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

by Dan Sugralinov

  Even Behemoth in his most terrible incarnation looked like a cute puppy in comparison to the boss of floor 594, Multifacet. He seemed to consist of a pair of massive leathery wings with a formless mass of monstrous faces between them.

  I flew on, trying to forget the sight. Despot kept up, mentally commenting:

  “Multifacet can adopt the form of his enemy, gaining all their strength! You can’t let him get within nine paces, or else…”

  Winding through the corridors, we reached a spacious cave with several passageways leading off it. Destiny appeared in the furthest and narrowest:

  “Over here!”

  I flew in and saw a sixty-foot-long straight tunnel, around nine feet across and twelve high. Despot had crawled after me through passageways like this in his labyrinth, although those might have been a touch wider. Stopping halfway in, I turned. Despot had completely covered up the entrance from the other side of the tunnel with his body. Almost — his angular frame still left small gaps here and there.

  “Hold on, ally,” I said, trying to support Despot.

  All my allies bristled with weaponry. Anna gripped a silver spear, Meister — his sabers. The ogre Niceguy held a javelin, and hobbit Nobu wielded a slingshot. Hellfish fashioned something of a barricade out of a couple of boulders and took up position behind it, his eyes narrowed. Destiny focused, released her bowstring.

  “They’re coming!”

  That got the others going — like it or not, everyone was ranged now. Even Quetzal had to get the hang of a crossbow taken from one of the Markers. I checked my spirit bar — enough for ten ranged hits at this distance. But if I got a little closer…

  I returned to the tunnel.

  “Keep left, Scyth!” Hellfish shouted behind me. “Don’t block the view!”

  Flying along the left side and reaching Despot, with his halberd arms stuck into the stone to keep himself grounded, I looked into the boiling mass behind him. The system labels shifted constantly, but the most frequent one was:

  Multifacet, Demon, level 594 Gate Guardian

  Dungeon Boss.

  “Despot…” I shouted. “On my command, move your right arm out of the way!”

  “It will be done…” the demon growled. His body twitched and slowly shifted towards me under the pressure of the demonic mass.

  Three… Two…

  “Now!” I shouted, and as soon as I saw a gap wide enough for me, I went into Clarity.

  I had to stretch myself tall and breathe in to fit between my ally and the wall. Feeling Despot’s chitinous spines scratching my body, I went through with my arms raised before me, came out head first and face to face with a disgusting visage — one of many. Multifacet’s long neck stretched out, and the head was just at the stage of transforming into Despot.

  Crunch! echoed out fifty-four times — that was how many moves my Fast Combo included, strengthened by the Talon. Next, while the combo was on cooldown, I fired off Storm Fists at the boss. The game mechanics allowed me to deal damage without missing.

  Unarmed Combat level increased: +12. Current level: 75 (rank II).

  Accuracy and damage of strikes dealt without a weapon increased by 1320%.

  Spirit: +1,200. Total: 9,790.

  The fact that Multifacet was one of the first strong bosses to arrive was a gift of fate! Thanks to the huge level difference, Unarmed Combat leveled up rapidly, and my supply of spirit along with it! Almost every hit extended my Clarity!

  Strangely enough, I felt even happier that I was dealing barely any damage. In a few sped-up seconds, I had taken down the demon’s health by only… 1%! It was clear why: I was in a raid, and the boss scaled to our numbers!

  The burst of joy was soon replaced by boredom from the monotonous rotation of abilities: Combo, Storm Fists, Combo, Storm Fists again. Multifacet’s life fell steadily. At 54%, the boss stopped transforming into Despot and began turning into me instead. He didn’t have time to finish. As Unarmed Combat grew, so did the levels of my combat abilities and the damage from every strike.

  I reached only level 135, but my raid gained a few dozen levels at once! Magnetism pulled in the self-loading epic Five-Barreled Hellrifle with a sniper scope and infinite ammunition.

  Seeing the loot in the logs, Hellfish cried out, but Clarity just turned the noise into an unintelligible roar. After finishing off a few dozen mobs, I flew out from the gap between the wall and Despot, went back to normal speed. I needed to get rid of my loot to get my Talon back.

  “Despot, block the passage!” I shouted, darting over to the contestants.

  Quetzal checked to make sure Despot’s roadblock was impassable, then stood behind him and tirelessly stabbed with his epic blade at monsters trying to squeeze through.

  “Can I have that rifle, Scyth?” the sniper repeated his question.

  I gave him the loot from Multifacet and sat down to catch my breath. While Hellfish span the high-level epic in his hands and whistled, Nobu the chef and Niceguy the alchemist poured me some invigorating drinks and potions. I unloaded all the loot and went straight back into battle.

  “Despot, raise your left arm!”

  Unarmed Combat had technically reached rank three, but since Path of Spirit had no limits on progress, it showed up differently in my profile:

  Unarmed Combat (rank II): 143.

  Only then did I realize the true power of Path of Spirit. Oyama had spoken of it, but back then I could barely imagine the potential of the path I’d chosen. The illusory eternal rank two of the skill implied that my abilities could now progress beyond a hundred levels! After level 100, Spirit-Crushing Hammerfist of Justice just moved straight to 101 and got a corresponding boost.

  Inspired by the possibilities, I looked at the targets flashing before me and fired off a full Combo, not in Clarity, but in Stealth. I decided to save my spirit and slow time only when I met a strong mob.

  After so many ordinary demons that I lost count of the strikes I delivered to the endless mass of flesh, a new boss hoved into view — Tital, level 372 Fallen Minotaur. The fifteen-foot-tall demon with burning scarlet eyes bellowed, blowing a stream of smoke and fire from its nostrils, its head turning, wide-eyed, with long adamantite blades gleaming in place of horns atop it. The skull was also partially adamantite, and plates of the same protected his powerful torso.

  Sensing me, he stirred, sniffed and leaned down, his face looming over me. I went into Clarity and fired Hammerfists into the minotaur’s head between his horns — sparks flew. The boss was thick-skinned; Rindzin’s Ghostly Talon didn’t pierce the skull. The third strike hit an adamantite plate, and all the damage reflected back at me! The force of it threw me out of the gap. I regained control of my body with Flight and came back, armed with the knowledge that I had to avoid the plates. A few Combos later, the boss was defeated, but an instant before that I saw what his enraged mode looked like: the horns split off from the skull, turned into a gigantic boomerang with razor-sharp edges, and zoomed toward me. Only my superspeed saved me.

  I had reached level 156. The rest of the raid were all over 80. For the first time since Youlang activated the pentagram, I felt hope that we had a chance to survive the day. Our key to that was now emitting his ‘groghkhr’ noises unceasingly. Despot groaned and strained, but stayed whole — the demons couldn’t deal damage to him, and his bony spines and halberd arms stuck into the stone helped him stay in place. We just needed the tunnel itself to withstand the onslaught of the monsters.

  The loot from Tital was an epic boomerang which nobody wanted except the hobbit chef Nobu.

  “Better than my slingshot,” he said, inspecting the weapon. “Those stones weren’t even doing any damage…”

  The next big target was the boss of floor 289, an ordinary two-headed demon called Seimur. The creature cast Dance of Death, spinning around and striking simultaneously with lashes, hooves and tail. He presented no problems.

  The thing that was supposed to kill us and make Youlang a champion as she hid somew
here up in the chasm had become a gift of fate. The most powerful bosses apparently couldn’t fit through the dungeon gates. Huge mobs also couldn’t get through the narrow corridors of floor 21. After all, the upper levels had weaker bosses and smaller mobs. The space in the instances matched the mobs’ size.

  After Seimur the demon was down, I met the three Companions, the already familiar bosses from floor 50. A few days prior, those three goat-faced bosses had nearly killed me, and then helped me take out a group of mages.

  “Y-o-o-o-u-u-u! M-o-o-o-r-r-r-t-a-al! M-i-i-i-i-ne!” came their hissing from behind Despot.

  “O-u-u-u-ur-rs!”

  “Foo-oo-ood!” they cried over and over, trying to pull me through with their harpoons.

  They were unsuccessful, of course. I was over four times their level and took them down easily, one Hammerfist for each.

  I’d been constantly tense so far, but now I started to realize that the demons’ bite wasn’t as bad as their bark, and I relaxed. That was a mistake. The nightmare came from the apparently weak bosses of floor 60. The Atlings, the two-foot-long worm-like leeches that had helped me knock the Readers out of the Games on two day, easily slid through the gaps between Despot and the walls.

  There were precisely as many Atlings as there were members of our raid, and I couldn’t hold their aggro — each slimy leech chose a target and tried to stick to it. The instance filled with wild screams — Destiny shrieked as she trampled one of the disgusting creatures. Nobu’s epic boomerang flew this way and that with a whistle above the battlefield. Quetzal wiped one of them across the floor, but two appeared in place of the one, and while Quetzal killed the first, the second stuck to him. The titan’s health bar began to drop. Each slime we took down split into two smaller ones, which caused even more problems.

  Clarity was essential. I sped myself up and rushed to help my allies. Everything slowed for me, and I had time to assess the situation. Kara, covered in the creatures, tried to cast a spell, but couldn’t: the slimes must have been interrupting it. I flew to Alison, who was desperately trying to heal both herself and the others, pulled back my arm to strike, but lowered it again. The Talon would pierce through not only the leech, but the girl’s skull too.

  I had to work by hand: I started pulling the creatures off one by one, and only then killed them. Then I saw how fast they split into two. Now there were even more Atlings! Good thing their health dropped proportionally…

  A few minutes later, the floor was teeming with rapidly darting leeches jumping at us. Once they stuck to a body, they immediately began sucking up blood. My spirit was going down too, and I hadn’t even killed a single one to the very end. We were all covered in low-level slimes, which didn’t seem to care that I was almost double their level! The creatures sucked out health in percentage values, which meant even I was in danger, especially since I still had to be the first obstacle in the path of the other demons who broke through.

  “Kara!” I shouted, pushing a pig-like monster back from the raid. “Hit the bastards!”

  “I can’t!” Kara shouted. “The damn toxin! The DOT breaks the cast!”

  While Michelle and Alison healed the raid with instantaneous, but weak casts, Quetzal used area abilities to crush the leeches on the floor. Koba, Yen, Hellfish and Destiny loosed volleys of arrows. Joker’s bombs were the biggest help of all. Shame they blew up friend and foe alike.

  Fortunately, after their sixth split, the Atlings finally died. In the end, we lost four: Niceguy, Hellfish, Bloomer and Meister. The poet nearly cut his own leg off while slicing through the worms. But we did it. I had placed Spirit Shackles to revive the dead in place, which saved them from getting zeroed by Abaddon at the bottom of the Pitfall.

  Right after the battle, Hellfish accused Nobu of not helping him pull off the Atlings stuck to his back, although he was the nearest. The werewolf lost a level from that, but he could have been knocked out of the Games entirely!

  “What could I do, with my boomerang?” the crafter asked, shrugging. “It got stuck into the floor and I had to pull it back out…”

  “You could have stamped on them,” Anna said dryly. “Or used another weapon!”

  “He knows that, he was just looking out for his own skin,” Hellfish muttered. “Right, half-pint?”

  “Don’t argue,” I said, heading back into battle.

  After that, it all blurred into an endless stream of battles and breaks behind Despot’s back while the crafters filled me with elixirs, buffed me and sent me back into battle to level up the raid.

  It reminded me of farming the Lakharian Desert, but it was far superior to that experience. There were so many demons that they filled the cave outside the tunnel to the ceiling, unable to resist the call of our mortal souls.

  I turned into a machine of mayhem, striking every second into the shifting mass of flesh, scales, claws, fangs, horns, bones and rough goat’s fur. I backed off only to avoid dying. I didn’t bother entering Clarity except to get out of combat in time…

  We didn’t just survive the demons’ Freedom Day; in six hours, we gained enough levels to be ready to face Abaddon himself.

  The raid was around two hundred levels below me. I was at 636. Now I was higher-level than my character in big Dis, but not stronger, because the levels here gave only one free point for main stats instead of five. And the same for class stats — charisma and luck. Unity didn’t apply here either, of course.

  Scyth, level 636 Summoned Herald

  Main characteristics:

  Strength: 270.

  Perception: 146.

  Endurance: 166.

  Charisma: 649.

  Intellect: 16.

  Agility: 117.

  Luck: 696.

  Secondary characteristics:

  Health: 2,744,976.

  Mana: 132,288.

  Spirit: 26,530.

  Defense: 85,860.

  Health restoration rate: 105,576 per minute.

  Mana restoration rate: 10,176 per minute.

  Spirit restoration rate: 498 per second.

  Base damage: 34,344.

  Spell strength bonus: 16%.

  Movement speed bonus: 50%.

  Dodge bonus: 50%.

  Carrying capacity: 2,700 kg.

  Merchant discount: 50%.

  Critical hit chance: 50%.

  With the increase in levels, I reached the cap on movement speed, dodge and critical hit chance. In spending points on my main stats, I focused on strength, knowing the importance of base damage.

  Along with the bonuses from Unarmed Combat, Hammerfist and Rindzin’s Ghostly Talon, each of my strikes now dealt around ten million damage, although some was reduced by the defense and armor of the bosses, and some from their innate abilities.

  All my key skills had shot up:

  Unarmed Combat (rank II): 249.

  Ghastly Howl: 84.

  Imitation: 13.

  Cartography (rank I): 57.

  Lethargy: 6.

  Meditation: 16.

  Night Vision (rank II): 78.

  Liberation: 8.

  Stealth (rank II): 81.

  Resilience (rank III): 32.

  I could now spend over four minutes in Clarity. Every new level of Path of Spirit added a hundred extra spirit to my reservoir.

  Night Vision didn’t offer any development paths, but at rank two it took on an additional property, apparently raising damage in the dark, in which I now could see clear as day.

  The mechanics of Resilience’s Path of Justice in the Cursed Chasm differed from those in greater Dis. There were no penalties for level differences here, so the Path just cut away half the damage from enemies of a higher level before any other damage-reduction mechanics kicked in.

  As for Ghastly Howl, it had a strange effect on demons. Firstly, it didn’t scare the bosses at all. Secondly, instead of running around in Fear, normal demons started howling. Good thing they did at least that instead of just continuing to fight…

  As soon
as the Freedom Day event ended, the surviving demons instantly teleported to their dungeons. Only in the descending silence did I realize how nightmarish was the sound the roaring brotherhood made in its thirst for mortal souls and flesh. I sighed in relief.

  Despot crawled into our dead-end corridor, groaning and swearing. The demons had almost pushed him all the way back, so he didn’t have far to go. Deep gouges and holes from the demon’s horns, arms and bony armor yawned all along the tunnel.

  “Holy shit…” Quetzal chuckled.

  “What?” Michelle asked. “Is it all over?”