Blessed Time: A LitRPG Adventure

by Cale Plamann

  A hail of javelins flew out of the forest. One blurred straight through the still-active Wind Shield and struck Will in the throat. Micah flinched back as the allegedly impenetrable stone armor exploded into a shower of gravel. He blinked. That wasn’t possible.

  Will fell to the ground bonelessly, his rocky body cracking the beaten earth of the path. The spear, fashioned from the lacquered spine of some monster, quivered in Will’s still form. Micah stared blankly for a second before the road erupted into chaos as various adventurers returned fire. Sarah fired an arrow at a shape darting out of the forest as Micah mouthed the words to Augmented Healing and placed his hand on Will’s collarbone.

  Nothing.

  He was gone.

  A bellow from Drekt pulled Micah back into the world. The huge man swung a cleaver at something that had once been a hound before it was subjected to the Durgh’s twisted alchemy. The blade practically bisected the creature, but there were more behind it. Many more.

  Micah cast Root Spears, a second-tier Wood spell. His breath came out in short, panicked bursts as stakes of wood grew out of the ground, stabbing into some of the charging horrors and forcing the others to evade. A chorus of panicked screams erupted from the other adventurers, barely drowning out the sound of jaws tearing flesh and snapping bones as they tried and largely failed to defend themselves after the decimation of the javelin attack.

  Then the Durgh themselves strolled out of the forest. Each of them was half again as tall as the humans they fought, thick with heavily corded muscles. Their black skin was littered with tattoos, each glowing with a fell pale green light. Two of them walked toward their party, moving casually as adventurers fought and died in front of them.

  “Sarah, support me!” Drekt shouted as his cleaver finished off the last of the hounds in his vicinity. “Jo and Micah, deal with the other one!”

  Micah glanced at Jo. She gave him a quick smile that set his heart aflutter before throwing a stiletto at the advancing Durgh. It waved a hand indifferently, catching the tiny blade on the heavy metal of its thick-bladed gauntlets.

  She sighed theatrically at Micah and drew her shortswords, sprinting toward the giant. Micah launched a pair of Air Knives over her shoulder. The Durgh didn’t even try to block, just letting the spell trace shallow lines of blood across its muscled abdomen as it focused on Jo.

  Micah ground his teeth in frustration. The only spell he had that would even injure a Durgh was Sonic Bolt, a second-tier Air spell, but there was no way he’d be able to get it off without hitting Jo. He gripped his spear with both hands and cautiously approached the two.

  Jo moved with the grace of a dancer, slipping just under punches from the Durgh’s gauntleted fists, only to slash upward, drawing deep, bleeding wounds on the creature. It didn’t seem to care. Despite the blood flowing freely from its forearms, it acted like the cuts were merely superficial.

  Then it stomped the ground, activating a blessing that knocked both Micah and Jo from their feet as the ground bucked beneath them. Micah scrambled back to his feet just in time to watch in horror as the Durgh punched Jo. All of her evasiveness meant nothing in that moment of imbalance and she flew backward, grunting as the blow connected solidly.

  His vision went red.

  Without thinking, he unleashed a Sonic Bolt, draining almost all of his remaining mana. For the first time, the Durgh looked alarmed as the attack bypassed its leathery flesh and attacked soft tissue directly, shaving off a good chunk of its HP. It stumbled and fell to one knee, blood dribbling from its ears.

  Micah charged, thrusting his spear into its back just below the shoulder. It wasn’t the most logical plan, but after Will and Jo fell, he wasn’t thinking. The Durgh stood back up and took a faltering step toward him, its balance clearly off due to its ruptured eardrums. Micah stabbed it again, sinking the spear into its gut all the way to the crossbar.

  It backhanded him. There was a flash of pain, and then Micah was insensible. His right arm shattered as the blades from the gauntlet bit deep into his flesh. Almost in slow motion, Micah hit the ground and bounced.

  He blinked at the afternoon sky, his vision narrowed to a tunnel. Distantly, he knew that he should get up and do something, but he couldn’t really understand the urgency. He didn’t even know what it was he was supposed to do. Far above him, a bird flitted between clouds.

  A Durgh’s face, eyes wild with hatred as it gnashed its tusks, appeared above him. Micah knew he should fight or resist as it reached for him with its gauntleted, bloodstained hand, but he could barely lift his arms.

  The Durgh’s head jerked back as a stiletto sprouted from its cheek. It turned from Micah just in time for Jo to jump off of his spear, still lodged in its gut, and plant another pair of stilettos in its eyes.

  Micah blinked again. She looked like hell. Her robes were torn and stained with blood, and the entire left side of her face was bruised beyond belief, but at that moment, she was the most beautiful thing Micah had ever seen.

  Then the blinded Durgh grabbed her. Even through the haze of his head injury, Micah heard the pop of bones shattering as it squeezed and she went limp. It took hesitant a step toward Micah before dropping Jo’s body right next to him. It wobbled and fell to its knees, finally running out of hit points as the blood loss took its toll.

  Micah turned his head to look at Jo. She was still breathing shallowly, blood gurgling past her lips. Hazily, his anatomy skill identified a punctured lung. The only treatment was an immediate and invasive application of three castings of Augmented Mending. Even if he’d been at full mana, he didn’t have the strength to cut her chest open and cast the spell on her wrecked organs.

  “Hey, Micah?” She coughed as she spoke, blood staining her teeth.

  “Jo,” he replied. Everything was dark and distant.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’ll have the opportunity to give you a second chance.” The coughs transformed into a ragged jag as she began choking on her own blood, unable to clear the fluid from her throat and lungs no matter how much she hacked and heaved.

  A hand grabbed Micah by his collar. In a brief tumult of motion, he felt himself slung over a man’s shoulder. Looking down, he made out Trevor.

  “I’ve got Micah!” Trevor was screaming at someone, but it sounded like he was in a windstorm. The words were muffled and hard to make out. “Josephine’s gone. We need to move before the Durgh come back for us!”

  He winced as his brother’s shoulder jolted up into his injured torso. He was running. Drekt led the way with Sarah flanking them, stopping occasionally to fire an arrow backward. From far away, he heard the baying of hounds.

  Micah didn’t know how long they ran. Then Trevor jerked and pitched forward, spilling Micah to the forest floor. A huge dark fist grabbed Micah and slung him over Drekt’s shoulder. Trevor lay unmoving, a black-lacquered harpoon made from a monster spine quivering in his back.

  Then they were moving again. Mercifully, Micah blacked out, unconsciousness protecting him from the grief and pain.

  14

  Reset

  The walls were going to fall. Micah cast Root Spears, doing what he could to slow the Durgh host’s advance. He felt his XP ticking up as the swarm of warbeasts simply overran the area of his spell, ignoring the damage inflicted by the knee-high punji sticks the spell thrust from the ground in their frenzy to reach Basil’s Cove.

  This wave would be the small ones. Mutated wolves, pack animals, and men, twisted by the dark alchemy and rituals that made the Durgh pariahs in civilized lands. The next wave would be the real monsters, the gargantuan beasts that roamed the tunnels of the Durgh’s underground kingdoms, ritualistically melded into engines of destruction.

  Next to him, Sarah fired arrow after arrow, barely bothering to aim as the density of the attackers guaranteed her hits. It hardly mattered. Her eyes were dead, and Micah didn’t blame her.

  Drekt stood by grimly, his cleaver planted in the battlements while he did his best to ignore the h
ostile stares from the other defenders. The rest of the soldiers manning the wall didn’t trust him, suspecting that he was at least partially Durgh. They weren’t wrong—after months of goading, Micah had gotten the huge man drunk enough to admit that his grandfather was a full-blooded Durgh.

  Whatever his birth, he was manning the wall next to them, ready to bleed and inevitably die at the hands of his estranged relatives. It was more than most of the nobles could say. They’d fled Basil’s Cove almost a week ago, just after Westmarch fell to the Durgh incursion. Ostensibly, they were retreating further into the Kingdom to try and raise support for a counteroffensive, but everyone from the guilds knew the score.

  Even if help was coming, it wouldn’t come in time. Westmarch had been slaughtered, with only a handful of sorry, broken refugees managing to trickle back to the alleged safety of Basil’s Cove shortly after their expedition returned.

  It had been an absolute massacre. Only a few adventurers had survived the frenzied retreat. Of the initial survivors, many were hunted down by hounds and harpoon-wielding Durgh as they ran for almost an entire day and night through the forest.

  Micah ran a hand through his greasy and unkempt hair as he glanced to the side, at the spots on the wall where Jo and Will should have stood. The entire operation had been a trap. The Durgh knew that humanity wouldn’t let Westmarch fall unavenged, and they’d lured the guilds away from the city’s walls and defenses to decimate the defenders.

  Even now, as he hurled spells at the attackers, Trevor, Jo, and Will flashed before his eyes. Trevor and Will both still had the Durgh spears sticking out of them, but Jo stood slightly distant, blood trickling down her chin as her body was racked with a wet, repetitive cough. None of them said anything. They just watched his futile struggle on the walls of Basil’s Cove, as if waiting for him to fall and join them.

  Micah chuckled. It wasn’t like he’d have to wait too much longer for that. He turned his gaze from the oncoming horde, barely slowed by the defenders’ magic and ballistae. Glancing down, he winced at the crude arm carved from living wood that grew from the mangled stump of his right shoulder. He could move the prosthetic, but without any of the agility or grace he was accustomed to. Despite constant healing spells, deep down, Micah knew he would never be able to use a spear again.

  A thud drew his attention to the main gate. A warbeast, grown from one of the great subterranean worms, twenty feet tall and covered in spikes and scales, slammed its clublike tail into the thick wood once again. Spells sparkled around it as the defenders struggled to even hurt the massive creature, but the Blessed capable of fighting something of that power had already fled Basil’s Cove. It wouldn’t be long now.

  He closed his eyes to hide their burning dampness. Soon he’d be able to join Jo and Trevor. Below him, the small warbeasts reached the wall. Halfheartedly, he threw an Air Blade at a twisted cat monster as it dug its claws directly into the fortification and began pulling itself up toward him.

  With a hiss of exertion, Drekt and a soldier upended a cauldron full of pitch on a cluster of warbeasts, scalding and killing them. A halfhearted cheer sounded from their section of the wall, only to be immediately extinguished when another swarm of warbeasts immediately took their place, scrabbling over the bubbling corpses of their comrades.

  The front gate thudded again, a dull booming sound that almost drowned out the clatter of claws on the wall in front of them. The assaulting worm was aflame; a high-level pyromancer running her mana dry to sustain a barrage of spells that blanketed the creature. It simply ignored the fire as it pummeled the gate. Micah didn’t know whether the fire wasn’t damaging the monster or if the Durgh had just made it immune to pain.

  It hardly mattered. Even if the fire was harming it, the gate would fall before the flames brought the monster low.

  Micah created a squall of wind, exhausting a good 20% of his mana reserves to throw the warbeasts off his section of the wall. They landed on their backs, misshapen messes of limbs that squirmed to their feet. He’d bought the archers a little more time to thin the swarm, but even as feathers sprouted from the monsters’ soft undersides, he knew it wouldn’t be enough.

  He could already see the Durgh warriors silently walking out of the nearby forest in formation, standing just behind the final wave of advanced warbeasts. Their front row carried heavy tower shields to protect them from arrows, but it was hardly needed. The defenders didn’t have the time and energy to spare on the real threat.

  With a signal from a Durgh clad in shiny silver armor, the final wave of warbeasts rumbled forth from the forest toward the wall, the Durgh themselves following shortly thereafter. Already Micah spotted at least three of the mutated worms.

  Maybe if the strongest among them had remained, there would be some purpose to this fight, but the Golden Drakes had fled along with the nobility and the elite of the militia to “seek help.” It was a cowardly retreat, made all the more damning by the Council’s final edict commanding that the remainder of the guilds and the militia hold the city to the last. They hadn’t even let the civilians evacuate with them.

  Micah, his friends, and his family were nothing more than a sacrifice. They were only meant to delay the Durgh long enough for those who truly mattered to make it to safety.

  Hells, the Durgh probably wouldn’t even occupy the city. As strong as they were, they knew better than to challenge the Royal Knights. No, in all likelihood, this raid was for nothing more than slaves and plunder.

  True, the bards would likely sing songs of “the butchers of Westmarch” and “the heroes of Basil’s Cove,” fighting nobly to the last man, but it would be propaganda. Nothing but a recruiting tool tailored to lure more starry-eyed young Blessed into serving the very nobles that abandoned Micah. He snorted; the nobles would probably even commission the song.

  Tears stung Micah’s eyes as he watched the Durgh fall into formation with deadly precision. Despite his childhood dreams of being a hero, he just hadn’t been strong enough. He’d tried and he’d bled, but Jo and Trevor were gone. Worse, from what he’d heard about the Durgh, his parents and Esther would be lucky to die in the sack of the city.

  The fate of Durgh slaves wasn’t pretty. Some toiled hard to produce food for the host, some became food for the host, and perhaps the most unlucky were twisted by foul rituals into the very warbeasts that clawed at the walls below him. He’d warned his father and given him a knife. Micah could only hope that he’d have the courage to use it.

  Micah stood on the wall, the weight of his regrets rooting him in place as he watched his world come crashing down around him. If only he’d worked a little harder. If only they’d found out about the Durgh incursion early enough to call the Royal Knights to Basil’s Cove. If only his damn gift had been enough.

  No. Micah gritted his teeth. His gift was enough. He’d just been too scared to use it. He’d let childish fears about losing the levels and attunement he’d gained stop him from traveling back and learning the skills he needed to hold his own. If he’d treated being an adventurer seriously from the beginning, rather than as some sort of silly game, none of this would be happening.

  It was funny. He’d fought for a little over a year and a half to become a level 11 wizard, and now that he was here, his path was clear. He’d throw it all away in a second for Trevor and Jo to come back. Mursa must have known what was coming, and she’d given him a second chance, both to improve himself and fix the mistakes and laziness that had brought him here.

  He laughed to himself, tears streaming down his face. Beside him, Sarah glanced at him and simply clicked her tongue before she resumed firing arrows into the enemy. Drekt paused as he hefted another cauldron full of pitch, giving him a look drenched in pity.

  Saying a quick prayer of thanks to his rarely acknowledged goddess, Micah stepped away from the battlement and took a quick breath.

  “Blessed Return.” When he spoke the words to activate his gift, they took on a voice other than his. They were poetry. Melod
ic, a song almost. Then mana began to swirl around him, building toward a crescendo. Across the field from Basil’s Cove, the Durgh howled, obviously sensing the huge vortex of mana condensing around Micah, but unable to reach him in time to interrupt the spell.

  The mana swelled and reality fractured. It was as simple as that—for a fraction of a second, everything froze, and then it shattered into a million glittering shards, revealing the exact same scene as before.

  Micah felt himself being pulled backward, step by step retracing his actions in reverse. At first, the pace was faltering but inexorable, but the speed of his observations increased with each second until everything was a blur, a riot of color and mana. Then he slammed into something soft, his back bouncing off of his childhood bed with the force of a catapult.

  He jolted out of bed, his body small and frail. Looking down, he noticed that his arms were pale, unmarked by the scars and muscles he’d earned as a Lancer. Outside his bedroom, he heard Esther’s childish voice as she called for their mother to fetch a toy for her. Micah began laughing, a shrill, tinny sound from his young throat. It worked. He was thirteen once again.

  15

  Once Again

  Micah swung his feet out of the bed, marveling at the way they barely touched the ground. He’d been scrawny at thirteen, going through a late growth spurt just before his fifteenth birthday to fill out his gangly frame.

  He stood up, hissing slightly as his bare feet touched the cold wood of the floor. He’d forgotten how icy his room got in the fall before the wood stove in the kitchen properly heated up the entire building. Micah wobbled slightly as he tried to take the first step with his awkward new body. The limbs were too long, all elbows and knees, throwing off his precarious balance.