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

by Alex Oakchest

  I defeated him handily in the third round and enjoyed the announcer declaring me the victor.

  Not only that, but several more of the spectators turned their placards around to show the blank side. This meant there were around twelve in total. I wasn’t exactly adored among the supporters, but at least it was something.

  Chapter 18

  While some of the crowd checked their tournament programs and left the arena to find other fights, tournament officials pulled three podiums into the center of the arena. Each had something on top, covered by black sheets.

  The announcer pranced in front of them like a magician displaying a new trick.

  “Ladies and gentlemen. As the winner of this fight, Core Beno may choose a Revered Trinket as a reward.”

  There was a hush as I floated to the middle of the arena. I waited patiently for one of the tournament officials to realize that I was a core, and as such couldn’t remove the sheets from the rewards. Seeing no sign of activity, I gave a polite cough. When this didn’t work, I realized I had probably used up my reservoir of politeness for the rest of the tournament.

  “Will one of you nitwits remove the sheets, please?”

  They did so, uncovering the three Revered Trinkets.

  “Remember, you can choose only one,” said the announcer.

  The first object was a model of a small yacht with a single canvas sail. It was stuffed into a glass bottle. A card beneath the yacht gave a further description.

  Yacht in a bottle.

  On command, this tiny yacht will leave the bottle and become a full-sized sailing yacht.

  Wow. I wasn’t a fan of open water. I was a gemstone, and stones tended to sink in the sea. But a yacht that could be carried everywhere? The magic woven into such construction must have been worth a fortune. Was this really a reward for round one? What prizes awaited in later rounds? My desire to get deeper into the tournament multiplied.

  The second reward was something called a Liecatcher’s Net. It resembled the thick rope nets you often saw on sailing boats. While such nets were used to catch haddock and cod, this could be hung in the room and would catch any lies spoken within the walls.

  The third and final reward was the Glade of Rest. It looked like a piece of turf dug up from a field. A bit of mud, a few blades of grass, and a pink petal resting on top. It had an artificial smell, as though it had been preserved by mana. I was about to dismiss it when I read the card beneath it.

  The Glade of Rest

  When touched, the Glade of Rest transports the user into a mystical field, where time is slowed and powers of sleep are multiplied. A user who rests for just an hour in the Glade of Rest will wake to find himself refreshed as if he has slept for a dozen hours.

  “Core Beno, we will have to press you for a decision. Another fight is to take place here soon,” said the announcer.

  My first thought was to take the yacht. There were some places in Xynnar only accessible by boat, and boats were often expensive to hire. Plus, what wasn’t to love about a yacht you could store in a bottle when you weren’t using it?

  But really, how often did I even go to the sea? It was just a fancy trinket. It would be a waste of a reward to take it. The Liecatcher’s Net would be more useful, especially after the mimicry antics today.

  I almost made my decision, but then I paused.

  I needed to think about the later rounds in the tournament. Although monsters rarely died in tournament fights, the damage taken in one fight would require healing before the next. Maginhart would be able to whip up some kind of alchemic healing potion, and Rusty the shaman also had a healing totem. But the further I went in the tournament, the more injuries my monsters would accrue.

  If one hour in the Glade of Rest was like getting twelve hours sleep, then if I sent a monster into the glade for eight hours, it would be like them getting four full days of sleep. Injuries would heal faster, and my monsters would be much more refreshed than those of the other cores. Especially in the later rounds.

  “I’ll take the Glade of Rest, please,” I said.

  This brought a few jeers from the crowd, but I didn’t mind. I knew would I was doing.

  Revered Trinket Received:

  Glade of Rest

  The announcer hurried me out of the arena so they could prepare for the next two cores to fight. I floated away with a warm feeling cascading through my inner core. A part of me had worried that I would crash out in the first fight. Especially after losing the opening round.

  I didn’t know what my strategy would be. I didn’t even know who my next opponent would be. But at least I wasn’t out of the tournament yet.

  Just as I crossed the portdoor and emerged back in my dungeon, messages appeared in my inner core.

  Leveled up to 29!

  - Total essence increased to 5600!

  - Core quality boosted by 5%!

  - New dungeon chambers available for construction

  - New monsters available for creation

  - New trap and puzzle options

  Shrub Bandit leveled to 5

  Permanent battle boost: Sun-drenched

  Overseer Bolton caught up with me as we headed into the dungeon. Seeing him wearing his overseer robes, I was struck with how much he seemed like the old Bolton, and not the new, retired one. He looked noticeably less happy, though. It was as if the robe brought back the serious side of his personality.

  “Beno. Can I have a word?”

  “What is it?”

  “You don’t seem to be enjoying this victory as much as I expected,” he said.

  I thought about it for a moment. “I am. It’s not that. It’s just that this was only the first round of the tournament, and I came within inches of losing. The core I fought wasn’t especially strong. If he could almost beat me, what hope do I have in the later rounds?”

  Bolton folded his arms in the way he used to when he taught at the Dungeon Core Academy, so that his hands disappeared inside his oversized sleeves.

  “Coal doesn’t become a diamond until it is crushed under tons and tons of pressure. Without the pressure. It will always be coal. Year after year, nothing will change. It will be the same old lump. Time will always pass, Beno. You can’t fight it, and you can’t run from it. With that being true, why not be like the coal? Let time pass as it always will, but let it do so with the pressure. Let it turn you into a diamond.”

  “You know, coal and diamonds don’t exactly work like that.”

  “There! There’s the Beno I know. Always ignoring the point of my lessons and causing trouble. I only hope that, like in the academy, you have taken the real meaning of what I said and stored it in your core.”

  “Thank you, Overseer Bolton. It is good to have a mentor again.”

  “I am not your mentor. I’m tired, and I’m also retired.”

  We had just stepped into the dungeon when a voice spoke above us and echoed throughout the dungeon.

  “Announcement from the Battle of the Five Stars. From round two onwards, cores will be able to choose and permanently keep a monster from any core they defeat.”

  Chapter 19

  I spent a few days before round two alternating between drilling my monsters in the dungeon arena and spending time with Maginhart in his alchemy lab and watching him brew all kinds of potions that would be useful for battle. When I wasn’t doing that, I was pulsing my essence in the essence cultivation chamber.

  This was a technique that I had been shown by - of all people - Overseer Gill. When a dungeon core creates monsters, traps, or puzzles, he uses essence to do it. That essence is then replenished by the essence vines growing in his dungeon. A sensible core will hire or train the best cultivators who can take care of their essence plants and give them the best chance of replenishing quickly.

  Many cores, and overseers, believed that replenishing essence was a passive process. That a core simply stayed in his dungeon and waited for the leaves to send the essence to him.

  Gill had different
ideas about that. He came to see me, wearing a robe that was open in the middle with his bare flesh on show. His belly lips opened gave a great burp, and then he spoke to me.

  “I have something to show you,” he said.

  “I’m not sure I would want to see anything that you would show me, Gill. No offense.”

  “I owe you gratitude, Beno. You didn’t jump in with the accusations like some of the others did, before the mimic was discovered. You have no reason to trust me, but you didn’t cast judgment. One turn deserves another, and I said I would be an overseer in your academy, did I not?”

  “I didn’t mean that you would be teaching me.”

  “Oh? Just because you left the Dungeon Core Academy, you have stopped learning, have you?”

  He had me there. The more I thought about it, the more my attitude had changed since I left the academy. Back when I was a student, I devoured every book in the library. I picked my overseers’ brains incessantly. Not literally, I should add.

  But since leaving the academy and getting my own dungeon, I had grown lax. Sure, I always put all my efforts into battling the heroic morons who raided my lair. But I had slowed in my pursuit of new knowledge and new techniques.

  In short, I was in danger of becoming what I had always poked fun at: a core, who became set in his ways and didn’t move with the times.

  “Okay… What did you want to show-”

  Gill was gone.

  After searching, I found him in the essence cultivation chamber, chatting to Tomlin. Seeing me enter, Gill beckoned me over.

  “Most cores wait for their essence to replenish over days or weeks. Even months, if their essence cultivation is especially bad. Which isn’t the case with you, by the way. Tomlin has done an excellent job.”

  “Tomlin is an F class cultivator,” said Tomlin. “His standards are the highest.”

  Gill continued. “Rather than just wait for your essence to replenish, you can actively pursue it. You can pulse essence in and out of your core body, much like a human breathes. Crucially, this isn’t just important for when you spend essence and need to replenish it. Pulsing your essence is also like working your muscles. The more you do it, the stronger your essence replenishment becomes. In turn, the essence you use will be more potent. That means…”

  I was amazed. “That the monsters I create from essence will be stronger.”

  Gill smiled. “Exactly! Now, this fancy core quality test might be all the rage among academics. But in the academy I used to oversee, we had a crude form of the test years before anyone else. We spent a long time studying core quality.”

  “Does that mean you can tell me what it means?”

  Gill laughed. “You might as well ask me to explain fate. Much of it is unknowable, at least with the methods available to us today. But what I can tell you, is that a core’s core quality affects their use of essence. A core with a core quality of MidBase upwards would produce creatures more powerful than you, Beno.

  Let’s say you, a base-core, created a kobold. Then, a core with a foundation-quality core created one. Their kobold would be stronger even if both kobolds are of the same level.”

  “Then I’m screwed before I even begin. Other cores will always have an advantage over me.”

  “What is an advantage, but a difficulty you must overcome? Even locks forged by the gods can be picked with enough time and technique.”

  I was amazed. Who was this man? He didn’t seem like an old drunk anymore. At this moment, he seemed even wiser than Bolton, who I’d always looked up to.

  “The more you practice pulsing your essence, the better your essence use will be. If you train enough, then your level one creatures would be more powerful than another core’s level one creatures. Your level five creatures would compare with another core’s level ten. And so on. Core quality is just a foundation, and every foundation must be built on or it is useless. You must never stop working, Beno. No matter what hand chance has dealt you.”

  The possibilities raced through my mind. All of a sudden, I wished that I had years before the next round, so I could stay in here and pulse my essence like crazy, growing more and more powerful. Unfortunately, I only had days. I couldn’t cheat time, could I?

  Unless…

  I had Tomlin fetch me the Glade of Rest. He set it on the ground. I floated over it, but nothing happened. I floated down so that the bottom of my core rested on it.

  The dungeon transformed. Soon, I found myself in a sunlit field, where the grass grew waist-high and swayed under a gentle breeze. A feeling of relaxation came upon me.

  Instead of relaxing, I began pulsing essence in and out of my core in the way that Gill had shown me. It was much like how a barbarian might lift weights. Every cycle was a repetition, and every repetition would make me stronger.

  Because of the time dilation in the Glade of Rest, a dozen hours’ worth of practice here was the equivalent of just one hour of real-time.

  I pulsed until my core felt like someone had tightened a vice around it, and the essence inside me seemed sluggish. I forced myself to complete another pulse, when a message appeared in my core.

  Ability Gained: Essence Pulse

  By pulsing essence in and out of their core, a dungeon core can increase the potency of their essence and the things they create from it.

  Core Abilities List Updated:

  - Core Control

  - Float

  - Core Voice Projection

  - Core Vision Intensification

  - Bogan Mind Settle

  - Mind Split

  **Essence Pulse**

  I was amazed at the results. Firstly, my total essence had increased from 5600 to 5800. That wasn’t much of a jump, true. But until now I had believed that the only way to increase my total essence was to level up. And the only way to level up was by killing things.

  But now I had another way to increase my total essence, which meant that if I practiced pulsing enough, I would be able to create some of the higher value monsters that had previously been out of reach.

  A dragon, for instance, cost 20,000 essence to create. If I was increasing my essence by leveling up, it would have taken me years of fighting heroes to achieve that kind of total essence. But by using the Glade of Rest and the new pulsing technique, I could cut that time down considerably.

  Soon, my second fight was upon me. I was to battle in an arena named Tysus, which floated on the west side of God’s Fist. My opponent was a core sponsored by the League of Necromancers.

  Ordinarily, the League of Necromancers was an establishment to be feared. Not surprising, since they possessed the rare power to raise the dead. And not just in the way that the core academy forgers had, where they placed a dead person’s core into a new gemstone body. The LoN could raise the dead in their original bodies. It meant that they were a very influential group.

  However, they weren’t a dungeon core academy. Like me, they had only recently registered themselves as an academy. Also like me, they had no intention of functioning as one.

  The LoN had always enjoyed a rather black reputation. Supposedly, their new leader, Necromancer Dalzuk, wanted to have people look upon them better. He wanted to take the LoN away from being a shadowy organization who the rich paid to bring back to life, and make them more of a public service instead.

  What this meant was that he wanted to secure an empire contract to resurrect fallen armies, which would be lucrative. There was little chance of that while the empire still viewed them with suspicion. Hence them competing in one of the most prestigious tournaments in Xynnar. They needed to raise their profile, and where better to do it?

  As powerful as the LoN were, there were unpracticed in all things dungeon core. What’s more, the core they sponsored for the tournament was one they had bought from an auction. She didn’t have the benefit of an academy education.

  The crowd in the Tysus arena didn’t seem to recognize this. All they heard was the announcer telling them that I was facing the League o
f Necromancers.

  Immediately, a hush fell upon them. I could tell they were looking at me with sympathy. No doubt wondering how quickly the necromancers would deal with me, and how brutal my defeat would be.

  As it happened, I defeated their core in the first two rounds. It was child’s play. She’d never been to an Academy, and she’d never fought any heroes. She, predictably, summoned undead-based monsters in each round and didn’t even alter her tactics when I soundly dealt with them. My victory was swift and total.

  The League of Necromancers didn’t seem to mind. They had come into the tournament and boosted their profile, and that was all they wanted.

  After winning the opening two rounds, I granted their core an honor round in round three. Wanting to take advantage of the round being meaningless, I withdrew my toughest monsters and sent a fire beetle out to fight.

  Meanwhile, I ordered the monsters I’d used in rounds one and two to visit the Glade of Rest.

  The League of Necromancers’ core defeated my fire beetle in the third round, and the fight ended 2-1.

  Chapter 20

  After defeating the League of Necromancers, I noticed even more blank placards being held up by the spectators. Still not many, perhaps thirty or so. But it was an improvement.

  While the necromancers filed away from the arena, I approached the center, where yet again three Revered Trinkets were displayed. The tournament officials uncovered them, and I floated alongside each, evaluating which to take.

  Ring of Anti-temptation.

  The wearer will become immune to the temptation of anything they class as a vice.