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

by Alex Oakchest

  Rooms: 14

  Monsters: 16

  Traps: 18

  Puzzles: 10

  Monsters:

  [Empty]

  As could be expected, I had only two rooms in my dungeon. It was likely that the Wrotun had carved out more rooms nearby, but I would have to travel to them or have a creature go there to claim them.

  As a level 5 core, my dungeon capacity was much larger than when I had first graduated from the academy. That would serve me well here.

  My monsters list was pathetically empty. Only a few days ago, back in my first dungeon, it had been filled with kobolds, fire beetles, and even a boss monster named Gary. He was a stone troll, leech, spider hybrid, and surprisingly cheerful.

  No matter. I would create new monsters. What I had needed to see, though, was my stats. Particularly, my total essence.

  Essence: 380/380

  Do you see why I felt a little better?

  I already had essence stored inside me, which I could now use to get started. Of course, it wouldn’t replenish until I cultivated the essence moss. Any essence I spent now would be gone, for the time being. At least I could do something.

  With a mental blink, I conjured my crafting list in front of me. This showed what I could make using my essence, and how much essence each item would cost. The more I leveled up, the more things I would be able to make.

  Core Crafting Categories:

  7) Dungeon Fixtures

  Pedestal Point [Cost:12.5]

  Lamp [Cost: 10]

  Door [Cost: 15]

  Pathway [Cost: 5]

  Small Loot Chest [Cost: 20]

  Iron Door [Cost: 10]

  Fake Iron Door [Cost: 10]

  Lock [Cost: 10]

  Rug [Cost: 10]

  8) Monsters

  Spider [Cost 15]

  Leech [Cost 15]

  Fire beetle [Cost 20]

  Kobold [Cost 35]

  Angry Elemental Jelly Cube [Cost 75]

  Sinister Owl [Cost 120]

  Stone Dwarf Troll [Cost 180]

  Bogbadug [Cost 200]

  9) Tool & Weapons

  Iron Pickaxe [Cost 200]

  Iron Spade [Cost 200]

  Iron Sword [Cost 250]

  Iron Shield [Cost 250]

  10) Traps

  Beartrap [Cost 50]

  Pitfall [Cost 100]

  Pressure Switch [Cost 50]

  Poisoned darts [Cost 250]

  11) Puzzles

  Floor Tile Patterns [Cost 250]

  Riddle Doors [Cost 110]

  Trick Levers [Cost 125]

  Transmutation Station [Cost 500]

  12) Loot

  Bag of Gold Coins [Cost: 50]

  Slightly fancy sword [Cost: 50]

  Semi-rare Gem [Cost: 75]

  Generic Magic Spell Book [Cost: 100]

  13) Rooms

  Essence growing room [Cost 80]

  Specialised insect and fungi larder [Cost 100]

  Melding room [Cost 120]

  As you can imagine, there were lots of things that a working dungeon needed to be successful, and not all of them involved traps and death. You may have noticed that I had unlocked the ability to create a rug out of essence. I still don’t know why a core would ever need to do this, but it proves my point. We’re much more than conjurers of death.

  What I needed now was a creature. This was how I would give Warren something to do instead of just standing around while I got busy.

  So, what should I create? It had to be something small and inexpensive. Ah – I knew what would work.

  Create leech.

  Essence left me. Just a pinch of it since a leech cost 15, and that really wasn’t much. It started as a swirl of purple light drifting from my core, before gathering before me and taking shape.

  Warrane recoiled, jerking the wooden rod so that I nearly tumbled off.

  “Watch it!” I said.

  “This leaf doesn’t understand,” he answered, eyeing the shape before us as the light left it, leaving behind a two-feet long leech.

  “You know nothing about cores, do you?” I said. “This is what we do. We create things. Quite gruesome things, usually. This is the least of it, Warren.”

  “This leaf doesn’t like the angry slug.”

  “Angry slug? You don’t know what a leech is?”

  “This leaf has never seen one.”

  I forced myself to be a little less harsh to him. Warrane had lived down here all of his life, so his whole world of experience consisted of whatever lived underground. If there weren’t any leeches, then, of course, he’d have no idea what one was.

  Not only that, but this was a dungeon leech, and thus was much larger than your normal swamp variety. I guessed if I had never seen one before and was suddenly introduced to this ugly thing, I would be a little perturbed, too. I knew how to ease his nerves though.

  “Warrane,” I said. “This is your leech now. I’d like you to name him.”

  Warrane looked at me strangely.

  The leech suddenly turned his way, and it leaped at him.

  “No!” I shouted. “Leech, you are not to attack Warrane.”

  The leech swiveled my way. It didn’t have eyes, as such, but I could tell it was looking at me. I stared it down, even though my eyes weren’t visible either. It was the worst staring contest ever.

  Finally, the leech gave a nod, the upper portion of its slug-like body forming into a bowing gesture.

  “See?” I said. “He’s friendly and rather polite. Although he isn’t as clever as a fire beetle or kobold, so you won’t get much conversation from him. Put him in your artificed bag and take him everywhere with you.”

  “This leaf wonders why?”

  “Because I need you to walk through every single tunnel that sprouts from the core room. The leech is my creature, and he will populate my dungeon map when you take him on a tour around it. Now, what’s his name?”

  “This leaf can name him anything?”

  “That’s the way I like to run things. Every creature has a name, and you can choose. Within reason. If name this leech Beno, we’ll have a problem.”

  Warrane stared at the leech, and he scratched his chin with his free hand. “This leaf names you Sixth-Leaf Webb.”

  “Webb? That’s the name of your tree.”

  “This leaf will not rise due to the corruption of his tree, as he told you. But if there is a Sixth-Leaf beneath him, it is as though he has advanced.”

  “Very well,” I said. “I’ll refer to him as Six for short. Can you and Six explore all of the tunnels around us? I understand that you already know what is here, but this is for me. Six needs to visit every tunnel for it to complete my map.”

  Warrane nodded. “Glad to serve,” he said. He pinched Six the Leech between his index finger and thumb and put him in his inventory bag. “How will you walk while this leaf is gone, Core Beno?”

  “Watch.”

  I focused on the center of the room.

  Create pedestal point.

  Essence left me again, this time forming a stone pillar in the center of the room. I imagined the core room just down the tunnel and commanded another pedestal point to appear there, too.

  Done. I was twenty-five essence points poorer, but now I had the means to travel between the core and essence rooms.

  With that Warrane left, taking Six with him. I had some lovely dungeon building to do.

  CHAPTER 7

  Taking care of the purple essence was easy. As long as your name wasn’t Core Jahn, cultivating essence was the most basic action a core could take.

  First, I cast out my core arms. These arms were like beams of light that spread out from me. They let me handle essence moss and vines, but they wouldn’t work on anything else. I couldn’t, for instance, take up watercolor painting using my core hands. I would never, ever get to play the piano.

  Using my arms, I gathered all the purple essence from the wall, brought it toward me, and then I took it into my
core.

  Now came the temptation. I could taste the essence moss inside me. Nourishing, sweet, so delicious that my core begged me to fully absorb it.

  But no, I wouldn’t do that. As I said, my name was not Core Jahn.

  Instead, I twisted and turned the moss inside me, and I focused on it and commanded it to change until soon, I manipulated it so that it became not moss but vines. I placed these back on the wall.

  Done! There was only a foot square patch of them, but given time they would spread over the wall. I’d then plant more on the other walls, giving myself a rapidly increasing essence supply.

  I could already feel the tiny patch of vines nourishing me. At their present size, I was only getting .2 essence per minute, but that would soon change.

  Now, I had to think about the red essence. I had a vague idea of what it would do, but the tricky part was cultivating it. I had to be careful because it might not work the same as the purple essence. I wish we had covered this more in the academy.

  Using my core arms, I pulled just a tiny patch of red moss away, leaving seven-eighths of it on the wall.

  I brought this toward my core. Even without absorbing it, it was like I could already taste it. This thing was potent as hell, much more so than purple essence. Rather than giving off a sweet smell, the red moss was spicy, like a hundred chili seeds mashed up into one fiery ball of throat-burning hell.

  I let it absorb into my core, without fully digesting it. Already I could feel it burning me, but it was a rather pleasant warmth.

  The temptation, though. Hells, it was strong. My desire to absorb this moss completely was so powerful that I thought it would break me. It was only by concentrating hard that I battled it, and I then tried to manipulate the moss just as I had with the purple kind.

  Wait. No.

  This wasn’t working! As I gently twisted and pulled on it, I felt the heat leave me in one big gust.

  I felt it then, a horrible sensation inside me. The essence had died.

  I let the moss fall out of my core, where it landed on the ground beneath my pedestal. It was completely black now. Dead.

  Hmm. So the red essence wasn’t cultivated in the usual way. I’d have to think about this, but I only had a finite patch of moss. Better to leave it for now until I had a better idea.

  More time must have passed than I realized, because when I pulled up my map, I saw that Warrane had traveled through most of the vast network, filling in the spaces that had once been black.

  On the southern-most part of the map was the giant cavern of the Wrotun. North of that was the bunch of tunnels that Warren and I traveled through. Then there was my core room and my current location in the essence room.

  Then, ranging north, was a great spread of warren-like tunnels. Hundreds of them, so that they looked like a crisscross of veins. There were no more rooms, though. Just places where the tunnels were a little wider. It seemed that the Wrotun hadn’t dug out any more besides the core room and essence room.

  There was a sense to it. The tunnels to the north were a giant mess, intersecting, looping, hitting dead ends. It was like the maze at the King’s palace, except a maze that looked like hundreds of snakes all slithering beside each other.

  It must have been designed this way to confuse any Seekers who made their way through the surface door, seeking the mana spring. No doubt the Wrotun had laced the tunnels with traps, too.

  Though it suggested they had some knowledge of defense, my presence here indicated something else; the Seekers were getting better at finding their way through the tunnels. Otherwise, why bother paying for a core?

  The thing was, even the most sophisticated trap system could be defeated. If a rogue or a mage was a high enough level, they could use their skills or spells to unmask and disarm traps. That was why any good dungeon also had puzzles and creatures.

  So, I had the beginnings of an essence vine patch, I had two pedestals, and I knew the layout of my dungeon.

  What I needed next were rooms, traps, puzzles, and monsters. Before I could plan what to build and where, I needed to know more about my enemy.

  “Warrane?” I shouted, hoping my voice would reach him through the tunnels. Alas, a gem core’s voice sounds strange. I had been working on deepening it.

  There was no answer.

  In less than a blink, I hopped from the pedestal in my essence room and emerged into my core room. The mana spring was to my right, with mana gently dripping from it. Six different tunnels were sprouting off from here.

  According to my map, Warrane was northeast of me. Unfortunately, without more pedestals, I had no way to travel to him.

  “Warrane?”

  Again, there was no answer. It seemed that sound didn’t travel well through the tunnels.

  That was when I heard a shout of pain in the distance, and realized I was wrong. Sound actually traveled quite well through this place. Just not the kind of sounds that I wanted to hear.

  CHAPTER 8

  Footsteps came toward me, starting quiet but growing in volume and echoing out through the dungeon. My map showed Warrane heading my way, and soon he stumbled into the core room.

  His face was a mess, and his right cheek had ballooned to the size of a… balloon. His green skin had turned purple. His leather armor was covered in flecks of dust and splotches of blood.

  “This leaf was attacked,” he said, getting his breath. “The Seekers are here.”

  I felt a jolt of panic now, and I realized just how different this situation was to what I had been trained for.

  When you were building a dungeon, it didn’t open until you were ready for it to. That meant you could prepare yourself before any heroes came to loot it, and you could leave lots of nasty surprises for them.

  Here, I had made no traps, no puzzles, and the only creature in my army was a leech named Sixth-leaf who lived in Warrane’s inventory bag. As situations went, it wasn’t ideal.

  “The Seekers? Where did they come from?”

  “The surface door, Core Beno. As always.”

  “Of course. How many of them were there?”

  “This leaf was blinded by a spell before he could see. If felt like a blow to the face, but made from mana. His vision only cleared in time for him to see the nearest tunnel, and run.”

  “So we have no idea how many Seekers are here, who they are, or what skills they have. The only thing we know is they have a mage who can cause temporary blindness.”

  “This leaf apologizes. Self-preservation wears the same cloak as cowardice. In the heat of the moment, his senses were not his own.”

  “You don’t need to say sorry. Fear isn’t a fair fighter,” I said. “It’s there to keep you safe, but it can turn on you. Don’t blame yourself. How far do the Seekers usually get when they attack? I take it Tavia’s traps hold them off?”

  “Further each time, Core Beno. May I see your map?”

  I mentally commanded my map to appear as beams of light. They formed as straight, yellow lines that hovered in the air so that Warren could see them. It cost me .1 essence per minute to show my map this way, but my essence vines covered that.

  Warrane pointed to the map. “The furthest they reached was here,” he said. “That was many moons ago, and it depleted them, I believe.”

  Hells, that was worryingly close. Warrane had pointed to a section of tunnels not too far north from the core room.

  “Can’t any of the Wrotun come and fight? It’s ridiculous you let the Seekers get that far. You can’t rely just on traps.”

  “The leaf that struggles against the wind soon falls off the branch. That is what first-leaf Godwin says.”

  “You mean he’s scared to die.”

  Warrane nodded. “As are many leaves. We are not a fighting people.”

  I thought I understood. These people used the mana springs to extend their lives way beyond their mortal reach. They had built their whole culture around it. But the thing about extended life was that it made you scared to lose it.
These people were too frightened to defend themselves, so they first relied on traps, and now they had bought me to battle for them.

  Fine. I’d do what I had to do.

  “First, we protect the spring at all costs. If the Seekers launched a full assault recently, they’re probably weakened. If they have any sense, this is just a scouting party here to see how many traps you managed to rebuild. Is there any way to speak to Core Jahn and see if they’re attacking that door too?”

  “This leaf could run to him.”

  “That’d take hours. We need a better way of communicating across both doors, but that’ll have to wait.”

  I felt my mind narrow into an intense focus now. That was the perk of my academy training; my whole second life thus far had been designed around fighting heroes. When it came to a battle, I felt at home. Tense, anxious, but at home.

  So, I had 340 essence points to spend, and I needed to make sure I used them well enough to repel the Seekers. To do that, I needed to know what I was dealing with.

  Looking at Warren, I realized I couldn’t send him back through the tunnels. I knew what I could do.

  Create fire beetle.

  A squat black beetle appeared in front of me. It had bulging eyes, skinny legs, and streaks of red light ran up and down its dark shell.

  “Kill?” it said.

  I suppose that it is a proud moment in any parent’s life when their offspring says their first words. For me, I had come to know that a fire beetle’s first words are always, fight or kill. Not exactly heart-warming, but a lot more appropriate for the circumstances than dad or papa.

  “I don’t need you to kill,” I told it. “See this map?”

  “Fight?”

  “No. Listen to me. Head north to the door you can see way, way at the top. As soon as you see anyone, watch them. Do not fight. Do not kill. Don’t even whisper harsh words under your breath. I need you to stay in the shadows and watch them.”

  “The beetle is a spy?” asked Warrane.

  “Of sorts. Once I do any kind of work in a dungeon tunnel or room, it technically belongs to me, and that means I can see it no matter where I am. Right now, I haven’t done anything to the northern reaches of the tunnels, even if I have mapped them out. So, I’ll need this vicious little creature to be my eyes.”