Dungeon Core Academy: Books 1-7 (A LitRPG Series) Alex Oakchest (list of ebook readers .TXT) 📖

better tell me why I just heard what can only be the sound of a kobold having his guts ripped out.”

Wylie nodded at his workers. “Stand aside for Dark Lord! Let Dark Lord see hole.”

The miners parted for me, revealing a void in the wall behind them. It was just large enough for a kobold to squeeze through. It was the beginnings of a tunnel that the kobolds had made on my orders, since I had instructed them to start mining in the eastern area.

They had made great progress in expanding my dungeon, but they had barely touched this wall, and now they were hiding the hole from me.

Hmm. This was suspicious alright.

“When my workers hide things from me,” I said, “It makes me think silly thoughts. Ones that involve my boss monster getting a kobold snack.”

Wylie scratched his chin. “Wylie made mistake, Dark Lord. Small mistake.”

“And…?”

“I am new supervisor. Smallest of mistakes could cost job.”

I felt a little bad for my friend then. True, I had been reluctant to give him the supervisor role on account of his muted intelligence, but I felt cruel judging him that way. So I had decided it was better to have a little faith in him. Give him a chance to prove himself.

Besides, it was a lesson to the other kobolds in my dungeon. A sign that I would reward loyalty and hard work. Intelligence didn’t count for much if you were disloyal, lazy, and showed no dedication. I needed creatures who were ready to sweat for my dungeon, especially with the things I had planned in the future.

“Wylie, I’m not going to strip you of your title because of a little mistake. Anyone who says they learned something without making mistakes is a liar, and you need to see errors not as catastrophes, but as stepping-stones that let you climb higher. The world has made people so worried to mess up, but messing up is part of learning. Now, what’s the little mistake that you’re so worried about?”

“Dylan was disemboweled, Dark Lord.”

“Disemboweled,” repeated Gulliver, while writing in his book. “Fascinating. Bowels should never be disem’d. That is a rule I live by.”

I brought up my list of dungeon monsters, and sure enough, I had lost a kobold miner.

Monsters List [11/18]

Tomlin [Kobold] [Cultivator Lvl 7]

Wylie [Kobold supervisor] [Miner Lvl 9]

Shadow [Scout] [Lvl7]

Maginhart [Kobold] [Miner Lvl 20]

Miner Karson [Kobold] [Miner Lvl 19]

Miner Tarius [Kobold] [Miner Lvl 15]

Brecht [Kobold] [Bard Lvl 15]

Gary [Troll-Leech-Spider Melded-Monster Lvl4]

Mushroom-guy [Boss monster]

Fire Beetles x2

Damn it. I now had 11 monsters in my dungeon, where I used to have 12. I studied the list, and I was saddened when I realized whose bowels had been disem’d.

You’d think that with so many monsters in my lair, and with most of them being kobolds who looked similar to one another, I wouldn’t know their names.

Not so. I made sure I knew my creatures - my clanmates - very well. After all, what kind of leader doesn’t know whether his people prefer grilled mouse or roasted rat? Lute music or heavy bard? I made sure to get to know my people.

So now, I saw that our unfortunate newly-gutless kobold miner was indeed Dylan. Damn it.

Not that I would be happy to lose any of them, but Dylan was an eager learner, who I had begun to suspect had talents that lay not in mining, but maybe in my alchemy chamber. He had also started reading book 1 in the Soul Bard boxset I had procured the last time the Wrotun people had sent wagons out to trade. Dylan was a good guy.

“Wylie,” I said. “I’m assuming Dylan wasn’t killed by the simple act of digging a hole. I know conditions are dangerous here – and I have resolved to buy you all flame-resistant gloves and pickaxe-proof boots, by the way – but miners don’t die simply by making a tunnel.”

“That’s right, Dark Lord.”

I carried on. “Since bowels don’t fall out of bodies on their own, I’m guessing that something living or undead killed Dylan.”

“I never knew cores were such masters of logical thought,” said Gulliver.

Ignoring him, I carried on. “And because there is no blood on this side of the room, I would hazard a guess that it happened on the other side of that hole.”

A kobold named Maginhart faced me. He was a miner who I had asked to train in the subskill of using a crossbow. Right now, Maginhart was a celebrity among the kobolds in my dungeon, after recently killing a rogue.

His kill count wasn’t the only thing to separate him from the others. Kobolds are a mixture of wolf and lizard, with most of them inheriting more of the wolf side. They walk upright, and they are surprisingly friendly, given that their appearance makes them look murderous.

Whenever I create a kobold, their appearance is completely outside of my control. Maginhart had inherited more of the lizard side of his species, giving him a long, thin tongue that stuck outside his lips as though his mouth wasn’t big enough for it. It rattled when he breathed.

“Thisss kobold hopesss you will, in future, protect your minersss’ interestsss againssst workplace hazardsss,” he said.

“We should unionize,” said Karson, a miner who was probably the only kobold in existence who styled his mane of wolf hair into a top knot. The other kobolds mocked him but truth be told, he had style.

Unions. Insurrection. Disembowelment. I didn’t like the sound of this.

I’d never heard of dungeon creatures unionizing before, but then again, who had expected members of the League of Necromancers to form a union? It caused a stir at the time, but there was nothing anyone could do about it. If that happened, then this could happen.

“Unionize!” cried Gulliver. “Yes, there is no