Titan: A LitRPG Adventure (UnderVerse Book 4)

by Jez Cajiao

  “Fuck it,” Arrin’s called, and he hit her in the face with a lightning bolt.

  The diminutive figure was smacked backwards only to jump back up and grin at us with a mad light in her eyes, suddenly sprinting forward.

  She covered the distance quickly, her short legs and wide stance giving her a waddle that would have been amusing, if not for the bloodthirsty look on her face. As I mentally tagged her as ‘walking like John Wayne,’ Grizz stepped forward. He batted her cudgel aside and kicked out, smashing her in the face with his armored boot.

  She staggered, then grabbed his leg and sank her teeth into it, the sound of metal scraping across metal echoing around the corridor. Grizz growled and struck downwards with the pommel of his sword, slamming it into the side of her head.

  The rest of us were frozen, watching the strange tableau: the enormous form of Grizz, well over six foot in height, heavily muscled, and the kind of a man you’d have on the recruiting posters for any armed force in the world, and the tiny bantam-weight woman, barely three feet tall, maybe three and an inch at a push, with bright blue, green, and purple hair running in rows from front to back, the sides shaved, and peculiar tattoos etched into her skin. She had a death grip on his leg and was attempting to gnaw her way through the armor, and judging from the way Grizz’s shouts went from anger, to fury, to pained disbelief… she was managing to do it, as well.

  Grizz shook his leg, then grunted and rammed his sword blade down against the armor, forcing it into her mouth where she was starting to bend the metal. Once inside the edge of her mouth, he twisted it, holding it in place with his left hand, and slammed his right fist down hard on the pommel, driving it deeper and sending flecks of stone flying.

  Before he could do anything else, Yen was there, as was Jian, grabbing the creature’s arms and dragging them back, while Lydia slammed her mace down hard on the top of her head.

  It took two more blows, but as soon as the stone coating over her head cracked, she changed. The grey-white coating and coloring of her skin suddenly seemed to change into flecks and fragments, floating away on an unseen breeze, leaving a short, weak woman that took the fourth blow on the crown of her skull with a nasty crunching noise.

  She collapsed to the floor, twitching, blood leaking from her ears, and we all looked at Grizz’s leg in shock.

  There were sections of the metal that were clearly bent and twisted, and as we stared down at the corpse, it was clear that her teeth had been replaced with some kind of metal.

  “What the hell was that?” I muttered in shock as Bane whistled, and we turned, looking up the corridor to see two more of them, similar in design, but still totally different. The first was a single wheel again, but instead of the rider being inside it, he rode above it, seemingly leaning over the top and gripping onto levers. The next was like the first, seated inside a wheel, but it was shaking and shuddering as jets of flame and blue-white steam erupted from it. I watched, stunned, as the pair seemed intent on ramming the other into the walls just as much as racing to fight us.

  The riders both started screeching the way the last one had, and I shook my head immediately.

  “Nope,” I said flatly. “Fuck to the hell no. Bane, Tang, get your arses back here and get behind us,” I ordered. “Miren, Stephanos, get back up the stairs. There’s no room for you here, and we need to be able to back up.” I regarded Grizz’s leg and then cocked an eyebrow at him.

  “Can you fight?” I asked, and he nodded grimly.

  “She didn’t get through the plate, just bent it and gave me a shock,” he admitted.

  “Good,” I said simply. “Arrin, you’re on Lightning until you hit thirty percent mana; then you fall back and heal us as needed. Oracle, I want water in the corridor, lots and lots of it. Join those puddles up. Lydia, you and I have the big shields, so we’re going to take the weight until we can jam them up. Yen, fire anything you can down the corridor; I want those monobikes fucked up. Jian, stand ready with Grizz. When Lydia and I need to step back, we’ll give you both the shields, and then it’s your turn.” I snapped the orders out, despite worrying that there was no way we could hold those damn bikes if they hit us full on. Our only chance was to make them crash, and then we’d fight the gnomes on the ground.

  I felt the tug on my mana and saw first one, then another, then, with the strain showing clear on Oracle’s face, a third fountain sprang up, this time a dozen feet in front of the foremost bike. I grinned, frantically building the spell I needed; before I could let it loose, though, Arrin had delivered, sending a weak lightning bolt hurtling across the air between them and us. The bolt hit the first bike just as it splashed though, the tiny figure on the top of the wheel shaking the water from his face, huge round goggles reflecting the light, until it hit him in the face.

  His screeching broke off suddenly, and the bike wobbled as his muscles convulsed, yanking the levers inwards in reflex and twisting the wheel somehow. It started to skid, and as soon as the first bolt wore off, the rider tried to adjust. A scream started to rise, filled with fury, when my bolt impacted and filled him with twenty thousand volts as well.

  This time, he didn’t manage to recover in time, and he hit the wall full-on, turning the strangely crafted device into an explosion of parts that flew everywhere. A split second later, the second bike hit the back of the mangled first one.

  The corridor was filled with the tearing, screeching sound of steel on steel, and I realized that was what their strange war-cries were supposed to imitate, even as the two weird bikes exploded. Whatever they were using for fuel detonated, filling the corridor with flames.

  We paused, observing the devastation, then heard the scream rising again. The rider of the wheel was dragging himself out of the debris, his right leg trapped. He left a bloody trail on the floor behind him as he went, but he gritted his teeth and pressed on, his skin slowly filling with color as the stone coating dropped away.

  In seconds, he slowed, then sagged, his head falling forwards in death, as the third rider leapt out of the flames, skidding and slapping at his leather-clad left leg to smack the fires out.

  He glared at us, stomping forward and kicking the corpse of his fellow from behind. When it didn’t move and he noticed the color of it, he grinned, then flipped it over and started rifling through its pockets, pulling out two small manastones, a single black stone that I thought I recognized, as I jumped in shock. Then he dragged the other rider’s knife out of his belt, and made us all gag.

  He drove the blade into the lower jaw of the corpse, digging it in and wrenching about, frantically working while blood ran everywhere. He’d just managed to free the rider’s artificial teeth before the next one arrived.

  This one was perched atop a massive pair of balls… literally. It made me think of a normal mountain bike, but with gears that glowed with power, and wheels that were the size of beachballs; somehow, the main body of the bike hovered over the pair of balls.

  “I do not fucking believe it,” I said flatly, shaking my head as I looked at the device.

  “What the hell is it?” Grizz asked, nonplussed, and I clapped him on the shoulder as we both stared.

  “No clue,” I said. “But it looks a lot like they’re making these things from the goddamn magical gear we need to fucking salvage!”

  “That makes it easier, than,” Grizz replied, and I blinked at him. “They’ll have been collecting it; all we have to do is kill them all,” he said with a shrug, and I grinned at him, nodding in agreement.

  “Yeah, that works; I just hope they’ve not broken it too badly.” I watched as the gnome on the ‘bike’ slowed down and hissed something at the one that was pocketing the teeth.

  He hissed back, and they spoke for a few seconds, their language a mixture of hisses, growls, and grunts. The one who was still astride his bike eventually straightened up and slapped his chest like a gorilla.

  The other one stood up straight and spat something at him, reaching into a pocket to produce the black
stone and hooting in laughter. I swore viciously as I saw it, now sure what it was.

  “What’s wrong?” Lydia asked, and I pointed at the gnome.

  “You see that key? The black thing?” I asked, and she nodded. “It looks exactly like the one I was given to open the portal from this side to let those fucking dickbags through. That needs to be destroyed,” I said grimly. “The nobles of the Empire are assholes and must NEVER be allowed to return. They make Barabarattas and others look like fucking saints of honesty.”

  “How’d it get here?” Lydia asked slowly, clearly confused.

  “They’ve been sending people through every five years for centuries; makes sense we’d find a trace of them eventually. Anyone they sent probably came through a Portal here, found these assholes, and boom. They ate the poor fucker.” My jaws clenched involuntarily as I watched the gnome wave it in the air, then put it back in his pocket, before screeching like he’d won the argument.

  He even smiled, his teeth glittering in the reflected firelight, until my Fireball took him in the side of the head, slamming him into the wall as the flames rippled out to encompass the one on the bike as well.

  He shrieked something, then strangely spun his bike around and vanished through the flames, causing them to whirl and dance in the slipstream of his passage.

  The other one, which I’d hit with the Fireball, pushed himself up, shaking his head and glaring at us, before checking his hands and realizing that the white coating was bleeding away slowly.

  He blanched in shock, then glared at us before turning and rushing into the flames, running through to the other side and vanishing up the corridor on foot.

  “Where’s the magelight?” Arrin asked suddenly, and I realized that at first, we’d still been able to see the light through the flames, but no longer; something had taken it.

  “Well, now what?” Bane asked from behind me, and I turned, eyeing the way he lounged against the wall comfortably. I looked at the gaps between us, and shook my head. There was no way he managed to slip though us, was there?

  “Ta…” I started to say, only to cut off when Tang spoke up from behind me, and I spun around again, seeing nothing, only to find him seated on the steps a few up from Bane when I turned back.

  “Hey, Jax,” he said simply, and I shook my head.

  “How the hell did you do that?” I asked. “Seriously, I mean, what the hell!”

  “We’re just that good,” Tang shrugged dismissively and Bane nodded as though it was simply a fact.

  “I hate you guys at times,” I muttered, getting a grin from Yen.

  “That’s perfectly normal, Jax. Nobody likes Tang,” she reassured me. “I got a promotion to take him on my team, and I still only did it because I lost the bet.”

  “Hey!” Tang said, looking hurt.

  “It’s true,” Grizz said, trying to keep a straight face. “Nobody likes rogues, they’re just so… annoying!”

  “Could be worse…” I said, joining in on the byplay while I stared up the corridor. “Could be a bard.”

  “Oh hell no!” Tang cried, jumping to his feet. “I can put up with a lot: abuse, more abuse, sexual abuse… hell, I even put up with working with Grizz, and everyone knows he’s riddled… but comparing me to a bard?!?”

  “You really have bards?” I asked, my train of thought derailed as I looked back at the group.

  “Yeah; thieving bastards, the majority of them,” Yen said, wincing. “I mean, we don’t have them in the Legion… and I’m sure they’re not all dodgy, backstabbing, thieving bastards; there’s got to be one out there that isn’t… but hell, I’d trust Grizz to watch over me in the shower more than I’d trust one of them. And that’s saying something.”

  “I love you, too,” Grizz said, throwing Yen a wink and making her blush bright red.

  “Anyway…” she pressed on, obviously flustered. “What’s the plan, then?”

  “Well, I’m thinking we follow them, we kill them all, and then we take their stuff,” I suggested, rubbing my chin as though deep in thought.

  “Simple, yet elegant… I like it,” Yen declared, and Lydia nodded enthusiastically.

  “Murder-hobo,” Bane said in a stage whisper, and I groaned, shaking my head.

  “Man, I wish I’d never introduced you to that concept,” I muttered as I began to roughly search the corpse of the very first gnome.

  “What’s a murder-hobo?” Lydia asked Bane, and I tuned him out as he started to tell the others a greatly embellished version of my adventures so far, while explaining what I’d taught him about the term back at the Arena.

  “Ah, right!” Tang said after a few minutes, as I slipped a pair of magelights, a manastone, and a half dozen copper and silver coins into my bag. “You’re right, he really is!”

  “Goddamn wise-ass dolphin-fucking smart-arse …” I grumbled under my breath as I walked forward, picking up the wooden club that the gnome had been wielding.

  I flipped it over and examined it, then tossed it to Grizz, who was watching me.

  “Can you see anything about that?” I asked him, and he frowned, looking it over.

  “Like what?” he asked seriously, all play gone from his voice as he examined the cudgel.

  “Anything, really. She acted like it was a great weapon, but it’s just a damn stick?” I asked, and he nodded, inspecting it closely, then swinging it a few times. Finally, he smacked it into the dead gnome, then shrugged.

  “Well, whatever she thought it was, she was mistaken. It’s literally a nicely polished stick with some metal shards embedded in it. That’s it.” He passed it back without giving it a second look. I dumped it into a pouch and shook my head in disappointment, scanning the nearest wreckage quickly.

  There were several sections that glowed faintly, trailing a white mist, but beyond that, it was literally a pile of scrap. I put the bits that seemed magical into my largest bag, hoping that I could get them to Thorn, but also happy to dump them if something more valuable came along.

  We got the team together and started up the corridor, making our way slowly until we reached the fires. I fired a preemptive Fireball through them to hurtle down the corridor until it hit a wall in the distance, and once we were reasonably sure the corridor was clear, we created magical fountains to wash the flaming wreckage down, soaking and diluting the fuel enough that the flames guttered out and we could move on safely.

  We continued along slowly, partially to let our mana recover, and partially because we were sure there was an ambush coming, but after a few minutes, Yen asked me to stop, and we did.

  “These Spellbooks…” she started to say, holding them up, and I smacked myself on the forehead.

  “Yes!” I grunted. “Bane, what can you sense?” I asked, and he paused, then shook his head.

  “Nothing for several hundred meters; the corridor cuts to the left, and then there’s nothing but the open air of a big cavern. Whatever these wheel things were attached to earlier was past that point, but I can’t sense it now, so it must have moved back. Want me to do a full blast…?”

  “No, that’s good enough for me for now,” I said with a wave of my hand. I passed a Firebolt out to both Tang and Bane, gave the Summoning spells for the Flame Atronarch to Miren and the Earth Golem to Stephanos, the Buff spell for Dexterity to Jian, and the Iceshields to Lydia and Grizz. Those, added to the Darkbolt spells I’d tossed to Yen and Arrin, meant that everyone had at least one spell.

  It struck me that it could be argued both ways; teaching them spells, in the case of front-line fighters, like Lydia and Grizz, might make them hesitate between a physical and a magical response at some point, but then I quickly dismissed the concern. If I could manage it, so could they.

  I got rounds of effusive thanks, followed by a groan from Lydia as Miren summoned her Atronarch. It was only five feet tall and almost willowy in form, but the flames that formed it flared and crackled, and it moved constantly, watching us all.

  “You know she’s going to
burn down the camp with that thing, right?” Lydia said to me, and I grinned at her.

  “We’re in an underwater city… oh, shit.” I froze, cutting off as I realized something.

  “Yeah,” Lydia said, nodding as I came to the same realization she had. “Soon, we won’t be; the mainly wooden Airships are going to love that thing.”

  “No summoning that thing on the ships!” I told Miren sternly, and she pouted, looking sullen. “I mean it!” I said, feeling like I was kicking a puppy, but I felt even worse when I caught a glimpse of Jian, who was staring at his feet. I’d literally give everyone else a spell they could use in a fight, but I’d inadvertently made him into a support class.

  I suddenly realized that I didn’t even let him fight on the front line most of the time, making him hang back to protect the ranged guys. I quickly went looking through the bags again and found the books on summoning demons. They made me wary, to be honest; the whole concept of summoning a demon seemed far worse than summoning a Golem, for some reason… and this was in a realm that had gods and Imps and all sorts, but still…

  I shot a questioning look to Oracle, and she eyed him, then patted my shoulder.

  “He’s strong enough in his heart not to be corrupted by it, and he loves Miren. Truthfully, I think we can trust him with one,” she said, and I looked back at him. He’d looked up at the comment about loving Miren, and he glared at me now, red-cheeked, as if to ask why I’d had that conversation in front of everyone.

  “Ah, sorry, mate. There’s more for you, but apparently you’ll need to be strong in your heart as well?” I half-told, half-asked him as I pulled out the two demon summoning books. “I don’t know much about demons here, but apparently, they’re real, so…”

  “Are you serious?” he breathed, his face lighting up. I looked at the others, not seeing objections, so much as envy, as I nodded slowly and handed both books over to him.

  “What’s the difference in summoning demons to summoning Golems?” I asked Oracle silently. “I was concerned because they’re gonna be sentient, or at least more than Golems, but they’re just like the Imps… right?”