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

Reginal stared into the distance for a while, where the heroes seemed to have found the door to the dungeon.

“I should just let them go into the dungeon?”

Bolton nodded. “They aren’t here to cause you any mischief; even the stupidest dungeoneer won’t break the code of town civility. They’re here for the dungeon. Beno will take care of the rest.”

“And if they beat his dungeon? We’ll be missing a core.”

“Heroes beat the dungeon, not the core. They battle their way to the loot room and fight whatever is in there. Once they win their treasure, they will leave. Beno knows to keep himself hidden in his core room, so even in defeat, he will not die.”

“What if they decided to battle into his core room and kill him? I’m told it can be done.”

“You might well ask me what to do if the sun grows wings and flies away. Let’s not worry about dangers unlikely to show themselves. Beno will worry about that because it’s his job, not yours. The butcher doesn’t tell the barber how to cut hair.”

Reginal sighed. “Heroes and dungeons. Town planning. Construction. Ever feel lost, Bolton? Like the world is forgetting your name?”

“I’ve had many names, and most have been forgotten. It’s never bothered me much.”

CHAPTER 12

“Heroes!”

Tomlin sprinted down the tunnel with his voice echoing ahead of him, since sound travels much faster than a kobold’s feet.

“Pull yourself together,” I told him.

“Heroes, Dark Lord, heroes! We’re all going to die!”

“You are the most cowardly kobold I ever met. Do you have poultry ancestry in your blood?”

Tomlin leaned one arm against the wall and rested his forehead against it, catching his breath. As the first kobold I ever created, it would be both accurate and outlandish to call him my oldest friend. Cores aren’t supposed to form bonds with their creatures, you see. It makes it harder when…well, it just makes it harder.

But heroes were coming, and I didn’t have time to deal with a panic-stricken kobold ranting and raving and spreading his yellow-belly thoughts all around the dungeon. Morale is important in a place like this, especially before a battle.

I concentrated, giving a mental command.

Core control activated.

I felt my consciousness lurch from my body as if a giant had grabbed my aura and ripped it out, before stuffing it down Tomlin’s mouth.

That’s right; through core control, I was now the temporary driver of a carriage named Tomlin, the cowardly kobold cultivator.

Just like when I used my core senses, the first thing to hit me was the colors and the sounds. Thanks to their wolf ancestry, kobolds see the world in a sharpness that others don’t, and they hear things like dew dripping from a room several tunnels away, and the distant swing of pickaxes and chatter of Wylie and his workers.

And the smell. Holy hells. I had core smell, just like I had core vision and the like, but I rarely found it practical, so I usually shut it off. Unfortunately, I was controlling Tomlin now, and Tomlin had no way of shutting it off.

I felt my – Tomlin’s – heart begin to race as I got used to looking at the world through his eyes, and by doing this, I realized all the avenues that had opened to me with core control.

I could walk. I could eat things. I could drink beer and taste the suds on my tongue.

I could develop an itch, and then scratch it. That was something that I strangely missed in my core body.

I could tell the others I was doing important dungeon work, but then fill a tub with hot water and lavender oil and sink into it and let the comfort carry me away.

As excited as I was, this wasn’t the time to mess around as I struggled to get used to the weight distribution of Tomlin’s body.

I took one step, and fell over, scratching my arms on the ground. It was strange, wearing this body. I supposed it was like the first time a knight strutted around in a full set of metal armor; they must find walking around with all that foreign weight quite difficult.

I got back to my feet and walked around until I began to master the art, and from there I graduated to a jog, and then to a hop, to a jump, and finally to running around in utter glee with Tomlin’s arms raised in the air, hollering like a bogbadug stung by a bee. This went on for minutes before a thought hit me.

Get a grip!

Heroes were coming, and as fantastic as it felt to inhabit a body after so many years as a core, I needed to conserve this skill.

I felt strange, then. A sensation of lightness hit me.

The skill was fading.

Core control was amazing, but it had limits that I had read about back in the academy. When you first earned the ability, your stay in a creature was short. The more powerful a creature, the less time you could spend in its body. This would increase the more I leveled up, but for now, I had minutes at most.

As I felt weaker and weaker, my last act was to take several deep breaths, calming Tomlin’s pulse until the fear of the heroes was gone.

With another mental command, I left his body.

I lurched into my core again, and immediately felt a sense of restriction. Now I knew why using core control became addictive to some cores. Once you regained the sense of full-body movement, it hurt to give it up.

I had read about cores who earned the ability, and before long, it became their sole purpose in life. They lived just to use core control to inhabit another body, and when they used it up, all they would do