Lion's Quest: Trinity: A LitRPG Saga

by Michael-Scott Earle

  “Sir Leo Lennox, raise your sword when you are ready!” Sharles called.

  I raised my broadsword, and the crowd cheered.

  New Quest: Place First, second, or third in this challenge.

  I relaxed a bit when I saw the quest prompt. The words on my UI reminded me that this was just a game, and I wasn’t going to die in real life if I lost this match, I was just going to miss out on attribute points.

  “Lady Cesnie Kayleic, raise your sword when you are ready.”

  The blonde woman pointed her rapier into the sky and moved her shield through the air to test its weight again.

  “Sir Rodin Worred, raise your sword when you are ready!”

  The knight gave each of us a nod and then brought his weapon to the air. Then his eyes met mine.

  “Tia’tor Barta, raise your sword when you are ready!”

  The minotaur’s longsword came up, and he let out a long growl that made my chest shake.

  “Moryana the blade dancer, raise your sword when you are ready!”

  The obsidian-haired warrior woman put both of her scimitars up into the air.

  “Lower your weapons!” the herald called, and we all followed his order.

  “Let the challenge begin!” he screamed.

  And the crowd screamed with him.

  We didn’t move for a few moments. Each of us had our weapons ready, but no one wanted to be the one to make the first step. We knew that as soon as we made a commitment to attack one challenger, the others could attack our backs. I expected Cesnie to make a move and attack me first, but I guessed the placement of Rodin on her side might have messed up her plans. I didn’t know if Rodin or Moryana intended to betray me, so I didn’t know if I should let them have my back.

  My eyes darted between the other challengers, and I wondered if they were thinking the same things as I was. Did they believe I would betray them? If Cesnie thought my issue with the amulet was me going back on our agreement, she might be suspicious. Hell, she probably already was, since I figured that she was going to betray me, anyway. Had she intended to betray me? Then what about the amulet?

  Moryana stepped toward me, and I held my shield out toward her. She was still a good fifteen feet away, but I didn’t know how quickly the sword dancer could move. She took another step, and a slight smile came to her beautiful lips.

  Shit.

  I took a step back, and I saw Cesnie turn her head to me. Then the blonde woman took a step toward my flank.

  Double shit.

  Rodin shuffled toward Cesnie, and the blonde woman turned a bit so that he couldn’t flank her. I forced myself to take a deep breath, and I wondered if the man was going to stay true to his word.

  Moryana took another step in my direction, and her smile widened. She was holding her curved blades at her side, and their tips were almost touching the stones of the ground.

  “Tell me when,” she whispered as she took another step toward me. I pulled back another step away from the green-eyed woman and noticed that Cesnie was moving toward my right flank again. Rodin hadn’t advanced on her again, and I wondered if I had been deceived by everyone, and if they all agreed to eliminate me first.

  “Huh?” I whispered.

  “When Tia’tor charges me, of course,” she let out a laugh and then shuffled toward me with blinding speed.

  I raised my shield to block the first flurry of her attacks, but as I did so, I saw the minotaur rush towards the woman’s unprotected back. It was a full on, head down, sword pointed like a spear, bull rush.

  “Now!” I shouted as her blades swung out toward me.

  But they never connected with my shield.

  Moryana jumped back into a handspring that smacked both of her blades into the ground, and then she flipped some ten feet into the air like a twirling gymnast. She passed right over Tia’tor’s shoulders, and her blades spun out to slice into his armored backside.

  Rodin shuffled up to Cesnie, and he thrust his sword at her right side, the woman turned to block his attack with her shield, and there was a deafening clang of metal against metal. I sprinted toward the woman’s unprotected back and aimed a horizontal swing at her thighs. I didn’t want to kill the woman, but I knew that I wasn’t going to get through this without taking off the gloves. Everyone else would be going for the jugular, so I had to just hope the healers on standby would be able to keep the woman from dying if I took her legs out.

  Cesnie spun around and slashed her blade down to meet my attack. Our swords slid together, and she pivoted her hips a bit so that the tip of my blade couldn’t come free and cut her.

  “I see,” she growled at me as she stepped forward. Our blades locked up at the hilt. Her motion put her back open to Rodin’s next attack, and I predicted she was going to try to bring her shield across my right elbow to disarm me before the man could get a cut into her.

  “Sorry,” I apologized as I hooked my left heel around her right foot and shoved her. The woman’s steel-blue eyes opened wide as she tumbled away from me. My guess had been correct: Lady Cesnie Kayleic was a well-trained fencer and swordswoman, but that shit wasn’t real combat. It had rules and limits to what your opponent could do to you. She didn’t expect someone to grapple with her.

  The blonde woman tried to twist her upper body around so that she wouldn’t fall, but her feet were struggling to keep up with her off balance tumble.

  Rodin swung his sword and sliced into the right half of the woman’s chest. She screamed with agony when the blade dug past her armor.

  The knight’s blade had cut deep, and her health bar dropped to 80%.

  Cesnie hit the stone floor and flipped her legs around with a spinning motion. It was a surprisingly athletic move, and it brought the woman to her feet.

  Then she glowed orange for a brief second, and I saw the cut below her breast stop bleeding.

  “I will not be vanquished so easily,” the blonde woman said as she leveled her sword at Rodin and me. Her health bar was now back at 100%.

  “You don’t have to go easily, you just have to go,” the knight said with a shrug.

  “I expected this of you,” she said as she leveled her eyes at Rodin. Then she turned to me, “I did not of you. Perhaps I was foolish.”

  “I expected it of you. You can’t say you weren’t going to backstab me if Sir Rodin had ended up on my left instead of Moryana,” I said as I took a step toward the woman. I was approaching her on her shield side, and Rodin came at her on her right sword side.

  “You’ll never know for sure.” The woman shook her head. “You won’t be getting the rest of the money.”

  “That’s fine,” I said as I thrust my sword against her shield. It was just a test to see how quick her movements were, and I wasn’t surprised to find out that she was quick.

  Really damn quick.

  Rodin stepped to her right and made a series of horizontal cuts with his sword. The blonde woman twisted her blade to meet his strikes but kept her shield free so she could block any of my attacks. Unfortunately for her, this meant she had to fall away from her position, and I stepped around so that I could move to her unprotected back.

  As soon as I got there, the blonde woman pushed aside one of Rodin’s strikes and then sprinted away from us to get back to the center of the arena. We walked after her, and then I took a turn attacking her sword side while the knight moved to try to flank her.

  I couldn’t really focus on the battle between Moryana and Tia’tor. I caught a bit of their melee out of the corner of my eye, and it looked like the sword dancer was a bee buzzing around the minotaur’s legs. I saw him make a low sweeping cut with his longsword, but the woman flipped over the attack with a twist of her beautiful body, and then made several slices along the length of the creature’s armored forearm.

  Cesnie’s shield work was impeccable. Even when I feinted, the woman seemed to guess my movement and only blocked the real attack. She was also cunning with her positioning, and as soon as I thought I had pushed her
into a spot where I believed Rodin could get cut on her, the woman twisted toward him, or me, and then managed to wiggle out of our pincer attack. Then she sprinted away from us.

  If we didn’t take her out soon, either Moryana or Tia’tor would fall, and then Cesnie would not be the first one out of the competition.

  Rodin seemed to have come to the same conclusion as me, and the knight let out a shout as he leapt toward her. His blade shimmered, and the blonde woman turned her back to me so that she could block his flurry of strikes.

  I shuffled toward Cesnie’s exposed back and made a thrust with my broadsword. My attack was true, but her form glowed a dark purple color before my point could touch her. Her form shimmered when my sword passed through her, and I jumped back to avoid her rapier’s counter swing.

  “Keep attacking!” Rodin shouted. His arm was as blur, and his strikes slammed into her shield instead of passing through her.

  Cesnie must have used some ability that was preventing me from hitting her. I had no idea what it was, but it must have been very powerful. Maybe it was like Guardian of Fortune, and one of my attacks would eventually hit if I kept trying to hit her.

  “Slow!” Cesnie shouted at me as I stepped closer enough to stab her again. My body was suddenly encased in a purple glow, and it felt as if I was fighting in a pool. The harder I pushed my sword, the slower it seemed to move. My UI showed a purple pair of chained legs on the top of my vision, and there was a teal colored bar underneath that I guessed would visually indicate how long I would feel the effects of her debuff.

  “Chains!” Cesnie shouted at Rodin, and the knight’s feet glowed the same purple color. I could tell the man was trying to move, but his armored feet now had thick chains of magic around them, and he could only move as if he was in shackles.

  The blonde woman’s form shifted like she was made of static pixels, then she was standing on my right side, and her rapier was diving toward my chest.

  “Haste!” she shouted, and her arm glowed a violet color.

  I used Spirit of Stone on myself a fraction of a second before her blade touched me. Whatever ability she used on me had not slowed my casting time, and the surface of my armor instantly glowed with the transparent teal bricks.

  I didn’t really need to block, but force of habit made me try to parry her rapier attacks with my own blade. My movement was all sorts of useless. I couldn’t have done anything to stop her flurry of strikes, and I lost count of the number of times her blade hit me after the dozenth strike.

  But my Spirit of Stone enchantment blocked all of them, and I didn’t even feel more than a light sensation as her sword danced around my arms, shoulders, chest, neck, and face.

  “Huhhhttt!” Rodin grunted, and his armored body dashed across my vision as if he’d been shot out of a cannon. His shield smashed into Cesnie, and the armored woman folded around the lump of steel as if she was made from a noodle.

  “Ha!” he cried as he stabbed down into her stomach with his sword. The blade passed through her body as is she was a virtual hologram, and the woman stabbed upward with her own rapier. The tip of her blade slid through the man’s stomach armor as it was made of aluminum foil, and his eyes opened.

  The health bar over his head dropped down 25%, and Sir Rodin slashed down with his sword again. His blade passed through the woman once more without appearing to do any damage, and he howled with frustration.

  I just couldn’t fucking move. Every step took all my strength, and the teal bar under the Slow debuff was only halfway gone. I was only a few feet from being able to attack the woman on the ground, but my legs were moving as if I was at quarter speed.

  Cesnie yanked her sword out of Rodin’s stomach and attempted to make another strike. The man was ready for her this time, and he blocked her attack with his shield, then he slashed his sword down at her right arm, but his blade swung right through her limb as if she was made out of a stream of hose water.

  “Shatter!” she shouted, and it felt like a thousand shards of glass had all decided to punch me in the stomach at the same time. My vision turned purple, and then black. I realized I was lying on the stone floor of the arena. I was no longer debuffed with Slow, but every muscle in my body was screaming with agony.

  I forced myself to sit up and saw Cesnie get to her feet. Rodin was down on the ground, at about 65% health, and his body was smoking with a purple haze. I realized the same colored steam was coming off my own body, and I realized the blonde woman must have broken both of our snare debuffs with some sort of ability that did damage.

  I thought about hitting myself with one of my healing abilities, but while I was in pain, I didn’t feel as if I was severely injured. My heart wasn’t thumping in my head and none of my body parts were numb. It was kind of annoying that I couldn’t see a health bar over my own UI, but other than the sensation of rolling around in a bunch of glass, I didn’t actually feel as if I couldn’t move.

  I pushed the edge of my shield into the stone ground and then used it to leverage myself to my feet. I caught the battle between Tia’tor and Moryana out of the corner of my eye, but it looked in a similar state to where it had been a few moments ago. The minotaur was still trying to get a hit on the sword dancer, and the woman was making many insignificant cuts through his armor. Their battle could end at any moment if either of them got lucky, so I needed to take care of Cesnie as soon as I possibly could.

  “I’m surprised you are standing,” she said as she shook her head.

  “Sorry to disappoint you.” I tried to say the words with confidence, but the fact of the matter was that she’d just kicked both Rodin and my asses easily. The knight wasn’t moving, and if she hit me with another one of her Slow debuffs, she could finish him off before I could get to his side.

  “Slow!” she shouted at me half a second before she spun to the fallen knight. My body was again covered with a purple glow, and I couldn’t move.

  I could still use my abilities though, and I used Spirit of Stone on the knight as Cesnie’s sword plunged toward him. Her blade was met with the teal brick enchantment, and she hacked a few times before turning to me.

  I managed to get off a Minor Heal on the knight, but then Cesnie opened her mouth to hit me with her magic.

  “Shatter!” she shouted, and purple shards of glass filled my vision again. I felt my body float through the air, but I didn’t feel myself land, even though I saw the strange purple planet with its orange ring floating in the sky above me.

  Okay. Now I was hurt.

  Really bad.

  I tasted blood in my mouth. My entire body was numb, and the purple planet was spinning in my vision like it was a top set upon a table made of blue sky.

  Then I saw Cesnie’s pretty face on the side of my tumbling vision.

  I used Guardian of Fortune on myself, and the teal enchantment with the green floating shields caught her next blade strike. My desire to win this contest overpowered the numbing agony that flowed through my nerves, and I spun across the ground enough to avoid her second chop.

  I didn’t want to, but I knew I had to use Breath of Life on myself or I wasn’t going to be able to stand. Hell, I was probably going to have to use a few Minor Heals in addition to Breath of Life.

  My body glowed orange when I healed myself, and I instantly felt better. Not, “I’m ready to take on the world!” better, but the agony in my body wasn’t nearly as intense, and I was able to get my shield up in time to block her third chop at my head.

  “You are better than I thought you would be, but--” Cesnie started to say, but then Rodin appeared in the air behind her, and drove the point of his knight sword into her back as he landed.

  Cesnie gasped with surprise and then stared down at the point coming out of her right breast. Rodin landed from his leap and then finished pushing his sword through her so that a good two feet of the blade emerged. Then the knight cut upward, and the edge tore free of the beautiful woman’s shoulder with a spray of blood.

  �
�No!” I shouted as I hit her with Minor Heal. Cesnie’s body glowed orange as she tumbled over, but her health bar lost almost all its red color.

  “No!” I didn’t know how I got up, but my sword smacked Rodin’s blade aside as he tried to plunge it into her skull. My block caused the point of the knight’s sword to dig into the stone half a foot away from her head, and I slammed my shoulder into him hard enough to send him falling to the ground.

  Cesnie’s steel blue eyes were wide. Her lips opened and closed as if she was speaking, but instead of words, only a river of blood descended from her mouth.

  I used another Minor Heal ability on her, and I felt as if someone was starting to squeeze my lungs. Her health bar went up, but it wasn’t the 15% that I expected.

  “Sir Lennox!” Rodin growled as he got up from the ground. My shoulder charge had flung him almost twenty feet away, and he turned to me with his sword at the ready and outraged confusion plain on his face.

  “Her amulet was fake!” I shouted at him as I gestured at the blonde woman with my sword.

  Rodin’s eyes turned down to the woman, back to my face, and then down to Cesnie again. “Oh,” he said. “Now I see.”

  “Cesnie Kayleic is the first challenger to fall!” Sharles’ magnificent voice called out. He must have had some sort of magical heralding ability that made his words carry since I easily heard him over the screams of the crowd.

  The woman’s health bar was still falling, and I used Breath of Life on her. The enchantment seemed to have stopped her health from dropping, but her life wasn’t going up, and there was only about 5% left.

  “I used one of my sword abilities. It reduces the effects of healing and will bleed her life out for a minute!” the knight yelled. He must have been telling the truth because her health bar dropped again.

  She was now at 2%, and the blonde woman choked out another mouthful of blood.