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

A mighty coughing fit overtook him then, so Godwin let it all out, and after that, he closed his eyes.

CHAPTER 24

I let out a big laugh. The kind that, if I had a body, you’d class as a belly laugh. I couldn’t help it, and I didn’t even try to hide it.

Yeah, I should have been worried, but instead, I was laughing. They thought they could destroy me. Really? A bunch of cave dwellers who had spent their lives suckling on mana. They thought they could destroy the very core they bought to protect them.

I guessed that the main fallacy in this was their belief that Galatee could order me to disarm my traps. There’s no such order, no rule that says that should happen. I was the one who told her that, and she’d told the First-Leaf in turn. They were operating under a misapprehension that would get them killed.

And I’d be the one to make sure that happened. It was time to rig this dungeon up with more traps than a cheesemaker’s shop floor during mouse breeding season.

This time, I needed to change my focus. My enemies would come from the west, from the direction of the caves, and they’d know the route to my core room.

I wondered how much time I had left. I guessed it’d take them a couple of hours. That meant it was safer to bank on one hour.

Using my core voice, I gave a command. “Everyone to the loot room.”

We met in the largest space in the dungeon, the room Wylie had excavated to become the loot chest room. There was Tomlin, Shadow, Maginhart, and all the other lovely kobolds I had birthed.

Ugh. Even saying birthed in my head sounded weird. I’ll stick with saying created.

I couldn’t help but notice that Tomlin and Shadow were holding hands, and they were trying to be subtle about it. Damn kobolds and their foolish ideas of romance.

Nearby were a few more kobold miners. Then there was my anti-seeker squad; the eight kobolds led by the level 15 bard Brecht. The squad was made from a mixture of the ranger, warrior, bard, and barbarian classes, and they were one of my toughest offensive squads.

Finally, there was the hivemind boss monster, represented now by a single dead-eyed bone guy, since the main hive lived on the melding room ceiling.

Looking at them all, I was proud of what I’d done. It wasn’t too long ago that I had made my very first kobold, Tomlin, and that had been a strain on my essence.

At the same time, I was struck with the idea of absence. That Gary and Wylie should be here.

“Tomlin wonders if Dark Lord will talk,” said Tomlin. “He feels that the silence is awkward. Dark Lord is not known for keeping his words to himself.”

A few kobold miners laughed now. Brecht idly drummed his tambourine, which actually added to the tension. I mean come on; when you’re already tense, the last thing you need is a drumbeat.

“I suppose you all know what happened yesterday with the idiot goatief boy. Well, there has been a development,” I said.

I explained what I had heard in the meeting. Starting with how they blamed us for the boy’s death, and what Godwin had persuaded them to do about it.

“Then surely, the best option is for us to leave?” asked Shadow.

“If it were as simple as that, I would. But Galatee holds Jahn and my deeds. We can’t stray from her.”

“Then she can destroy you.”

“Not quite. I’m still a free-thinking being, and she can’t force me to do anything here. She certainly can’t force me to destroy myself. The only thing she can do is prevent me from fleeing.”

“And I take it the same restrictions apply to us, but placed there by yourself?” asked Shadow.

I might have known. Always thinking of herself, of escape.

Other dungeon cores would have answered that question by smiting her down. Making an example of her. The theory of tyranny wasn’t just a way of a core being mean, it was a legitimate dungeon ruling technique.

Maybe I had to change that part of me. I had always treated the creatures in my dungeon as their own people, but what did that bring me?

Insubordination. Guilt. A feeling of sadness when they died, because I had made the fatal mistake of seeing them as something other than tools.

Some overseers would be scowling if they could see me now, and perhaps it was time to make an example of Shadow. Now, more than ever, because I would soon have an invasion on my doorstep.

I was about to speak when a voice beat me to it.

“Tomlin will fight for Dark Lord,” he said. “And he will fight for his clan. Shadow will fight for hers. Maginhart, Brecht, and strange mushroom beast will fight. We all fight for the clan.”

“Right,” I said. “Besides, I can destroy you if you don’t.”

That seemed to do the trick.

“Let’s talk defenses and traps,” I said. “But first, I need two things. I need someone to get a message to Core Jahn.”

“If only someone had given you a cryssstal that accomplissshed that,” said Maginhart.

“Hey! Without deconstructing it, I’d never have known that our owners were planning to kill us. Now, someone needs to leave the dungeon and sneak through the cavern and then get to the other side, where Jahn is guarding the surface door. And I say guarding in the loosest sense of the word.”

“This leaf will do that,” said Warrane.

All gazes turned toward the three-eyed, green-skinned teen who had just entered the loot room. One kobold snarled at him. If you’ve ever heard a kobold snarl, you’ll know just what a pathetic gesture that was.

I understood the sentiment, though. I