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

is wait for it to replenish so they could use it again. They ignored their dungeon, ignored defending against heroes, and they soon met their end.

I was sure I had enough mental resilience to avoid that trap, but even so, I would only use core control when I absolutely needed to.

“Feel better?” I asked Tomlin.

“Tomlin…does. Strange. His fear is gone. He must be braver than he realized.”

“He must be,” I agreed. “But shouldn’t he be in the cultivation room?”

“Tomlin was taking his break when he heard the heroes. Tomlin gets a break every four-”

“Every four hours. I know, because you keep reminding me every time that you’re about to take one, and I keep telling you that I already agreed to your breaks. So, you were taking a break…”

“Tomlin decided to go to the surface to take his break in the open air. He likes to watch the clans work up above. He poked his head out of the surface door, and he saw heroes nearby, looking for the dungeon.”

“I already know they’re here,” I said.

“You already know?”

“Maginhart told me. He went to visit the tinker for a new spade, or ssspade as he would say, and he saw a group approaching from the east. Since they didn’t belong to the Eternals or Wrotuns, they could only be heroes tempted here by the prospect of defeating my dungeon.”

“Then Tomlin ran here for nothing?”

“I wouldn’t say nothing. We both know that working in the cultivation doesn’t burn many calories, does it?”

If I had eyebrows, I’d arch one of them now in a sassy kind of way while looking at his gut.

“Tomlin will go back to essence vines now. Lots of work to do.”

“You’re sloping off to avoid facing the heroes, more like. Fine, Tomlin, you scoundrel. I’ll be hopping to my core room to take care of the heroes from there. Thank you for coming to tell me.”

I hopped into my core room, where I floated on a pedestal in the center. Liquid mana from the spring in the corner of the room gently rained onto the ground, catching in the trough that would take it all the way through the labyrinth and to the Wrotuns’ cave.

There were just two doors in my core room. There used to be eight tunnels leading here, but I quickly changed that. The fewer ways to reach me here the better, because a core room is where a core makes his last stand if the heroes beat his boss monster, get their grubby mitts on his loot, and then decide they’re not done dungeoneering yet.

It rarely happens this way; most heroes depart after getting their prize. But some, the greedy and reckless ones who have a death wish, hunt for the core.

As such, I had made the two doors in my loot room riddle doors. The tunnels leading to them were trapped to the gills, meaning any hero who made it to the core room was likely to be stabbed and burned to hell, as well as mentally frazzled after dealing with my ingenious riddles.

Using my core vision, I viewed my dungeon from an angle way above, so that I could see each room, each tunnel, and all my creatures at the same time.

Time to strategize.

I needed to beat these despicable heroes. Not that any core likes to lose, but it does happen. Some cores, when they don’t want to lose too many of their creatures, even take a defeat on purpose, locking most of their monsters in the core room with them and hoping the heroes take their loot and bugger off.

But I needed to get stronger. I needed to level up to increase my essence points and dungeon capacity, and then I could create more creatures for my army. Before long, I wanted my arena chocked full of kobolds and trolls training to become killers.

At the same time, I couldn’t afford to lose too many monsters at once. My dungeon was still in its infancy, and if this hero clan killed too many of my creatures during their dungeon dive, it would be like starting from scratch.

So, I had to plan my attack carefully. Inflict maximum pain for the minimum of losses.

“Shadow,” I said, projecting my core voice to the loot room, where the sneaky kobold was doing stomach crunches. “I need you just beyond the surface door room.”

“I am the welcome party?” she said.

“No, sending you to welcome something would be like greeting a gooseophobe by gifting them a gaggle of geese. Here’s what I need you to do. And the rest of you, listen carefully because your orders are coming soon…”

The heroes entered via the surface door at the far north of my dungeon, walking into the first room in a single file.

I watched them strut in, four bare-chested men following a woman who wore a tight shirt with a studded leather waistcoat. The men took orders from the lady, that was plain enough, and they each wore necklaces around their neck. Links of sturdy chain with a stone threaded through.

There was something about the necklaces that prodded my curiosity, but I couldn’t say what. Had I read about them somewhere?

Never mind.

Heroes were here! Hot, fresh, and ready to get slaughtered.

It was one of those rare times when I actually felt something. Excitement crashed through me, almost as if my core was a cliffside and the tension and anticipation were the tide beating against it.

I felt joyous, like a blacksmith ready to hammer metal into shape, like a bard strumming a new lute, like a troll ready to test out his new warhammer on someone’s skull.

Time to kill some heroes!

CHAPTER 13

Sider and the Four versus Core Beno

Sider held up her right hand. Four sets of feet stopped walking, and her men waited behind her. Say