Dungeon Core Academy 1

by Alex Oakchest

  “Halt your monster, Beno,” she said. “These are my brothers. You wouldn’t hurt someone close to me, would you?”

  Oh, for doom’s sake. I really didn’t need this.

  It was an interesting question, though. Would I hurt someone close to Vedetta?

  Hmm. I had to think about it. On the one hand, I did like her. And the two brothers weren’t heroes, despite the fact that they, unfortunately, met the technical description. Killing them wouldn’t give me anywhere near as much pleasure as it had with the barbarian and his gang.

  But then again, I was a core. My human instincts had left me long ago. Really, they had. When the other cores used to tease me and say I’d kept too much humanity, they were wrong, and they were idiots. Especially Core Jahn.

  So yes, on reflection, I would kill someone close to Vedetta. I was a core; it was my job, my purpose, it was the reason my soul was resurrected in the first place.

  “Sorry, but you know the rules,” I told her.

  “Can I talk to you properly?” she shouted.

  Her brothers looked at her strangely. “Detta? Who are you talking to?”

  “How did you find us?”

  “Later,” the girl answered. “Beno, I need to speak with you. You won’t be harmed.”

  Won’t be harmed?

  I won’t be harmed?

  This was my bloody dungeon, and I had her brothers on a plate! No matter how old Vedetta really was, she was still a little girl. She was nothing but a morsel to Gary.

  “Please, Beno,” she said. “Just come and hear me out.”

  I used my core powers to amplify my voice through the dungeon. This needed to sound terrifying and serious.

  “Why would one such as myself talk to one such as…yourself?” I tried to boom.

  Damn it! The amplification made my stupid voice sound even worse.

  “There’s something you need to know, that you won’t find out if you kill my brothers.”

  “Oh?”

  “About the overseers. Something you don’t know about them.”

  Ah. Now, this might change things.

  I supposed I could talk to her. After all, the moment to issue an order for Gary to slaughter them had sort of passed. I could find out what the hell she knew, then kill her brothers.

  “Fine, child. Tell me.”

  “Come here.”

  “Heh. Not a chance, have you lost your mind?”

  “Come and talk here, core, or not at all.”

  I wanted to know what secrets she held about the overseers, but I couldn’t just pedestal hop into the loot room. That’d leave me right in the center, and I’d be too exposed.

  No, it was time to do something I had avoided for all this time because I found it demeaning.

  “Tomlin? Come here please.”

  My core room door opened and both Tomlin and Wylie shuffled in. I couldn’t justify keeping them out of the fighting while sending my other clan monsters into it, yet I didn’t want them to get hurt. They were my favorites. Is that wrong?

  At any rate, I had posted them outside the core room as guards, which technical meant they had a role in things.

  “Dark Lord has almost destroyed his enemies,” said Tomlin. “Tomlin impressed.”

  “Almost, but not quite. Tomlin, I’ll need you to carry me.”

  He arched the little strip of hair that counted as a kobold eyebrow. “Dark Lord?”

  “Yes, I know. It’s demeaning as hell to be carried around by a kobold. I need to get to the loot room, but I don’t want to be stranded in the center.”

  “Dark Lord can move to other pedestals.”

  “And if the mage hits me with a fireball and knocks me off it?”

  “Ah, Tomlin understand.”

  “Good,” I said. “I’ll need you to carry me to the loot room entrance, where I will speak to them. If there is the slightest hint of trouble, you carry me back here. Got it?”

  “Tomlin will protect his friend.”

  That felt like a dagger of emotion in my cold, dead, completely non-existent heart. “Thank you, Tomlin.”

  The kobold carried me to the loot room, where I saw Gary, Vedetta, and the brothers. There was a dead barbarian with a bear trap on his hands, completely drained of blood. It was beautiful.

  “Vedetta,” I said. “Tell me what I should know.”

  “Nothing.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I just needed you to come here so you could see them properly. My brothers. Look. They’re scared. Barely out of their teens, but with simple minds and cowardly souls. They aren’t made for fighting.”

  The swordsman eyed his sister now, but I suppose he knew better than to spoil her blatant attempts to get me to spare them.

  Yes, I understood what was going on. I don’t know how or why, but Vedetta’s brothers had joined with a party of heroes and had come to loot my dungeon. Now, Vedetta wanted me to spar their lives. Apparently, actions shouldn’t have consequences after all. Who knew?

  “Vedetta, you know as well as I do that sparing a hero’s life willingly is the most disgraceful breaking of core rules that is possible.”

  The mage brother spoke to his sister. “Detta? You know this…thing? You know about what, core rules? What the hell is going on?”

  Vedetta patted his arm. “Sweet brothers, it would be a great idea if you didn’t speak a word until I’ve negotiated your release.”

  If I had a face, I would have been giving her a very serious frown right now. “Oh no. Nope. They’ll be no negotiation. These guys came into my dungeon willingly, and with their own motives. Whatever those motives are, anyway. You know what that makes them. You know what it means.”

  Vedetta nodded. “I thought you might feel that way. I would have, too.”

  “You would have too? What?” said the swordsman brother.

  I was about to give Gary his kill order when Vedetta pulled something from her bag.

  It was a mana lamp. Small, made of metal, with a green flame inside.

  “Gary, tear these two to-”

  Before I could say anything, Vedetta ran at me, barged into Tomlin, and then ran past us. Her footsteps echoed all the way down the tunnel until they stopped, and I knew where she was.

  Holy hell. She was in my core room.

  “I’m sure you know,” she shouted. Even as a little girl, her shouting voice sounded better than mine. “That mana lamps can be smashed. And when a mana flame touches essence…”

  The essence vines! She was going to burn them. Forgive me for exaggerating, but this was bad.

  I decided to call her bluff. “Burn them. I’ll murder your brothers and still pass my graduation.”

  “Your evaluation doesn’t end just because you kill a party of heroes, Beno. Come on. You know that. It ends when the overseers say it does, and from what you told me, you’ve annoyed them a little. Let’s say you kill my brothers. But now that your dungeon is open, more heroes will come. With your vines scorched to cinders, you won’t have essence. Which means, my little core, the next heroes to find their way in will kill your clanmates and then smash you into dust.”

  She had a way of getting her arguments across, I’ll give her that.

  The biggest problem was that everything she had said was true. Winning against this party of heroes wouldn’t end the evaluation. It would have just put me in a good position.

  But without essence, I was defenseless. Like she said, when other heroes inevitably came, I’d have no resources.

  At least if I let her and her brothers leave and spared my essence, there was a chance I could beat the next heroes. Or that I could talk the overseers round.

  That was my choice, wasn’t it?

  Dearth at a hero’s sword, or death when the overseers smashed me up.

  Sometimes, there are real drawbacks to being a core, you know that?

  “Get out of here,” I told her. “You and your brothers.”

  “Just wait,” said Vedetta. “Wait here, Beno
, and I’ll fix this. Thank you.”

  “Wait here? Where in all hells else would I go?”

  CHAPTER 34

  This should have been a time of celebration. Of basking in the deaths of my enemies. Stripping their corpses for loot, practicing my cackle. I had been so, so close.

  Now I was in a dungeon filled with heroes corpses, yet every single body and every bloodstain was a symbol of how so near to victory I had gotten, yet had failed miserably.

  Tomlin and Wylie and Gary tried to comfort me, but I’m sorry to say I was in a horrible mood. I couldn’t bring myself to loot the heroes or to do any work. I floated restlessly.

  Then, I spent hours hopping from one pedestal point to the next, turning it all over in my mind, considering all the ways I was absolutely screwed.

  And then I heard footsteps.

  Someone spoke to me.

  “Core Beno?”

  My first thought, in a flicker of hope, was that Vedetta was back with some miraculous solution.

  “Core Beno, please join me in the core room.”

  It was Overseer Bolton. Here to gloat. Here to deliver his judgment that I be smashed into thousands of pieces, and those pieces used to create a core for a new soul.

  A brief, crazy idea sparked in my head. That I should order Gary to kill the overseer.

  No, that was both idiotic and useless. A core’s creatures couldn’t harm an overseer.

  The best thing I could do would be to get things straight in my head. Work out my arguments, and somehow convince the overseers that I shouldn’t be immediately pulverized.

  I gave my kobolds and my spider-leech-troll monster a sad smile. “It’s been great getting to know you all,” I told them. And then I didn’t have the heart to say anything else.

  I tried to make myself resolute. To face whatever happened next like a true core.

  As I prepared to hop into the core room, I heard something else.

  Footsteps and voices, but coming from the dungeon entrance.

  Heroes? Now?

  I hopped into the room next to the entrance room, so that I could hear them without being seen. It was then that I heard a familiar voice. The voice of a little girl.

  “Just down here,” she said. “I told you, didn’t I?”

  A deep, harsh voice replied to her. “Very good, girl. You weren’t lying after all. You say there’s treasure down here?”

  “There sure is. You just need to walk through that door.”

  I cast my core vision to the entrance, where I saw a man step into my dungeon.

  A tall man wearing leather armor, with a patch over his right eye, and a piece of wood where his left leg should be.

  This was no hero, I knew that much. I could sense the foulness coming from him. The complete lack of morality. I could see, just by looking at him, that he had a dark aura.

  Not a hero, no.

  Not in the moral sense, anyway. Yet, he had walked into my dungeon willingly, seemingly led her by Vedetta in search of treasure.

  Vedetta stayed by the dungeon door, not stepping foot over the threshold. The door slammed shut, trapping the man here. This evil man with an eye patch and peg leg (not that those things made him evil).

  One who, by walking into the Whispering Caverns of Gary Fight Kill, had just deemed himself as a hero. Technically.

  Now I understood.

  Sort of.

  Was this man a bandit? Could he even be the bandit who had killed Vedetta’s father?

  “Core Beno,” said a voice across the dungeon. “I am not accustomed to waiting.”

  Aha! Vedetta had delivered me a second chance. If I killed this man, this dictionary-definition hero, before I even spoke to Bolton, then surely that would count in my favor?

  “Oh Gary,” I said. “Get ready. You have work to do.”

  CHAPTER 35

  One-Eyed Sanders had just enough time to hear the girl say something before the door started to close.

  “This is for George Costitch,” she said.

  And then the door slammed shut, leaving Sanders alone.

  George Costitch? Who the hell was that? Was he supposed to know the name?

  He might not have recognized it, but he knew the intention behind her words. See, you didn’t spend decades as a bandit without occasionally having the family members of people you murdered come looking for revenge. They usually said things like, “This is for blah blah blah.”

  And then Sanders would kill them.

  Now, though, he was alone. He hadn’t brought his men with him because they were all out west, waiting for a merchant who they knew would be heading over travelers’ pass with boxes of gems in his cart.

  Sanders was always happy to delegate, and he’d trusted them to do the job alone while he relaxed at camp. And then the little girl had come to him, saying she knew a place where there was treasure, but she was too scared to go. That she’d lead him there if he gave her a cut of it.

  He’d planned to follow her, get the treasure, then murder her.

  But now a locked door separated them. Sanders tried its handle, but it wouldn’t budge.

  Damn it, girl.

  There was nothing for it but to explore.

  Sanders took one step, and then almost fell down a bloody hole in the ground!

  He leaned over and saw a corpse at the bottom of it. What the hell has happened down here?

  Sanders hadn’t known fear for a long time, but he felt it now. Steeling himself, knowing what a story this would be if he survived, he looked around the room, and he saw a door.

  He walked through it, following a tunnel into yet another room, with even more corpses. A dead bard was lying next to some kind of frog creature.

  In the next room, he saw a mage with a mutilated face, and two dead owls on the ground.

  What in the gods’ names was going on?

  Onwards he pressed, gripping his sword. Right now, he didn’t care much about treasure. He just wanted to get out of here. Course, when he told the rest of the camp about this, he’d miss out the part where he felt his hands shaking.

  He walked through another doorway and into a tunnel, and then into another room. A much wider one, oval-shaped and with a chest in the center.

  Ah, was this the treasure?

  Then he saw the dead barbarian, his hands caught in a bear trap.

  There was a squelching sound.

  Sander’s pulse raced.

  Movement to his left caught his eye, and that was when he saw it; a monstrosity of a spider mixed with…what…leeches? Leeches for legs?

  How could such a thing exist?

  That was the last thought that crossed bandit Sanders’ mind before the monster was upon him.

  CHAPTER 36

  Two Days Later

  The overseers loved to make a show of things. I’ll tell you, it really annoyed me. Not long after they called an end to the evaluation period, they summoned all of us cores away from our dungeons, and back to the academy.

  There, in the great atrium filled with statues of famous cores, and models of famous dungeons cast by waves of mana light, they made us all wait.

  I and all the other cores, floated on our pedestals, all of us lined up in a row. I looked around and saw my old classmates, and I wanted to talk to them, but I knew better.

  This was it. The final evaluation. No sense any of us saying anything now, because we might say something stupid. Cores are prone to doing that, you know.

  So we all waited in silence as, one by one, the overseer called us into the judgment room.

  Finally, it was my turn.

  “Core Beno, hop into the judgment room, please.”

  I did so, finding myself in the judgment room. Though actually, it was Overseer Butte’s alchemy lab, and they’d just tidied away all his vials and bottles and stuff.

  In front of me were four hazy beams of light, vaguely resembling giant faces but disguised enough that I couldn’t tell who they were.

  “Core Beno,” said one
of them. His voice was distorted, but I guessed it was Bolton. I would have been shocked if Bolton had declined to chair my judgment.

  “How would you say your performance was?” the anonymous overseer asked.

  Good question. Very good question, and one I had prepared for.

  “I believe that my total essence advancement was in the top percentile of all cores. My dungeon was one of clever construction, if I can be so bold, and my trap placement was exquisite. As was proven in its effectiveness, if you happened to notice the hero corpses. Furthermore, I did kill a party of heroes.”

  “Party?”

  “The peg-leg man who met his unfortunate end at the hands…leech legs…of my boss monster.”

  “One man is not a party, Core Beno.”

  “According to the technical definition, there is no set number to describe a party.”

  “He was no hero. He was a bandit.”

  “Again, technically, he entered my dungeon of his own volition, with his own motives.”

  “Ah, technicalities,” said the overseer. “You do love those, don’t you?”

  “I merely comply with the academy guidelines.”

  “And do your guidelines state that you should let two young heroes escape your dungeon?”

  “They were not heroes,” I said.

  “By definition, Core Beno, they were.”

  Damn it. They had me then. I knew it. I had one last thing to say.

  “Learned overseers, if I may speak freely, I believe that-”

  “Silence! We have evaluated your performance, Core Beno. We have discussed it fairly, free from bias.”

  Sure you have.

  “And it is, in our panel’s opinion, a fact that you broke a fundamental part of dungeon core law. You willingly chose to let two heroes leave.”

  “Now wait-”

  “Therefore, it is with regret that we have deemed your evaluation a failure. You will henceforth be ground into dust, and used in the creation of a new graduate.”

  CHAPTER 37

  Henceforth. Such an immediate word, isn’t it? Especially when it precludes a judgment that you been robbed of your second life.