Rogue Online: The Devil's Gate: A LitRPG adventure

by E K Baxter

  Max checked the map. They were close. Now seemed like an opportune moment to check his stats.

  Name: Maxwell Jones

  Level: 23

  Strength: 4

  Stamina: 1

  Agility: 2

  Wisdom: 17

  Charisma: 6

  Ingenuity: 6

  Mana: 450

  Magic class: Novice

  Certainly not the best stats in the world but far better than what he’d started with. He only hoped they would be enough. Next he opened his inventory and examined it.

  Item: Woodsman’s knife +2 attack. What better way to skin a rabbit?

  Item: Hunting bow +4 range attack. You’ll never go hungry if you can catch your own food!

  Item: Flint and tinder. A woodsman’s second best friend!

  Item: Woodsman’s ax + 5 melee attack. A woodsman’s ax is his best friend!

  Item: Guardsman’s spear +6 attack. Sturdy but reliable is the name of the game!

  Item: Embossed sword +15 attack. +20% damage to possessed enemies and the undead. Don’t you just love pointy-stabby things?

  Item: Ranger Longbow. + 20 to ranged attacks. Ability: will shoot imbued arrows.

  Item: Boiled leather jerkin. +10 armor. The height of peasant fashion. You’ll knock em dead, kiddo!

  Item: Light leather boots. +20 armor. These boots were made for stompin!

  Item: Gemstone of Infinity. Alignment: neutral. Ability: This jewel will allow the caster to temporarily increase the attribute of their choice by two levels.

  Item: Stone of seeing. This stone will reveal the properties of magical artifacts.

  Item: Elemental Gauntlet: Alignment: Dark. Ability: Control of the four elements: Fire, Air, Earth and Water. This gauntlet will give any Dark mage the ability to control the very environment around them. The earth itself will do your bidding.

  Stealth. Effect: This will render you invisible to all. Cost: 100 mana Cooldown: 10 seconds Secondary ability: Find. Whilst Stealth is cast, this will enable you to find what is hidden and see the true nature of reality. Cost: +10 mana

  Winter’s Breath. Effect: This will freeze your enemies in place. Cost: 150 mana. Cooldown: 20 seconds

  Acid Rain. Effect: This will rain down acid on your enemies, burning them to a crisp! Cost: 200 mana Cooldown: 30 seconds

  Again, not bad but he couldn’t help wishing he had more spells at his disposal and had managed to achieve a higher magical ability. There was nothing for it. He’d have to make do with what he had. He closed his inventory. “There’s a set of steps over there,” he pointed to a door at the back of the room. “The excavation site should be at the bottom.”

  Sam whistled under his breath. “And I wonder what we’ll find there?”

  “Nothing good, that’s for sure,” Terra muttered.

  “Take some potions if you need to. This might be the last chance we get.”

  He followed his own advice and checked his HP and mana. They were nearly at full strength so he didn’t take a potion. Best to save them for when he was really in need.

  He looked around at his companions. “Ready?”

  They nodded. “Ready.”

  They left the storeroom by the door at the back and, just as Max had predicted, soon found a set of stone steps leading down into darkness. Max held the torch up high but its light didn’t reach beyond a few feet around them.

  “I’ll go first,” Sam said, taking the torch from Max. “If we’re attacked I can hold them off better than you. You two hang back and cover me. Right?”

  Max nodded. “Right.”

  In single file they began carefully making their way down the steps. Rough, unworked stone formed the walls on either side and the steps were steep, steep enough that he wondered how long it would take for them to come rolling to a stop if anyone tripped. As they slowly descended, Max had the odd impression that he was walking down the throat of some great, evil beast that would swallow him whole.

  Up ahead Sam suddenly halted. Terra and Max, caught off guard, almost stumbled into the back of him.

  “What is it?” Terra whispered but Sam held up his hand for silence.

  They all froze, listening. Then Max heard it. From somewhere up ahead came a low droning sound like the murmur of many voices. A shiver went down Max’s spine.

  “What is that?” Terra asked, her eyes round with fear.

  “Only one way to find out.”

  They carried on walking, more carefully now, all with weapons drawn and eyes and ears peeled for the slightest movement. A light grew ahead. It flickered as though cast by many torches until finally they reached the bottom and found themselves stepping out onto a galleried landing high up on the wall of a vast cavern that was lit up like a Christmas tree.

  Sam doused the torch and the three of them crept to the edge of the gallery and peered cautiously over the balustrade. It took Max a moment to make sense of what he was seeing. Below them lay a cavern that was almost perfectly circular, with smooth floor and walls that gleamed as if they’d been polished. They were made of a black stone that Max guessed must be onyx. Torches ringed the cavern, so many that it was lit up as bright as day.

  In the middle sat a raised dais ringed by four tall pillars. Five sets of runes marched up each of these pillars from bottom to top—all sharp lines and jagged angles that for some reason made Max’s skin crawl.

  Beyond the pillars stood a huge monolith constructed of two upright stones supporting a larger horizontal one—like a gate. These too were carved with strange runes. Even as Max watched, they began to smoke and seethe. The space beneath the lintel slowly filled with a swirling vortex of darkness, like a silent tornado. Max struggled to pull his eyes away. A worm of fear slithered down his spine. This was it. They’d found what they were looking for.

  The Devil’s Gate.

  Figures covered the floor in front of the Devil’s Gate. They wore red robes and most were kneeling on the floor by the dais, chanting. This was the noise Max and the others had heard from the stairwell. It seemed to caress his skin like icy fingers and one look at Terra and Sam’s horrified faces told him they felt exactly the same.

  There was movement and Max noticed two figures standing on the dais facing the acolytes. One was tall, and Max recognized the white hair and beard of Lord Mespar. The other stood to the side with the hood of a robe hiding its face. Lord Mespar stepped forward, towards a low platform that stood in the middle of the dais and looked down at a figure that was strapped to the platform like an offering.

  Max squinted, trying to make out the figure and suddenly gasped, fear and shock sending his pulse racing.

  “My god,” he whispered. “It can’t be.”

  “What is it?” Terra asked.

  Max would recognise that long dark hair, that alabaster skin anywhere. He’d watched her often enough when she was playing in tournaments.

  It was Nightshade.

  Chapter 14

  Max grasped the railing to keep from falling. He suddenly felt dizzy. What the hell was going on here? First Kalrick and now Nightshade? He stared at her, unable to believe his eyes, but she seemed all too real as she lay unmoving on the dais.

  “Our time has arrived!” Lord Mespar shouted suddenly, breaking Max’s reverie. “Long has been our journey and hard has been our toil, but finally our goal is almost within our grasp!”

  The kneeling acolytes stopped their chanting and rose to their feet. A ripple passed through them as they pushed back their hoods, revealing men and women with the copper rings in their hair and beards that marked them as Lord Mespar’s mercenaries. But there was something different about these. Something it took a moment for Max to put his finger on. Then he had it.

  “They’re all blind,” he whispered. “Look at their eyes.”

  Each of them had been maimed. Where their eyes had been were only puckered holes crusted over with scabs. They wove slightly as they stood facing Lord Mespar as though listening to music only they could hear.
<
br />   “We have found the Devil’s Gate, the Vessel is ready, and soon our master, Agiel, will take his place as ruler of Theloria! Our reward is at hand! Immortality!” shouted Lord Mespar.

  On the dais Nightshade suddenly thrashed against her bonds.

  “No!” she cried in a fear-stricken voice. “Please let me go!”

  The sound of such terror from her shook Max to the core. Gone was the self-assured, supremely confident mage that she’d always played in the tournaments. Now she sounded very human and very, very scared. Max remembered how terrified she’d looked when he’d been about to kill her in the tournament, way more terrified than losing in a game ought to make someone. It had struck Max as a little odd at the time and he’d meant to ask her about it after they all left the game. Except that Nightshade’s VR pod had never opened...

  “Shut her up,” Lord Mespar grated.

  The second figure, the one who’d been standing off to one side, strode forward and backhanded Nightshade across the face. The back of her head smacked into the hard stone of the platform and she went still, groaning.

  The man straightened and his hood fell back, revealing the face. Somehow Max had known it would be Kalrick.

  “Bitch!” he hissed. “You should be grateful. You failed us. We could have killed you but instead we brought you here to be the vessel of our Master. If you whine or snivel again, I’ll cut your throat. After all, our Master doesn’t need you alive to be his host.”

  The word ‘host’ echoed in Max’s mind like a gunshot. He glanced at the gate, at the darkness that roiled within it. He looked at the red-robed acolytes swaying to an unknown rhythm. He peered at Lord Mespar standing in front of the gate with an exultant look on his face.

  “Oh my god,” he breathed as cold realization hit him. “We have to get her out of there. Come on.”

  They hurried over to another set of steps that curled their way down to the cavern floor. Max readied his spells as they went. If he cast Stealth he might be able to sneak up and free Nightshade before anyone knew he was there.

  But they weren’t even halfway down the steps when an almighty blast shook the cavern, throwing them all flat. Max staggered onto to his knees, crawled over to the edge of the steps, and looked out. The four pillars that ringed the dais had blazed into life. The first set of runes carved into them, the set closest to the base, had begun to burn with an eldritch light, mirroring those on the Devil’s Gate itself. Power ebbed from those runes and ran up the pillar to the top in dark pulses of energy linking to the next pillar so that swirling tendrils of energy formed between them and the Gate, creating a searing net of shadow energy.

  “The seals have been activated!” Mespar cried. “Join me, my brothers and sisters! Join me in calling our master through!”

  The acolytes began to chant again, the noise so low it was almost beyond hearing, rumbling through the ground and into Max’s bones. In response the lines of power began to pulse, almost like a beating heart, and as they did so the swirling vortex of darkness inside the Gate began to coalesce, take shape. A figure appeared inside.

  Max’s eyes widened, his heart thumping in his chest. He had no idea what was being summoned through that gate but the waves of evil coming from it were enough to knock him flat.

  He glanced at his companions. Their eyes were round with terror, their skin pale.

  “We have to get down there,” Max grated, forcing the words out against the fear that was threatening to choke him. “That’s what we came for, right? We have to stop that thing coming through or Myrlind is lost. Hell, for all I know the whole of the Rogue Lands might be lost.”

  Sam and Terra nodded.

  “Right,” Max said. “Those pillars are what gives power to the Gate. We have to break them. They’re magical judging by those runes so I’ll try to use my own spells against them but Mespar, Kalrick and those acolytes aren’t going to let me just waltz in there and destroy them. I need you both to keep them off me for as long as possible. Okay?”

  “Don’t we always?” Terra said, yanking her garrote tight between her hands. “Don’t worry. We’ll give you all the time you need.”

  Sam nodded. “You do what you need to, my friend. We’ll do our part.”

  Max nodded in return. “I know you will. Ready? Let’s go.”

  Together they hurried down the steps. Just before they reached the bottom Max cast Stealth on himself then, as they stepped out into the cavern, he dashed right, the opposite direction to Sam and Terra and pelted towards the nearest pillar, trying to move as silently as possible. Stealth might make him invisible but it didn’t cut out sound.

  Max and Terra reached the back row of acolytes before they realized they were there. Working in tandem they cut into the red robes, Sam covering them with his shield whilst also laying about them with his newly acquired mace, Terra cutting and slicing with her swords and throwing her knives.

  Max glanced up at the Devil’s Gate. Much to his dismay, he saw that the figure in it was bigger, as though it was being pulled closer and closer to this world. Now that it was clearer Max got a better look. The silhouette was vaguely humanoid in shape but for the outline of wide wings arching from its back. And even from this distance Max could see its eyes. They burned with orange flame, full of hatred and malice.

  Suddenly the figure raised a hand and tendrils of black power snapped out from the Gate and crashed into Nightshade, attaching to her body like thick, ugly tentacles. Nightshade’s back arched and she screamed in pain and terror. The seals pulsed and a wave of energy shot from them into the black tentacles, making them stronger.

  I have to break those pillars, Max thought. I have to stop that thing coming through.

  Even as he watched, the pulses of dark energy running up the pillars grew stronger. The second set of runes flared to life in a burst of black flames.

  There were three more sets of runes on each pillar that were yet to activate. When they did, when they were all lit, Max knew the Devil’s Gate would be at full strength.

  When that happened Max doubted he’d be able to stop that thing coming through.

  He scrambled over to the first pillar. It was thicker around than he was and looked to be made of solid granite. A faint buzzing reached his ears from where the power lines emanated from it. He quickly did a circuit of the pillar, searching for any sign of weakness or any clue as to how to break it but found nothing.

  He remembered how he’d defeated the statues in the Avenue of Kings and an idea came to him. Equipping his ax, he dropped Stealth so as not to lose too much mana then he cast Winter’s Breath over the pillar. A white cloud erupted from its base. Hoar frost grew all over the pillar like sparkling silver frost.

  The ice didn’t affect the power pulsing through the stone but Max hadn’t expected it to. It wasn’t the pillar’s magic that he was targeting, but the structure of the stone itself. Ice had the power to crack stone and it was this that Max was relying on.

  Already his mana was dangerously low. He didn’t have much time. He swung his ax at the base of the pillar with all his might. The metal struck the stone with an almighty clang and a shockwave rippled all the way up Max’s arm. Chips of stone went flying and Max smiled grimly. He’d guessed right. Winter’s Breath was weakening the stone, allowing his ax to do some damage.

  The problem was, of course, that now he’d dropped Stealth everyone could see him. Lord Mespar pointed at him and howled in fury.

  “Stop!”

  Max took another swing, sending more stone chips flying.

  “Kill him!” Lord Mespar screeched.

  Kalrick grunted in annoyance, pulled out his sword, and came striding towards Max. His face was twisted with fury and hatred.

  “I’ve had just about enough of you, you little runt. It’s about time I spilled your entrails all over the floor.”

  But suddenly Sam and Terra were there, blocking Kalrick’s path. Both had injuries. Sam was bleeding from a cut to his thigh and a huge lump was forming on Terra
’s temple, the skin black and blue. This didn’t stop them throwing themselves at Kalrick with desperate fury. Kalrick’s advance was halted as Max’s friends pinned him down, forcing him to defend himself against their barrage of blows.

  “Max! Get that pillar down!” Terra cried.

  Max swung at the pillar again. A webbing of cracks snaked out from the impact site, racing right to the top. One more blow and it would collapse.

  He swung with all his strength, stone chips exploding out and spraying dust. The cracks widened and the pillar gave off an ominous groaning sound but it still held.

  Max growled in frustration. From the corner of his eye he saw acolytes [Fanatic: Level 20] running for him, he saw Terra and Sam desperately battling Kalrick, and he saw Lord Mespar raising his arms for an attack of his own.

  Max didn’t have much time. In desperation he cast Acid Rain. A rain cloud formed above the pillar, large liquid-metal droplets falling onto the stone which hissed and began to dissolve.

  Max’s mana was now zero and he’d have to wait for it to replenish before he could cast any more spells. After a moment both Acid Rain and Winter’s Breath stuttered out but the spells had done their job. The pillar now had cracks all the way through it and a widening hole where the acid rain was eating through—damage it couldn’t withstand. With a groan of tortured stone, the pillar collapsed, toppling to the ground with an impact that shook the cavern and sent dust and debris careening along the ground.

  A howl of fury went up from Lord Mespar. Max glanced up, daring to hope that this had disrupted the power flow to the Devil’s Gate but he was disappointed. Although the pulsing along the lines of power from the remaining pillars seemed slower, it hadn’t stopped. Nightshade was still writhing as those black tendrils attached to her body.

  All four seals, Max thought. We have to break all four seals.

  Unfortunately, he had no idea how to do that. It had taken all of his mana just to break one.

  A tide of acolytes was running across the chamber towards him. Max fled, throwing himself behind the next pillar and using it as cover whilst he equipped his bow. He nocked an arrow and sent it hurtling at the nearest acolyte. It knocked him back into the others, sending them all crashing to the ground. Max took advantage of their momentary confusion to let fly with more arrows, each of them finding their target in eye or throat.