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

by Alex Oakchest

  “What kind of things do you specifically need to know?” asked Shadow.

  “Shiny things!” squawked Edgar the raven.

  “We need warnings about traps, puzzles, sentry creatures. I don’t want a fly to fart in there without the rest of us knowing about it.”

  “As you wish, your royal gemness.”

  “Thank you. Gary are you ready?”

  “Always, my dear chap,” said Gary, bowing and sweeping a leech leg in a grand gesture, accidentally slapping Tarius in the face. The kobold wiped a smear of leech slime from his goatee.

  “And you have the pendants?” I asked.

  “I most certainly do,” he said. He lifted another leech legs, which had two blaudy-stone pendants tied to it.

  “Good, good. Fight, Death, Kill? How are you feeling, little bugs?”

  “Fight!”

  “Death!”

  “Kill!”

  “When you put it like that, it’s hard to argue. Well then, we are ready, aren’t we?”

  There was plenty to be anxious about in the upcoming escapade, even if as a core, I didn’t feel anxiety in the way most living beings did. We had to be wary of traps, puzzles, monsters, narkleers. There could be anything waiting for us.

  I looked at my legion of creatures, each of them bred for dungeon life, ready to attack, slaughter, kill, and destroy at a moment’s notice, from just a single command from me, their glorious leader.

  Well, except for Tomlin who was petrified of violence.

  And Karson and Tarius who didn’t consider battle part of their job as miners.

  And Gore the jelly, who used to be an angry elemental jelly, but I had used alchemy to rob him of any combat ability.

  Most of them were ready to attack, slaughter, kill, and destroy at a moment’s notice, then.

  “Okay, good. Isn’t this exciting? Let’s go to it, my creatures. Stay alert and stay safe; dungeons are dangerous places, and accidents can happen.”

  *

  Edgar and his raven friends were the first to go through the hole. “Shiny things!” called Edgar, leading the flock.

  “Edgar! Not so loud,” said Shadow.

  “Shiny things,” he repeated, this time using the raven version of a whisper. Corvids are nothing if not stubborn.

  The four black-feathered scouts were joined by another flying mammal with brown and green plumage and a big, orange bill. Yes, the duck we had spared in the hero slaughter had joined the ravens, flapping through the hole and following Edgar. Whether it considered itself a raven or just liked being with them I didn’t know, but it was part of Shadow’s scouting team now.

  Shadow herself was the next through. She paused at the hole and looked at Tomlin, who was surrounded by little balls of fur.

  “Take care of them, Tomlin.”

  Tomlin, eyeing the puppies swarming his legs and patting one as awkwardly as if it was made from lava, nodded.

  And then, Shadow was gone.

  I switched to my core senses now, seeing the world through the eyes of Edgar the raven. Once again, I was greeted by passageways decorated with stone carvings and statues of underworld gods. Muralled hallways with archways of perfect geometry and exquisite engravings, the patterns showing images of monsters and death, together with runemarks that bore dark meanings when translated.

  The only sounds were the gentle flaps of wings, soft as a fairy’s whisper. Onwards Edgar went, his way lit by mana lamps that could only have been of the self-replenishing kind, or they would have burned out long ago. The flames flickered, the light cast silhouettes of his wings on the walls.

  Edgar must have flown for half a mile through a linear set of passageways, when he halted. His raven squad, and a solitary duck, stopped behind him and hovered in midair.

  “Don’t say a word,” I told him, projecting my core voice into his tiny bird mind.

  The narkleer was ahead of them. Good old Kainhelm, patrolling the ancient Hallways with his lovely flap of back skin hanging off him and his rays of invisible death radiating out in every direction.

  Edgar and his flock were far enough away to be unaffected by Kainhelm’s toxic energy, and at least we knew where he was now. This was a good start.

  “One of you can stay and keep track of Kainhelm. Don’t get too close. The rest, head back,” I said.

  The ravens flapped back through the tunnels until they joined Shadow, waiting by the hole in the wall.

  “Kainhelm is far enough away for us to begin the assault,” I said. “We didn’t spot an entrance to the inner dungeon that way, so we’ll head in the opposite direction. Gary? It’s time. Shadow will take the lead but be ready to support her.”

  After they clambered through the hole, which Wylie had to widened to allow Gary to squeeze in, they headed in the opposite direction from the narkleer, with Shadow and her ravens leading the way and using her scouting abilities to detect traps.

  I helped, of course. As a dungeon core, I know how other cores think. Even if the core residing here wasn’t trained at the academy, which I suspected was the case, I have an instinct for where other gems will set traps and puzzles.

  “It feels strange,” said Gary, his leech legs squelching as they stuck and unstuck on the ground. “After spending so long in Core Beno’s dungeon, I find being in another disorientating. It is funny, how a core’s personality bleeds into their dungeon, no?”

  “How do you mean?” said Shadow, without turning around.

  “Our delightful core is practical. Free from unnecessary flourishes. He has little artistic flair, to be sure, but everything in his dungeon has a purpose.”

  “I kinda like the aesthetic of this place. It looks like a dungeon should. Like you can feel its age in the air, and when you look at the stone the weight of history bears down on you. Beno builds his dungeon with all the artistic flair of a tavern toilet.”

  “Can you two be quiet?” I said. “Focus.”

  They wound their way through cramped tunnels where the roof brushed Gary’s head, through passageways so wide you could guide a carriage through them, up hills, down slopes, and even across a chamber filled with ankle-high fetid water. I made Shadow check it carefully for drownjacks, of course, but after learning how shallow the pool was, there was nothing to fear.

  There was no hint of trap nor puzzle so far, and that was what worried me. The safer this place appeared, the more it would disarm us, and the more dangerous it then became. This was another core tactic, one not utilized so much nowadays; lulling heroes into believing a dungeon was harmless.

  “Finally,” said Shadow. “A room up ahead.”

  They came to a room, circular and with a domed ceiling, on which was a mural depicting Snaggleneck the demon’s massacre of King George’s army, a famous tale in the Underworld grimoire. It was most likely untrue; contrary to popular opinion, most demons just want to be left alone with a warm fire and cup of herbal tea. Being summoned constantly by wizards and demonmancers can become quite tiring.

  The room was covered in dust so deep in some places that it looked like ash. The smell, reaching me through Edgar’s olfactory gland, was cloying. His sense of smell was weak, but there was so much dust that it was too much even for him, and so I shut this part of my core senses off.

  Shadow had no such luxury, and she raised her arm and coughed into the crook of her elbow.

  When the last raven fluttered into the room, a steel door, one we hadn’t noticed due to it opening on the inside of the room, slammed shut, and a lock clicked into place.

  Gary pounded on the door with four of his legs. “Let us out, you blighter! I hate the dark. I cannot take it, I tell you!”

  Shadow rubbed his back. “Gary, you spend your life underground, in the dark.”

  “That is different, madam. I am used to darkness created by Core Beno. Darkness my master calls home. This is uncontrolled darkness and is quite, quite different. The air in here is poisoned, I am sure of it.”

  Truth be told, I was surprised at G
ary’s nerves, but I wasn’t surprised that the door locked behind us. It was just standard dungeon practice; when you lace a room with puzzles and traps, you make sure the only way out of there is to solve the traps or die.

  It was strange experiencing it all from the other side, delving through another core’s dungeon. We used to do it in the Dungeon Core Academy for practice, of course. We’d devise traps for the other cores and have them try to break them. But this was for real, and Shadow and Gary and the ravens would be in trouble if we got it wrong.

  Luckily, they had me.

  “Fly a little higher,” I told Edgar. “Give me a better view of the room. But don’t go anywhere until I know what’s in here.”

  “Shiny thing?”

  “No,” I said, unsure of the meaning of both the question and my answer to it.

  He flew up another five feet until he was close to the ceiling. The view wasn’t much better, and the only source of light was a mana lamp with a green light, indicating that it was fuelled from a renewable mana source.

  Hmm. This made sense. There was a mana spring in my dungeon, and perhaps the spring ran through here, and the old core had connected his lamps to it. Clever. I would have done the same, but most of the spring on my side of the dungeon was deeper in the ground and digging that way would have compromised structural integrity.

  As I studied the room, details emerged.

  Walls free from the murals and decorative flourishes of the rest of the dungeon.

  Nothing on the ground; no tiles, no suspicious-looking patches of dirt that might hide trick levers.

  A giant hourglass was standing by the left-most wall. The sand was trickling from the top half and into the bottom, and it had started as soon as we entered here by the looks of it.

  “See that?” said Shadow. “How long until it empties?”

  Gary stroked his chin with one of his leech legs. “Ten minutes, perhaps?”

  Shadow shook her head. She was beginning to look worried now, like she had with the werewolves. Had I made a mistake in creature-management by making her do this? Perhaps it was too soon after her scare to throw her into the action. If so, that was a dungeon management mistake on my part.

  “We better hurry. What happens when the time’s up? Huh?” she said.

  “By the gods, you are right, my girl! Beno, we have a problem.”

  “Just relax,” I said. “It’s a common core trick. Nothing will happen when the hourglass empties; it’s just there to make you panic. The real trick is something else. You can’t think straight when you’re panicking, and that’s what we cores rely on. It’s like asking a man to empty a wagon of gunpowder using a shovel made of flint and then whispering, ‘tick-tock’ in his ear.”

  Gary took a deep breath. “You are quite right. Of course. Let’s keep calm. Let’s keep bloody calm, for underworld’s sake!”

  The trouble I had was that I couldn’t see any sign of traps or puzzles. There were none of the markings even the most well-hidden of traps would leave behind, and no hint of a puzzle to be solved.

  “Shadow, use the anti-illusion dust.”

  Shadow fumbled in a leather purse clasped to a belt on her waist and pulled out a jar containing the dust we had taken from the last heroes after we killed them. There was still plenty of their anti-illusion powder left. The idea of using hero items felt like wearing my worst enemy’s dirty pants, but I’m not too proud to use all my advantages.

  “Scatter it through the room,” I told her. “Take one step, scatter some dust, then don’t take another until we are sure there is nothing hidden. This place is perfect for a bear trap or spike pit.”

  It was all too strange for me, watching Shadow using the dust. In effect, I had just taught one of my creatures to become a hero. I was instructing them on how to raid a dungeon.

  Maybe I should have just hired some heroes.

  Then again, not a good look, is it? A dungeon core hiring heroes to raid another dungeon? It’s like a sardine paying a shark to go beat up a tuna fish. Maybe I should become a hero myself. After all, who knows dungeons better than me?

  Ugh, I feel dirty.

  “Only half the sand is left,” said Gary.

  “Shiny thing,” squawked Edgar.

  “I told you, Gary. Don’t worry about the hourglass, it’s a trick.”

  Shadow went as quickly as she could, spreading anti-illusion dust everywhere but without uncovering any hidden puzzles. Soon she had covered all the ground. There was nothing at all, just a locked room.

  “Hardly any sand left…” said Shadow.

  “I told you, the sand doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Shiny thing!” said Edgar.

  “Yes, shiny thing.”

  “Shiny thing!”

  Shadow half-heartedly lobbed a pebble at Edgar, purposefully missing him. “Give it a rest, Feather Face.”

  “Shiny th-”

  “Wait!” I said.

  I realized that Edgar wasn’t just using a catchphrase, nor repeating the same raven nonsense over and over.

  There was, in fact, a shiny thing in the room, near one part of the ceiling.

  “Shiny thing!” I said. “Edgar, flutter over to it.”

  As the raven fly across the room and drew level with the shiny thing, two things happened.

  “It’s empty!” Gary shouted as the last grain of sand in the hourglass fell onto the pile below it.

  A great churning noise filled the room, and the ceiling began to move downwards. In just a second, it had reached the shiny thing. If that shiny thing was a button to get us out of here, it was useless now.

  Gary ran in a circle, lifting four of his leech legs in the air and waving them in sheer panic. I had never, ever seen him like this.

  Shadow sprinted to the steel door and banged on it. “Let us out! Let us out!”

  “Shiny thing!” squawked Edgar.

  The other ravens began a chorus as the room grew smaller and smaller. “Ceiling thing! Ceiling thing!”

  Everyone was losing their heads. For the ravens it was understandable; they had pea brains. Shadow had just had a scare, so I supposed it was understandable. But Gary? I had never seen him so worried.

  At least I could keep a clear ahead. At least…

  Hang on a second.

  “Demon’s arses, that’s the trap,” I said.

  Shadow fixed me a look that said I want to smash you with a mana-lined sledgehammer. Instead, she said, “The ceiling? You are a genius, Core Beno. I never thought that the ceiling getting lower and lower might be a trap!”

  “Not that,” I said. “The trap is…”

  Another noise competed with the rumble of the ever-lowering ceiling. A panel opened in the center of the room, uncovering a hole in the ground. It was the size of a troll’s grave and filled with a gloopy green liquid that gently lapped side to side.

  The ceiling had cut the room height in half now so that Gary had to stoop. “The liquid,” he said. “It is our only hope of safety from a bloody painful crushing. We must dive in and hold our breath.”

  “It’s the only way,” agreed Shadow, edging toward the pool.

  “You first. Chop chop, my dear!”

  They were ready to dive into the pool of disgusting goop that had conveniently appeared in the middle of the room. Not only that, but they were displaying an unusual level of panic for two of my bravest creatures, and they had completely abandoned logic.

  Something was wrong here. The signs pointed to one particular kind of trap.

  “Halt!” I shouted, causing Shadow to pause at the edge of the water pool. “The trap isn’t the ceiling. The real trap here is your own panic. The core has released something in the air to make you scared, and that impairs your decision making worse than drinking moonshine from the puddles outside a dwarven tavern. The pool of water won’t save your lives, you fools. It's filled with some sort of acid mixture. I would bet my arse on it.”

  “What about the ceiling? Do you ask me to call m
y own eight eyes liars?” asked Gary.

  “The ceiling will stop before it gets low enough to crush you. It isn’t meant to hurt you; it's meant to make you hurt yourself by diving into acid to escape it.”

  I knew what I was dealing with now. See, you can learn a lot about a core from the kinds of traps he places in his dungeon. Some of us lean toward the practical side; we want our traps to kill and maim heroes as all good traps should.

  But some cores like their traps not just to kill, but to cause suffering. In this case, the suffering was both mental and physical; when awake, the core would no doubt watch heroes as they jumped into the pool, to their own deaths.

  Shadow lifted a leg. “Core Beno, I don’t…”

  “Do not take another step,” I commanded, projecting my voice in such a way that, as a dungeon creature, Shadow could not disobey me.

  We waited then. Tense, scared, feeling doomed. Or, I supposed that was how they felt, given that the core had laced the air with some kind of toxin. I felt quite assured that I had figured out this core’s nature, and I would use it against him later.

  The ceiling fell further, and Gary, the tallest of them, had to spread his leech legs out and lower his spider abdomen to the ground. The ravens stopped hovering and just settled down on the dirt. Shadow kneeled, staring at the ceiling with her anxiety clear on her face.

  “Beno, this isn’t working…” she said.

  And then it stopped.

  With another great churning sound, the ceiling reversed itself, rising to its previous height in barely a second. Across the room, a door opened.

  Fresh air - as fresh as dungeon air can get - wafted into the room.

  “Breathe deeply, my friends,” I said, casting my voice through Edgar’s beak. “Let the toxin leave you.”

  “I feel different,” said Shadow. “What just happened?”

  “Your body is filled with squishy things called organs, and the core attacked two of these – your lungs and your brain – with a panic-inducing poison. Luckily, I know a little about poison and falling ceiling traps. If the core didn’t know we were here yet, he will have woken up now, I’m sure. Let’s hit him while he is still groggy.”