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

by Alex Oakchest

  There were no people around. No carts, no traders, no shops. Just those giant spikes. I’d never seen anything like it. Never learned about such a place. But instinctively, I knew what it was.

  This was a core settlement. A village on the surface of the world, but for cores.

  It was hard to say why I thought of that so instinctively. Maybe because an old core was showing me this in a vision. It didn’t take a great leap of deduction to assume his vision would involve cores.

  But more importantly, it was the glass spikes. They were dwellings, but nothing like what you’d find in a civilized part of Xynnar these days. It was impossible that such a structure would be made by the hands of man, gnome, or orc. Only a core could have conceived of such things. A non-core brain simply wasn’t capable.

  “This was a core settlement,” I said.

  Ray didn’t reply.

  Instead, I saw movement in the core vision.

  Cores floated out from doorways in the spikes. Cores of all shapes, all sizes, all colors. Cores shaped like a half-moon, their bodies burning white. Forked cores like Ray. Square cores. Cores that seemed to shimmer as though they were made of liquid.

  Some floated alongside one another. Others were alone. Just on the edge of the frame, I saw Ray himself. A trident-shaped core with gold rune marks on him, except in the vision, he was colored the purest green like fresh meadow grass. There were no cracks on his surface.

  The cores seemed to be going about their day. Using essence to fuel their powers, though not for slaughter. One core was over by the forest, creating new trees. Oaks, ferns, chestnuts. The forest grew, tree by tree, as he worked. Every so often he’d create a bird’s nest and place it in the tree.

  Others were building more of the glass spikes. Spinning glass out from their cores, creating the funneled structures that rose high enough to touch the sun. Way east of the village, one core was even creating a hill. Piling dirt and stone upon dirt and stone, and then spreading it into a shape as if it were butter. It got bigger and bigger. I wondered if it would become a mountain.

  Not a single core was creating traps. There were no monsters. No hint of a dungeon.

  The powers these cores had. It raised so many questions. Did cores make everything in Xynnar? Instead of being just a cracked, old core, was Ray one of the makers of our world?

  “Is this Xynnar?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “It can’t be. There’s no evidence of these spike towers. Not a trace.”

  “This is Xynnar, Beno. I have been around long enough to know,” said Ray.

  The vision grew smaller.

  Or rather, the area it covered grew bigger, which made the village itself seem tiny. We were in the sky, looking down upon the core settlement from a great height. I saw lots more settlements spread over a giant mass of land full of green fields and thick forests.

  “Where are they, then? Dozens of settlements, all with those glass spikes. You’re telling me these things once existed in Xynnar, and didn’t leave a single trace? What crap. Metallurgy-mages are always digging up coins in the dirt, and they turn out to be centuries old. A little coin can exist all that time, yet these towers just vanished?”

  “You doubt me? I have thousands of years on you, young core. If I tell you this is Xynnar, then it is Xynnar.”

  “But where? There’s no record of such places anywhere. So where did these villages exist?”

  “Right above our heads.”

  “This is the wasteland?”

  “Yes.”

  It was impossible to comprehend. And that in itself was ludicrous.

  I was a core. A being brought back from the dead and fused into a gem. I could suck energy from what amounted to a bunch of plants, and I could create monsters from it. My very existence took a great leap of belief.

  Even so, I struggled to accept that the green, sprawling pastures in the vision was the dry, dead land above me. This couldn’t have been the wasteland.

  Yet, what reason did Ray have to lie to me?

  “It was the way of things since the beginning,” said Ray. “Cores were spread all over Xynnar. None of us were perfect. Settlements fought with each other, yes. But all fights ended eventually. There were always periods of peace, even if such periods were just gaps between more tension. No civilization is perfect.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “Longer than the memories of any man.”

  “That doesn’t exactly answer my question.”

  Ray said nothing.

  “What happened?” I said. “All these cores settlements. Not a single trace of their existence. A whole land turned to desert. Something big must have gone on.”

  The core vision changed now. I was looking at the same core village again, with its bordering forest and its giant, glass spikes.

  Except now, people were there. Hundreds, maybe a thousand of them. Soldiers on horseback. Mages in their robes, spell-light flashing from their fingertips. Flames spreading. Catapults tossing rocks into the giant spikes.

  All I could think as I watched it was, why?

  “Why did the cores let this happen? If someone tried doing this to me, I’d…”

  “You’d what, Beno?” said Bolton. “You can’t use your essence on the surface. You couldn’t even protect your own dungeon from Riston. An Awakener. A glorified messenger boy.”

  The words felt like a sword thrust deep into my core. They caught me off guard. I’d told Bolton the truth, and he used it to mock me?

  I almost fell back on my instincts. My gut told me to act tough. Threaten him. Tell him I’d flay his skin, tear out his bones, and feed the marrow to Shadow’s hounds.

  But I held back. I couldn’t help but get the sense that Bolton was goading me. Trying to provoke a certain reaction. Testing me.

  “I know my weaknesses,” I said. “Knowing them is the first step to beating them. A hell of a lot better than pretending they don’t exist. I failed my dungeon, but that doesn’t mean-”

  “Hush, please,” said Ray.

  Like me, Ray didn’t have a face. But if a person can sometimes sense a core’s gaze, then a core can easily do the same to a fellow core.

  Right now I could sense that Ray was watching the vision intently. It was impossible to miss the air of despair he felt. This must have happened centuries ago, and yet, look at him. Still feeling the same grief.

  The cores in the vision must have been his friends, I realized. His family. His village mates. They were gone, and somehow Ray was still here.

  “What utter tripe,” said Bolton.

  The core vision disappeared as if the harsh words had shattered it. Ray said nothing. Just brooded.

  Bolton looked angry.

  “This deceitful core would have you believe that the ancient cores lived in peace,” said Bolton. “That they were happy and passive until the evil men from the north broke their towers and enslaved them all. That the men exploited the cores and destroyed their civilization. What a load of old crap.”

  “That’s not how it happened?” I said.

  “Not everything he showed you is a lie. Yes, there were core villages. For a while, the cores did live peacefully. What Ray doesn’t mention is that a core sickness began to spread. Cores began to die off. Their numbers dropped, and they didn’t know why or how to stop it.”

  “Lies!”

  “Shut up, core. We watched your vision. I cannot cast light to make my words seem more truthful, but you will show me the respect of listening to me.”

  Bolton’s voice made him sound much bigger than he really was. As if the room shrunk around him. I’d never seen him like this. Not even in the academy, when a student core would mess something up. I felt like I was seeing not just Bolton the man, but his old, dead core self too. The mighty core he used to be, before earning resurrection as a man. They’d fused as one, and it made him look scary.

  Maybe that was how it was. Just like how remnants of my human self sometimes mixed with my core,
perhaps parts of Bolon’s core self sometimes took hold. And at the peak of his powers, Bolton had been a core to fear.

  He carried on. “At the same time that core sickness began to spread through villages, people in the far north had begun to advance their own civilizations. They were entering a new age. They didn’t just have to focus on surviving one year to the next, and instead could explore Xynnar. So, heading deeper and deeper south, they began to get close to the core lands.”

  I could tell Ray wanted to speak, but he said nothing. He was actually scared of Bolton.

  Bolton paced. “The cores, ravaged by sickness, had a choice. Did they wait and see whether the people from the north were hostile, and risk getting attacked when their numbers were lowest? Or did they launch a preemptive strike?”

  “Lies!” thundered Ray.

  Seemed that he couldn’t help himself. He shook on his pedestal. I was certain he was trying to summon something. I could feel it in the air. I could also feel that he was too weak and that he didn’t have enough essence.

  “Settle down, Ray,” said Bolton. “Don’t show Beno a mirror and tell him the reflection is false. If you wanted to show him the past, at least make it the true one. The cores slaughtered thousands of people in their preemptive strike. And in the end, they still lost.”

  “Lost? It was not a game,” said Ray.

  “The second part of the vision is also true, Beno. Where we saw their villages being destroyed. Ray has shown you the beginning and the end of the tale. But the context lies in the middle. The cores slaughtered thousands of people, provoked a war, and ensured their own destruction. All based on a hypothetical threat.”

  “Those people were monsters,” said Ray. “They unforged some of us. Learned the secrets of our bodies. Used them to forge their own people into cores!”

  I felt a shudder run through me. I knew that Ray wasn’t lying about this part. After all, what was I? A bloke who died and then got his soul thrown into a gemstone.

  “That happened to me,” I said. “After I died. The academy forged my soul into a core.”

  “No, Beno,” said Ray.

  “Look at me, Ray! What the bloody hell do you think I am? How can you say I’m not a core?”

  “I do not doubt that you are a core. I am ancient, but I am not blind. I just doubt that you were ever a man.”

  “What?”

  “You have always been one of us, Beno. When we knew that losing our war was inevitable, some of us fled. We went underground. We went to places nobody would look. Some of us were discovered straight away, but others chose their hiding places wisely. Some cores made themselves dormant, so as not to give off any trace of our energies. You were one of those, Beno.”

  “No. I was a man. I died, and then the Dungeon Core Academy forged me into a core.”

  “You were dormant, Beno. The academy found you, as they do. They have people all over Xynnar digging into forgotten places, exploring the unexplorable, in the hopes of finding an ancient core.”

  “You’re telling me the whole academy story is bullshit? That none of us were resurrected? We were…dug up, like fossils?”

  “No,” said Bolton, before Ray could speak. “That’s not the case. The academy truly does resurrect people and forge their souls into cores. Another part of Ray’s story was accurate; we learned this secret from the ancient cores.”

  “Fine. If that’s true, then how would you even know what I am? How would you know that I’m an ancient core, Ray? I look just like any other core.”

  “I could sense you,” said Ray. “The second you entered my dungeon, I knew that a fellow ancient one was among us.”

  “Bolton? Is that true?”

  Bolton looked at me for the longest time.

  Memories hit me then.

  About how I’d always felt different to the other cores in the academy.

  How certain things just came quicker to me than most cores. I was the first in my class to conjure a kobold out of essence. The first to convert essence into a lava trap.

  I’d always been different.

  That was when I knew it was true, that my whole second life had been a lie. My second life hadn’t happened…because I was still in my first life.

  I had never been a man. I had never died. Everything I believed was wrong.

  It was hard to know how to feel. It was flattering, in a way. That I had never been just a man. That I was part of some ancient race, that…

  But I noticed that Bolton was shaking his head.

  “No, Beno. You aren’t an ancient core. Jahn is.”

  CHAPTER 23

  I was astounded. It takes a lot to do that to me, but Ray and Bolton managed it.

  Being honest, I felt a little jealous. Sure, there were plus sides to Jahn being the ancient core. Briefly, it seemed like everything I knew about my second life had been a lie, and I don’t know how I would have handled that.

  Then again, it meant I was a lesser core. I was just a human soul forged into gemstone. Whereas Jahn was a true core. He was like Ray. An ancient one, a being that had always been a core, and nothing else.

  Why had Bolton hidden this from us? What was the academy’s angle in all of this? Why had they let Jahn believe he was like the other cores in the academy?

  That was when I realized the truth, and it made me uneasy.

  Some of the ancient cores had been dormant for centuries until they were found by the people searching for them underground. It was obvious now; someone from the academy had discovered Jahn.

  Waking up after centuries of sleep, he didn’t even know which way was up. The academy seized on his confusion, and they enrolled him in the school. They fed him the same story as everyone else. A story that was true for cores like me, but not for Jahn.

  They’d woken a slumbering core and they’d hammered a lie into his mind. They’d done it so that they’d have full control over him. So he’d feel that his loyalties were with the academy. After all, if someone tells you they resurrected you from death, you kinda feel like you owe them something.

  This just brought up a whole bunch of questions.

  “You’re wondering why the academy failed you and Jahn, and why we kicked you out, aren’t you?” said Bolton. “I know this is a lot to take in.”

  I thought back to my academy test. I had built a dungeon and used it to kill a hero. I should have passed my test, but the overseers failed me. They gave me some technicality crap as an excuse, but it had never felt true.

  “You kicked me out because I broke rules in my test, remember?” I said.

  “Broke the rules. Yes, that’s what you’ve always had to believe, isn’t it? You know, Beno, you and Anna really ought to have a chat.”

  “I’d rather kiss a hero’s arse.”

  “It’s all a rather delicate matter. We conditioned Jahn into serving the academy,” said Bolton. “And we suppressed his ancient memories to do so. In doing that, we also repressed his natural talents. We made him less effective as a core. That went against the whole point. The best thing for him to do was to leave the academy and to re-learn his ancient skills. We needed someone to watch over him while he did.”

  “Ah. So that’s why you are always lurking around Yondersun. To watch over Jahn.”

  “Not me, Beno. You. You never failed the academy test. Not really. Your first dungeon was excellent, and it showed that you’d taken our teachings to heart. You didn’t fail for breaking any rules; you failed because we needed you to.”

  All this time, I’d considered myself a failed core. I had studied so hard in the academy, and then I’d messed up my evaluation, and I’d left the academy in disgrace.

  If I was honest with myself, it had fueled me to be better. To build my Yondersun dungeon to be as deadly as possible. Now, I’d found out that I hadn’t failed. I wasn’t a letdown, after all.

  I thought about what Bolton had told me. It all seemed to make sense.

  The ancient cores lived in a village. They made forests, built g
iant spike towers to live. They’d looked happy. Their lives revolved around creation.

  Jahn had studied at the dungeon core academy, but he could barely make a trap deadly enough to kill a fly. Yet, he could use essence on the surface even better than I could underground. He had built most of Yondersun, and he was getting better at it by the day.

  There were other things, too. In the academy, we were taught that cores didn’t have emotion. They stripped away as much of our human emotions as possible because cores were supposed to be cold. Emotionless. Being unfeeling strengthened us, whereas emotions were a human thing, and they made us weak.

  But that was a lie. Cores had emotions; Ray’s vision made that clear enough.

  The ancient cores had seemed happy when they were creating forests and building towers. In the second vision, with the soldiers charging around, they’d looked scared.

  So clearly, emotions weren’t reserved just for people. In the academy, Jahn had shown more emotions than the rest of us cores combined. The academy just couldn’t drill them out of him no matter how much they tried, and this was why. Jahn came from a purer line of cores.

  I realized then that the academy didn’t remove our emotions because that was how cores should be.

  They did it because if we were emotionless, we were obedient.

  “We should bring Jahn in here,” said Bolton.

  He left, soon returning with Jahn.

  “Hey, Beno,” said Jahn, his voice as pleasant as ever.

  I looked at him differently now. I imagined Jahn being in the core vision. Maybe he’d lived in a village like that long ago. I suddenly felt a deep reverence for him. He was older than me. Older than Bolton. Older than the academy.

  “Why are you looking at me like that? Did I do something wrong?” he said. “Oh! Here’s the core we were looking for. Listen, are you going to change those wraiths back into-”

  “Silence, Jahnetian.”

  Ray, despite his core body ready to fall apart, had enough energy to put force into his voice.

  “My name’s just Jahn.”

  “You are not just anything…but I am not one to use a longer name when the short is preferred,” said Ray. “I never met you, back then. But I heard about you. You dwelled in a village north of mine. I met your brother’s wife’s cousin, once, I believe.”