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

by Alex Oakchest

  “Where are you going, First-Leaf?” he asked.

  “To see Core Beno.”

  CHAPTER 28

  By the time I detected First-Leaf Galatee in my dungeon, Dolos the mimic had already surrendered his Cynthia and Devry imitations and returned to his transparent leech form. He squirmed on the ground in front of me as notifications chimed in my inner core.

  Dolos [Mimic-Leech boss monster] has leveled up to 3!

  - Mimic ‘tell’ less obvious

  - Imitation strength increased

  “Good, Dolos,” I said. “You were amazing there. She didn’t suspect a thing!”

  It hadn’t all been Dolos, of course. I had used my core vision to watch Dolos as he transformed into the likeness of Devry, Chief Reginal’s son. He had gained knowledge of Devry’s appearance and voice after using his leech ability on Maginhart, whose surface dalliances had let him cross paths with the young goblin.

  After that, it was a simple matter of planting a few psychological seeds in Galatee’s mind and reinforcing them with a further mimicry of Cynthia, the tinker.

  It was a much cleaner plan than anything I could concoct with the narkleer, and it meant I didn’t have to risk actually hurting Galatee to get my way.

  And now she was on her way to see me, walking through my dungeon tunnels and dressed in a thick fur coat to ward away the chill.

  “Is it really that cold in here?” I asked.

  Dolos said nothing. When not imitating anyone, the poor thing had little personality of his own, no identity onto which he could hang his metaphorical hat.

  “You better leave now,” I told him. “But well done; you served the dungeon with great aplomb today.”

  It was only a few minutes later that I heard footsteps outside my core room. Galatee, holding a map I had been forced to furnish her with so that she and the other clan people could avoid traps when visiting my dungeon, appeared.

  “Core Beno,” she said. “I hope I am not intruding.”

  “I am rather busy.”

  “You appear to be doing nothing.”

  “I am doing work of the mind, Galatee. Concocting plans, imaging mischief for heroes, and that sort of thing.”

  “I wanted to have a little chat.”

  “Well come in, come in. I’d offer you a seat, but we don’t have any chairs. And I’d offer you tea, but we don’t have tea leaves or cups.”

  “I will take your hospitality as metaphorical, then.”

  “And I will take your gratitude as implied. What brings you here?”

  Galatee pulled her fur coat tight around her. Though the mana springs down here kept her appearance looking much younger than her true age, it was impossible to miss the fact that leadership was taking its toll on her. Her eyes had more bags than a duke’s butler after a shopping trip.

  “I have been doing a great deal of thinking lately,” she said.

  “I hope it wasn’t too taxing.”

  “Perhaps we’ll talk when you feel a little less like…your usual self.”

  “Wait, wait,” I said, chiding myself for giving into temptation and picking the low-hanging fruit. “I’m sorry. What did you want to discuss?”

  “As I said, I have been doing a great deal of thinking.”

  Don’t say a word, I warned myself. Rein in your inner idiocy.

  “And how can I help?”

  Galatee sighed. “Let me ask you something. If you had the chance to leave this wasteland, where would you go?”

  I only needed a second to consider it, because it was something I had thought about many times.

  “I would stay here.”

  “Really?”

  “You sound surprised. Dungeon cores build dungeons, Galatee. It is woven into our nature in the same way that no matter where he is in the world, a wagon attendant can find an illegally parked wagon. Even here, in this great big nowhere, there will be a wagon sitting somewhere with a little slip of paper folded under the reins.”

  “I don’t know which of you is eviler,” said Galatee.

  “You do me a great dishonor, Galatee. It’s obviously them. But anyway, when most cores leave the academy, they’re given so little underground space for their lairs that a moles’ burrow would fill them with envy. Through chance or mischance, whatever you want to call it, I find myself building a dungeon underneath a vast spread of nothingness. A place so barren that not a single greedy duke or avaricious earl has tried to claim it. I share my underground lair with nobody, I compete for space with nothing. In short, I can grow my dungeon unchecked, expanding as much as I like. I would be crazy to give that up.”

  She stroked her gnomish chin. “So you would stay, even given the chance to leave. Hmm. And in staying, I presume, you would continue to offer defense to the clans if we needed it?”

  “These hypotheticals are nice, Galatee, but I feel like you’re dangling an illusory pie with a crust made of dreams in front of a starving man. As you know, the choice isn’t mine. I labor under your orders.”

  “I have been thinking about that. Recent conversations have enlightened me, in some respects, leading me to an epiphany.”

  “Epiphanies are good for the soul, so I hear. Except for the priest out west whose epiphany led him to believe that humans have wings inside them, ones that only appear in times of great need. I’m told it took his followers a week to clean up the mess he made after leaping off Mount Edna.”

  “My epiphany is less dangerous and requires no cleaning up after it. So I hope, anyway. I have decided that ownerships and mana contracts might be too cruel a thing to be applied to intelligent beings. Reginal and I are trying to build a home here. A settlement constructed through ambition and sweat, a place for our people to live and, one day, flourish. We cannot build such a place on a foundation of slavery, which is what you and core Jahn’s servitude amounts to.”

  “What are you saying?” I said, doing my best to sound dumb. And succeeding all too well.

  “That with your agreement to continue helping us – in your case by defending us from intruders and in Jahn’s case by assisting in surface construction – I will release you from your contracts.”

  I let the words echo in the core room, and I imagined them floating around the chamber like little fairies made from light. They were so pleasing to hear. They were words that sparked a core’s equivalent of joy.

  Had I actually done it?, had I earned my freedom by using my mimic to convince the First-Leaf?

  “Can I just ask who influenced this decision, Galatee?” I asked.

  “Who? Why, myself, of course. I have been thinking about what kind of leader I want to be. About what sort of settlement, and thus life, I want to help create here. I have decided that forced labor is no foundation on which to foster a new era.”

  “You came to this epiphany on your own, hmm? Well, I have to commend you for that. Really. It takes a strong leader to make such a decision.”

  “Well then. With your agreement to continue serv...assisting…us, we can formally sever the contract.”

  “Just what would that agreement entail?” I asked. I had to be careful not to push this, but I was also a core of my word, and I didn’t want to make a deal that amounted to forced servitude in all but name, and thus have to break it.

  “I won’t ask for contracts nor promises,” she said. “Just that you will, of your own free will, continue to defend the clan until we are in a position that we do not need it.”

  “And Jahn? The same terms apply to him?”

  She nodded. “I will speak with him separately, but yes. I would ask him to continue his efforts on the surface until we have the materials and expertise to complete further construction ourselves.”

  I let the silence hang for a few seconds. The trick in any deal, even one overwhelmingly favorable to you, is to not seem too eager.

  “I will accept your proposal,” I said. “And I commend your good leadership.”

  She smiled, and for that split second the years seem to
fall off her. It was only for a blink because then the worries and stresses of leadership returned to her face, and I felt a little sorry for her.

  “I will go and speak to Jahn. Consider your contract severed, Core Beno. Henceforth, you will labor here as a clan equal.”

  CHAPTER 29

  Hold it in, I told myself. Hold it in. Just wait until she’s gone…

  The second that Galatee exited my dungeon, I spun around on my pedestal like a puppy who had just scored a treat, and I let out a great cheer that echoed out of my core room and brought Tomlin scampering in to check on me.

  “Tomlin heard noises, Dark Lord. Everything okay?” His face was wrought with concern.

  “Ah, I see your confusion,” I said. “Those were happy noises, intended to express joy.”

  He arched a furry kobold eyebrow at me. “Joy?” he said, as though the word was poison burning his insides. “Are you sick, Dark Lord?”

  “I’ve never been better, my friend.”

  “Then Tomlin will get back to work.”

  “Good,” I said, with glee in my voice. It was unbecoming for a core, but I didn’t care. “You’re doing a brilliant job, Tomlin. Superb. Pat yourself on the arse.”

  Tomlin left with a smile on his face, and I felt a smile deep within my core. For the first time since I had been resurrected as a dungeon core, I was free.

  I wasn’t beholden to the Dungeon Core Academy, whose forgers had made me.

  I didn’t serve the Wrotun clan, who had bought me.

  I was a free core with a giant dungeon, one that I had recently expanded by gobbling up the dungeon next door like a hungry troll. I had two boss monsters, a narkleer, and a clan of kobolds, jellies, ravens, and beetles who looked upon me like a god.

  Did I feel guilty that I had accomplished this through trickery?

  Pah. I didn’t know the meaning of the word. After all, I hadn’t asked to be resurrected as a dungeon core. The academy core forgers hadn’t said to my deceased soul, “Would mind terribly if I yanked you from the place of eternal rest, stuffed you into a mineral body, and granted you immortality? Subject to the condition that you live it in servitude, of course.”

  Cores were created to be tools. No, weapons. Ones wielded by the academy, who sold the services of their best cores to the highest bidder, and sold their failed cores to less scrupulous owners.

  As far as I could remember, I was one of the only cores to win self-determination. I surely had to be one of the youngest to do it, anyway. Even Overseer Bolton had spent decades as a core before earning freedom.

  And I hadn’t killed a single person to get my way.

  Well, besides the heroes I had killed to earn a high enough level to create a mimic. But heroes don’t count; they aren’t real people.

  No, I felt no guilt about my tricks. In fact, the events of today left me with a thought that I hadn’t had since my resurrection; that things couldn’t be better.

  *

  The novelty of my freedom still hadn’t worn off when, hours later, a being materialized beside me on the pedestal. It was a dungeon core, as orange as pumpkin flesh and shaped like a star ready to explode.

  “Jahn!” I said, with genuine happiness.

  There was something different about Core Jahn today. Not in the way he looked, exactly. Or perhaps in the way he looked, but not his actual appearance. He was still the same old Jahn in that regard. But now, he seemed to carry himself better, to float a little straighter atop the pedestal.

  “Sorry I haven’t been to visit much, Beno,” he said. “A problem with my essence vines. Or complication, rather than a problem. You see my kobold cultivator, Beno, he-”

  “Woah, woah, woah. You named a kobold after me?”

  “Why, yes. It was you who gave me such good advice on growing essence, so it only seemed fair…”

  I didn’t like this. Not one bit. A kobold sharing my name? But Jahn was so earnest that I didn’t have it in my dead, evil heart to rebuke him.

  “How are things going up top? It looks like you’re making progress,” I said.

  “Ah, you went to the surface? And you didn’t visit me?”

  “Not exactly. I was using my core vision filtered through a mimic, and it was a whole thing…never mind. I saw that you’ve begun building houses up there.”

  “Yes, Beno. Chief Reginal is still searching for thermal pockets. He’s demented, if you ask me, always ranting and raving about them. But we couldn’t hold off on construction any longer. My miners excavate so much stone that it's piling up to the rafters, and it needed to be used. Added to that, the clan is sick of tents. Even with their alchemically-treated fabric, they don’t reflect the heat well enough. They need a place to shelter from the sun.”

  “You’ve done a great job, Jahn. It looks like a different place up there. Almost like a real town.”

  “Using essence on the surface is simple, Beno. Like riding a mule after you’ve already learned to make a horse gallop. It's just the way you bring the essence out from your inner core that’s different. You see-”

  Jahn launched into a whole diatribe about using essence on the surface instead of a dungeon, and using it to build rather than destroy. It was interesting on many levels, mostly because I had never heard Jahn talk about a subject for so long, in so much detail, and with such an air of confidence.

  But as proud of him as I was, all I could think about was my lessons with Samson Bing, and how I hadn’t been able to construct a single thing on the surface.

  I supposed we were just different cores, Jahn and I. Which led me along another path; despite being resurrected by the academy, were cores brought back to life with different natures?

  Did we all belong in a dungeon, or were some of us better suited for creation, for healing, maybe even for things like art?

  Why had I never really questioned this before?

  I felt a lurching inside me now, like I was standing in a sky balloon and watching the world miles and miles below me. It was a strange feeling, in that it was one of the first real feelings I’d had in a while.

  I didn’t like it, and so I shook it away.

  “…and purple essence vines used in surface construction work just fine, but I came to thinking that there might be a way to grow essence on the surface itself. And in doing that, perhaps grow crops. If essence vines can survive in the heat, can the thing that gives it its survival traits be utilized in food crops?”

  “Wow. An intriguing thought. You’ve changed, Jahn. Not that there was anything wrong with you, but you seem like a person who’s found their purpose.”

  Jahn seemed to glow then. He was always such an upbeat core, which earned him plenty of harsh stares back in the academy, and now he’d found a place to use his positivity.

  “Found my calling, yup. And my freedom! Did the First-Leaf talk to you?”

  “Free cores at least, eh? I wonder how many of our old academy classmates are free?”

  “Now now, Beno. Let’s not gloat. It’s only thanks to the thoughtful nature and good heart of Galatee that we are free. We should spread that same kindness, not lord it over others.”

  I wanted to say something. To claim all the credit. But for what purpose? Just to satisfy a little of my ego?

  And besides, the mimic did most of the work. As a transparent husk, the mimic was entirely egoless by definition, so why should I inflate my own with his deeds?

  “I came here to ask you something, Beno,” said Jahn.

  “I am an open book, my friend.”

  “As happy as I was when Galatee offered me a deal, I came to wondering...I just wanted to ask…you are staying here, aren’t you? You won’t just leave?”

  “There will come a time when the clan doesn’t need me, Jahn. But they’ll always need you, I think. As long as you want to be needed, anyway. Humans and gnomes and other surface dwellers will always need creation more than destruction, and I think that’s what we’ve both become: two opposite sides of the same gemstone.”
/>   “But always friends, I hope. You didn’t answer my question.”

  “I’ll stay for a while, Jahn, and that’s all I can promise. When that changes, you’ll be the first to know.”

  “Good, good. Thanks, friend. My best friend, in fact! Now I better go. I left my kobold, Fixus, in charge of taking some stone to the surface, and I don’t want him to Beno it up. Whoops, sorry.”

  I laughed. “Get your arse up there, you pumpkin-faced buffoon.”

  As Jahn prepared to hop from the pedestal in my dungeon and back to his own lair, we heard footsteps coming from a tunnel connected to the core room.

  They were rapid steps, ones that could only have been made by someone in a hurry.

  “Hello?” called Jahn.

  Shadow appeared in the doorway, out of breath and more flustered than I’d ever seen her, including when trapped with werewolves. Barely a second passed before five puppies joined her, their cream coats now thoroughly dirtied by living in a dungeon. They swarmed her legs, some pawing at her, others instigating playfights with each other.

  “The surface, Beno,” she said, pointing at the ceiling as if I didn’t know where the surface was. “Invaders.”

  “What?”

  “Invaders on the surface.”

  “What?” asked Jahn.

  “I don’t know how else to put it. There are invaders on the surface! Can you cores get off your rumps and do something?”

  I spoke to Jahn. “Get back to your dungeon and assemble any creatures who can fight.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “To see who these soon-to-be-dead, spineless, pigeon-hearted gits are.”

  CHAPTER 30

  At first glance, I saw nothing wrong. The clanspeople were on the surface and were rushing to and thro, as usual, some emerging from their cavern surface door and carrying big piles of stone, iron, and other raw materials to a storage shed Jahn had created. Others were turning the soil in various squares of land marked with signposts, each the place of a different experiment designed to make the dead soil give life.