Labyrinth to Tartarus: A LitRPG Saga (The Eternal Journey Book 3)

by C. J. Carella

  “Laughing Man happened,” Hawke muttered. He explained the situation as he examined his surroundings.

  He was in the center of a circular platform, surrounded by five columns, all made of black marble, arranged in a pentagonal shape. There was no ceiling, however; the columns supported nothing. The setup looked a little like the desecrated temple in the lake, but where a portal should have stood there was nothing but empty space. Beyond the columns, he could see a vast plain of scorched-looking black earth, although it was hard to tell colors apart in the red haze that filled the area. He couldn’t see where the ‘room’ ended – everything vanished into haze after two or three hundred feet. He knew from experience that the Labyrinth’s sections could be huge. And the damn place had gone up in level, too. When he had last visited the Gates of Tartarus, it had been a level fifteen Proving Ground.

  “How the hell does a Labyrinth gain five levels in a few weeks? None of us has been anywhere near it.”

 

  “That sucks.”

 

  “Okay, that sucks more. Does the Twelfth Circle mean anything to you?”

 

  “Well, I hope nobody made coffee for us, ‘cause we ain’t staying,” Hawke growled, activating Node Recall. His Mana pool dropped by 150 points, but other than a brief bout of nausea, nothing happened. He was still in Hell.

  Node Recall Failed! No teleportation in or out of the Labyrinth is allowed beyond the Third Circle.

  “What the hell? If teleportation doesn’t work, how did I end up in here?”

 

  “Great. Just great.”

  What was going on with the rest of the party? Hawke had to let someone know what had happened to him. The Labyrinth’s entrance was a good thirty miles away from the Dungeon, much too far for Saturnyx to reach anybody telepathically. He had one spell that might work: Send Thought let him deliver a brief message to someone up to sixty miles away. Five words or less. He chose ‘Trapped in Labyrinth of Tartarus’ and spent the Mana.

  Spell Failed! Messages cannot be sent beyond the confines of the Labyrinth.

  Hawke wanted to start screaming and breaking things, but the knowledge that it wouldn’t do any good stopped him. Barely. Instead, he gritted his teeth badly enough that he probably was going to need some magical dentistry in the near future and tried to keep himself under control.

  “This is hell. They don’t know if I’m alive or dead!”

 

  Getting mad was worse than useless. Hawke fell quiet and forced himself to think. He was glowing like a neon sign with all his auras. Demons could probably spot him from a mile away, and yelling would only make him stand out more. Figuring that stealth was probably his best bet, he dismissed all his noticeable buffs and used his brand-new Celestial Twilight Shroud on himself, augmented with Fae Stealth. During his previous trip to the Labyrinth, he had discovered that he could sneak past most demons with his Twilight spells. But since Twilight spells were a combination of Light and Darkness, he could imbue them with Celestial energy, making them even more effective. He could have played rogue as well as Girl, but he’d been needed as a tank. Now he needed to be everything. Scout, tank, healer and damage-dealer. A party of one.

  Hawke picked a direction at random and began walking.

  Thirty-Seven

  The unnatural haze made it hard to see anything beyond a hundred feet or so. As Hawke advanced, tall metal spikes protruding from the ground came into focus. He reached the closest one and saw a naked body hanging from the jagged structure, held up by hooks piercing its limbs. It was humanoid, but so skeletally thin and covered by scars that he couldn’t tell what sex or species it was. And it wasn’t dead. Hawke froze when the emaciated figure twisted against the chains, making them rattle slightly, and opened its mouth as if screaming, although no sounds came out.

  Damned Soul

  Level n/a

  Health n/a Mana n/a Endurance n/a

  Not applicable? What is that thing? Hawke asked Saturnyx. His first impulse was to try to help whoever that was, but he wanted to make sure doing so wouldn’t land him in more trouble than he was already in.

 

  What can I do to help them?

 

  Girl. She is becoming one of them, but without the dying and torture bits, isn’t she?

 

  If she could see this, she might reconsider.

 

  Hawke shook his head and kept walking. He walked past more metal spikes, some unoccupied, others with silently screaming souls. The sight sent chills down his spine. He wasn’t sure if this was an actual afterlife. Instead, he suspected it was just one more indignity the Makers inflicted on the people of the Realms, forcing some of them to respawn in their version of hell. Either way, he wanted no part of it, and had no idea why the Laughing Man had decided to throw him in there.

  Along the way, his Detect Ore ability spotted three mineral deposits nearby. He figured he might as well spend a couple of minutes improving his Arcane Mining, so he examined them. One was mithril and yielded two more units of ore, improving his level to five. The other two veins were Imbued Iron, which he hadn’t encountered before. Saturnyx explained that Iron that was exposed to magical energies became attuned to them, making it easier to enchant or improve. It wasn’t quite as powerful as mithril, but it was far better than ordinary iron. Even better, his improved skill allowed him to get a total of nine units of ore, enough for two ingots and change when he got the chance to smelt the stuff. The experience he got from the extraction didn’t increase his Arcane Mining, but it got him closer to level six. Not bad.

  All that was nice and all, but the extra loot didn’t improve his mood much. He was grateful he hadn’t landed in the middle of a horde of monsters, but he wanted to get the hell out of this place and rejoin his friends. He also wanted to figure out why he’d been dragged there, although that rated a distant second place in his list of concerns.

  Sink or swim, he said. Why does he want me to sink or swim here?

  A glimmer of movement that broke through the surrounding haze caught his attention. Hawke ducked behind an empty spike and saw several figures walking in a group, about three hundred feet away. Humanoid. Plenty of demons had two arms, two legs, and a head, but as they got closer – they were moving at an angle from his position, navigating t
hrough the spikes dotting the plain – he was able to see their stat boxes. Adventurers. Six of them. And he recognized one of them. She was a wizard type, walking behind two heavily armored Warriors and an Elven Scout. Her gear was pretty fancy: metallic purple robes and a golden tiara studded with jewels, along with an ornate mithril-and-gold staff. Even before he read her name plate, her hair gave her away; it was dyed bright blue and done in a pixie cut.

  Amelia Blueflame (Human, Eternal) (Nerf Herder Officer – Captain)

  Level 15(18) Elemental Mage

  Health 346 Mana 989/1,052 Endurance 299/342

  Last time Hawke had seen her, Amelia had been a greeter outside the Nerf Herder compound. A level three mage with a friendly smile that had been nothing but bait for a trap. The poor Eternals who had fallen for that friendly smile had ended up facing the choice between submitting to Kaiser Wrecker or suffering the Final Death. She had clearly climbed the corporate ladder over the past few months, and looked older and rougher around the edges. Amelia was no longer grinning like a spokesperson for some dubious company. Instead, her mouth was set in a grim, close-lipped expression, and her eyes were darting back and forth, looking for enemies.

  He also recognized the two Warriors in front: Death-Dealer (currently a level 15 Defender Warrior with 1,864 Health) was a Canadian Eternal who had guided Hawke to the fateful meet and greet session with Kaiser. And Gerrod (level 16 Gladiator-Stalwart) had been one of the guards at the gate. The fourteenth-level Scout’s name was Glorificus; Hawke hadn’t met him before. The same went for the two magic-users in the rear, a level 14 human Sorcerer-Rogue by the name of Charlie Peligro, and a level 13 Half-Orc Shaman. The Shaman (Bobo Three-Legs) had a pet, a plodding Earth Elemental with 900 Health. Their effective level had been increased by two, which meant their party leader had Generalship II. Lucky them; that might even allow them to survive the level 20 Labyrinth they were in.

  How did they get here? Hawke wondered as he watched them walk on by. There must be an entrance to the Labyrinth near Akila. Or maybe the Labyrinth Girl mentioned is linked to this one.

 

  The Scout hesitated for a few moments, looking around, and Hawke held his breath.

  “What is it?” Gerrod growled in Vulgate, strangely enough.

  “I thought I heard something.”

  “It’s probably another damned soul, rattling his chains.”

  Glorificus gestured at the party to be quiet. Hawke could see the Elf listening intently, and using some sort of Scout ability to improve his senses, and he hoped his Shroud of Twilight was good enough to handle it. If it came down to a fight, he wasn’t sure he could take six Eternals at once. Not unless he struck first. He thought about ambushing the Herders. Was that why the Laughing Man had dropped him there? It couldn’t be a coincidence. Killing six peons who would respawn somewhere else in the Labyrinth didn’t seem like a productive use of his time, however. He stayed in stealth and waited.

  The Scout shook his head. “All clear, I guess.”

  “Then come on. I don’t want to stick around any longer than I have to,” Amelia said, her voice making it clear that she was in charge. “Gerrod, Deedee, spread out on the flanks. Bobo, put your pet out in front of us. Glorio, you’re on point.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the Scout said.

  The party moved on. Hawke followed.

  Thirty-Eight

  The Nerf Herders wandered through the seemingly-endless plain for almost an hour before a demon struck.

  Hawke kept his distance, careful not to attract their attention. The Elven Scout was good, so he tried to move only when the Warriors made enough noise to cover his approach. Their plate armor was much worse than Hawke’s when it came to stealth, so he found plenty of opportunities to mask his own sounds with theirs.

  Congratulations! Your Stealth Skill has increased to 5.

  The Nerf Herders talked to each other in hushed whispers, which Hawke’s high Perception allowed him to hear. Most of their conversation was useless stuff. Bobo the Shaman complained about being dragged into a high-level Labyrinth. Amelia snarled at him and reminded him that in the Herders, you leveled up or you got effed up. Death-Dealer (or ‘Deedee’ as the Guild captain mockingly called him) made fun of Gerrod, whose Identity was in the single digits and who had forgotten almost everything about his former life.

  “Favorite movie, Gerry,” Deedee said. “Come on, you remember movies, don’t you?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t know,” the Warrior said; there was genuine pain in his voice. “Stop asking me. I don’t know!”

  “Quiet, both of you,” Glorificus hissed at them. “We’re in demon territory, in case you forgot.”

  “Let’s be patient, okay?” Amelia told them. “We got the damn Quest MacGuffin. We just got to make it to the gate and we’re golden. Big rewards for everybody.”

  “What’s a MacGuffin?” Gerrod asked in a bewildered tone. “We got the Rune of Order. That’s what we got.”

  “It’s a freaking expression, moron-boy,” Death-Dealer told him.

  “I don’t remember,” Gerrod whispered.

  “Sure,” Amelia said. “Do you remember grabbing every female ass that gets within five feet of you, dickhead? Because you keep doing that.”

  “I like girls.”

  The blue-haired mage scowled at him. “So do I, but I can control myself. Now shut up before I send you back to respawn, assuming there is enough left of you to respawn. We’re almost home, and if you die, we’ll have to cross the entire freaking Circle again.”

  The words ‘Rune of Order’ sparked Hawke’s interest. Maybe it was something he could use. He asked Saturnyx about it.

 

  Okay. So now I’ve got to decide whether to hit them now and steal the Rune – which is probably in Amelia’s Inventory, which I cannot get to – or just follow them to wherever they are going.

  He could also try to infiltrate the group. Just in case, he altered his nameplate and stat box to read Orestes Markes, level 15 Human Paladin, using his Twilight Templar ability, Hidden Status. If he showed himself, the Nerf Herders wouldn’t know that he was an Eternal, let alone the infamous Hawke Lightseeker. He could claim he was a lost Adventurer, and maybe talk them into letting him travel along.

  Unfortunately, there was a problem with that plan. The Herders didn’t like the company of non-Eternals. They were more likely to kill and rob some wandering Paladin than to accept his help. No, he would keep the fake name, to keep the respawning Herders from identifying him, but his best bet would be to ambush them and try to disable Amelia and force her to give him the Rune of Order.

  The sound of chains shattering somewhere nearby interrupted his planning. Hawke turned toward the sound and saw that one of the Damned Souls had broken free. It was about fifty feet away from the Nerf Herder party and it was changing. Muscles began to grow over the skeletal frame and its pale yellow skin darkened into the deep red of fresh blood. The process was shockingly quick, like a speeded-up werewolf movie. Horns tore through its skull and the newly-formed demon grew in size. It was eight, maybe nine feet tall, and surrounded by a fiery aura.

  “Shit,” Glorificus said when he spotted the creature..

  “Get it!” Amelia ordered. The party turned towards the demon, but the transformation was complete before they could attack.

  Nyurgal (Infernal)

  Level 17 Elite (Noble)

  Health 5,100 Mana 6,800 Endurance 3,400

  The newly-hatched demon had terrifying stats. It gestured with a three-fingered hand, and a black staff appeared, jet black, with a glowing flame floating on one end. A moment later, the Nerf Herders s
truck.

  Half a dozen Mage Missiles flew from Amelia’s outstretched hand, glowing like shooting stars; they flew towards the demon and exploded on impact, doing over two hundred damage apiece. The Earth Elemental began to charge the demon and the Scout let fly a shining arrow that hit the monster right between the eyes. The two Warriors used their abilities to rush or leap into melee range at impossible speed, but before they got there or the other spellcasters could do anything, Nyurgal leveled his flaming staff at the party and spoke a single word in Infernal.

  All six Nerf Herders caught fire.

  Hawke watched the damage numbers scroll up, almost too fast to register – 120, 99, 109, and so on – over each Eternal’s head. They all had some form of damage mitigation, but the Hellfire enveloping them overwhelmed their defenses as if they weren’t there. Unable to restrain himself, Hawke leaped into the fight, running past the Herders and firing off a Healing Wave before letting Nyurgal have a double-tap of Light-Celestial spells. The two fighter-types were whaling away at the Demon Noble; their high Health would take a while to drop below zero. Unfortunately, their only healer was the Shaman, and he dropped dead despite Hawke’s healing spell. The Sorcerer lived long enough to fire off a Blast Demon spell that burned four hundred Health off the Infernal creature, but that was all he accomplished before he was consumed as well. The Scout was already gone.

  By the time Hawke reached the demon, it had speared Dee-Dee right through his breast plate, killing him instantly. Gerrod delivered a critical hit, reducing Nyurgal’s Health below five thousand; a moment later, the Gladiator-Stalwart’s head went flying off into the plain while his body collapsed and soon disappeared, off to respawn. Hawke thrust Saturnyx through the monster’s throat and channeled an 800-Mana Elemental Strike into the wound.

  Nyurgal was down to below one thousand Health when a Meteor Shower spell rained down on both it and Hawke. Flaming boulders hit Hawke three or four times. Only his high resistance levels against Elemental and Physical damage and his In Extremis buff kept him alive. He finished off the Infernal Noble with a shield bash and a sword swing that nearly decapitated it. As the Infernal Noble dropped to the ground, he turned to Amelia, who had fired off the spell that nearly killed him. The Mage had been protected by a Mana Shield, but between the high-power spell and the Hellfire attack, she was out of power and had lost almost all her health. She was also the only survivor of the party.