Dungeon Core Academy: Books 1-7 (A LitRPG Series)

by Alex Oakchest

  “Tomlin do!”

  “Great. Then get to it, my friend, and we’ll soon have this place looking better.”

  Tomlin eyed the wall now, pickaxe in hand, and he muttered something under his breath. I couldn’t quite hear him, and I couldn’t exactly move closer to him, could I? Something was going on here. Something not quite right.

  Luckily, Tomlin was my created creature.

  “Tomlin,” I said.

  He turned my way. “Yes, Dark Lord?”

  “Repeat what you just muttered under your breath.”

  “Mutter, Dark Lord?”

  “Don’t play ignorant,” I said, my suspicion growing. “Something is going on here. I hate to pull rank, but you’re forcing me into it. As my created creature, I order you to repeat whatever you muttered under your breath.”

  Tomlin sighed. “Fine,” he said. “Tomlin isn’t stupid, okay? Tomlin can talk better than you would expect.”

  “Ah. So the one-word answers, the simplistic dialogue, that was an act? Is it because you believe that is what I would have expected from a kobold?”

  Tomlin nodded. “You have to understand, Dark Lord. The creatures you create aren’t sprouted from thin air. Tomlin was born in the academy. Tomlin and his littermates were taught dungeon ways when we grew up.”

  “Dungeon monsters are bred in the academy?”

  “Yes. Some of them. When cores are new, their essence simply transports monsters from the academy. When core gets stronger, monsters will be created from essence.”

  Interesting. Very, very interesting.

  I should have known this. Even if the overseers hadn’t taught us this particular fact, I should have come across it in one of the books I had read. I should have overheard a conversation about it, caught wind of a rumor. Something.

  Then again.

  The overseers had warned us that there were some things we would only learn once we began making our own dungeon. Dynamic learning, they called it. It was another part of our evaluation, and the theory was that knowledge was an advantage, and thus not every core could learn the same things.

  Some things, some pieces of dungeon information, could only be learned while you were in the dungeon, by doing certain things.

  My instincts had made me suspicious of Tomlin, and by ordering him to reveal himself, I had learned something new. I didn’t know how I would use this information yet, but it was great to know.

  “So, Tomlin. You know much more than you were letting on, and that makes the nature of our dynamics a little different, doesn’t it? You seem to have more free will than I expected.”

  “If free will exists when you can order Tomlin to do things, then yes.”

  “A semi-free will, then. Half a will. And where there’s half a will, there’s half a way. I can’t, in all good conscience, just boss you around.”

  “That is our role, Dark Lord. We are raised by the breedmaster overseers in preparation for this.”

  “You are told to be compliant? Docile?”

  “Yes, sort of. Tomlin has to serve.”

  “Tell me, Tomlin, were you serious when you said you were happy to become a miner?”

  Tomlin scratched his chin. “Tomlin can be honest?”

  “Please.”

  “Then…no. Tomlin likes books. He likes to learn. Tomlin would like to be a scholar.”

  I ran my hand through my hair, feeling frustrated.

  But I didn’t have hair, of course. I did this in my head. To be clear; I ran an imaginary hand through imaginary hair. In my mind, my hair was glorious and flowing, like a barbarian’s.

  I also had an imaginary goatee beard.

  “I created you because I desperately need to carve out more real estate, and to find materials,” I said. “I need a miner, and that is why I chose to create a kobold. Even so, a large part of being a dungeon core is learning how to manage my underlings, and a happy worker is a productive worker.”

  “Tomlin will carry out orders, as Tomlin said. He was bred for this.”

  “Even so. How about this, Tomlin? For every two hours you mine and dig for me, I will allow you an hour of study. For now, I don’t have any books down here. I’ll need to get a surface liaison for that. But…I’ll become your tutor and teach you what I know, okay?”

  Tomlin thought about it for a second. Now that I had unmasked his pretense, I could see there was a hell of a lot going on behind his dragon eyes.

  “Tomlin agrees! Tomlin thanks you, and wishes to express that he didn’t expect this of his core master.”

  “Beno is pleased that…” I began. Damn, his way of talking was infectious. “I mean, I am pleased that we could agree. Now, Tomlin, if you would begin digging, I’d be most appreciative.”

  Relationship status with Tomlin improved from [compliant] to [loyal]!

  “By the way, there’s something you should know,” I told him. “If you want to whistle while you dig tunnels, that’s totally fine here.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Overseers Evaluation Report

  Overseer: Overseer Rivers

  Graduate Core: Jahn

  Graduate Core Jahn was rather fortuitous in his placement. His dungeon is in the middle of iron-rich land, with a town nearby that is especially tolerant of the kobold and goblin races. This should stand him in good stead.

  Not only that, but there is a giant iron deposit just five feet east of his core room. I could sense it as I evaluated him.

  Unfortunately, Core Jahn may be a simpleton. I mean that with no insult; I actually believe that Core Jahn is simple-minded.

  Jahn, when he began in his room, absorbed his inch of essence moss and then fully consumed it. This increased his total essence to six, but left him without any means of regenerating it.

  He then wasted his 6 essence points digging a hole in the core room ceiling, trying to reach the surface. Which, as we know, is impossible with just six essence points.

  As such, Jahn now has no essence points, and no means of regenerating them. He is completely stuck in his core room with nothing to do. I recommend he is hammered into dust and the dust be thrown into the sea. That is how useless core Jahn is.

  Result: Condemnation, with recommendation that Jahn is removed. I write this with regret; in my ten years as an overseer, he is the first core I have made this recommendation about. I’m not as harsh as Bolton.

  Vedetta Costitch had almost made it out of her house without waking anyone, when a voice called out.

  “Who’s awake?”

  A shiver crept down her spine. She paused at the doorway and held her breath. She stayed real, real quiet.

  “Vedetta?” called the voice. “Vedetta?”

  Damn. It was Mom. If it were one of her useless brothers, she’d have ignored them, but she’d never ignore Mom.

  “Yes, Mom?”

  “I need you, dear.”

  Mom never asked Vedetta’s brothers for help. Even though they were nineteen and twenty years old, Mom always asked for Vedetta, because she knew that Vedetta would help without complaining or making excuses.

  The problem was, Vedetta had important stuff to do today. Stuff more important than helping her sick mother. What could be more important than that?

  Finding the stuff the alchemist needed to cure her.

  Vedetta could never refuse her Mom, so she went to her room and helped her get comfortable and fetched her a jug of lukewarm nettle tea.

  “You’re a good girl,” said her mother. “I raised you right.”

  “It’s nothing. I’m going to head out now, Mom.”

  “Nowhere dangerous, I hope?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Vedetta…”

  “I promise. Nowhere dangerous.”

  Ugh. A promise. You weren’t supposed to break those, were you?

  What if you gave a promise to make someone you loved feel better, and you broke it to save their life? If there was someone in charge of tallying who kept their promises, he’d take that into acco
unt, wouldn’t he?

  Vedetta knew she had to break it either way. She’d take whatever punishment she earned for it. Deciding that, she left the house.

  The bag on her back was really heavy. Too heavy for an eleven-year-old. If she was outside of the town right now, she’d have been a target for brigands and horrible people like that.

  Luckily, it was still dark, and Vedetta knew where she was going because she’d been sneaking there every morning for two weeks. She left town, took a route by Farmer Yorke’s field, and then headed south a little, to where the muddy ground started to turn really dark, and where it stank like a giant’s fart.

  It was here that Vedetta found the hole she’d dug in the ground. She put the metal basin that she used as a mining helmet on her head, and she strapped her little mana lamp to it. She climbed into the hole using the ladder she’d stolen from Farmer Yorke’s outhouse.

  She went down, down, down, and finally, her feet touched the ground. Even with her lamp glowing, it was darker than a demon’s bum down here. It was wet, and things scuttled around.

  Vedetta wasn’t scared. That was something the rest of the town always said was strange; nothing scared Vedetta. When the other kids were playing in the forest and they heard wolves howling, they fled for their homes. Vedetta always wanted to stay and meet the wolves, and she only left when the others dragged her away.

  She’d once heard the elders discussing it. “The girl’s fearlessness isn’t something to be commended,” they said. “She is fearless to the point of it being dangerous.”

  Oh, well. At least she could use it to help now. She’d heard that there was a potion that could fix Mom, but it cost more gold than the entire town had put together. She couldn’t buy it.

  But…it could be made. If a person found the right, rare ingredients, an alchemist could make it.

  This was why Vedetta spent her early morning down here, in this dark, wet place way underground. Where she was alone. Where, if the hole she had made caved in, nobody would ever find her.

  Vedetta wasn’t scared. She wasn’t like other children.

  CHAPTER 9

  While Tomlin mined the wall of room three as I ordered, I hopped back to my core room. Even far across the dungeon, I could hear Tomlin’s efforts. His pickaxe hitting the wall. Mud crumbling away. Tomlin whistling to himself.

  It was nice to feel like I wasn’t alone here anymore. Another sentient being sharing the same dungeon as me. It was a bit of a novelty after a week of seeing nobody but Overseer Bolton.

  As Tomlin toiled away, I had time to think. A person probably wouldn’t need many guesses to know what was occupying my thoughts.

  It was the new knowledge that a young core’s monsters were bred in the academy. This knowledge put everything I knew into question. If they’d held back this secret, what else were they hiding?

  It tallied with something I had come to suspect about essence.

  It was both easy to understand, and incredibly complex. I knew that the overseers could directly manipulate essence. If not, how could they reward or condemn us after evaluations?

  At the same time, I was taught that essence was a naturally occurring material. This was backed up by the essence vines and buds, and how much quicker my essence regenerated when they grew bigger.

  What if it was all a sham? What if the academy controlled everything, like how essence points depleted when I did something, how fast they grew back, and that kind of thing? What if the loot chest that I had conjured in my loot room wasn’t made of essence converted by me, as a core, but instead had been sitting in some dusty room in the academy until I spent my points?

  Hmm. I wasn’t sure what to think. I’d have to ask the next overseer who came to evaluate me, even though I knew what they’d say.

  “We can’t answer technical questions. It isn’t fair to the other cores.”

  It was fair enough, but still…screw the other cores.

  While Tomlin mined the wall on the far side of the dungeon, there were other things for me to be getting on with.

  Firstly, I spent a long time working on the essence vines in my core room. I couldn’t believe their progress! They had covered the first wall entirely and had spread halfway across the second wall that I had planted them on. It meant that my essence regenerated much, much faster.

  There was bad news, though.

  Earlier, I had kept one essence bud. Instead of eating it, I had split it into four new buds, even though it was incredibly unlikely that they would grow. They were split too many times, and I had pushed my luck with their vitality.

  Yeah, they died. They shriveled on the vines, growing black and smelly. Luckily, I got to them before they spread to the vines themselves. If rot had set in on my essence flora, I would have been screwed. Imagining losing my only means of regenerating essence made me shiver.

  Man, I’d rather not have to think about it.

  Then again, I had no choice. I needed to think about it so I could avoid disaster.

  This was a quandary. I was reliant on the vines growing on my core room walls. To me, as a core, they were like my only sources of oxygen. If the vines died, and I used up my essence, I would have no means of regenerating more.

  I wouldn’t die like a person would without oxygen, but a core without essence is just a big, useless gem. No guessing what the overseers would do to me if I let that happen. Surely no core would be stupid enough to leave themselves no way of regenerating essence? And if I did that…

  Condemnation? Nah. They’d have me destroyed.

  I needed to make a life preserver for myself. Something to fall back on if the worst happened and my essence vines were destroyed.

  For a few hours that afternoon – I had no idea if it actually was afternoon or not, but it helped me to pretend that I knew what time it was – I thought about it. I thought about it until the imaginary veins in my imaginary temples throbbed.

  My first thought was to just snip a few vines away and keep them separate from the others, and store them somewhere. Then I realized that if you snip a vine and don’t plant it somewhere else, it’ll just die.

  So, why didn’t I just plant some vines in one of my other rooms?

  Hmm. It was a risk.

  Essence vines, as important as they are, are incredibly fragile. Seriously, new-born puppies have nothing on an essence vine’s fragility. Not even a puppy who has three legs, is blind, and has no sense of smell. That’s how bloody fragile essence vines are.

  Planting them in my loot room would be a waste of time because I would one day have a big boss monster in my loot room. It’d be the setting of glorious battles, where parties of soon-to-be-dead heroes would fight whatever leviathan I had spawned to guard the loot chest.

  Assuming I had a monster better than Tomlin, of course.

  In the mayhem, with hero mages casting fireballs and stuff like that, my essence vines would die, and my cultivation time would be wasted.

  So, why not use one of my as-yet unassigned rooms?

  Well, I had set those aside as puzzle and trap rooms that the heroes would have to beat before they got to the loot. That made them a poor place for essence growing, for two reasons.

  One, there was a chance of the aforementioned stupid mage fireballs and stuff.

  Two, essence vines had the annoying property of sending out healing energy. If I put them in rooms where heroes might walk through, my vines would heal them.

  Why, in the name of all the demon lords of the underworld, would I want to do that?

  No, planting more of them in my dungeon rooms wasn’t an option. Nor could I use another wall in my core room, because I’d need to create defenses and traps to protect my core. I had to leave some wall space free for that.

  So I pondered, and I whistled, and I lost focus and started thinking about my Soul Bard story, and then I got my focus back and thought some more.

  Another solution hit me like a slap from an angry ogre.

  A solution that had made Oversee
r Bolton get his undies in a twist the last time I did it.

  Yep, one way to keep some emergency essence vines would be to snip them away from the others. Then, I’d split some of my core, and use the resulting liquid to keep the vines alive even when they were separated from the others. Then I’d be able to dig a little hole in my core room, store the vines inside, then fill the hole.

  Just like that, one emergency stockpile of essence vines, hidden and preserved.

  The thing was, I had already likened splitting my core to losing a finger. No matter what the motivation for it, would a man who cut off one of his own fingers be advised to cut off another?

  Nope. The book I had found in the library said that with the core splitting process, came the chance your overall essence could decrease. Not only that, but the lower my core purity, the more chance a hero could kill me if he reached my core room.

  A nonstarter. A blunt sword. An arrow with a broken point. A mage spell with no mana behind it. That’s what my idea was.

  The only safe way of keeping my essence vines protected was to dig out a dedicated growing room, and then somehow get some spell-resistant protection inside it. The problem was, being a level one core meant I was limited to having four rooms in my dungeon, and Tomlin had already dug my fourth.

  Damn it all to the underworlds. I’d have to wait until I leveled up.

  Lacking a way to keep emergency essence, I decided I had better take care of the essence vines currently flourishing in my core room.

  To do this, I wielded my spectral arms again. I painstakingly checked each vine, each leaf of essence, and I made sure they were all healthy and free from the dreaded black spots. I clipped a couple of leaves that I was unsure about.

  Not only that, but I gently moved certain leaves where it looked like they were growing too close to the others, and I massaged all the vines with my spectral fingers. That might have sounded stupid, but plants love that. They enjoy a little affection from time to time.