The Demonic Games (Disgardium Book #7): LitRPG Series

by Dan Sugralinov

  “What next?” Destiny asked when I dropped her off on the ground.

  I took out the loot and threw it at her feet so as not to lose my Talon:

  “Take whatever you want, keep the rest safe. Then go to the tavern and wait there. Don’t stick your nose out until I come get you!” The rest I said while taking off: “The way there is safe, all the enemies are at the graveyard. Run!”

  There was no time for conversation. Every second could cost someone’s life. I’d done a lot, but there was still plenty of work to do — now I had to save my people, wipe out my enemies, and only then would I be able to think about the rest. Including Destiny…

  As I flew closer to the churchyard, I left Stealth. I needed to save my spirit.

  The graveyard blazed with the flashes of cast spells. Metal clanked, the wounded groaned and cursed, the attackers laughed triumphantly.

  “Hope you die!” I heard a painfully familiar voice say, and rushed to my allies’ aid.

  I had no time to take a good look around, but it wasn’t hard to tell friend from foe. Almost all my allies were garbed in basic canvas gear, with some missing equipment. The enemies paraded around in full armor or magic cloth gear.

  Every strike brought death. I went into a battle frenzy, a state in which nothing remained but bloodthirst. Like a furious beast, I hit every enemy I could reach, and when a target was too far away, I destroyed anyone closer and then chased down my enemy, not letting them escape. The headless enemy raid divided into individual groups which then split off in various directions instead of uniting when they sensed danger. Now the fearsome raid was more like a scattering of fleeing roaches, which I kept on crushing, crushing, crushing…

  My fist broke through the back of a fleeing elf girl and burst out of her chest. A second strike took off the head of a minotaur, who screamed and fell, his hooves twitching. As I looked at my third target, I was surprised at his rare race — a draconid! There was no time to look closer before my Hammerfist caved in his scaled armor and sent the dragon-man flying.

  I was no longer using Clarity, instead attacking with the usual flow of time, but Flight allowed me to move far faster than on the ground, and my Hammerfists fired from Stealth must have seemed to my enemies some terrible punishment from a fearsome god. Anyone watching the reckoning from the outside would think the bodies were exploding in fountains of blood all on their own, heads smashing like overripe melons.

  I had learned my lesson from the morning; this time I stayed silent, tried to make no noise. After each attack, I carefully watched to see whether Stealth fell, so that I could go straight into Clarity if it did. After all, Smoothie was still around somewhere with her Ephemeral Web of Pacification, and the other contestants might have another surprise like Overburdened up their sleeve. I had no right to take risks. Any delay meant the downfall of my allies.

  One of the ones I killed five minutes ago in the forest learned what was happening from the logs and shouted:

  “It’s Scyth! Use crowd co…” And started choking on his own crushed jaw.

  It was hard to control or stun an invisible target. And they had about as much chance of detecting me, with three times their level and a highly advanced ability to remain in stealth even in combat, as sandbox noobs had of taking down a Ravager.

  I cut through them, and even the most desperate enemies stopped rushing to resurrect after their second or third death. The graveyard had already been littered with corpses, but I tripled them.

  Finishing off an unfamiliar centaur — Rindzin’s Ghostly Talon sliced open his neck and he fell down dead, — I shot toward another reviver, pulled back my arm to strike and… stopped. Before me stood the gawping gnome Hox, a tailor from Meister’s raid.

  Looking around, I realized there was nobody to attack. Our enemies were huddling in spirit form in the center of the cemetery. Hox saw some other resurrected allies and ran after them.

  I flew up and saw that all our allies who had realized what was happening had moved out of the graveyard and gathered a hundred paces away. They were hiding, clustering in defensive formations in the bushes, but some kept poking their heads out to call over newly revived allies.

  The hedge parted before Hox, letting him inside. The role of tank went to destroyer Quetzal, warrior Kart, bogatyr Arioch and three paladins: Blondiecat, Equilibrium and Yermak. Behind them, around twenty yards into the woods, the surviving crafters and clothies hid.

  I spent another minute looting the fallen until I got overloaded, and only then flew to my allies. I picked it up by hand to avoid filling my bags with garbage.

  Quetzal and Hellfish watched the space around the now bare graveyard anxiously. The titan still looked powerful, but was clad in rags like a hobo. The werewolf looked no better, and instead of his rifle, he now clutched a gnarled club.

  “Sorry I’m late,” I said, approaching them and unloading my loot. From outside, it looked as if gear was dropping straight out of thin air from two yards up. “I think there’s a decent rifle here, Hellfish. Take a look, I’m going for another pass.”

  Stealth meant they only saw me when I was right next to them. Leaving them stunned, I went back to the graveyard, took out a couple of resurrected enemies, picked up the remnants of the loot with Magnetism and returned to my people. This time, the flood of equipment and weaponry was less of a surprise to my allies.

  “Scyth,” the werewolf sniper nodded impassively. “Stay in stealth, just in case…”

  The few survivors from his group greeted me too, along with Quetzal’s people. They were already rooting through the gear.

  “Thanks for helping at the Pitfall,” I said to the leaders. “Those seconds might have saved me.”

  “We weren’t headed there to help you exactly,” Quetzal muttered. He had put on some gear and looked more like a gladiator again. “You didn’t show up, and we realized you were in trouble. There was no point in staying hidden, they would have found us anyway… So we decided to fight.”

  “And die a worthy death,” Hellfish added. “Not like those other guys.”

  He cast a glance back. The crafters looked dazed. Meister and Roman sat silently, their faces in their hands. The jeweler’s shoulders shook. Bloomer seemed in better spirits, but even he was deep in thought, pacing back and forth, muttering poetry with his hands behind his back.

  The crafters couldn’t see me — the system didn’t consider them allies since they weren’t in the raid. The poor guys were exhausted — it had only been two hours since the game day began, but they had all died at least once. Meister and the others who spent an hour in the tavern were lucky, but those that began the morning in the graveyard had a rough time of it. I hoped that at least some of them had gotten out, otherwise my attack and the capture following it were pointless.

  “They didn’t take it easy on them,” Quetzal said. “We’ve seen it all in the Arena, we’re used to pain, but it’s all a shock to the system for these guys. No pain filters here, after all. It’s no wonder their raid is out of it, to put it mildly.”

  “All the same, I take back what I said. They aren’t all cowards,” Hellfish said. “We’d almost reached the top when Laurie found us. The fairy told us what happened to you — she hid in the bushes after you freed her to recover and grow back her wings. She saw you getting dragged away and came looking for us…”

  I looked around, but didn’t see Laurie. Quetzal answered my unvoiced question:

  “She was with us when we attacked Marcus. On her last life…”

  Grinding my teeth, I looked over my allies — less had survived than I’d hoped. And almost all were below level four. Some had only one life left.

  “How many of ours survived?”

  “Twenty or so,” Quetzal answered. “I’ll add Meister’s people to the raid to count up…” He turned around and shouted: “Meister, Roman, Bloomer, I made you squad leaders. Invite your guys, and hurry up!”

  “Give Scyth a squad too, so he can invite any of our people he r
uns into,” Hellfish said.

  Before answering the invitation, I left my group with Destiny. Her presence would raise questions, and this wasn’t the time.

  “Let’s wait a couple more minutes,” I suggested. “Someone might be stuck in the graveyard, and if they are, then I need to be close by.”

  I told them about who I’d thrown into the Pitfall. When he heard Youlang’s name, Hellfish grunted:

  “She’ll save herself before she hits the bottom! She has Feather and Levitation!”

  “Marcus will escape too,” Quetzal sighed. “He’s a bruiser, he has Breakthrough. He can use it to move through the air! I doubt he survived, but he could have moved to land on the stairs.”

  “So he might already be at the graveyard? And Youlang is somewhere in the Pitfall and…”

  “The others probably weren’t eaten by Abaddon either,” the titan destroyer said, finishing my thought. “Takes a long time to fall down there. They could have thought of something. The lopher has Sail from his elephant ears. Sounds stupid, sure, and he won’t fly like Dumbo, but… Caville has his version of a paladin bubble too, he could use that to survive the fall and escape from Abaddon. So nothing is certain yet.”

  “I’m going to go check the graveyard,” I said.

  Leaving my allies, I returned to the churchyard and hovered, looking for friends and foes and considering what to do next. The optimal decision was to hide my allies somewhere in the Pitfall, then come back and neutralize our enemies. But how? Stay here all day killing each one dozens of times? Or throw them down to Abaddon in the hope that not all of them would survive the fall?

  No more of our own people had resurrected. On the other hand, I could clearly see the enemy leaders: Marcus, Urkish and Caville. Only Youlang and Inchito were absent. If they survived, then they must have been in the Pitfall still.

  One after another, the last of the raid’s rank and file appeared and huddled together.

  “Join arms!” Marcus commanded. “So he can’t carry us off one by one!”

  Two more contestants joined the ranks of the survivors. Marcus’s raid was now assembled. The strongest were arrayed on the outer edge of the ring, with shields, knives and pikes held before them. The mages and healers hid behind them. They were all joined in a single whole, their arms locked together.

  “Hunters, launch Signal Flares!” Marcus’s command rang through the graveyard. “Scyth could be in Stealth! Shamans, cast Slow Totems! Mages, cast shields and Tearing Sparks!”

  Tiny sparks filled the air like a cloud of diamond dust, knocking me out of Stealth. Activating Clarity, I flew upwards and turned invisible again. The perimeter of the graveyard lit up with the hunters’ Signal Flares, which revealed anyone invisible.

  They saw me, shouted in preparation for battle, but I’d seen enough already. I flew back to my allies.

  Once we were in the same raid, the crafters finally noticed me. Sighs and shouts of relief came from all over:

  “Finally! Just in time! Any longer and you’d have nobody left to save!”

  Bloomer shook my hand, gritting his teeth:

  “Scyth! I’ve never felt so powerless! Avenge us!”

  “Bloomer is right,” Meister rasped, casting a rage-filled glance at the graveyard where our enemies huddled. “What are you waiting for, kid? Why are they still alive?”

  “All in good time,” I answered. “First I’ll take you somewhere safe, then vengeance and all that good stuff. I promise you, they won’t live out the day! Now let’s go!”

  I hesitated, considering whether to use Tactical Retreat, but chose to save it. There was no direct threat to my allies right then.

  We decided to leave through the forest. The scouts moved out first: Naiterio the druid and the two rogues Filex and Berstan. Behind them walked the others, staying thirty paces back. I stayed behind to cut off the pursuit. If anyone from Marcus’s raid decided to attack, they’d regret it.

  Only Quetzal stayed with me, looking from side to side.

  “Nobody else is coming. Let’s go. Strange. Two of my people aren’t here even though they’re alive.”

  Yesterday, there had been almost a hundred and forty people across the raids of Meister, Quetzal and Hellfish. Now there were only around thirty. And Infect was still in the group.

  “Tissa got zeroed in front of me,” I said. “Where’s Infect?”

  “Hiding somewhere, I think,” Quetzal shrugged. “The map here only shows groupmates in the same zone as you. The raid chat works on the same principle too. Anyway, catch us up…”

  The enemies in the graveyard were clearly preparing to attack: silhouettes of fighters flashed with raid buffs and elixirs.

  Even I couldn’t survive against almost a hundred top players ready for battle, and that meant I couldn’t protect my allies. There was just no way. Any control spell, stun, paralysis, and I’d be out of the running for at least a little while. And then the losses would pile up.

  After checking that nobody was following us, I caught up to my people and landed next to the leaders of the allied raid. Knowing perfectly well that they were all a burden to me in that moment, and I could just leave them and concentrate on my own progress and on completing the games, I used all my willpower to push down a voice inside, one that whispered in silken tones that nobody had hired me to shepherd these people. They were all adults, it said; I didn’t have to fight with Marcus — I could just calmly take Despot and go even deeper… I shook myself, casting off the rotten thoughts pretending to be rational.

  There was nothing rational about them! Losing the respect and trust of millions of viewers, abandoning my allies who had sacrificed themselves to save me — it would be suicide. I’d get what I wanted faster, but I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.

  The destroyer and sniper noticed my internal conflict. They seemed to even understand the reason for the doubts plaguing me, but said nothing. Quetzal just reported:

  “We’re going to the Pitfall. Or do you have a better idea?”

  “I do. I can bind our enemies for an hour after death, stop them from resurrecting. Then we’ll be able to head down, get my pet, and, while I deal with the enemy… You’ll be able to go level up. Behemoth couldn’t have sent us a better tank than Despot for floor 100!”

  “Behemoth?” Quetzal raised a brow.

  Hellfish, a priest of the Sleepers, caught my eye and gave a slight shake of his head.

  “A little swamp god I once knew,” I answered. “If this works, our path to the Pitfall will be open, and Marcus will be stuck in the great nothing for an hour.”

  “What happened with your pet anyway, kid?” Quetzal asked. “Where’d you lose him?”

  I told them about the gate seal on floor 531 and my futile attempts to remove it.

  “There’s an easier way,” Hellfish said. “Gate seals below floor 100 are usually removed by the whole raid.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You join hands,” he shrugged. “The damage gets split between everyone equally, taking away the same percentages. That’s how the lower gates are opened, at least without defensive abilities. But the boss aggro still goes to the one touching the seal.”

  “The boss won’t touch any of us on floor 531,” I promised. “I have enough strength now to take two people flying with me, but I can’t risk you. Won’t take long for our enemies to figure out that they aren’t about to be attacked, and come looking for us. For you, that is. And I’m no superman here, not even a Threat. I’m vulnerable even with all my skills…”

  “We noticed,” Quetzal nodded.

  As one raid, we walked through the village gates, kindly left open by the NPCs, then walked straight through the settlement, sending ducks and geese flying. That was the shortest path to the Pitfall. The locals watched us go curiously, but didn’t risk questioning us.

  Noticing that my spirit bar was almost full, I stopped.

  “Wait here. I’m going to pay Marcus a visit.”

  “Your
bar’s refilled?” Hellfish said, chuckling in understanding.

  “Something like that. Just one little problem left to solve…”

  Marcus’s hundred-strong raid was unlikely to fit into the thirty-yard radius of the soul trap. I needed to somehow get them to clump together… But how?

  I wanted to squeeze as much as I could out of the situation. When I attacked Marcus’s squad after the drop into the Pitfall, rage had spurred me on. I was hasty, overconfident. I put all my hopes in Clarity and Abaddon instead of playing to all my strengths. Now I had time to analyze my errors and calculations.