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

across his chest. While Shadow dragged Wylie to safety, my fire-beetles surged forward and activated Hell Husk, sending sparks of flame up and down their skin.

The Collector kicked them away using two shovel-like feet, flinging Death into the ceiling, and Fight and Kill into a wall near to Gary.

I heard the crack of bones as the Collector punched Tarius.

A groan of pain as Maginhart succumbed to the slap of a tentacle.

The sound of Fight, Death, and Kill, returning to the fray, before getting knocked over like skittles.

Shadow grunted as she charged at the Collector and was swept away with barely a smidgeon of effort.

The Collector focused on Wylie now, looming over him. He raised an arm, brandishing a set of razor-like claws. Wylie looked side to side, eyes wide with panic, but there was no escape for him, and no friends near nor strong enough to come to his aid.

“Don’t look for a retreat,” The Collector said. “We must all face our end sooner or later.”

I had to do something. The Collector, for the time being, had no thoughts about his collection and was set on slaughtering every creature in my dungeon.

I couldn’t let him take Wylie, but what could I do?

Aha!

“Gulliver,” I said. “I need you to distra-”

But the scribe wasn’t in the core room. Instead, he appeared in the loot room, emerging from the shadows in time to grab the Collector’s arm and divert his swing.

The Collector swept the scribe aside, and Gulliver hit the ground with a sickening thump. Wylie, though injured, scampered to his feet and hobbled away, but the Collector pursued him.

“Dolos!” I commanded. “Get into that damn loot room and show this monstrosity just how ugly he is!”

The mimic squelched through the tunnels, soon emerging in the loot room. It took just seconds for his transformation to begin.

The Collector, advancing on Wylie again with claws raised, stopped. He stared at the mimic, whose transparent body had already stretched to eight times its old height. Confusion crossed the Collector’s various faces, as the mimic grew arms, legs, tentacles, claws.

I gave a command.

Activate core control!

With a mental push, I felt my consciousness get ripped from my core self and into the mimic, where I found myself standing eight feet tall, commanding a body of tremendous weight, struggling to control various arms, legs, claws, and even a wing. Although I had practiced with core control, I had never used it on a body such as this.

We stood there then, Collector eyeing mimicked Collector, two freaks pacing around the arena, never letting up in our gazes. He looked ready to attack me, but I still hadn’t gotten used to controlling this new body.

“They told us you were a fable,” I said, trying to buy time. “A story to keep cores alert. To scare us into self-discipline.”

“Every fable has its roots,” said the Collector, his various legs tensed, almost ready to strike.

“You don’t have roots of your own, though, do you? You might be a fable, but your origins are stolen. I’d ask who you are, but the answer is obvious; you’re no-one. Just a monstrosity of stolen body parts. There is no you is there, Collector?”

His nostrils flared. “Butterfly collectors kill their specimens and keep them in jars. Perhaps I ought to change the way I collect things.”

I was beginning to get used to the body now. To its weight, to the multitude of different limbs. The Collector might have been too strong for my creatures, but how could he hope to overpower a copy of himself?

“Yes, I’ll keep you,” he said, prowling. “But the rest of these useless sacks of flesh…well, there might be a limb or two I can use. And the mimic will make a most valuable tool. But the rest…”

Without answering, I launched at him and swiped with one of his own claws. I caught him off guard, barreling into his chest just as I slashed him. Blood sprayed on my face, and I crashed on top of the Collector.

He raised a hoof of some sort and kicked me with such force that I smashed into the ceiling, breaking away some of the already-fragile rocks.

Tarius was right. This place really is a death trap.

I had barely got my balance when the Collector was on me again. I raised a troll-like arm to deflect his claws, but he responded with a furious uppercut from a limb I hadn’t even seen, the force enough to knock me onto my back.

I began to lose control again. I saw that I had been wrong. Dolos might have mimicked the Collector, but he couldn’t imitate years and years of experience in his body, and I couldn’t hope to wield it as a weapon and use it better than he.

When I was almost on my feet, he kicked me back to the ground. He stood over me now, pinning me with two feet.

I heard stirring around me. The sound of creatures shuffling to their feet, of the kobolds and beetles and other monsters preparing to defend me. But there was no way they could. This creature, whatever he was, was just too strong.

The fables were right. He was a nightmare visited upon coredom, a specter of…

And then I spotted it. The hole in the roof, the small gap that Tarius and Karson and Wylie had complained about again and again.

A hole I should have gotten fixed but hadn’t because I had always been putting other things first. Because I had put my own pursuit of the narkleer and freedom over the complaints of my workers.

But the hole…I could see the sky, just about. A sky dark as ink, with the sun having long-since set over the wasteland. I saw a sliver of pale light sitting in the middle of that sea of starry sky.

I