigger than a mouse.

Maybe their true power was elsewhere. There was something else I could try.

“You. Fire jelly man. Follow me, please.”

I quickly hopped to the pedestal in the core room. “This way,” I shouted.

Soon, I heard squelching noises approaching. So, they weren’t going to offer much stealth, that was for sure. Before long, one of the red ooze men had joined me into the core room.

He looked around, his dead eyes scanning the room. He opened his mouth to speak, making nothing but a slurping sound at first. Then he found his words.

“The master needs me?” he said. The noise his gullet made was quite revolting, and it took a lot to disgust me. I usually love disgusting things.

“I want to try something,” I said.

Slurp. “I am ready.”

“Could you stop this sound, maybe? It’s distracting.”

Slurp. “I am sorry, but I cannot.”

“Fine, we all have our flaws. Listen, there is a mage in the labyrinth. He has spells that cause ice damage.”

“I should attack him?”

“No. Wait here a second.”

I hopped back into the melding room, where I heard the fungi chatting to each other.

“He doesn’t like our slurping? Does he think he is the king of Xynnar or something?”

“Shh! He’s back.”

“A mage with ice damage. Nasty.”

The chattering gradually died down as knowledge of my presence spread through the hivemind.

“Make another ooze man,” I said.

Again a mushroom fell, and a shape formed. This was the smallest one yet by at least an inch. But, it was colored red, and heat emanated from it.

Aha.

It was like I’d suspected. When I had told the last jelly guy about the