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

by Alex Oakchest

  “Beno?” said Chief Galatee, peering out from the doorway.

  “Dark Lord? What am I to tell Overseer Bolton?” said Morphant.

  “What should do? Need plan,” said Wylie.

  CHAPTER 4

  Everyone was placing demands on my time. Everyone wanted something from me. The trouble was, they were within their rights.

  After all, I had an obligation to my dungeon mates to handle any heroes who entered our lair. I had also bargained for a seat in the Yondersun chief meetings, so I owed it to them that I actually took part. And killing Hogsfeate’s mayor and taking control of the town had been my idea, so I could hardly complain when Morphant needed my help with town issues.

  All of this was my fault, and I was just going to have to work out a way to deal with everything at once.

  “Razensen, I need you to handle the heroes,” I said, using my core voice to speak to the monster in my dungeon.

  It was a few seconds before Razensen answered me, and he did so with a grumble. “Ice and snow, Beno, I don’t have time for this. I need to find my brother and slit his throat, damn it!”

  “We had a deal. I’d give you a base for your whole revenge saga. A nice underground chamber with a pool, where you can escape the heat and plot your sibling’s painful demise. In return, you help me when my dungeon comes under attack.”

  “But the ravens have spotted something. A place where Nazenfyord may be staying. I need to send him to the ice!”

  “The ravens? I think you mean my ravens. I have been kind enough to let them scout the wasteland for you, but that wasn’t part of the deal. They are just an extra resource I provided out of the kindness of my core. I’m well known for changing my moods, though. I can be a spiteful git when I need to be.”

  “Damn you, core. I hope you get lost in the wildest of blizzards. Nevertheless, you have been true to your word to me thus far.”

  “You’ll help me out, then?”

  “I will kill the heroes for you. I can command your creatures, yes?”

  “Your unit is fully healed after our last hero fight. Take them for now, but call on Brecht, Rusty, and Gary if things get tough. Give Gore, Death, Fight, and Kill a rest. They still aren’t recovered from our last raid.”

  “It will be done, Stone. I will send the heroes so far into the ice that their arse cheeks freeze together.”

  I hated the idea of trusting anyone else to handle a hero raid. Something about surrendering dungeon control made my inner core itch, and I felt my attention being pulled back to the dungeon.

  I told myself that Razensen was a capable leader. He had been in charge of warriors back in his homeland, and he knew how to fight. A few miserable heroes wouldn’t get the better of him, even though the standard of raiders visiting my dungeon had risen lately.

  Trying to force that problem to the back of my mind, I used my core vision to speak to Mimic Morphant, all the way across the wastes.

  “Where is Overseer Bolton right now?” I asked.

  “He is in Sir Dullbright’s parlor, Dark Lord.”

  “And where are you?”

  “In Dullbright’s chambers.”

  “How are your powers? Are you replenished? Can you mimic Dullbright if you need to?”

  “I mimicked the mayor to conduct a meeting between the cotton and carpenter guilds this morning, Dark Lord. It was boring to the extreme. I have replenished some of my power, but not all of it.”

  “Damn it,” I said. “You’d need to be at your best to have a chance of tricking an overseer, and even then, it’d likely be a doomed attempt. We need to do something else. We need a way to divert Bolton. The problem is, I know him all too well from my student days at the Dungeon Core Academy. They say mules are stubborn, well Bolton brays like the best of them. Let me think. A diversion…”

  My mind flashed to the last time I’d needed to make a distraction in Hogsfeate. Then, I’d asked a barbarian named Eric to start a fire on the far side of town so that Shadow, my rogue who was currently missing, could sneak into Dullbright’s house and kill him.

  But I couldn’t go starting fires in town all the time. Big, towering flames and assassination wouldn’t solve every problem.

  What could I do to stop Bolton from wanting to meet with Dullbright? It didn’t have to be a long-term solution. Just something that would get me some time. It shouldn’t be too hard; I’d spent years as Bolton’s student. I knew the man very well.

  Ah.

  “Did Overseer Bolton use a portal to get to Hogsfeate, or did he arrive by horse?”

  “I can find out for you, Dark Lord.”

  “Good. Sometimes he loves to travel by horse and take the scenic route. Something about having died once already and wanting to enjoy the world this time around. He also uses the same horse every time, one that he loves like a bloody child. Set the horse loose and then tell Bolton about it. He’ll chase it across the wasteland. Don’t harm the creature, though. We’re evil enough already, let’s not get a reputation for animal cruelty.”

  “It will be done.”

  “In the meantime, stay holed up in the chamber. Get one of your servants to send a message to Gulliver. If Gull comes to the palace, he can keep the overseer busy. He could talk the arse off a rock troll.”

  “Very well, Dark Lord.”

  Floating back into the meeting chamber in the Yondersun lodge, I found Galatee and Reginal waiting for me. Reginal was drumming his fingers on the table.

  “Better things to do, Beno?” asked Galatee.

  “Things to do, but I can’t say any of it is better.”

  “We’ve just received some rather alarming information. The duke has already left Fort Smiten and is halfway across the wasteland.”

  “There’s no way of stopping his visit, then.”

  “It is as you said, Beno. He has a retinue of over two hundred soldiers with him.”

  “Perhaps I’m wrong. Maybe the duke just needs a couple of hundred bodyguards. I mean, he doesn’t sound like the most likable of people.”

  Galatee shook her head. “Everything is happening as you said. That much is clear. The duke will arrive in town, make an offer of friendship to us, and he will leave his soldiers in place whatever our answer is.”

  “And that’s not all,” said Reginal. “He has a monster with him.”

  “Now you’re being interesting. What kind of monster?”

  “A great big fluffy yeti creature with three glowing eyes and two horns on its head. Like the one in your dungeon.”

  “Like Razensen?”

  “Yes! That’s the one.”

  “Another bogan monster. Oh, hells.”

  “This doesn’t fill me with confidence, Beno. If a monster worries you, then…”

  “The bogan traveling with the duke must be Razensen’s brother.”

  “Family reunion?”

  “Not quite, unless your typical family reunions end in a bloodbath. Back home, Razensen is the heir to his people’s throne. His brother, Nazenfyord, murdered Razensen’s parents and tried to kill Razensen, but failed. Razensen has pursued him to the wasteland, set on killing him in the most gruesome way. It’s a noble quest.”

  “We can’t have those two brutes fighting here. They’ll destroy half the town!”

  “Half of it?” I said. “The violence of the bogans is legendary. When they get sufficiently angry, their eyes turn bright red, and they become filled with a lust for violence that cannot be quenched. Both brothers locked in combat in the middle of Yondersun…they’ll destroy everything.”

  Reginal pounded the desk. “Then we must stop the duke and his beast from getting here!”

  “How? We can hardly use force to turn him away because that would be an outright declaration of war, and it would give him an excuse to crush us. It’s only the fragile tapestry of Xynnar war laws that have kept him so polite thus far.”

  “Then we send riders out to meet him and explain that he must turn back.”

  “That won’t
look well,” said Galatee. “He would be extremely suspicious of our reasons at best and may take it as outright hostility at worst. To refuse him our hospitality might provoke a battle.”

  “We cannot use force, and we cannot use words,” said Reginal. “Damn this duke! What, then? Are we to pray to the gods for some kind of misfortune to befall them?”

  “We might not need to pray,” I said. “Is the weathermage still in town?”

  CHAPTER 5

  The smells of cinnamon and honey-glazed pastries turning in bakery ovens tried to lure Gulliver away from his duties. They fought desperately to hold his senses hostage and drag him from his business, and gods damn it, they almost won. Gulliver wanted them to win, he was willing them on. You can do it!

  No delicious pastry for him today, though. The sun had barely risen, and he was already behind schedule. He must have been the only man in Hogsfeate who was out before the early morning street sweepers and delivery boys, and who was still not done with his daily toil when the lamplighters strolled through the streets and spread their glows from lantern to lantern.

  Hogsfeate was just waking up now. A quiet chatter came from the plaza some streets beyond, blocked from view by a huge apartment building. The rustle of a butcher brushing his stoop with a broom sent a shiver over Gulliver’s arms. He couldn’t say why. Some noises did that to him.

  Heading toward Crooked Pass, Gulliver walked by Tumbold’s Tales and Tomes, a shop specializing in books of the entirely frivolous variety. Adventure books, cheap tales, pass-the-time parables. If a book contained facts of any kind, it had no place on Tumbold’s shelves. Beno would have loved it here. The damn core could probably spend all day in the quaint little bookshop.

  That reminds me. It’s Beno’s Rebirthday soon. I must get him something nice.

  Today, as with every single day that Gulliver walked this route to work, he saw a little boy standing outside the shop, his face pressed up against the window, breathing steam onto the pane and leering at the books that his ragged clothes and louse-ridden hair told he couldn’t afford.

  The door opened. Tumbold, a girthy half-troll, appeared in the doorway.

  “Get thee gone, scamp! Get thee gone!”

  The boy, startled, retreated a few steps. “I was only lookin’, Mister Tumbold.”

  “Get thee gone!”

  Gulliver had half a mind to tell Tumbold that he may have accidentally sat on a stick at some point in his life and it was subsequently wedged firmly up his arse, but he didn’t have time for the argument. He never did. Every morning Gulliver saw this little street show, and every morning he didn’t just as he did right then – walked away.

  He squeezed into Crooked Pass, an alleyway barely wide enough for a man to walk through, yet one which allowed Gulliver to completely avoid the beggar square and reach his office without having to walk by the panhandlers. It always made him feel bad to refuse to give any of them a coin.

  Halfway through the pass, he heard footsteps. A curious prickling of the hairs on the back of his neck told him that someone had entered Crooked Pass behind him. It was unusual, to be sure. The alleyway smelled of burned oil and rotting vegetables from the adjoining grilled meat restaurant, and nobody ever took this short cut.

  Without turning, Gulliver stopped. He kneeled and pretended to tie his winkle pickers.

  The footsteps also stopped.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d suspected he was being followed since coming to Hogsfeate. This was just the most obvious. He didn’t know who was following him, either; until now, he’d only had vague suspicions, he’d only thought to himself that certain men or women seemed to have been walking in the same direction as him for too long.

  But now? In Crooked Pass? Yep, he was being followed.

  Still kneeling, he quickly took his book and quill from his inside coat pocket and scribbled a message.

  If you have a stove at home, you have left it on. If you do not have a stove, you now that believe you do.

  Such a blunt lie, one that didn’t befit a master scribe or the head of Hogsfeate public communications. Gull’s old master, the underworlds take his soul, would have literally vomited because of its lack of flair. But such unsubtle lies would work on a single person. They weren’t strong enough for more than one or two folks to believe them - for mass communications, Gulliver had to be clever than that. For a lone stalker though? They were plenty enough.

  He tore the paper from his book and left the slip on the ground, before straightening up and hurrying on. He took twelve strides and heard the footsteps behind him begin walking too.

  Gulliver stopped. He began patting his coat, feigning that he had forgotten something.

  Turning around, he saw his pursuer; an old woman wearing a flour-dusted apron.

  “You dropped something, lovie,” she said.

  She picked up the note, read it, and her eyes widened. She slapped her head. “Oh! I left my bloody stove on!” Before Gulliver could stop her, she turned and left Crooked Pass.

  Damn it. Just an old baker going to work. He was really getting paranoid.

  Well, too late to do anything now.

  He turned around.

  A man was staring at him from the opposite end of Crooked Pass. A thin man, almost impossibly so. He wore a black coat that seemed to hang off him like clothes on a washing line. His face was pale, his eyes dark.

  His heart beating, Gulliver turned and left Crooked Pass the way he had come, emerging back onto the street where the boy was standing outside Tumbold’s Tales and Tomes.

  Gulliver strode over and patted the lad on the back.

  “Inside,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Get inside.”

  The shop bell trilled. Tumbold saw the boy. “I thought I said get thee gone, you grubby little rat?”

  “Tumbold, your kindness is surpassed only by your sensitivity,” said Gulliver, as he and the boy stepped into the shop.

  “I know you work for Sir Dullbright, Mister Scribe, but I will not have-”

  Gulliver glanced behind him. Through the shop window, he saw the thin man leave the alleyway and look in one direction and then another.

  The thin man walked away, leaving Gulliver feeling only slightly relieved. The fact was that although he’d slipped away from him for today, the man would be back. Either him or another shadowy fellow. Someone was taking it upon themselves to watch Gulliver closely, but who? And why?

  The only explanation Gulliver could come up with was that it was something to do with the local Heroes’ Guild. Gulliver had been present when Beno had a run-in with Pvat, the head of the Hogsfeate heroes’ guild. Perhaps the old swordsman was suspicious of Gulliver.

  Whatever the answer, he would just have to be careful for the time being. Stop using Crooked Pass, because they must have studied his usual habits. From now on, he would become completely unpredictable. He’d take new routes to work, drink in a different tavern every night, entertain a new lady each evening instead of spending all his time with Kathryn. Gods, the sacrifices he had to make.

  Taking his coin purse from his pocket, Gulliver said, “Tumbold, you beacon of kindness, this boy is going to buy however many books he likes.”

  The boy’s face lit up in a way that Gulliver had thought impossible on anything but a puppy. “Really?”

  “Really, lad. Get whatever you want. Take your time. Take all morning, if you have to.”

  Morphant woke up in his mimic form in Sir Dullbright’s bed. In his slug-like natural state the bed was too big for him, like a giant silk beast trying to swallow him whole. With a mental command, he felt himself begin to change. He felt his body growing, spreading, taking on size, shape, color. Before long he was Sir Dullbright again, lying in his bed and ready to start his day.

  Morphant’s day began in the way most humans began theirs, by covering his naked frame in various cuts of cloth. Only, when he tried to put on shirts and trousers from Dullbright’s wardrobe, he had to struggle to f
it into them. He tugged on a pair of trousers, only for the seam around his arse to tear.

  He could no longer deny it. He had enjoyed himself all too much while spending time in Dullbright’s form. He had taken on hunger for human cuisine that was almost like an addiction, and he had found that a bottle of red wine was a delightful medicine to round off a night, even if it turned to poison in his stomach throughout an evening’s sleep. After waking up feeling like Eric the barbarian had pounded his head with the blunt end of his axe, Morphant had taken to leaving Dullbright’s form before he slept, thus avoiding the toxin effects of a good bottle of claret.

  There were three taps on the chamber door.

  “Yes?” he bellowed. That was a touch he was most proud of in his act; he had assumed a pompous, rich oaf like Dullbright would bellow a lot, and he had been right. People seemed almost disappointed when he talked to them in a normal volume of voice.

  The door opened to reveal a guard in the doorway. “Sir, I apologize for the earliness of the hour, but-”

  Morphant threw the torn trousers at the guard. They hit his spear and hung from the top like a flag of surrender.

  “Get my tailor here at once!”

  “Yes, mayor.”

  “Mayor?” said Morphant, eyebrows arched in a way he spent hours practicing in the mirror.

  “Lord Duke Mayor.”

  “That’s better.”

  Never mind that the title made no sense. Morphant just enjoyed being called it. He enjoyed the idea that people were so scared of his authority that they’d say anything. Even people like the guard, who was not only taller and more muscled than Dullbright but was wearing metal armor and carrying a spear. He could have just stuck Dullbright in the belly whenever he wanted! Yet, as Morphant was discovering, this invisible sword of authority seemed to make people more scared than an actual, real spear. Bloody humans and their stupid ways.

  Morphant knew that as long as he shouted and blustered and acted like he was supposed to be in charge, nobody would question things too deeply. They would never rumble the fact that he was a mimic, and not Dullbright himself.