Blessed Time: A LitRPG Adventure

by Cale Plamann

  Micah hurried to catch up to Brenden and Martin as they left the dungeon. The following week, he was excused from every class. Instead, the three of them went into the dungeon as often as it reset. Micah killed monsters held still by Martin’s water tendrils or Brenden’s daemons over and over again.

  As he gained experience, the accomplishments felt hollow. The skill and progress that he earned weren’t his. They were nothing more than tainted gifts, given to him by the Royal Knights at the price of Bart’s life.

  Finally, he hit level 20. Withdrawing his spear from the imp’s chest, Micah heard a chime that rose steadily in pitch until it became an omnipresent droning whistle. His vision blurred and the floor rocked under him. He sank to a knee, shaking his head to try and clear his senses.

  The noise faded away, prompting Micah to open his eyes. Around him was nothing but dimly lit mist. The floor felt the same as before, but it was the only touchstone of normalcy. He couldn’t see Martin anywhere. He might still be in the dungeon, but at this point, his location was more of a guess than anything.

  “Congratulations, Blessed,” the familiar voice from his class selection emanated from the mist. “You’ve reached your first milestone and are eligible for a class specialty. A series of options will be presented to you based upon your affinities and skill levels.

  “For your achievements in learning the martial art, Wind Spear, you may upgrade the martial art to Uncommon rarity, increasing the effectiveness of all abilities associated with that martial art.” The voice continued its even tone and measured cadence, unperturbed by Micah’s bewilderment. “Due to your increased physical fitness, you may specialize as an athlete and gain additional hit points upon each level-up. For following The Path of the Spear, you may specialize as a spear adept, making you more effective in many small ways with a spear. For your achievements in Wind magic, you may specialize as an Aeromancer, decreasing the mana cost and increasing the effectiveness of your Wind magic. For your achievements in Wood magic, you may specialize as a Healer, decreasing the mana cost and increasing the effectiveness of your Wood magic. For your achievements in Time magic, you may specialize as a Chronomancer, decreasing the mana cost and increasing the effectiveness of your Time magic. For your knowledge and achievements in ritual magic, you may specialize as an Occultist. For your knowledge and achievements in enchanting, you may specialize as an Enchanter.”

  The voice paused as Micah blinked rapidly, inundated with information.

  “Be aware that you may only select one specialty or improvement of a specialty every twenty levels,” the voice said, its tone unchanged. “Please select one of the previously listed abilities or request that they be repeated for you.”

  “Chronomancer.” Micah tried to prevent his voice from cracking. Martin had been clear: Any other specialty would not result in his survival.

  “Granted,” the voice replied, the mist fading away to reveal the chamber of the dungeon he’d been standing in before. Martin stood nearby, attempting to rub some monster blood from the hem of his outfit.

  “Congratulations on your level, Micah.” Martin’s voice didn’t carry any warmth. “Now that you’re done staring vacantly into space, it’s time to move on to the next step of your training. Moment of truth once again, Mr. Silver.” A water tentacle snaked out from behind Martin’s back. “You should be close to full mana right now. If you picked Chronomancer as we agreed, you’ll be able to cast Foresight. Otherwise…” He shrugged.

  “The Royal Knights are fairly keen on following orders,” Martin continued, the water tentacle snaking near Micah. “We aren’t interested in accepting rogue elements into our ranks.”

  Micah glanced toward the tentacle and bit back a sarcastic response. As much as he didn’t enjoy the constant threats, he knew they were genuine. Now wasn’t the time to goad the malevolent killer that held his life in his hands.

  He cast the spell, only stumbling once but quickly catching himself. It consumed over half of his mana, but by his projections from before he’d gained the specialty, it should have taken over 130% of his available mana. The world faded into the rainbow blur of probabilities around him.

  Micah’s eyes widened. He ducked a full half-second before the water tentacle—its tip flattened into an axe head—swung at his neck, traveling at barely visible speeds. He rolled to the side as a hypersonic disc of water drilled through the dungeon floor.

  He pulled himself up into a crouch and raised his spear. Just as he was about to charge, he paused, literally seeing his future-self get pulled apart by a lattice of water blades that sprouted from nothingness around Martin.

  “Good, good!” Martin clapped his hands together, grinning maniacally at Micah. “A Magi managed to dodge two high-speed attacks and avoid rushing into a defensive trap. I’d say that’s proof positive that you had Foresight active.”

  “That” —Micah’s teeth chattered as cold sweat ran down his back—“that was all just a test? You could have killed me!”

  “Would have, boy.” Martin clicked his tongue at him in disappointment. “Sometimes I wonder about your Mind attribute. No matter how much we tell you that the Royal Knights aren’t a place for the weak, either physically or emotionally, you never seem to properly take it in. You’re more or less one of us now.” Martin began walking out of the dungeon, motioning for Martin to follow him. “If you can cast a fifth-tier spell before your eighteenth birthday, no matter how you got there, you’re qualified to be a junior squire. If you’ve learned anything from me during these past eight months, I want to be clear on the most important lesson. You’re going to have to toughen up. It takes a lot to survive in our organization, but the rewards are more than worth it. Right now? You’ve only gotten your foot a couple inches inside the door.”

  27

  Squire

  “And this will be your room, Squire Silver.” The servant opened the door to a midsized room about twelve stories up in one of the towers. “You’ve been assigned to Ser Osswain for your apprenticeship. Squire Thrakos will be by soon with your first assignment.”

  “Do you know when Squire Thrakos plans to visit?” Micah asked, taking in the snug but well-appointed apartment. “Do I have time to draw a bath?”

  “I would not presume to know what a squire does with their time.” The servant still refused to make eye contact with Micah, instead staring at his immaculately polished shoes. “I do know that it is best not to make a knight wait. The punishment for doing so is quite harsh.”

  “Understood,” Micah replied glumly, walking into the room.

  The door closed behind him with a click as the lock engaged. He sighed. They’d inducted him into the Royal Knights. Micah Silver, Squire Third Class.

  According to Martin, he should be proud. Usually, the Master of Curriculum required test after test, constant proof of skill and loyalty before a Blessed would be made into a squire. Apparently, the magnitude of his achievement and the rarity of his Time affinity allowed Micah to sidestep years’ worth of classes to ensure his “political reliability.” As it stood, Micah had been brought into the Royal Knights at one of the youngest ages in recent memory.

  It didn’t come without a cost. The locked door confirmed that he wasn’t trusted, and even five minutes of conversation with Martin provided ample demonstration that the older man didn’t respect him. He might be part of the Knights, but there wasn’t any sense of belonging.

  Even if they’d made him a member, they’d conferred none of the rewards normally associated with joining the organization. The Knights considered him useful, an asset and nothing more. Martin had so much as told him that any escape attempts would be punished with either death or dismemberment.

  Micah walked over to the reading desk built into the wall of his apartment. The arrangement was quite cozy; a bookshelf stocked with tomes on magical theory and ritual magic sat just to the left while a magelight hung from a gossamer thread above the table. He only needed to tap it to turn the light on, illuminating the
room without any need for the dangers of an open-flame candle.

  On the desk lay a book, its cover weathered and yellow to the point that he could barely make out the title: Time and Its Uses. He opened the book gently, careful not to pull or tear at its ancient binding. The book was a treatise on magical theory, specializing in Time magic with a handful of spells scattered throughout its length.

  He lost himself in the grimoire. It divided the study of time into two major fields: transferring one’s thoughts and perception forward or backward in time, and the actual energy related to the passage of time itself. Perception was the easiest field to learn, with Foresight and Time Echo being the two most discussed introductory spells.

  Time Echo was intriguing. Although a fifth-tier spell, it was a much easier spell to learn and use than Foresight, hinting at Martin’s barely concealed antipathy toward Micah. Where Foresight allowed a glimpse into the near future, Time Echo focused on the past events that had occurred at a specific location.

  The user could cast their sight and hearing into the past, rewinding events at up to ten times their normal speed, only limited by the hefty per-second mana cost of the spell. At his current level, Micah could only rewind his vision of a location by a couple hours, but he almost immediately saw how the spell would aid either a diplomat or a spy.

  The sections on temporal energy were even more interesting, albeit borderline useless. Temporal energy was just too powerful and difficult to tame. There were ways to recreate it with mana, but they were simply too energy-intensive to exist as anything more than theories for the scholars to debate.

  The book contained a powerful spell, Temporal Transfer, that allowed a caster to create “age” with mana or to draw “age” from a target into the caster. It was just that it took a full mana pool to create even a month of age, and drawing time into oneself predictably aged the caster.

  With a single knock on the door, Brenden strode into the room. He glanced around briefly before smiling at Micah. It was an ugly thing—his lips were pulled back tight, displaying a mouth full of teeth without a single ounce of mirth.

  “Squire Silver.” Brenden walked over to Micah as he placed a cloth bookmark in the grimoire and set it down. “It’s good to see you so studious now that we’re both squires to the same knight and all. Ser Osswain sent me to get you. He has a task for you, but first, he wants to show you a surprise to commemorate your induction into the order.”

  Micah followed Brenden, thoughts flitting through his mind as he speculated as to the nature of the surprise. Neither Brenden nor Martin were sentimental sorts. Anything they gave him would come with a price tag, usually one far above and beyond what the gift was worth.

  Brenden opened the door with a mocking flourish. Inside was a well-appointed dining hall with five sumptuous meals set out on a beautiful table carved from a single old-growth tree. Micah’s breath caught in his throat.

  “No,” he whispered as Esther bounded around the table toward him, flinging herself into the air to wrap him in a hug.

  “Martin thought you’d like to catch up with your family,” Brenden said with a laugh and a wink. “Once you’re done with lunch, we’ll have them escorted to their new living arrangements and you can begin your project.”

  “You mean—” Micah’s eyes went wide with horror.

  “Squire Thrakos invited us to live on the estate of the Royal Knights,” his mother interjected excitedly. “Apparently, people have tried to use the families of Royal Knights as hostages against them in the past. These days, it’s standard practice to pay their family a generous stipend to relocate so that we can’t be used against you. Of course, we couldn’t turn down such a generous offer, especially if it had the potential to put your work at risk.”

  “Hostages?” Micah turned back to Brenden, his eyes wild.

  “Tragic, really.” Brenden’s eyes danced while he tried to adopt a dour tone. “Families killed and tortured just because a knight wouldn’t cooperate with their captors. These days, we try to do everything we can to prevent such a sad recurrence.”

  Brenden left the room, Micah’s eyes still trained on him. A slap on his back returned Micah’s attention to his family. Trevor’s hand was on his shoulder as the big man leaned in for a hug, engulfing Micah almost entirely.

  “By the Sixteen, you’re huge now.” Emotion choked his brother’s voice. “You’re only seventeen and you’ve probably already passed my level entirely.”

  Trevor grasped Micah’s shoulders, pushing him back a step so he could look him up and down. Micah noticed the shine of unshed tears in his brother’s eyes.

  “You don’t know what the past year has been like, Micah.” Trevor’s smile only wavered slightly. “You didn’t get to come home from the Golden Drakes, so we never really got a chance to catch up, but I’ve been so proud of you. Plus, the minute they announced you were being transferred to the Royal Academy… Well.” Trevor smiled sheepishly, wiping away the moisture pooling around his eyes. “I just couldn’t shut up about you. I think I told everyone at the Lancers about ‘my younger brother, the Royal Knight candidate’ at least twenty times.”

  “It’s good to see you too.” Micah smiled back, trying his hardest to make the most of the moment with his family. “They’ve been working me so hard that I haven’t had a chance to come home and visit. It’ll be nice to have you all close at hand.”

  Trevor shooed Esther away before leaning in close. “What about your boss, that Brenden guy?” Trevor whispered to him conspiratorially. “He’s pretty cute in an overly authoritative sort of way.”

  “What?” Micah sputtered. “By the Sixteen, no. Never. Gods above, I thought you liked girls.”

  “I do like girls” —Trevor winked at him—“but that doesn’t mean I can’t like boys too. I never really spoke up about it back in Basil’s Cove. It’s a smaller city and they frown on alternative lifestyles there. You saw how the housewives treated Mom. Can you think of what they’d do if either of us did anything other than settle down with a nice human girl? Hells, I wasn’t about to date an elf, boy or girl. There’d just be too many rumors.

  “Here” —Trevor smiled, slapping him on the shoulder once again—“things are different in the capital. I don’t know if I’m going to talk to Mom or Dad anytime soon. I know they’re pretty keen on grandkids, but if the right guy comes along...” Trevor shrugged.

  “Squire Thrakos is not the right guy.” Micah shook his head empathetically. “Please. Anyone associated with the Knights should be considered off limits. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes that I can’t talk about, but just don’t. Please.”

  “Spoilsport,” Trevor replied at a normal volume, pulling away from Micah with a laugh. “Come on, lunch is getting cold and it sounds like you still have an assignment this afternoon.”

  After the meal, Brenden led the way to Martin, constantly trying to draw Micah into a pointed and passive-aggressive conversation. Micah knew better than to engage. Brenden just wanted to bait and taunt him about his family. The older man couldn’t help but target Micah’s every weakness. He couldn’t really make out whether Brenden didn’t like him, or if the older man was just an asshole. Either way, he wasn’t keen to start an argument he couldn’t win.

  Together they walked into a laboratory, books and reagents meticulously stored up against its vaulted stone walls. Martin absently waved them in as he put the finishing touches on a ritual circle. At its center, a swarthy man wearing only ragged undergarments struggled against metal bonds holding him to a steel slab. Micah squinted at the man, whose face vaguely triggered a thread of memory.

  “Micah!” the man shouted as soon as his eyes fell upon him. “You gotta tell these guys that it’s all a mistake. Whatever they says I’ve done, I didn’t do it!”

  “Who?” Micah cocked his head to the side, trying to ignore Brenden’s damning smile at his side.

  “It’s me!” The man rattled his wrists against his bonds. “Gheb! The carriage driver? I brough
t you from Basil’s Cove to Bitollan.”

  “This man is a criminal, Micah,” Martin replied indolently, motioning to Brenden, who quickly gagged the struggling man. “He’s a senior agent in the Resistance. Under interrogation with a Truth Seer, he admitted to gathering information and passing it on to dissident forces. He’s already been found guilty of treason.”

  “The Resistance?” Micah asked, frowning slightly. “What are they resisting?”

  “What indeed.” Martin smiled, walking over to a chair within arm’s reach of Gheb and seating himself. “Everything, really. They’re a group of forgotten. Their stated purpose is to acquire ‘equal rights’ for the forgotten, but really they’re nothing more than a bunch of rabble-rousers, trying to create chaos and benefit from the suffering of others.”

  “What is he doing here, then?” Micah asked slowly, his eyes flicking from Gheb to Martin and back.

  “The same thing you are.” Martin smiled. “Serving your purpose in the greater scheme of things. You see, Micah, Brenden told me you’ve begun reading up on the spell Temporal Transfer. What the written grimoires don’t speak of is the theoretical breakthrough made by Karrin Dakkora. Unfortunately, she didn’t have any Time affinity, so she couldn’t act on the theory, but she created a theoretical ritual to amplify Temporal Transfer. One that would allow a caster to transfer years from one target to another.”

  “Every nation has an organization like the Royal Knights.” With a nod from Martin, Brenden handed Micah a sheaf of papers containing the formula for a ritual. “The problem is that it takes years to get soldiers to higher levels. I’ve spent most of my life working my way to level 44. Enough to make me a full Knight, but I know my limits. I don’t have enough time to make it past level 60 in this lifetime.”

  Brenden grabbed a censer full of incense and placed it at Micah’s feet as Martin kept speaking. “Battles between kingdoms are decided by powers between levels 60 and 90. The problem is that anyone at that level is too old. Often pneumonia is more likely to claim their life than an enemy’s arrow.