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

by Alex Oakchest

  “Never mind. Ulruk will show them the truth.”

  They grew up to his chest.

  “Ulruk has delivered the true word to dungeons greater than this, and he will…”

  The teeth, now as tall as Ulruk, opened wide and chomped on him. He screamed, but he wasn’t screaming the truth anymore. Unless you could call intense agony a kind of truth.

  Half of him was hanging out of the teeth, half of him had disappeared inside. He was kicking his legs like a puppy trying to swim. The teeth wouldn’t let go. The traders, their faces the color of anemic ghosts, were too scared to move.

  The teeth chomped once, twice, three times, grinding Ulruk’s flesh and bones until his screams stopped.

  When Ulruk was dead the teeth disappeared, leaving nothing behind but the grisly remains of a pulped, half-eaten hero.

  And his hammer, of course.

  “All you had to do was close your mouth, and they wouldn’t have grown,” I said. “Stupid hero. Sometimes the truth is best left unspoken. Shadow, are you hurt?” I said.

  “Winded, Beno. I’ll be okay.”

  “Take the Hammer of Truth to the inventory store, please. The rest of you, take care of the wounded.”

  “Yes, Dark Lord!”

  One kobold pointed at Tomlin, who was still up against the wall, as though he was glued to it. “Tomlin didn’t help us! He’s a coward!”

  I didn’t say anything for a second. Everyone was looking at Tomlin, and I knew it wouldn’t do his reputation any favors if I spoke up for him. Especially if I did it in front of Shadow.

  Come on, Tomlin. Stand up for yourself….

  He said nothing.

  The kobolds laughed. “Go and play with your flowers, Tomlin.”

  “Yeah, go and…”

  “Enough!” I thundered, my voice dripping with venom. As much venom as the voice of a dungeon core could hold, anyway. We always tend to sound quite tinny.

  It was enough to shut them up.

  “This is a dungeon, not a playground. We do not mock each other.”

  “You mock us all the time, Dark Lord.”

  “That is different, you little…forget it. Tomlin, you have cultivation work to do.”

  “Yes, Dark Lord.”

  “The rest of you will show respect to our longest-serving kobold.”

  “Serving? Serving how? Tomlin doesn’t fight.”

  “Think carefully what you say next, young kobold,” I said. “I created you just last week. You haven’t earned the right to talk back to Tomlin or me. In any other dungeon, you’d have been burned alive and your ashes fed to a goat for such insolence.”

  “Sorry, Dark Lord.”

  “That’s better. Now, clean this place up.”

  Tomlin left through a tunnel that led to the cultivation room. As our head essence cultivator, leading five trainee cultivators, Tomlin was one of the most important creatures in my lair. I just wished he’d grow a spine.

  Ah, well. I had other things to think about.

  The traders looked like they’d rather be anywhere else in the world except here. It also seemed like taking even the slightest step would require more bravery than they could conjure in a thousand years.

  Finally, Baby found a shred of courage. He pointed at me. “You’re a monster!” he said.

  “A monster is usually defined as a large, ugly, and frightening creature,” I said. “Or as a thing of extraordinary or daunting size. Am I either of those things? I’ll take a compliment where I can get it, but let’s be realistic.”

  “How’s this for realistic? We will never vote for you. In fact, we will use our influence to make sure nobody does! We cannot have a beast like you in power. Never! We will not suffer it.”

  I watched the traders leave, deciding there was no point trying to change their minds. They’d come here for dinner, they’d watched a hero pummel a bunch of monsters, and they’d seen him get devoured by a set of giant teeth. Could I really blame them for their reaction?

  “I should have booked a table in a lodge in town,” I said. “Why didn’t I just do that?”

  With the battle over and all the heroes finally dead, post-fight information rushed into my core.

  Leveled up to 27!

  - Total essence increased to 4738

  - New dungeon chambers available for construction

  - New monsters available for creation

  - New trap and puzzle options

  Items Received:

  Hammer of Truth

  Iron armor x2

  Steel swords x2

  [Standard] bow x1

  [Blunt] Arrows x12

  “Dark Lord,” said a voice.

  Brecht the bard was standing next to me, his tambourine slung around his back.

  “Are you okay, Brecht? Were you hurt?”

  “I’m fine, but one of the new kobolds did not make it through the fight.”

  “Damn heroes to hell! We will make sure our fallen warrior is given a place in the remembrance chamber.”

  “This would not have happened if you weren’t spending all your time with the traders, Dark Lord. You could have been ready for the heroes.”

  “Are you saying this is my fault?”

  “Some of us feel you spend too much time trying to win votes, and not enough in your dungeon.”

  “Were you hit by the Hammer of Truth, Brecht?”

  Brecht walked away without answering.

  CHAPTER 2

  Gary (The Spider-troll-leech monster)

  Gary was more nervous than he’d ever been. Forget the furious battles he’d had with heroes. Forget all the fights Core Beno had dragged him into. Tonight, all his leech legs were shaking.

  Everyone in the Scorched Scorpion was staring at him. They’d all bought their drinks and settled into their chairs. The innkeeper, with no customers to serve, wiped down the wooden counter with a rag. He watched Gary as he made soapy arcs over the oak.

  Gary felt alone on the stage. Just him and his harp, a battered old thing he’d bought with his dungeon wages. Beno, the delightful core, had given him a bonus last week for decapitating a ranger. It was a thoughtful gesture.

  “When you’re ready, lad,” called an old bard, leaning against the bar. He wore a straw hat, and his hands and fingers were heavily calloused. His lute case was propped up next to him. He was waiting for his turn.

  So…time to begin.

  Why did he feel so nervous? He’d played in the tavern plenty of times.

  It was never this busy, though. He usually had Brecht with him. Today he was alone.

  And the most nerve-inducing thing was that his new friends were watching.

  Ever since Core Beno had allowed dungeon monsters to spend their free time in the town, Gary wished he could feel more included in things. Not just as a strange monster from the dungeon, his presence barely tolerated in town. But as a real resident. A part of the community.

  He decided the first step was to get some townsfolk friends. After many failed attempts, many conversations cut short by their fear of his big, swollen abdomen and his leech legs, he’d finally done it.

  There they were, sitting around a table. Right in the middle of his eye line. There was George, the baker. Flour crusted under his fingernails. Eyes baggy from having to wake up so early in the morning. Next to him were his two lads Fred and James, their hands soft and flour-free because they had no desire to bake. Then there was Clarabeth, the Old Hag Psychic, as she styled herself. She’d admitted to Gary that it was an act. A guessing game.

  One person was missing, he noted. It made his heart sink a little. Core Beno had promised he’d be here tonight. He rarely ever came to the tavern. He hated things like laughter, fun, and joy. But he’d promised he’d come tonight.

  Still, his four new friends were here, sitting with eight drinks on their table. They’d ordered two drinks each, so they didn’t have to go to the bar mid-set and miss one of his songs. How thoughtful of them. They were here, waiting for Gary to play
.

  And it wasn’t just any old song. They’d asked him to write this one especially for tonight. It made Gary proud to be asked this by his new friends.

  “Write a song about what you reckon it’d be like to be human,” said Fred.

  Gary had done that. When he wasn’t killing heroes or training in the dungeon arena, he pondered what it would be like. What his life would be if he wasn’t a spider-troll-leech hybrid monster created in a dungeon. He spent hours, days, weeks on the lyrics.

  And tonight was the night to play it to them.

  It was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. He did hear a pin drop, in fact. Bagatell, the seamstress, had brought some of her work to the tavern and she had just dropped a pin.

  The innkeeper squeezed his sodden rag into a glass. Filled a quarter of it with murky water. He arched his eyebrows, telling Gary to get on with it.

  Gary, a slayer of heroes, a veteran of dozens of dungeon battles, gathered all his courage.

  He tried to remember the advice his dungeon friend, Wylie, had given him. Sage advice that would get him through this, words that would help him conquer his anxiety. “Don’t be scared, Gary,” Wylie had said. It was genius in its simplicity.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “I’m Gary, and this is a song I call ‘To Walk in Soft Skin.’”

  And then, with a shaky leech leg, he strummed the harp and began the melody.

  “Oh, ask me a question, about being a monster,” he began.

  He sang with everything he had. He played like never before. He tried to forget their watchful faces and he focused on the music. He missed a note, then recovered. A lyric jumbled in his mind, but he improvised.

  On and on he went. Twelve verses, the crescendo building, every agonized lyric sung as well as he could.

  And then he sang his last word and strummed the harp for a final time.

  He waited.

  The last note seemed to hang in the air.

  Gary felt exhilarated and sick. Had they liked it? Is this what his friends had wanted when they asked him to write about being a person, and not a monster?

  George was the first to laugh.

  Then Fred and James, who always did everything together. Even laughing.

  Clarabeth added a laugh of her own. A horrible, throaty laugh. Soon the whole tavern was guffawing at him. One man chuckled so hard he swept his beer glass off the table. It smashed and sprayed ale everywhere. The innkeeper, usually obsessive about keeping the place clean, was laughing too hard to notice.

  A whole tavern of townsfolk laughing at him. Big, horrible belly laughs that built into a cacophony. Faces mutilated by mirth. Hands slapping tables. People taking big, wheezy breaths.

  Gary’s cheeks burned so hotly he felt like he’d melt. He blinked. All eight eyes. Felt a tear fall from one.

  It had all been a horrible trick. They weren’t his friends. They just wanted to laugh at the stupid monster trying to fit in.

  His tears soon dried.

  The heat in his cheeks turned to anger. A furious, boiling feeling that seeped through him, way down into the pit of his belly.

  In the dungeon, he’d murder a man who laughed at him. He’d tear them apart. Rip their flesh from their bones. Did these people know what he was? Who they were laughing at?

  He should kill them all!

  But Gary swallowed his anger just enough to clear his mind a little, and he knew that in the dungeon, violence was called a battle. In the tavern, it would be called murder.

  He threw his harp against the wall. It smashed. Pieces rained down on the seamstress’s hair. Scattered her pins.

  People parted as he stomped through the tavern. He reached toward the innkeeper, who shrank back. He raised his glass of murky water as if throwing it on Gary would hurt him.

  “I’m not going to touch you, idiot,” said Gary.

  He grabbed a full barrel of ale and wrenched it free from its fixings. Ignoring the innkeeper’s protest, he left the tavern with the barrel.

  He stepped out into the night. It was humid. Orange lamps glowed atop poles. The street was mostly quiet. A couple of gnomes, arms interlocked, were looking at the window display of the tailor’s shop. A watchman was trying to fix a flickering mana lamp.

  Gary popped the cork of the barrel and began to drink. He stomped through the streets.

  “Hey,” called a voice.

  It was the old bard, straw hat and callouses and all. No lute, though. He must have left it in the bar.

  “What do you want?” said Gary.

  “It ain’t your job to control their reactions.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Your job is to play. Some folks will like it, some won’t. That’s why us bards travel around so much. Get a bad reception? There’s always another town. Screw ‘em.”

  “It isn’t that,” said Gary.

  In the dungeon, he’d been stabbed. Shot by an arcane bolt. All kinds of wounds and scars. But when he thought of Fred, James, George, Clarabeth…how they’d pretended to be his friend…

  He started to shake with anger. “I should go.”

  The old bard approached. He smelled of tobacco. He placed a hand on Gary’s shoulder. That was the most shocking thing. Most humans, gnomes, goblins, they couldn’t even bring themselves to be within a foot of Gary. Used to walk wide arcs around him on Jahn’s Row. That was what made it so special to have four new friends.

  But he didn’t sense any trickery from the old bard. Only a world-weary kindness.

  “You can’t force people to like what you sing about,” said the bard. “But you can make yourself like it. You do that by being true to what you believe, and to hell with anyone else. Tell me something. Is singing about being human and what it’d be like if you were different really what sets your heart going?”

  The song had been their idea.

  Gary’s throat felt so tight he couldn’t get his words out.

  The bard carried on. “Don’t sing words you think they want to hear. Sing ones that sound true in your own head. You play well, friend. You’ve got a good voice. Wouldn’t think it, lookin’ at yer, that a brute like you sings so well. You just need to find yourself in your work. Listen, there’s a bard college out west. Get out of the desert, hit the glens, and you can’t miss it. Only bard college that accepts older folks, the ones who missed their boat and found it too late. If you’re serious about playing, you should enroll.”

  The compliments missed their mark. Gary was too furious and sad for that. But he knew the bard hadn’t said them to be nice. He’d said them because it was right. He realized this old guy had principles, not like those four treacherous flesh sacks.

  When Gary looked up to thank him, the bard was gone.

  Soon, he found himself at the town graveyard. It was still new, but getting bigger and bigger. Core Jahn usually did most of the town construction, but the townsfolk insisted on digging the graves themselves. Gary and the other dungeon monsters had helped. Rows and rows of grey stone-faced him. Each marking a life, most of them lost in the battle against Duke Smit.

  Gary had fought in that battle. Risked his life for the people of Yondersun. All for them to laugh at him. Not just laugh, either. They had baited him. Set him up so they could embarrass him. It was all planned.

  The beer in the barrel was half gone now, and his mind was half gone with it. The vision in his eight eyes was fuzzy. He drained the rest of the barrel, let the rest of his thoughts leak away.

  That was when he heard them. Four voices nearby. Near the graveyard, the quietest part of Yondersun. Nobody around except a drunk monster. A hideous freak who was stupid to think he could fit in anywhere except a dungeon.

  And the four people who’d arranged his humiliation.

  It was them, alright. He knew their voices. Fred and James, laughing at something. Clarbeth telling George how she wanted one last glass of wine before bed, and maybe he should join her tonight. They pretended they weren’t together, but everyone knew.


  Gary thought he’d drank enough ale to dull his anger, but it came back stronger than ever. He threw the empty barrel. It smashed into a gravestone. The wood splintered and the last dregs of ale dripped down the stone.

  Standing up, he scanned the area with his fuzzy vision until he saw them.

  Four shadows, walking in a shadowy part of town.

  His thoughts seething, he stomped over to them.

  CHAPTER 3

  “Loss is an inevitability in a dungeon core’s life. You spend much of it fighting heroes, and in combat, someone has to win. That means someone has to lose. Either way, someone dies. You can’t help being a bloodthirsty monster.”

  Deep within my dungeon, locked away in my core chamber, Gulliver was trying to make me feel better. He was drinking jasmine tea from a tin mug that he carried everywhere with him. As a traveling scribe, he kept his pack full of essentials and could be ready to travel with a minute’s notice. Usually, that travel only extended to the town of Hogsfeate, where his girlfriend Kathryn lived.

  Lately, though, he had spent all his time hanging around my dungeon. Not that I was complaining. It was good having my best friend here. He’d traveled all over Xynnar and spent time with mages, lords, dukes, witches. This made his experience invaluable, and his advice was usually good…as long as he hadn’t spent time in the Scorched Scorpion before giving it. Besides, I liked having him around. We all did. He cheered us up.

  “That would usually be nice of you to say, but the fact I’m a dungeon core is the problem here. The traders won’t vote for me if they’re scared,” I said.

  “Plenty of votes are won using fear.”

  “By giving people something else to focus their fear on. Not by making them fear me. If you were a fly, you wouldn’t vote for a spider to become your next leader.”

  “I suppose not. You’re focusing too much on whether they like you or not, Beno. There’s a structure to the world. Everything has its opposite. Good and evil, life and death. Even when you lose a fight or a vote, you’re contributing to the natural order.”

  “The natural order. Making the traders watch a bloodbath means they don’t trust me to be chief. That’s the natural bloody order. They’ve got it into their heads that I just love killing things. Inviting them to dinner was supposed to show them another side to me.”