Titan: A LitRPG Adventure (UnderVerse Book 4)

by Jez Cajiao

  Inside, I found dozens of magelights, long dead, but obviously the group had been ripping them free of the walls as they went, and I frowned at the collection.

  “Where do these come from, normally?” I asked out of curiosity, and Yen glanced around the dilapidated walls.

  “Mostly from ruins. They’re not complicated for a crafter to make, apparently, but they are obviously magic, and there aren’t many magical crafters, so it pushes the price up.” She gestured down the partially collapsed hallway nearby. “I’d guess these areas of the city were hard to access before, so they’d been relatively untouched… by people anyway.”

  “They’re not exactly hard creatures, though…” I said, frowning at the reptilian corpses.

  “Hah, just you wait,” Yen said, shaking her head. “Fiends are like goblins; they just breed and breed and breed, then swarm over anything they find, so either this is a new nest…” She trailed off, and Grizz spoke up, finishing her sentence.

  “Or there’s something nearby that was keeping them contained.” He drew his sword and pointed out into the darkness. “And I think we’re about to meet it.”

  “Form up, everyone!” Lydia barked, and we flowed into our accustomed battle formation, the Legionnaires finding their natural places easily, with Grizz on the front line next to Lydia and me, Jian protecting the archers and Arrin, and Yen and Tang on either flank, able to see better than the rest of us with their elven heritage.

  The room we were in now was considerably larger than any we’d been in yet, with sections of sagging ceiling hanging low over us.

  We moved out from the small corner we’d been fighting in and took stock of the larger area. Keeping the newly-made entrance behind us, and the wall to our right where the majority of the Naga had slithered up from, we were left with a huge space that vanished upwards, interspersed with sections of the old floor above that jutted out, creaking and groaning ominously. Even my recovered DarkVision and Fireball weren’t enough to dispel the darkness to show the entire room.

  “Something’s out there,” Yen called softly from my left, drawing her bowstring back and sighting down the arrow as Tang called out from the right.

  “Here, too,” he said calmly, and I heard Arrin start to cast, building a spell ready.

  I held the Fireball in my right hand still, so I called out to the group to be ready as I threw it forward, angled up, just in case whatever was out there wasn’t hostile. A few seconds later, it slammed into the far wall, bursting and cascading flames out from the point of impact as the barrier shook slightly.

  Below the flames, exposed for us all to see, were dozens of crawling, stumbling, and blindly staggering undead. The corpses ranged from rotting and skeletal to almost fresh as they shambled forward with mindless hunger, hunting the living.

  The flames guttered out, and the room was plunged back into darkness, lit only by the distantly flickering flames of something that smoldered away fitfully.

  “Well, that’s not good,” Arrin’s voice remarked bluntly before Grizz called out. The usual joking and cheerful tones I was used to hearing from him, as one of the youngest members ever to grace the Dravith Praetoria, were lacking as he spoke up, determined and ready for the fight.

  “We need light, sir, and somewhere to fall back to. It’s unlikely for us to have been so unlucky as to just stumble into the main concentration. This appears to be a full infestation of the dead, and we’re just seeing an outlier.”

  “Arrin!” I snapped. “Here, start charging these up!” I called as I tossed the bag of magelights at him. He released his spell, sending five Magic Missiles flaring out into the darkness. Two hit their targets, one blowing off an arm and the other slamming into a ribcage and detonating, smashing a staggering skeleton apart in a shower of bones. The remaining three flew straight and true, impacting walls in the distance. One hit a doorway, exposing a hallway that was filled with the shambling figures, and Yen swore, putting her bow away and starting to build a spell.

  “We need to bleed them, Jax,” Grizz said seriously, his voice professional. “We’ve encountered this kind of thing before, and we either retreat and get more forces to deal with it, or we bleed them of as many as we can, and continually fall back. The real risk from shamblers isn’t the individual, it’s the fact that there’s hundreds or thousands to each of us. They can afford to make a hundred mistakes, and all they lose is time, until the Necromancer resummons them. We make a mistake, we lose someone.” His expression was uncharacteristically grim.

  “Okay, people, aim for the head, kill as many as you can, then we fall back and climb back up to the floor above.”

  “They’re getting closer…” Tang warned, drawing his bow back and firing a single shot out into the darkness.

  “Then let’s go play!” I snarled to the group, leading the way forward, Lydia and Grizz going with me as the others used ranged weapons to start cutting the undead down.

  I rushed at the oncoming horde, my DarkVision bringing them into sight as I ran. They were slow, weak looking things, most didn’t even have weapons, but here and there, I could see the glimmer of metal, and identified swords, shields, and spears, as well as a surprising number of other weapons being carried, dragged, or brandished.

  The first few shamblers I reached were barely intact, almost entirely skeletal and clearly held together by the magic that reanimated them. They clacked their teeth as they ‘saw’ me with their glowing eyes, and suddenly, they sped up.

  Whatever was controlling them clearly started taking a hand as the general lethargy seemed to drop, and the corpses straightened and rushed forward.

  I spun my naginata around, sweeping out long and low from right to left in a rising arc, smashing one’s legs apart and sending it cartwheeling away as I swung on. The next was hit in the hip and knocked backwards, and the third, as I spun around, received the weighted, metal-clad base of the naginata smashing into its skull, shattering it and sending the bones clattering to the floor in a spray as the animating force lost cohesion.

  I heard grunts and clatters from either side as Lydia and Grizz went to work, and I flipped my naginata around, pushing a touch of fire into the weapon and igniting it. I stabbed out, driving the tip of the blade into the next closest shambler’s face, feeling the bones shatter, then yanked back and twisted, slamming both arms out straight. The naginata snapped diagonally between them as I hit two skeletons at once, their questing hands reaching for me as I threw them backwards.

  I twisted and kicked out, staggering another undead. The light grew behind me as Arrin filled magelight after magelight and threw them outwards, illuminating the room more.

  The fight was close in and was only growing closer as more and more of the undead seemed to awaken from the unsteady general undead reminiscent of old horror movies, into the terrifying, fast and determined kind. More and more were appearing, and as I hooked one ankle with the butt of my weapon and yanked, slamming the blade into the face of another, I heard Yen call out.

  “On the left!” she grunted, her arms held above her head as three glowing spears, wreathed in flames, hovered above her. As soon as she’d given the warning, she threw her hands forward, as though physically hurling the spears, and they shot away, spreading out.

  They impacted, as she’d warned, to the left of our small group, one after the other, and as soon as they hit, they exploded.

  The projectiles burst into flames, spaced evenly apart so that the first reinforced the second, which reinforced the third, creating a shockwave of blazing destruction that wiped out a solid forty feet of undead, sending bits flying everywhere.

  I stepped back, then again. Rather than the pause I’d been expecting, it was us that were distracted by the attack, and the undead kept crowding forward, rushing us.

  As the flames started to die away from Yen’s attack, I caught a glimpse of more undead crowding into the room from the doorway at the end, and I swore.

  “There’s light above!” Miren yelled above th
e din, and I jerked my head upwards, looking instinctively, before swearing and turning back to the fight. Swinging my weapon from right to left, I cut through a half-decomposed corpse at the neck, sending the head tumbling as the body fell.

  “Who is it?” I called, feeling Oracle finish the spell she’d been working on. Whatever lingering effects the broken spell had wrought on her, her casting ability was certainly the most obvious right now, as it was taking her an order of magnitude longer than usual to cast.

  A full spread of Magic Missiles flew from her, five in all, each aimed at a different undead. The massive darts slammed into them, killing two and injuring another, while the last two shamblers barely seemed to notice, and I swore as I saw them.

  They were weird-looking skeletal creatures, standing about five feet high, and four broad, with huge carapaces on their backs. They moved more like an armadillo than anything else, but with weapons grasped in their hands while standing upright. Additional armor hung loose across their chests, including a few helms that should have covered their heads, making them look like someone had tried to create an organic living tank, then strapped more armor on for shits and giggles.

  “What the hell are they!” I grunted, and Oracle called back to me in warning.

  “Xon’dike!” she shouted. “They’re the original caretakers of this place, and its basic defenders, so watch out!”

  “Really?” I shouted back, bashing another skeletal warrior in the face, then smashing its legs out from under it and crushing its skull with the base of my weapon. “I was going to let it kill me out of fucking curiosity!” I turned too late, getting shoulder charged by a skeleton from my left.

  I staggered, then head-butted it, my greater weight driving it back far enough that I could let go of my naginata with my left hand and grab its throat. As soon as I felt the bones in my grip, I yanked, tearing its head free.

  Before I could set myself again, another skeleton hit me, and another, and this time, I went down, slamming into the ground. Refusing to stay pinned, I immediately began rolling, lashing out with my legs and kicking.

  The undead started piling on me, their bony fingers tugging and digging, frantically trying to get at my flesh.

  One leapt on my right arm, pinning my naginata down, while the first two that had taken me down pinned my chest and waist as best they could.

  Another appeared behind them, less decomposed than the rest, only at most a few months dead, and it leapt into the air, raising its mace high and aiming for my head.

  A black arrow flashed through the air, slamming into the airborne undead’s breastplate and sending it flying backwards, even as I lashed out with the bones I still held in my left hand.

  I had a fist full of spine, still connected somehow to the skull, and I slammed it into one of the skeletons. The crunching of bones sounded loud enough to me underneath it all that I winced as I planted my feet and arced my back, bucking the pair off my chest. Momentarily free, I twisted to my right and slammed the skull-mace into the face of the one that held onto my right arm.

  Then Grizz was there, followed by Oracle and Lydia, and between the three of them, they cleared enough space that I could get back to my feet.

  “Time to fall back!” Grizz insisted, and I nodded to him, winded but glancing around. At some point while I’d been on the floor, Yen or Oracle had hit another group with a big spell, and that’d created enough of a gap that we could back up.

  “Get Lord Jax out of here,” Grizz ordered Lydia.” I’ll hold them long enough.”

  “Scratch that. Miren, Stephanos, get back up there now, and then you can pick them off while the rest of us fall back…” I started to say, when an ominous creak rose from the debris behind us.

  “What the…?” I looked up, only to see movement, as two men began shoving a section of wall hard, making it tilt.

  “Move!” Lydia bellowed, shouldering into me and shoving me aside as more of the section that led up began to fall away, taking with it the low-hanging ceiling.

  Interlude – Thomas

  “Sir, yes, sir!” Thomas barked along with the others as Sir Edvard Tunnik, Dark Paladin of Nimon, ordered him forward, proceeding down the wet marble steps into the pool of black liquid.

  “Dark Lord!” Sir Edvard intoned sonorously. “This humble Soldier has risen fast in your service, barely weeks ago a slave, then a Slave-Aspirant, until he stood proudly and fought off all challengers to his right to ascend! Finally, his brothers and sisters in the Faith, Belladonna, Turk, Coran, and Majiis have offered their blood in a plea for a full healing and binding!”

  Thomas swallowed hard and again worked to focus his eyes on the spot of dried viscera that hung from a stalactite in the Chamber of Darkness, rather than glancing to his immediate left.

  Sergeant Belladonna, his squad leader, one of the hardest, dirtiest fighters he’d ever seen, and without a doubt, the most beautiful, stood by his side, her long blue-black curls swaying in the slight breeze that filtered up from the depths of this most holy of places. Like Thomas and the other three who had pledged their blood to his, swearing to act as his family, swearing to aid and teach him, in exchange for the healing and rebuilding of his mana channels… she was utterly naked.

  Thomas jerked his eyes ahead again, biting down on the impulse to just take a single look sideways… it wasn’t that she was naked, although he desperately wanted to see that again at any opportunity.

  He’d seen it before; they all shared a communal tent city, after all. The construction of the new Citadel was still underway, which meant they all shared baths and more out of temporary necessity.

  It was the fact that she stood so close.

  He could feel the heat rising off her body, smell her scent on the breeze that filtered past, a faint mixture of crushed lilac and Jasmine that changed every so often, a faint peppery undertone joining with the rest. He could see her breath as it clouded the air. The preternatural cold of the crypt pressed in all around them, and he really didn’t want to think about the effect that was having on his manhood, despite simultaneously being damn glad, as it was all that was keeping him from ‘springing’ to attention at her nearness.

  “Now Dark Lord, your servant Thomas will step forward to ask for your blessing. He will expose his heart to you, aided by his brothers and sisters, and you may judge him! Should he be worthy, we ask that you restore him, heal and bind him, so that he may carry forward your anger unto the enemy, no matter where they skulk!” Sir Edvard roared, the dark light of fanaticism gleaming in his eyes as he looked down on Thomas and his companions.

  They stepped forward as one, having been schooled on the correct etiquette, and glided deeper into the oily substance.

  Thomas felt the slick, cloying wetness rising up his thighs, and he felt a spike of regret that it was going to take forever to get the damn stuff off every hair, fighting back a grimace as the substance rose higher.

  Nobody knew exactly what the liquid was, but it was warm, and the cavern was anything but; that fact alone had given rise to countless rumors over the years.

  Add to that, the knowledge that immersing yourself into the substance and having your companions open your veins to it never made the volume rise or fall, that it felt like oil but smelt like blood, and that if Nimon found you wanting… well, the result was explosive, both for you and those who entered with you.

  Thomas drew in a deep breath, turned and laid back, feeling the substance buoy him up to float on the surface, and he tried his best not to imitate a sailing ship as he looked into Belladonna’s eyes. He focused grimly on them until she nodded once to him.

  Then he turned his head and stared determinedly upwards, focusing on the stalactites above him as four sets of hands took firm hold of his limbs, and the cold of sharp metal was pressed gently against his skin.

  “All praise be to Nimon! For in his glory and service are we all tested!” Sir Edvard intoned, and the others, Thomas included, echoed him.

  “All praise to Nimo
n!” they cried, and then the knives bit into his flesh. Thomas gasped in pain, his eyes flaring wide as he was opened to the Dark God in truth. The inky substance flowed in, burning into his veins and intermingling with his heart’s blood.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The entire section of the structure that supported our path to retreat started to tear loose with an ear-splitting shriek of tortured metal, and I had a split second to recognize a familiar face grinning down at me from above.

  Joshua, the Baron of Sarat, I remembered, Hannimish’s nephew, who had just fucked me well and truly. He made a rude hand gesture at me and vanished, making me swear fervently.

  “He’s just fucked us, whoever he was…” Stephanos said grimly, and I turned back to face the oncoming tide of the dead.

  “No,” I said firmly. “That’s Joshua, one of the asshole nobles, and he only thinks he has.” I checked my mana, seeing it was a little below half, and scanned the room quickly.

  The path up, indeed the entire section where we’d been standing, was now a mess of debris. Behind that was a wall, and to the right was another. Straight ahead was the majority of the undead horde, pouring out of a hallway on the far side of the room and flooding in after us.

  There were a few undead heading in from the left, but nowhere near as many as from straight ahead, so I pointed in that direction and clicked my fingers.

  “Arrin,” I ordered. “Fire as many spells as you have to; I need to know what’s over there, if there’s a way out or not.” I looked to him, and he nodded, determination clear on his face as he yanked a mana potion free of his bag and started chugging it.

  “The rest of you, hold this line. We can’t afford to get forced back against the wall…” I said, taking the lead, only to find Grizz and Lydia moving up beside me.

  “No,” I insisted, motioning them back. “I need you both to protect the others.”

  “Our job is to protect you,” Grizz said grimly, and I shook my head as Lydia grunted agreement.