Dungeon Inc

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

It's been five years since the Aetheric Boom, when magic ripped out of the Earth and flooded the planet, changing the world forever.

It's been five years of business as usual for Alex. The only difference is now the entitled customers have magic powers, and they sell swords at the big box store he works at. When a day on the job goes wrong, Alex is left unemployed and with a hole burnt through his shirt. The only reason he isn't a charred corpse is the strange crystal he wears around his neck.

It's been five years of dreamless slumber for Zack. When he wakes up, he discovers he's not human anymore. Instead, he's a small crystal worn around his friend's neck. He has become a dungeon core, able to filter magical energy, conjure monsters, and create marvels that put most mages to shame. The only problem is he's not exactly the most mobile thing in the world.

Zack needs help establishing his dungeon, and Alex needs income. They both have something the other needs, and there's only one reasonable thing to do:Time to start a business.

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Dungeon Increimagines the Dungeon Core genre in a world where magic is still very new, and capitalism has a death grip on who gets to learn it. Join budding dungeon core Zack as he learns more about himself, and this new world he has awoken in!

UpdatesMonday,Wednesday, and Friday(Hiatus is still ongoing, however I plan to get back to writing this one as soon as I finish my current project. The cobwebs are officially dusted off). Chapters will release on Patreon as soon as they're written.

Information

Status: Hiatus
Year: 2023
Author: DMGilmore

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.4/ 5.0
Followers: 1,100
Views: 344,996

Chapters(78 total)

Reviews

No reviews yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!

Community Reviews(10)

BunkerbenRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Quick to get off the ground, the story pulls you in to the possibilities of sudden magic introduction in the not too distant future with out the complete upheaval of an apocalypse or system integration. I look forward to see where this story goes and will be following raptly! (That was all I really wanted to say but there is a 50 word minimum for reviews. 😅)
Idle_SingularityRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
This story is amazing, I've seen my fair share of Dungeon Core stories that try to do things differently. But this is really cool. And as much as the thought of it annoys me, the concept of Capitalism controlling access to Magic and the right to be adventurers is a really cool thing I wish I had thought of.
The only thing I can suggest is to write faster, because I'm starved for decently lengthed content that fits my interests, So this has made my day a little bit better just by knowing its only getting started and will continue.
Your story is amazing, keep up the good work!
NyamonesRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
The story puts an I teresting twist on the concept of the Dungeon Core by having a reasonable person in charge that doesn't suddenly abandon all human character traits and instead acts like a reasonable non-violent citizen of a modern nation is expected to (the kind of behaviour cemented in the form of laws).
This and the view on the magical apocalypse not from the perspective of unparalleled geniuses/people with more luck than sense, who do not automatically consider themselves the main characters of everyone's lives, provides an engaging story that has me smile whenever I see a new update.
PotassiumRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
This story starts at a point we rarely see, five years after the system and magic arrived, this is a more unique setting, something I would like to see more, as we have left behind the chaotic start, things have begun to settle down, but the potential of change is still there. The dungeon part of the story i is still beginning but appears to be promising. Few to none grammatical mistakes or misspellings.
meloncatRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
This story is just getting started, but I enjoyed the funny setup in a magical but still mundane and dreary world. Monsters and magic might be real as of 5 years ago, but there are still rude customers and dodgy institutions taking advantage of the little people. This story follows two friends who have had bad twists of fate as they work to understand the mysterious powers one of them gained after being turned into a magical core. The writing is snappy and funny, with lots of references and good banter between the friends. I'm looking forward to seeing how this story progresses, and I am enjoying the mixture of magical and modern living. A good read!
TelRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
A truely fun first book
Had a blast theory crafting and yelling at the screen in equal portions as I read book one.
There are rough edges where the narration could have been better, But overall it is a fun take on the dungeon genera.
looking forward to book two.
Ike5421Royal Road
★★★★ 3.5
This story starts out as a light hearted story of people taking advantage of the unique powers of a dungeon core. But is a really hard hitting story with lots of heavy emotional moments. It's well written, but since the author doesn't show you the tone of the story from the beginning I thought I would let you know.
MTalonRoyal Road
★★★ 3.0
This definitely has some fun ideas. The system apocalypse happened and for most people life didn’t change all that much. We’ve got dual protagonists so we will be able to see both the hero side and the dungeon side. The magic rules seemed worked out.
this just isn’t the story to make dungeon core work for me. The writing is pretty smooth. 3-5 errors per chapter. Some annoying head hopping. I felt both protagonists are bland and it’s hard to remember Zach is a disembodied dungeon core. Definitely “ok but nothing special”.
monkeymanwasd123Royal Road
★★★ 2.5
I liked the dungeon development part but once there were more than two people the personalities, politics, disgust for customers, conversations and such was driving me insane. If I could skip more of it to just see what the MC was doing I'd be fine with it but everything just started blurring together. If I had to deal with coworkers and customers like that I would likely quit my job and get a county job to pick trash off the side of the road or cleaning up after horse cow or sheep.
Even when the mc was just talking to his best friend they struggled to communicate and it felt like they were about to get into a fight ever few sentences.
The system was janky and wasn't in a typical blue box so it was hard to skip around to find normal litRPG notifications.
The dungeon development was a bit like a dungeon development videogame rather than a litRPG one. The mc immediately got used to their abilities some of which were relatively op same with the side characters.
The characters all seemed really neurotic and blatantly liberal. One of them was a furry/furry artist and the author made it so that a lot of characters were turned into non human "races".
Hugs wantedRoyal Road
★ 1.0
The main villains act far too campy and mustache twilrlingly evil.
It wants to make capitalism a major villain of the story but writes it as if it was an Anthropomorphic pig in a golden suit with infinite influence and cash making other people lives worse while snorting at their suffering as opposed to indifferent market forces and ultimately detached and apathetic individuals all working for their own gain resulting in societies loss.
It's explanation for how leveling up has been restricted to those with wealth is shoddy and one of the cheapest variations of the concept I've seen.
The progression curve for the protagonist and co seems to be utterly fucked as it seems to flip flop on how extensively our protagonists can cheat to make upgrade trees that almost feel arbitrary.
Spoiler about this exact point
Final boss of book 1 is defeated via literally overloading them with upgrades at the last minute.
The dungeon management is of the "Doesn't require much thought or effort" variety in which the protagonist can simply spawn monsters at will so there isn't anything interesting there.
Grammar is fine nothing to say there.
Character writing is a let down ultimately as I can just see the potential there and sometimes it does have really good moments between characters but the villains ultimately drag down the characters score for me especially having seen the end of book one "League of evil capitalists go to be evil and intimidating for the audience POV shit they have no method of knowing about in order to tease book two".
Ultimately I'd say the book is pretty mediocre, as a dungeon core fic it's not interesting and capitalism is boiled down to evil black suits in this story.