Since we were the only ones present in the auction, we purchased the core for a very reasonable price. In this case, reasonable meant that much of my gold surplus was now gone. Even so, we had an untrained core.
The organizers brought him out and left us alone with him. This core was shaped like a hexagon, except uneven on one side, as though he had been stretched. His gemstone was a sickly yellow in color.
There was something about him that worried me. Bolton and Gulliver wouldn’t have been able to sense it, but Jahn and I could. This core was scared.
This was an unfortunate side effect of rogue core forgers. They didn’t take the same care in acclimatizing their cores to their second life as the Dungeon Core Academy did. I had to give the academy credit for that.
Jahn and I explained to the core what had happened to him and that we had bought him. He listened but didn’t say anything. When we were done, I still felt tremors of fear coming from him.
“What’s your name?” I said.
“I…don’t remember.”
“Well, would you like to choose one?”
“I just want to go home.”
“Where is home?
“I don’t remember that either.”
“Well, forget that, then,” I said. “You’re coming with us to the dungeon, which will be your new home. Cheer up! Dungeons are lovely places. Soon, you’ll be up to your neck in dead heroes. And not only that. You’re about to get an education, my friend. You’re about to join the greatest dungeon core academy in the land. And the newest. And at least one of those statements is true.”
The core looked at me and Jahn, and the fear came off him in waves.
“No! I won’t go with you. I don’t want to be a core. I can’t be.”
I was about to speak when Jahn interrupted me. “Beno, Gulliver, Bolton, give us a minute alone, will you?”
The three of us left Jahn alone with the core. One minute became five, then ten. Gulliver passed it by scribbling in his notebook, while Bolton was transfixed with some sort of puzzle he’d bought from a street vendor in the town, no doubt satisfying yet another new experience.
Finally, Jahn called us back in. The core seemed much calmer now. I had to hand it to Jahn. He’d done well.
“Beno, Bolton, Gulliver… I’d like you to meet Wrench.”
“Wrench?” I said.
“That is the name my… forger? Is that the right word? It is the name he gave me,” said Wrench.
“Wrench is a utility core,” said Jahn. “Forged not so much to create things, but rather to repair them. He wouldn’t be much good at creating monsters. He and I have a lot in common.”
“That doesn’t matter so much. Repair core, food core, bard core. It doesn’t matter. He’s still eligible to join an academy. What do you say, Wrench? Do you want to become our first student?”
Wrench thought about it for a while before finally answering. “If Master Jahn is there, then yes.”
“Master Jahn?” I said.
Jahn gave the core equivalent of a shrug. “That’s just what he decided to call me, Beno. I had nothing to do with it.”
“Sure you didn’t. Welcome to the academy, Wrench.”
Chapter 11
It was the big day. Later that afternoon, a representative of permit office number 129 was going to trouble from Tavercraig to my dungeon, where they would evaluate my new ’academy’ to make sure we had passed the requirements.
I was excited and nervous, two feelings that often go together but never feel pleasant when mixed. Worries buzzed in my inner core, so I shut off my core feelings. The sensations disappeared instantly.
In my chamber, I was joined by Bolton, Gulliver, Anna, Cynthia the alchemist, and Maginhart. Maginhart was busy scribbling strange symbols in a book. They seemed to represent parts of some kind of potion. Or was it a tinker schematic? Or some kind of artificery, maybe? I supposed it wasn’t my job to know. That was why I had arranged Maginhart to be trained by Cynthia, after all.
“Beno, will you stop floating around? You’re giving me a bloody headache!” said Bolton.
I hadn’t realized I was doing the core equivalent of pacing in the chamber, floating from wall to wall. I stopped. “Sorry. We just won’t get another chance at this. The deadline for registering an academy closes in three days. If this doesn’t go well, we’ll never have time to correct whatever’s wrong and have the permit office send another inspector.”
“You’ll be fine,” said Gulliver. “Things always are.”
“Are they?”
He shrugged. “Perhaps. Either way, last-minute nerves are good for no one.”
The core room door opened, and Shadow the rogue kobold sauntered in, flanked by four giant beasts. They had started as puppies and just grown and grown and grown, and now would put most wolves to shame. Excellent defenses for a dungeon, but they cost us a fortune to feed them.
“Shadow? I thought you were taking the wolves to hunt?” I said.
“There’s a problem, Beno.”
“Don’t tell me heroes are raiding the dungeon. I love a diversion as you know, but this isn’t the time.”
“No. Bandits.”
“Excuse me?”
“The carriage booked to take Tomlin to his exam has been waylaid by bandits. They surrounded it, and they’re refusing to let it move unless the driver gives them all the cargo it is carrying… including Tomlin. So far he has refused, but he’s bound to cave eventually.”
“In the meantime, Tomlin is going to miss his bloody exam!”
Footsteps came from outside the core chamber, echoing down the tunnel and getting closer and closer. Soon, Wylie appeared. He was panting, and his face was red.
“Problem, Dark Lord!”
“Not another one.”
“You sent Wylie to fetch new overseer from Hogsfeate, but Wylie cannot find him! Overseer was supposed to meet Wylie at town gates as you said. But he wasn’t there. Wylie checked every tavern, as you told him to, and Overseer Gill was nowhere to be seen.”
I found myself floating from wall to wall again. “So Tomlin is missing his bloody exam, and our overseer has vanished, no doubt on another booze binge.”
More footsteps came towards the core room. There stood Rusty. He was a kobold, but could often be found wearing a skull crown and a cloak of skin, as well as carrying a staff made from a femur bone. It was okay, though, because he was a shaman. They get away with dressing like that.
“Yip yip! Dark magnificence, there is a…”
If I had hands and a face, I would be slapping my cheeks with them and praying to wake up from this nightmare .
“If the next words out of your mouth are 'problem', Rusty, then you will soon get a major problem of your own. One that involves you being sent into a fire ant trap covered in honey.”
Rusty thought about it for a moment. “Complication, Dark Magnificence. The permit officer is here, yip yip.”
So many problems to deal with at once. It might have completely overwhelmed some people, and nobody could blame them. Luckily, I had learned the core technique of separating my mind into sections, and working on each section independently of the others without losing any brain capacity.
Unfortunately, losing brain capacity was the least of my problems. Because my current capacity wasn’t suggesting much of an answer to me.
“Shadow,” I said. “I want you to go and talk to Eric the barbarian. Take Rusty and a couple of the fire beetles and go find Tomlin. When you reach them, I want you to find out how much gold the bandits want to let the carriage pass safely.”
“You’re going to pay them, Beno?”
“No. Find out how much gold they are demanding, and shove have an equal amount of rocks up their arses until they are completely plugged up. Escort Tomlin to his exam. For demons’ sake, be nice to him. You know how cowardly he is. He’ll be shivering his arse off.”
Shadow, who used to be so rebellious and sarcastic to me, gave a salute that she could only have
learned from Wylie, and spun on her heels. “Leave it with me, Beno.”
That was one problem sorted. Unfortunately, that was the easiest one. Bandits were often unorganized, drunken louts, who shirked getting a real job in favor of attacking people traveling through the wasteland. They didn’t pose a threat to a barbarian and rogue assassin like Eric and Shadow.
But a drunken, missing overseer? That was much more of an issue.
Gulliver closed his notebook. “I can find the esteemed Overseer Gill,” he said.
“You can?”
He nodded. “You forget – I had a rather passionate romance with Kathryn, the head of the Hogsfeate guards. She’ll locate Gill for us.”
“You’re sure she’ll help us?” I said. “I mean, most of your old flames aren’t too inclined to talk to you, let alone help you. On account of them hating your guts.”
“Kathryn is different,” Gulliver said.
“Yeah,” said Anna. “She dumped him, not the other way around.”
“She didn’t dump me… We agreed to spend some time apart. The rest of our lives. And yes, I wasn’t too happy about the fact. But still…"
“Gulliver, if you can sort this out for me, I’ll buy you a brand-new wardrobe. I’ll furnish it was as many pantaloons and winklepickers as you can ever wear.”
“No offense, Beno, but I wouldn’t trust you to have the right taste in fashion. All the same, leave it to me.”
Gulliver dashed off to find a shard crystal, so he could communicate with Kathryn. I watched him leave, rushing past Shadow, who was on her way to get Eric. I was glad to have such helpful and resourceful friends.
The inspector from the permit office was a surprisingly pleasant chap named Helmut. After spending much of his life issuing permits to fly fishermen, he had recently been promoted to permit office 129. We were the first academy he had been asked to visit, because new dungeon core academies didn’t open up very often. As such, it was a novelty for him to visit a dungeon.
He spent two hours crossing through various chambers and tunnels, inspecting all of the traps and puzzles that I had created to kill heroes. Obviously, I deactivated them for the duration of his tour. Although… if he didn’t issue a permit, perhaps a trap would accidentally come to life. And then, with Helmut taken care of, I could have my mimic assume his form, and…
No. Helmut wasn’t a hero, and as such, killing him in my dungeon would feel dirty. Not only that, but empire bureaucrats were often protected against mimicry. It was only backwater mayors like Sir Dullbright who left themselves open to such easy deception.
Helmut didn’t seem to mind me following him around the dungeon on his inspection, and I found him a surprisingly pleasant chap. Always remarking on how fascinating things were.
“And what is this?” he said in his southern accent.
“That is a trap of Hellish Reflection,” I told him. “If you look in the wrong mirror, it spawns an evil reflection of yourself that hopefully murders you on the spot.”
He clapped his hands. “Wonderful! Wonderful! Thank you for the tour. Now, we must get to business. I understand you have hired an overseer?”
Using my inner core voice, which Helmut wouldn’t hear, I spoke to Gulliver. “Is everything sorted with Gill?”
“He’s on his way,” said Gulliver, replying to me using a shard I’d given him so we could always communicate in secret. “Apparently, he was so nervous about becoming an overseer again, that he went for a drink to give him courage. One drink became twenty, as it often does. He caused a scene by stripping to the waist and singing soprano from his belly, and a guard dragged him into the cells. Kathryn let him out when I asked her to.”
“How long before he gets here?”
“I splurged on a mana-carriage, which I expect to be compensated for.”
“Sure. But first, you’ll compensate me for all the tea and biscuits you consumed from my dungeon stockpile that is supposed to be for guests.”
“Call it quits?”
“Done. “
I turned my attention back to Helmut. “If you don’t mind, inspector. I’d like you to meet Wrench, our first student. After that, I will introduce you to our esteemed overseer Gill, and our F-class cultivator, Mr. Tomlin.”
Helmut gave one of his beaming smiles. “Very good, core, very good.”
I used my core voice, this time talking to Shadow. “Shadow? How’s it going out there?”
There was no answer for a moment. And then Shadow spoke with a grunt that sounded like she was fighting.
“Nearly done, Beno. Just a couple more bandits to murder. Eric is snapping one of their next right now, and then we should be done.”
“Tomlin is going to be too late.”
“Not at all. We sent him off to the exam ages ago. We’re just taking care of the bandits for fun.”
“Any word?”
“He’s on his way back to the dungeon. He passed the exam. Hang on, Eric is telling me to say something…he says he expects to be compensated for the mana-carriage we put Tomlin in.”
“Demon’s arses, I’m keeping the mana-carriage business afloat here. Carriage drivers will be naming their kids after me, soon.”
Hours later, after distracting Helmut with a tile puzzle by subtly doubting his ability to solve it, I escorted him through the dungeon chambers and to the wasteland exit. Tomlin and Gill had arrived after a lengthy delay, and the meetings hadn’t gone too badly at all.
“I must say, Beno, I have had a very pleasant day. Yes, yes. I will remember this dungeon for years to come.”
“And do I have the right to call this an academy, as well as a dungeon?”
“Your overseer is an interesting fellow, yes, yes. But I believe he is a little… how do you say…”
“Incompetent?” I offered.
Helmut laughed. “Oh, you cores. Very funny! Yes, yes. I was going to say that he seemed rather tired, but that is not a crime to be locked up for, is it? And I have met your cultivator. I must say, I have never met a kobold cultivator before, much less one who is an F class. Although, his cultivation gloves appeared to be covered in blood.”
“No… That was just red essence.”
“Very good, very good, yes, yes. Well, Core Beno. Thank you.”
Helmut produced a sheet of yellow paper with a name printed on the top that read, ‘Beno & Jahn’s Dungeon Core Academy.’
Below that was a paragraph of nearly incomprehensible legalese. Helmut pressed his stamp against it and then handed it to me.
Lacking hands, I obviously couldn’t grab hold of it, and the paper flitted to the ground. Helmut laughed embarrassingly, picked it up, and rather awkwardly placed the sheet of paper on top of my core. I was so pleased to get the stamp, however, that I didn’t mind.
“Congratulations, Core Beno. I wish much fortune to your dungeon core academy.”
Chapter 12
We wasted no time taking a mana carriage to Heaven’s Peak. It meant that I had to sell much of the remaining hero loot from my dungeon, but I couldn’t afford to miss this chance.
Soon, the great mountain, God’s Fist, loomed ahead of us, reaching towards the sky like a slanted sword. Its bowl-shaped arena perched atop, and I couldn’t help but stare with awe.
That was the arena I would soon be competing in. Was I ready? Would my core quality even let me compete with the other cores?
Questions for later. As an overseer once told me, only open your window to doubt when the skies are clear.
“Shouldn’t we have hired two or three mana carriages and brought the rest of the gang here?” said Gulliver. “After we register, we don’t plan on going back to the dungeon, do we?”
Bolton, who was wearing a straw hat - no doubt for the first time in his ridiculous life - opened his eyes. It was the first time he’d done so for the whole journey.
“No need. With each cores permission, a portdoor will be opened in God’s Fist that leads back to the dungeon. One door for each core. It means that Be
no will be able to go back into his dungeon between tournament rounds using the portdoor. He can replenish his essence and create monsters for the rounds ahead without needing to travel all the way home.”
We headed back into the wooden lodge with the black stars on the roof and were greeted by the same owl lady as before. She seemed surprised to see me again.
“Did I not already explain that you need academy sponsorship to compete?”
“You did,” I said.
“All the academies enrolled in the tournament have already declared who they are sponsoring.”
“Not all of them.”
She swiveled her head 180 degrees to glance at her desk, then swiveled back to me. “I’m quite sure that…”
“I doubt you know who the Beno and Jahn Dungeon Core Academy are sponsoring. Mainly because we haven’t told you yet.”
I won’t lie, I was enjoying this. I don’t like to be smug, but…
… who was I kidding? I loved being smug! All the more when somebody had already treated me with condescension, as the old owl had weeks earlier.
“You…went away and created your own academy?” The surprise in her voice was incredibly rewarding.
“I did. And I’d like to register our academy to compete in the tournament. The core we will be sponsoring, is a rather dashing, knowledgeable, talented core named Beno.”
It was the old owl’s turn to smile. She crossed her wings and glared at me, beak tilted down. “I’m afraid that all the places for dungeon core academies to register in the tournament have been taken.”
“What? I only checked a few days ago, and there were five places left. All the main academies have already registered. You’re not telling me that five new academies sprouted up in the last five days?”
“Actually,” she said, “They have.”
Bolton took his straw hat off his head and scratched his sun-weathered scalp. “Who are they?”
Dungeon Core Academy: Books 1-7 (A LitRPG Series) Page 139