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

knew what I had to do now. The hole had to be widened, but the ceiling was too high up. Nobody could reach it, except perhaps…

In a flash, I used core control to hop from Dolos to Gary. Struggling for control as my ability began to wane, I stumbled over to the hole.

I lashed at it with Gary’s legs, chipping away stone after stone, rock after rock, showering the loot room in dirt.

Pale light shone through, stronger and stronger with every centimeter of stone that I removed. The hole was bigger now, big enough that we could finally see it.

A full moon sitting way above, illuminating everything around it.

“A beautiful night,” said the Collector, grinning.

But as he raised two clawed hands, ready to kill Dolos, something happened.

Moonlight shone into the loot room and covered Dolos entirely, the illumination spreading over his Collector imitation and then seeping deep into him, where it met with the werewolf essence dust that I had fed him.

My core control ended then, flinging me out of Gary’s body and back into my own, where I watched from the core room.

As the werewolf essence activated under the glow of the full moon, Dolos changed. His form was that of the Collector still, but the were part of him flared now, and every limb, every leg, every claw became stronger, larger, growing and stretching until he dwarfed the Collector himself.

The Collector edged away, finally realizing that his collecting days had ended. He looked behind him, where a steel door blocked his exit from the loot room. He could wrench it off, no doubt, but I could see in his eyes that he knew he wouldn’t have time.

“Don’t look for a retreat,” I told him. “We must all face our end sooner or later.”

At least I knew something now. It was one question answered.

When you fed werewolf essence dust to a mimic, it simply became a much stronger version of whatever form it had taken during a full moon. Quite obvious, when you think about it.

And as Dolos, transformed into a were-collector under the shining of the moon, advanced, the rest of us watched the Collector meet his end.

We delighted in his tears, we smiled through his pleading, and we enjoyed every moment until finally, the loot room was silent.

CHAPTER 34

The problem with dishing out copious amounts of alcohol before you give a speech is that people will be too sauced to listen. It’s quite obvious; don’t let people drink themselves into oblivion when you want them to listen to you.

That was the mistake Chief Reginal and First-Leaf Galatee had made today. With naming day preparations complete and the big day finally here, Galatee had approved the use of a spirit brewed in the caverns, nicknamed Cave Rot after the place it was made and what it did to your liver.

And so, with Cave Rot nourishing their insides, the clanspeople made merry under the fading sun. It came as a welcome break after spending all morning draping banners and tying colorful bunting all around the town and hanging it from lodge to lodge.

Now, the drunken clanspeople filled the wide stretch of dirt sandwiched between the two rows of wooden lodges, which had been named, imaginatively, as Main Street, since all towns need a Main Street. Unofficially, many clanspeople called it Jahn’s Row.

Every person of every clan was present under the setting sun, and I had even allowed my dungeon creatures to join the party. Jahn’s Row was alive with chatter, jokes, laughs, and shouts, together with the competing songs of various musical groups. Some clanspeople played string instruments and sang about future glory and harvests, while Gary, Brecht, and the beetles practiced their only, unique form of song which celebrated the sounds heroes make when they die.

There was a distinct lack of tension on the surface today. Nobody was working and nobody was only just finishing work to go to bed, already stressed by thinking about their shift the next day.

Today, the only thing on their minds was the celebration.

“Quiet!” shouted Reginal, standing atop a hastily-erected wooden platform and facing the crowd. He wore a set of robes that looked like rejects from a theatre troupe prop box, and he was clearly unhappy with them. “Quiet!”

The chief was getting red in the face, so Galatee subtly touched his hand. Most people were too drunk to notice, but I saw it.

“Told you,” said Gulliver, nudging me with his elbow and giving me a saucy wink.

A goblin hobbled onto the platform, passed something to Reginal, and then scampered away.

Chief Reginal raised a horn to his lips, and the subsequent eruption of noise blasted through the crowd, stunning them first into a murmur and then into silence.

“Friends, family, dear partners from the Wrotun clan,” he said. “We gather here today to give our town a name. For that is what it is now; not a collection of tents sitting in the dirt, but a town good and true. A town built by your hands and forged with your sweat.”

The crowd cheered, and Reginal waited for it to die down.

“I will first give thanks to cores Beno and Jahn. Jahn, as you know, was instrumental in building our first real homes here, thanks to his growing skills in construction.”

Cheers and whoops and hollers followed.

“And Core Beno recently dealt with an attack, tempting the invaders into his lair and destroying them before they could injure any more of our people.”

Slightly fewer cheers sounded out now, but it was still good to hear the clanspeople calling my name.

“And we must thank Beno and Jahn as one, for their diligence in the last few days has resulted in hope for our town. I am told that, together with our lovely Cynthia, who as well as being a tinker also studied artificery in