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

by Alex Oakchest

  “The rest of you, be nice to Kainhelm. Wylie, make sure your boys don’t stray too close to him when you’re mining, but at the same time, stop by and have a chat with him. Make him feel welcome.”

  Wylie nodded. “Will welcome him, Dark Lord!”

  “The rest of you, train in the arena. I want you in fighting shape.”

  *

  With the addition of a narkleer to my dungeon came a notification in my inner core.

  Your dungeon difficulty has increased from Average III to Hard I

  Bonus:

  - Passive trait unlocked: Fear [The presence of a narkleer increases heroes’ fear when entering your dungeon, slowing reaction times and increasing the likelihood of poor decision making.]

  - Dungeon fame increased. More heroes will now come to plunder your lair!

  Woo hoo! Earning the ‘hard’ status was another milestone on my path to boasting a dungeon of mythical difficulty. I had a long way to go, but with a clever application of evil, the appropriate dose of diabolicalness, and some good, honest, hard work, I’d get there.

  Now, it was even more likely that the heroes’ guild would deem more dungeon worthy enough to journey all the way out here, and more heroes meant more slaughter, which in turn meant more levels for me. With the addition of a passive fear effect on my dungeon, things couldn’t have gone better.

  But I wasn’t done there.

  We spent the next couple of days in a frenzy of activity. As ordered, Wylie and his miners created a route that led from the surface door room to this whole new section of my dungeon. Now, the heroes would have a choice to make when they entered the dungeon. And what did choices mean? Mistakes! Give a hero a decision to make, and you increase the likelihood that he’ll shoot himself in the foot with a big old crossbow bolt made of poor reasoning skills.

  The choice presented to would-be heroes was thus: navigating the tile puzzle in my surface door room would still allow them to reach the other side of it, where uncovering a riddle door would grant them access deeper into the original part of my dungeon.

  Or, they could just waltz through the new steel door that I had installed. I had made this a regular door without any riddles purposefully to make it seem like the easier choice. But the door led to a long tunnel, which connected to the new part of my dungeon. And what was waiting for them there?

  Kainhelm, the ancestor-cursing narkleer.

  But I couldn’t leave the defense of said new labyrinth solely to the narkleer. In addition to Kainhelm’s patrols, I also spent some essence sprucing the place up.

  When we had journeyed through the old core’s dungeon, we had crossed a room filled with ankle-high fetid water. I had Wylie and the others deepen this, and I spent essence turning it into a fully-fledged pool room.

  As nice as the name pool room sounded, this wasn’t a place where heroes could strip to their unders and do a few laps. No, it was a room dominated by a deep pond, which had to be crossed to reach the door on the other side.

  In this pool, I introduced some wildlife. Namely, a drownjack.

  The drownjack was a fish so big that any fisherman would have been ecstatic to have snagged him. Its bulbous body was covered in scales that glistened when the mana lamps glowed on them, making them look quite beautiful, really. It had three fins, two eyes, and one great big spot on its side, a birthmark that looked like an eye.

  To a hero, it would look like any fish at first glance, but the longer they held its stare, the more they would see a human-like face sitting atop its scaly body. It was like a mermaid, in a way, if mermaids were designed by an underworld committee intent on making the ugliest sea creature possible.

  “Drownjack,” I said, as the fish floated near the surface of its new home and stared at me with its bulbous eyes. “Your name is Flipper.”

  “Glub glub,” answered the drownjack. “Rejected.”

  “Rejected? You don’t like the name? Well then…Finito, perhaps? Fitting, since you will be the last thing a hero sees.”

  “Rejected.”

  I sighed. “Then what do you want to be called? Out with it, I don’t have all day.”

  “Glub glub. My name is Megalodonid.”

  “Fine, Mega. Your job is to lurk here and kill any heroes who dare undress to their undercakes and swim in your waters. Is that clear?”

  “Glub glub,” answered Megalodonid, submerging. A long air bubble rose to the surface, popped, and then the water was deathly still.

  With the narkleer settled into his new home and my drownjack swimming in his pool, I was free to consider matters that didn’t relate to hero slaughter. At least, not directly.

  As such, I ordered Wylie and the miners to begin chipping away at the blaudy stone in the old core’s chamber. This would be a laborious process, I knew, since blaudy stone is tougher than a troll’s loincloth, but it would be worth it. My problem then would be deciding what to do with it. As far as I understood, raw blaudy stone had to be treated somehow before it could absorb spells. That would require further study.

  As the evening of the second day after our victory drew to a close, I decided that I should speak to Overseer Bolton and see what information I could wheedle out of him.

  Why was the core next door so important? Why all the secrecy? And why had it been lost? I didn’t believe anything about a library fire at the academy.

  I sent Maginhart to the surface to find Bolton, only for him to return less than fifteen minutes later.

  “Overssser Bolton is gone, Dark Lord. They sssay he hasss traveled back to the academy.”

  “Well then. Answers will have to wait, I suppose.”

  “What ordersss do you have for me?”

  “Take a break, Maginhart. The next part is down to me, and me alone.”

  CHAPTER 27

  It was early in the morning when Chief Galatee stepped into the wasteland sun. Barely a bird had woken, not even the insects that always plagued the air and scurried over the yellow soil were stirring, but here Galatee was.

  And yet, the Wrotun and Eternal clans were already hard at work, taking advantage of the brief window of time when the sun was still weak. The laborers were so well versed in avoiding the sun’s peak hours that they could have told you the times of sunrise and sunset for the last 30 days just from memory.

  “First-Leaf Galatee,” said a voice beside her.

  It was Tasgario, the Sixth-Leaf of the Bendarno tree. As Sixth-Leaf he was at the bottom of the Wrotun clans' social pyramid, and as such was not allowed to choose his own profession yet. Young Tasgario would need to serve Galatee in whatever way she saw fit, until either a leaf above him – one of his relatives – died, or Galatee deemed him fit for elevation to Fifth-Leaf.

  “What is it, Tasgario?” she said.

  “They say there’s an oasis a dozen miles out west. A few of the others are going to look for it. I’ve never seen one before, and I was wondering if I could go?”

  She thought about it for less than a second.

  “No. I might need you to brew my tea later on.”

  “You might need me to?”

  “Correct. Anything else?”

  Tasgario looked crestfallen, but he merely shook his head.

  “Good. Now go and refill the water jugs in my chamber,” she told him.

  As Tasgario headed toward the surface door and then went underground, Galatee looked at the wasteland around her, one that was starting to look more like a town. Only slightly, but the shape was forming. The clan was making dents in the armor of nature.

  The buzzing of wasteland wasps was usually drowned out by the clink of shovels biting into dirt these days. The rattles of snake’s tongues and the scampering of insects were replaced by the bangs of hammers and the crunch of gears in crudely made pulley systems. Instead of morning birdsong, the early wasteland hours were filled with worker songs, the lyrics of which were things like ‘move the bloody trolley closer!’ And ‘who took my godsdamned shovel? I only set it down a second ago.’
>
  At least there were results to show for their labor, these coming in the form of two rows of wooden houses all lined up together. Nothing fancy; just simple lodges with places to sleep and escape the sun. Of course, Core Jahn was to thank for a lot of that. Though the clanspeople helped with fetching materials and the like, Jahn could construct a dozen houses before a clan builder had even erected a wall.

  It might not look like much, but to Galatee it was the first sign that this was a settlement and not just a bunch of tents erected in the middle of the world’s backside. Seeing the wooden lodges had raised the spirits of both clans better than a barrel full of goblin whiskey, and it made Galatee grateful that Reginal put his fear of thermal pockets to one side so he could agree to their construction.

  It was all coming together, and it was only fitting, then, that they were to have a naming day today, where their new home would be immortalized.

  “First-Leaf Galatee?” said another voice. “Good morning.”

  This was a young voice of goblin ethnicity, but Galatee was surprised to see that it belonged to Devry, Chief Reginal’s boy.

  He was seated in a chair with a blanket over his thighs, and his glass orb floated beside his head, half the sphere filled black with the poison it zapped from his body. Poor boy.

  There was a peculiar smell coming from the lad. A sort of sour smell, like carrots left in the sun and already on the turn. There was no point mentioning it to him. In a place where people labored in the sun so long they barely had time to wash, bad smells weren’t so unusual.

  “Devry. What are you doing awake so early?”

  “It is clan custom to wake before the sun is ready to beat on us, isn’t it? Pa always says that the first to the well draws the deepest bucket.”

  “Your father doesn’t seem to follow his own sayings,” she said, noting Reginal’s absence.

  The boy didn’t say anything, and Galatee knew she should have kept the remark to herself. It wasn’t very chiefly of her to talk like that, especially not in front of Reginal’s son.

  Looking at Devry, she changed the subject. “What’s the book you’re holding?”

  Devry held it up. The title read ‘A Farewell to Manacles.’

  “This? It’s a story of the slaves in the Viborg Dynasty. Of how the Grand Ruler Gall was trying to build a two thousand-feet high wall all around his kingdom, to protect his city from nearby hordes. He used an army of slaves, ones disciplined into working by the crack of their foremen’s whips.”

  “The horde stormed the city, as I recall.”

  “That’s right; they didn’t finish the wall in time. You know your history, First-Leaf?”

  “Lad, when you’re as old as me, what some people call history, you call memories.”

  “You were around in the Grand Ruler’s days?”

  She laughed. “I was being facetious, but I know the story. Grand Ruler Gall never finished his walls in time, and the horde took the city. He lost his home, his people, and finally, his life.”

  Devry nodded. “But his grandson, smuggled from the city when the hordes came and raised far away, came back years later. He took the city and drove the hordes away again.”

  “And as I remember it, he finally built the wall, didn’t he?”

  “He built it with the descendants of the slaves of the old Grand Ruler. They survived both invasions, because slaves are never killed in battle. Everyone needs a slave, no matter who they used to work for.”

  “So, he completed his grandfather’s legacy.”

  “But he had to change things to do it,” said Devry. Galatee was struck with how old the lad sounded. It was as off-putting as it was impressive. “Do you remember what he had to change, to get his wall built?”

  She thought for a moment. “He made the slaves free men.”

  “And, as free men, the city belonged to them too. That meant the great walls weren’t just forced labor, but defenses for their own city. The Grand Ruler’s slaves took fifteen years and didn’t complete even half the walls. The freemen finished them in six.”

  As the story turned over in her mind, Galatee stared at the boy for the longest time. “You’re too clever for your age. Too clever by half.”

  *

  Later that day, Galatee went to visit Cynthia the tinker, but she wasn’t in the tent that she referred to as her workshop. The tent was one of the largest in the camp, and it permanently smelled of oil and wax. A table full of holes and scorch marks dominated the center, with an assortment of items spread across it that were so varied it was hard to imagine exactly what Cynthia had been working on, and why.

  Pax, her young orc errand boy and future apprentice, was using a hammer and chisel to try and bust the lock on an antique box, the kind a rich lady might keep on her dresser. Knowing it was probably a task set by Cynthia, Galatee didn’t bother asking what he was hoping to find inside.

  “Pax, where is Cynthia?”

  “In the dungeon.”

  “We have two dungeons, lad. Which one do you mean? The one with the nice but dopey core, or the one that thinks he’s so much cleverer than he is?”

  “The nice core, First-Leaf.”

  Galatee ruffled his hair, which, like all orc hair, felt like a broom’s bristles. “Core Jahn, then. Good lad. Have Cynthia come and see me when she returns.”

  *

  “You wanted to see me, First-Leaf?”

  Galatee was in her chamber in the underground cavern. It was mid-afternoon now, the time when the sun was at its most merciless. Surface labor was halted, and no pickaxes would be swung, nor shovels heaved until later in the evening when it cooled. The workers would then toil all through the night, getting relieved by a new crew in the early morning, who again would work until the sun grew mean enough to burn skin. This would go on for years, perhaps generations, and piece by piece their home would become a town. Such was wasteland life.

  “Cynthia, come in,” said Galatee.

  She was rubbing a yellow ointment onto her shoulder where her skin, despite all her precautions, was burned. That was the problem with gnomish skin - it burned so easily. Her people were bred for life below ground, not for strolling around in the sun.

  The tinker, with her tinker goggles strapped to her head, walked in and sat on a block of stone that had been smoothed down to form a chair.

  Galatee prepared herself for all the usual complaints from Cynthia. The ratbrid lady was utterly dedicated to her work, and this made her such a good tinker. Since she was now helping both the Wrotun and Eternal clans, her workload had doubled. Although she showed respect to Galatee, she was not so respectful that she didn’t moan about being dragged away from her duties.

  “Take a seat,” Galatee said, gesturing in front of her.

  Cynthia brought with her an aroma that Galatee didn’t like at all. A waft of something sour, the smell of something not quite right. That was as best as she could put it, even though it didn’t mean much.

  “You haven’t been spending time with Devry, have you?”

  “Chief Reginal’s son? No, First-Leaf. Why?”

  “Just curious.”

  “Right. I’m guessing that’s not why you wanted to see me?”

  “I had a question for you,” said Galatee. “Something has been nagging at me.”

  “I’m an open toolbox, First-Leaf. Ask me whatever you want.”

  Curious. Cynthia would usually have complained about being drawn away from her work at least once by now. Perhaps Galatee had caught her on a more relaxed day.

  “Your family are from Talapagi provinces, aren’t they?”

  She nodded. “So I’m told.”

  “I believe the Talapagians used you ratbrids to hunt.”

  “Hunt and burrow and anything else that your common ferret can do. They didn’t need us ratbrids to do that work, but they made us all the same. As though our claws were mere shovels and our minds not big enough to realize we were slaves.”

  Galatee stroked her chin.

&
nbsp; Cynthia continued. “I’m not saying any living thing should be used as a mere tool, so don’t get me wrong. Not a mule, not a bison, nothing. Us ratbrids aren’t the first to be enslaved, and we won’t be the last. Everything deserves to have respect no matter its species. But to use an intelligent race as nothing but property? To my mind, those who do such a thing are fouler than the drips from a tavern gutter.”

  There was a silence between them now, one that Galatee imagined they were both filling with their thoughts, and that their thoughts were centered on one thing; free-thinking beings enslaved, being used as tools, being utilized as mere property.

  Damn Devry for sending her down this line of thought.

  “Thank you, Cynthia,” she said. “You may get back to your duties.”

  When she was alone, Galatee pondered on the conversations she’d had today, and the things that she’d learned. More time must have passed than she’d realized, because there was a knock on the door.

  “Come in.”

  Sixth-Leaf Tasgario entered. “Do you need anything, First Leaf?” he asked.

  She felt pity for him then. Or was it shame toward herself? The two feelings were so much alike that it was impossible to tell. Maybe pity and shame grew from the same seed.

  “Tasgario,” she said. “You may go with the others to find the oasis you told me about, as long as they haven’t left already. If you find it, mark the location. We could use another water supply. Who knows, Tas, they may name it after you.”

  A smile, a tentative one, started to form on his face. Not wholly, but more like a spider peeking from under a rock to check no predators were around.

  “Truly?”

  “Truly. Go, you don’t want to miss them. And thank you, lad.”

  “For what?”

  “For your devotion to duty. A promotion to Fifth-Leaf isn’t far away if you keep up this attitude.”

  “Thank you, First-Leaf. Thank you so much.”

  Tasgario, forgetting duty and pecking order, hugged her. Galatee found herself smiling. When they separated, she went to the alcove in the wall where her clothes were hanging on a rod. She selected her thickest coat.