Trial by Fire: A LitRPG Dragonrider Adventure (Archemi Online Chronicles Book 2)

by James Osiris Baldwin

  “The very first item of the night is, in fact, this holy relic that the High Forgemaster created especially for this auction,” the Auctionmaster said, once Toth had started back for his seat. “It is made of Mithril and Titanium, and was forged using the ground scales of a dragon which were given freely to the Church some two hundred years ago. We will start the bidding at 400 rubles...”

  Tense, I watched Toth move back to his table, which was ringed by guards from the Church. Most of the other ‘guests’ who sat at the tables to either side of him had the tense, wary look of warriors. Kirov was seated at that table, and so was Matthias, who watched the proceedings with the glazed expression of a man who was bored to tears.

  “How does it look from your angle?” I asked Suri.

  “Looks fine so far.”

  Suri’s P.M. was pushed aside by Karalti’s telepathic voice. “Hey, so, I still hate you and everything, but some bad people just snuck into the grounds.”

  I drew a sharp breath. “Sitrep?”

  “Six, tall, they got weapons. I think they’re Meewfolk. They’re coming from the north and heading for the house... Uh-oh...”

  “Get them if you can. Be careful.” I leaned in towards the Captain, who glanced at me in consternation. I kept my voice to a hissing whisper. “Sir, we’ve got a situation. My dragon just spotted six intruders coming over the north wall. She’s going to engage.”

  The Captain paled. He nodded, rose quickly, and exited the room. Once he was outside, I heard him bark orders at the guards outside.

  The waiters were still circulating. I noticed that they were avoiding the Volod’s table, and that neither he nor the High Priest were letting the waiters serve them drinks. One caught my eye as he passed by Toth’s table, carrying a single bottle with an unusual color on a tray. The opaque glass, usually green, had a weird red tint. A non-mutant probably wouldn’t have noticed, but I sat up straight, trying to get a proper look.

  “Five hundred! We have five hundred rubles over here!” The Auctioneer was warming up now, brandishing his gavel. “Five hundred and twenty! Five hundred and forty!”

  The waiter passed too close to one of the church guards, who caught him by the arm and quietly rebuked him. The man - human, pale, bald, sweating like a pig - nodded and bowed, withdrawing from the table and bumbling straight into the chair of the next guest.

  I saw his expression – calm, resigned, even serene - and lunged up to my feet as the bottle toppled and fell to the floor. “Get back!”

  Three things happened all at once. The bottle smashed, releasing a cloud of gas into the air; Father Matthias threw himself from his chair and tackled the waiter to the ground; and the assassin exploded.

  Chapter 30

  The suicide bomber took out the floor, the ceiling above Toth’s table, and the tables around it. I saw Suri throw herself over Andrik just before the shockwave engulfed me and flung me to the ground.

  [You are Deafened!]

  [You take 25 bludgeoning damage!]

  [Party Member Suri is gravely injured!]

  People - and parts of people - and tables showered everyone and everything. Groaning, I rolled over on the ground, armor crunching over bits of broken wood and stone. I could feel the gravel shifting underneath me, but I couldn’t hear it. In my HUD, an icon of a musical note with an X through it had appeared, along with a 30 minute-long debuff bar.

  “Suri!” I scrambled up and forward, barely noticing the red flashing warning in my HUD as people shoved past me, stampeding for the doors. There were at least twenty bodies on the ground, and all around me, people were going to their knees, clawing at their skin as seams of light crawled on and through their flesh. The stench of blood and mana was all around us.

  I couldn’t see her, but Suri’s name and player halo were highlighted in among the smoking mess, and they were flashing red with warning. Her HP was draining away second by second, down to a sliver by the time I waded through the wreckage and pulled the splintered remains of a table off her body.

  She had put herself between the blast and the Volod. He was okay - unconscious, but alive, and his NPC halo was stable. Suri was not. She was sprawled in the wreckage of several chairs. Her beautiful dress was torn to shreds... and her left arm was gone. She was bleeding out from the stump of her elbow. The game had not been merciful enough to knock her out. She stared at the ragged end of her limb with bewilderment. Her lips and the skin around her eyes were pale with shock.

  “Fucking fuckity fuck-” I continued to curse. I pulled a Moss Tincture from thin air and poured it onto the wound. Suri flinched, lips moving, but I couldn’t hear her. I shook my head and put the Moss Tincture flask to her lips. “Drink! You’re going to be okay!”

  She swallowed, eyes rolling to look up at my face, until her gaze slipped past me. I dumped a second potion on her, healing her another 70 HP. The status updates continued to narrate to me telepathically as I worked to save her.

  [Suri has a critical injury: severed arm. Her Max HP has been reduced to 180!]

  [Suri is stable! Current HP: 148/180]

  Suri stiffened and flinched as I took out a healing poultice to make up the 32 point gap. She yelled something, shoving me back a step.

  “I can’t hear you!” I bellowed, probably far too loudly. “I’m deaf!”

  “TURN THE FUCK AROUND!” she shot back by P.M.

  I jumped and spun back to face the main room. “Oh, shit.”

  The bodies of the dead and dying had Stranged - but instead of an army of ghouls, they were sliding across the floor, drawn toward a nexus of magical gravity that smashed them into one another and merged the corpses into a tottering tower of flesh and sharp bone. A [Gibbering Flesh Amalgamation]. One that contained the remains of the High Forgemaster... and Matthias.

  “Get Andrik and any other survivors out of here!” I spun my spear around and fell into stance.

  “I can fight-”

  “Don’t give me this Black Knight ‘tis but a scratch’ bullshit! The Volod will die if you don’t get him the fuck out of this room!” I felt cold energy swirl through my body and condense in my limbs, winding them taut. “Go!”

  And with that, I Jumped right into the fray.

  The Flesh Amalgamation undulated from side to side, and as I sailed through the air toward it, half a dozen eyes erupted on the surface of its body. It lashed out with a pseudopod, but the clumsy strike missed as I twisted in midair and drove the spear down with my full weight behind it. The blade sunk into the slithering mess like butter, and blood sprayed from the wound. I carried the maneuver through and bounced away, wrenching the weapon free from the thing. I felt a dim wail that rattled the floor and shook dust from the ceiling.

  [x3 damage! You hit Amalgamation for 401 HP!]

  [HP remaining: 4599/5000]

  [Amalgamation uses Hideous Screech! You are immune!]

  [Suri is Stunned!]

  [Suri shrugs off Stun with Battle Fury!]

  I landed and skidded over the blood-covered floorboards, keeping an eye on my adrenaline level as I ran back in. Long, ropy tentacles sprung out of the Amalgamation’s body, lashing out in all directions. Some were at head height, some were intended to sweep my feet out from under me. I skipped over them and then executed my new Blood Sprint chain. The first two moves were familiar: Blood Sprint’s dash carried me in close enough to stab the monster deep in its side. I tore the blade free, landing several bleeding cuts in quick succession, and then triggered the Death by a Thousand Cuts finale.

  “You gonna die!” A shadowy nimbus pulsed along the weapon, ruffling my skin with an unpleasant sensation that churned my guts like an icy claw. The curse seemed to suck the light out of the space around the Abomination, marking it with a stain of darkness. It cringed back as its attack power diminished, and I drew a deep breath as the sliver of power flowed back into me.

  [Flesh Amalgamation is Cursed! -2% Attack power!]

  [You gain +2% Attack power and +5% damage reduction from your o
pponent’s attacks!]

  [You deal 617 damage to the enemy!]

  The thing punched me with a meaty ‘fist’ the size of a small cow before I’d even had a chance to recover my balance. The blow sent me tumbling, then crashing into the surviving tables. Little crustless sandwiches and fancy cookies went everywhere as I skidded through shattered crockery on my back and sprawled onto the floor.

  [You take 221 bludgeoning damage! HP 338/559.]

  [Gibbering Flesh Amalgamation uses Horrid Screech! You are immune!]

  “Fucking bullshit-!” Ranting under my breath was surreal when I couldn’t hear anything except the ringing of my own punctured eardrums. I scrambled up and away, trying to keep moving. Not being able to hear the monster meant it couldn’t paralyze me with its screeching, but I lost the advantage of being able to hear it telegraphing its moves. In the dust and smoke and haze, that could be fatal, and almost was when another gelatinous tentacle - as thick as a tree trunk and studded with sharp, broken bones and chair legs - slammed down across a table I was using for cover. It smashed the solid oak into kindling.

  I slammed a couple of Bonebreak Poultices, healing a hundred HP as I circled and ran back in. I sprung up like a cricket, flipping midair, and Jumped onto the monster as I had the first time. The thing twisted and flailed, but it missed the agile strike and tore the ceiling open instead. It clipped my leg as I followed the Jump through and leaped away, sending me careening off course midair.

  As I fell, Leap of Faith kicked in - time slowed enough that I could right myself in the air. I spun around to land with knees bent and weapon ready.

  [x3 damage! Critical hit!]

  [Flesh Amalgamation is immune to critical hits! 401 Damage!]

  [You take a glancing blow! HP: 412/559]

  The Amalgamation tensed up in a way that my gamer brain was instinctively familiar with: ‘Area of Effect attack imminent’.

  “Hector!” Karalti’s voice pierced the battle fugue as I began to run a circle around it, putting broken furniture between us. “What’s happening!?”

  “I thought you hated me.”

  “I do! But not THAT much.”

  “Big monster. Lots of HP.” I saw the monster stiffen, and triggered Shadow Dance.

  The Gibbering Flesh Amalgamation’s body erupted with splinters of wood, bone, and absorbed weapons, blasting everything in a thirty-foot radius like the grossest nail-bomb in history. Most of it went through my temporarily-gaseous form, but I took a few shards to the chest when I rematerialized. Twenty-three HP down the drain.

  Karalti called to me again. “I’m coming! Hang on! Suri is coming, too!”

  “What!? Stop her! She only has one arm!” Panting, I ran back toward the Amalgamation and Jumped, this time with the intent to use Obscuring Veil - the new Jump combo chain I’d forgotten about in the excitement - but the creature did something I’d never seen in a video game before. It anticipated my move. As I plummeted toward it, a huge mouth unzippered along its side, gaping into what could have almost passed for a fang-lined grin.

  “GOAT BALLS!” I couldn’t change my trajectory fast enough.

  [x3 damage! You deal 401 damage! Amalgamation is immune to critical hits!]’

  [You are entangled! -50% maneuverability!]

  [Amalgamation has swallowed you whole!]

  The flesh horror slammed shut around me like a Venus flytrap, plunging me into darkness. And suddenly, I really missed Umbra Burst.

  [Amalgamation uses Engulf! You take 100 damage!]

  Pain blossomed in about half a dozen place on my body at once. It was fucking chewing me! Revulsion crawled up the back of my throat. I slammed down three Moss Tinctures as my health dropped down into the red, bringing it back up to half after the last attack. I had eleven potions left.

  [Amalgamation uses Engulf! You take 100 damage!]

  Fuck. Shadow Dance allowed me to become immaterial enough to allow blows to pass through me, but it unfortunately didn’t allow me to phase through barriers. I struggled with everything I had, plunging the spear into the monster’s body like a butter churn.

  [You deal 120 damage to Amalgamation! HP: 3060/5000]

  [Amalgamation uses Engulf! You take 100 damage! HP: 414/559]

  And then it occurred to me - I now had Whirlwind Butcher III. And it wasn’t affected by the entanglement penalty.

  I couldn’t see or hear, but I felt dark, savage strength gather in my body, then ejected explosively as I tore my spear up and around through the belly of the monster. I was inside it - so all six blows hit, and they tore it to shreds.

  [You deal 758 damage to Gibbering Flesh Amalgamation!]

  [Karalti uses her breath weapon! 450 damage!]

  [Amalgamation is on fire!]

  [Suri uses Primal Rage! Suri loses control!]

  I felt the boss monster rumble through. The side of it split, and it spat me out into the open air. I twisted like an acrobat and landed, only to look up and see one of the weirdest sights I’d ever witnessed in my entire life.

  The Flesh Amalgamation was crowned with white fire, and lurched as it sizzled and popped with a smell that was alarmingly similar to barbecued pork. Karalti had torn a hole in the ceiling and was raining Ghost Fire down on it from above. Suri had stripped her flimsy dress down to her waist and torn off a long strip of it, which she had tied around the bloody stump of her left arm at the elbow as a makeshift tourniquet. She was boiling with a red aura, and her face was a mask of uncontrollable frenzy as she ran in, topless, with an ax, and leaped bodily onto the Amalgamation with no apparent regard for her life.

  “No! Whyyy!? You have a hundred and eighty HP and NO FUCKING ARMOR!” I yelled in frustration as I shook red goo off myself and sprinted back into the battle.

  [Amalgamation hits Suri for 75 reduced damage!]

  [Suri’s rage builds as she is injured! Damage reduction and attack power drastically increases!]

  [Suri hits Amalgamation for 440 damage!]

  [Amalgamation hits Suri for 55 reduced damage!]

  [Suri’s rage builds as she is injured! Damage reduction and attack power drastically increases!]

  [Suri hits Amalgamation for 660 damage!]

  [Amalgamation takes 100 Fire damage!]

  Oh wow. Okay. That was why. But even with crazy berserker DR, she only had 50 HP left and could only take a few more hits with that amputation in play - and I bet that this ability of hers would cost her afterward.

  As I ran, I planned my next moves. And then I sprung up to Jump.

  The Amalgamation didn’t have to turn to see me - it had eyes everywhere. As it had last time, a gaping maw split along its side, but I didn’t carry Jump through into its meteoric strike this time. I used it evasively, springing off the edge of its meat-mouth, and then triggered my other new ability: Shattering Darkness. Dark energy rippled along my spear, then blasted forward as I stuck the huge monster with the very tip of the Alpha Rod. An icy blast of shadow sped down the haft and blew into the Amalgamation, sending thin spikes of black ice through the entire mass of its body.

  [You used an Ice attack! It’s super effective!]

  [You deal 500 Freezing damage to Amalgamation!]

  [Amalgamation takes 100 Fire damage!]

  [Suri hits Amalgamation for 660 damage!]

  The overkill stacked up in a single round. Simultaneously burning and freezing, the Amalgamation emitted a shrill roar that rattled my teeth. Suri’s final ax blow sent cracks through its frozen body. It rumbled, slowly expanding with bursts of magical light, and then exploded into chunks.

  [You have defeated Gibbering Flesh Amalgamation!]

  [You gain 1000 EXP!]

  [Congratulations! You are Level 12!]

  “Dun dahh da dah da-ow!” I pressed a hand to one of my ringing ears as a small spike of pain flashed through it, then pulled it away with a grimace as I realized it was covered in blood and slime. “Eww. Fucking gross, man.”

  Suri staggered up bare-breasted, gore-streaked, her remain
ing hand clenched around the haft of her ax. She panted through her teeth, her gold eyes blazing. It was like staring into the face of War personified.

  “Well. Th-th at was a bit nasty, wasn’t it?” The woman tried to lean on her weapon to rest, and stumbled to her knees. She swayed for a second, and then fell flat on her face.

  I ran to her side just as Karalti dropped through the gaping hole in the ceiling, sending dirt and broken tiles, plaster, and wood everywhere. She landed on the remains of the Flesh Amalgamation as I stopped beside Suri and felt for her pulse on IRL instinct.

  “Are you okay?” My dragon squeaked.

  “I feel like a refugee from a German porn set, but I’m okay.” To my great relief, Suri’s heart was strong. I checked her in the Party menu: she had healed back to full HP, but she was still only at 180 because of the severed arm. Her stamina was zero, and her status was ‘Unconscious’. I guessed that was a symptom of the Berserk Rage ability she’d used. “Come on, we have to go outside and see who survived. Search the monster. But... be respectful. My friend was sucked into that.”

  “Okay. Well, it’s good that I don’t hate you anymore.” Karalti hopped off it, and began to delicately nose through the remains.

  I felt heat from above, and looked up to see that the ceiling was on fire. Great. With a heavy heart, I slung my cloak off and crouched down. I used it to cover Suri up, then went to loot the Amalgamation.

  [Gold Ruby Ring x 3]

  [Gold Necklace x 4]

  [Broken Plates x 10]

  [Iron Sword x 4]

  [Green crystal Mana x 6]

  [100 olbia]

  [Petko Matthias’ pipe]

  The last one was genuinely painful. I pulled the pipe out of the sticky mess and wiped it off. Matthias. You poor son of a bitch.