Blessed Time: A LitRPG Adventure

by Cale Plamann

  Micah cast Heal once more, targeting the daemon riding the bucking centaur. Instinctively, as the spell took hold, he could feel the damage from the heat aura accumulating on his summoned monster. Already, it’d lost more hit points than Micah even had.

  He winced as another gush of blood from the Behemoth soaked the Brensen, the scalding liquid shaving off another fraction of its total hit points. Luckily, the daemons regenerated and were fairly resistant to environmental stressors such as extreme heat and corrosion. Without their resilience, the entire battle would have ended almost fifteen minutes ago and Micah would already be dead.

  The Brensen at the Behemoth’s feet ducked under the huge creature as it failed in its confusion, slashing its underbelly with both of its deceptively sharp bone claws. Micah hurried behind a boulder and began recovering his mana. The last thing he needed was for the Behemoth to fire another swarm of needles, any one of which could kill him in a single shot if they hit him cleanly.

  There wasn’t much he could do other than heal his daemons. Even though his Air magic held the advantage against the Earth magic that powered its rusty iron armor, Air Knife didn’t pack enough of a punch to actually damage the boss. Of course, his Wood magic was completely pointless against it. The fire aura around it held the advantage, and any Wood spells he cast would be negated before he could even finish them.

  That said, he wouldn’t need to step in. Micah couldn’t see the Behemoth’s HP, but it was covered in wounds and visibly tired from the daemons’ harassment. So long as he fulfilled his support role and kept healing the daemons, it was only a matter of time before they brought the creature down.

  A bellow rang out as one of the Brensens did more damage to the Decrepit Behemoth. Micah smiled as Telivern walked over to him, lowering its head slightly. He ran his hand through its off-white fur.

  Accomplishment.

  “Almost, friend.” He chuckled slightly. “The daemons have everything in hand. Pretty soon, all we’ll have to do is collect the experience and rewards and then we can head back to the cave.”

  Discontent. Unnatural.

  “I know you don’t like the Brensens, buddy.” He scratched Telivern behind the ear. “Just trust me that there isn’t another way. Something big is coming, and they may be our only way to fight back.”

  Acceptance. Discomfort.

  “I just wish I could control a couple more of them.” Micah frowned slightly. “None of the books say anything about a maximum number of creatures that can be summoned at the same time, but I think that’s because no one tried to summon daemons this powerful at a level as low as mine. I’m pretty sure that summoning is tied to my Mind attribute. Unless I do something drastic, I’m going to need to gain a fair number of levels before I can summon a third.”

  Confusion.

  Before Micah could answer, the ground shook. Glancing over the boulder, he took in the Decrepit Behemoth, splayed out on the ground and soaked in its own steaming blood. One of the Brensens grasped the rusted-over iron plate surrounding the monster’s throat and tore into it with its hooked beak. A couple of seconds later, his status updated, displaying the huge amount of experience he’d gained from his contribution to the boss’s death.

  Checking his status, he smiled grimly. One more level until he could learn his class specialty once again.

  Micah Silver

  Age 16 [ERROR] / 26

  Class/Level Thaumaturge 19

  XP 4,100/15,000

  HP 355/390

  Attributes

  Body 10, Agility 10, Mind 33, Spirit 33

  Attunement

  Moon 13, Sun 2, Night 10

  Mana

  Moon 209/810, Sun 562/788, Night 503/804

  Affinities

  Time 10

  Wood 6

  Tier I - Refresh 10, Mending 9, Plant Weave 9

  Tier II - Augmented Mending 10, Root Spears 11

  Tier III - Heal 6

  Air 5

  Tier I - Gale 7, Air Knife 15, Air Supply 4

  Tier II - Wind Shield 6, Sonic Bolt 8

  Tier III - Updraft 2

  Blessings

  Mythic Blessing of Mursa - Blessed Return, Ageless Folio

  Skills

  Anatomy 7

  Enchanting 11

  Fishing 1

  Herbalism 5

  Librarian 5

  Ritual Magic 17

  Spear 11

  -Wind Spear 8

  Spellcasting 23

  He chuckled. Thaumaturge really was a broken class. He wouldn’t even need a ritual to cast Foresight. Between his incredibly high Mind attribute and level in Spellcasting, the spell would cost roughly half the mana it had when he was at the Academy. That fact, combined with his mana pools being roughly twice what they were the last time he hit level 20, would make the casting of the spell a trivial matter.

  Micah stepped out from behind the boulder and walked over toward the altar to Ankros, where the reward for finishing the dungeon had appeared as soon as the boss expired. A book. He shrugged to himself. Books weren’t uncommon, but usually, they just had introductory spell formulae, martial arts, or enchantment recipes. Valuable and powerful items, but not usually something that would benefit Micah at his current level.

  He’d expected a bit more from the Cavern of Rust. His last couple of runs had earned him an enchanted suit of chainmail and a gem covered in indecipherable runes that could turn earth and metal into lava if he fed it enough mana. Unfortunately, without a Fire affinity, the process was slow and required an obscene amount of mana. In short, the rewards were usually powerful and valuable, even if he couldn’t directly use all of them.

  Micah picked up the book and turned it over in his hands. The book was simple, only adorned with the word “Haste” and the picture of an hourglass. The leather enveloping the wooden cover was old but well maintained. As Micah opened the book, a smile lit up his face.

  The book’s interior didn’t contain any superfluous information. No page devoted to the scribe. No sheet on the author. Just the spell formula for a fifth-tier Time spell called Haste.

  Quickly, he scanned it, not entirely able to commit the spell formula to memory but gaining a decent idea about its effect. The smile morphed into a full-on grin. Haste sped up the flow of time around a target, allowing them to move and act between 10 and 250% faster depending upon the level the caster achieved in the spell.

  Packing the book away, Micah motioned to the Brensens. Both of them immediately looked up from the corpse of the Behemoth, their beaks soaked in its blood from their feast. He motioned to the exit of the boss’s chamber as he began walking toward the exit. He’d need to drop them off at the grove before he returned to Basil’s Cove to avoid suspicion. Even if the average person couldn’t recognize a Brensen as a daemon, everything about them screamed both power and menace. They wouldn’t just raise questions—a mob armed with torches and pitchforks was more likely.

  Silently, he thanked both Mursa and Ankros. There was no way that spell had been awarded to him randomly. He wasn’t sure which god, but one of them was looking out for him.

  After hours of walking, the walls of Basil’s Cove began growing on the horizon. It was a shame that he couldn’t use his teleportation ritual every day, but given his registration as a solo adventurer, the guards would just assume he’d found a way to sneak in and out of the city and ask him questions about avoiding taxes. It was simpler to just pretend to be a normal adventurer two to three days a week to avoid suspicion.

  Quickly, he joined the line to get into Basil’s Cove, a long, winding thing at the end of the day filled with farmers, adventurers, and merchants waiting for their turn to be inspected and taxed. Just as he was about to pay his attunement and enter the city, a familiar voice jolted him from his musings on the new spell.

  “Micah!” He looked up to see Trevor walking over to him, a big grin on the larger man’s face. “I can’t believe how busy you’ve been as a solo. Still, there’s no excuses now. We’re
both done with adventuring for the day. Nothing to stop us from catching up over a drink.”

  “Sure,” Micah replied, letting a genuine smile creep across his face. Trevor had a point. He’d spent every waking moment since the reset researching or adventuring. He needed to take a minute to relax every now and then or he’d lose his edge.

  “Great.” Trevor punched him on the shoulder and winked. “My new team and I are a bit behind you in line, but if you wait for us inside, we’ll catch up with you.”

  “New team?” Micah asked, cocking his head.

  “Apparently, I tried flirting with the guildmaster’s daughter at a party.” Trevor blushed, scratching the back of his head. “Although everyone but him was amused by it, I’ve been assigned to help protect a squad of new Lancers while they train up to the point that they can handle themselves.”

  “Anyone I’d know?” Micah replied, an uneasy feeling starting to settle in the pit of his stomach.

  “Maybe?” Trevor shrugged. “Do you know a big guy with a cleaver, a guy that can turn to stone, or a pair of sisters? I don’t think I’ve introduced them to you, but everyone but the stone guy has been around the guildhouse a couple times before, so you might have seen them around.”

  37

  An Awkward Reunion

  “Come on, Micah.” Trevor dragged him by his arm as Micah struggled weakly. “No one really cares that you’re sixteen. As long as you have attunement to spend and I vouch for you, I’ll be able to get you into the Lancers’ guild bar.”

  “But—” Micah began, his eyes flicking back to Drekt, Jo, Sarah, and Will bemusedly following Trevor.

  “Nonsense,” Trevor continued, ignoring Micah’s distress. “You can be a solo if you want, but I’m not letting my brother become an absolute loner and a shut-in. My new team are good people and they’re around your age. Mom and Esther worry about you.”

  “Esther?” Micah asked, turning his head to Trevor in confusion.

  “She may be young,” Trevor said, smiling wryly, “but she notices a lot. She keeps asking where you are and saying that you look lonely. Whenever I tell her that you’re training or going on adventures, she points out that I didn’t work anywhere near as hard when I joined the Lancers. She’s right, you know.”

  “I have my reasons for working hard,” Micah demurred evasively. “Can’t it just be enough that I want to raise my levels and skills as high as possible before I join a guild?”

  “Don’t worry about it too much.” Trevor winked at Micah as he pulled him through the familiar front door to the Lancer guild. “Dad and I have always known that you’re the studious one in the family. Ever since you started your apprenticeship at the library, you’ve kept long hours. None of us wanted to make a big deal out of it, but we saw the bags under your eyes and we knew how hard you were working.”

  Trevor chuckled. “Still, you don’t have to be that mysterious about it. You haven’t even told any of us what your blessing is.”

  “It’s more than Common.” Micah smiled, trying to keep his thoughts from straying to the previous timeline. As much as he might want to talk about his gifts with his family, Trevor was a drunk and his mother and sister were notorious gossips. Anything he said would find its way to those in power fairly quickly, and he had enough on his plate without some noble deciding that his refusal to join a guild with his level of blessing marked him as a malcontent or a threat.

  He smiled to himself as he sat at a table in the small Lancer bar. Everything from the odd scents and distressing sticky spots to the initials carved in the wood of the benches was exactly the same as he’d remembered. Maybe Trevor was onto something. He’d spent most of the last couple days talking to a magical deer that probably understood him. He needed some normalcy to ground his life or he’d go insane.

  Laughing at a joke from Drekt, Sarah and Jo sat down at the table with Micah. A moment later, they were followed by a confused Will.

  “I still don’t get what’s funny, guys.” Will’s whining lilt immediately brought Micah back. Quickly, he raised his hand to scratch a cheek, concealing a smile. “I don’t understand why the Duchess would be so upset about her chambermaid cheating on her in that story. She should’ve been mad at the Duke when he admitted that he slept with the chambermaid instead. It just doesn’t make sense.”

  “It’s a joke, Will.” Micah put his hand back on the table and leaned back, finally relaxing slightly as the gentle murmur of the tavern lulled him into letting down his guard. “The point of it was that the Duchess doesn’t give a crap about the Duke. She’s only actually upset with the chambermaid for ‘cheating’ on her by sleeping with the Duke.”

  “But they’re both girls?” Will asked, looking at Micah with an expression that resembled a duckling separated from its mother. “Two girls can’t date. They don’t have the right parts.”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Jo cackled, positively shaking in her seat, “we have our ways. Ways that are often not nearly as quick, disappointing, and messy as other options.”

  “I don’t understand?” Will turned back to Drekt, his face a rippling mass of confusion and furrows. “Why would two women date each other? They can’t have babies and the Church of Luxos says that babies are the only reason for two people to date each other.”

  At that moment, Trevor returned to the table with a wooden plate covered with small metal cups. The unmistakable scent of juushk wafted toward Micah, causing him to pale. His eyes could barely make out the shit-eating grin on Trevor’s face through the bar’s murky lighting as he began to set a cup in front of everyone at the table.

  “I got us the good stuff since we’re meeting up with my kid brother.” Trevor smiled as he pulled up the last remaining stool in their vicinity. “What’d I miss?”

  “Drekt was about to explain the birds and the bees to Will.” Jo giggled as she grabbed the mug of hard liquor. “Well, more specifically, the birds and the birds and the bees and the bees.”

  “Drekt.” Trevor’s eyebrows shot up. “I didn’t know that you were…”

  The big man grabbed his mug and downed it in one quaff with a grimace and a satisfied sigh. Almost gently, he put the metal receptacle down on the table.

  “When you look as Durghish as me”—he shrugged, a flicker of distaste on his massive face—“it hardly matters if you’re a deviant in one way or two. The same people would hate me for either. I do not advertise what I am, but I will not deny it.”

  “Wait.” Jo put her cup back down. “We were just joking around with Will. I didn’t realize that you were gay, Drekt.”

  “Not gay.” Drekt looked wistfully into his empty cup while Trevor’s eyes fixed themselves upon him appraisingly. “Simply more free with who I am. I’m attracted to powerful personalities, and the gender of that person doesn’t seem very relevant to me.”

  “Why are you so surprised, Jo?” Micah asked, glancing dubiously at his own cup before sliding it to Drekt. “Didn’t you just say that you liked women?”

  Jo blushed and quickly took a sip of her juushk, coughing as the acrid liquid hit the back of her throat.

  “I just said that to mess with Will, not that it worked.” She squinted, the flush from the alcohol already starting to hit her cheeks. “Wait, what’s your name? I know you’re Trevor’s little brother, but how do you know my name? I don’t think I ever introduced myself to you.”

  “He knew Will’s name too,” Sarah said, speaking for the first time and cutting Micah off before he could think up an excuse. “Has Trevor been talking about us?”

  For a second, Micah was tempted to use Trevor as an easy out while Drekt distracted him. Ultimately, it wouldn’t get him anywhere. At some point, Trevor would mention that Micah and him really hadn’t had a chance to talk in months and everything would become unraveled.

  He’d screwed up—it was time to make up a story and take his licks.

  “I was, uh…” He struggled for words. Years of isolating himself in a cave reading books might help h
is level, but it really wasn’t the most efficient method of developing social skills. “You guys were talking and telling jokes on the way to the bar. I overheard you mentioning each others’ names. Sorry about that if it was a little weird.”

  Sarah squinted at him. Micah could feel the room warming around him as he tried to avoid her gaze. She didn’t believe him. He could feel it.

  “Give him a break, Sarah.” Jo rolled her eyes as she took another sip of her juushk. “It’s a little weird, but where else would he have heard our names? Nothing else actually makes sense.”

  “I will shoot him if I catch him trying to drink my bathwater or go through my soiled laundry.” She leaned back in her chair, eyes still on Micah. “I’ve had to deal with that type before and it isn’t a pleasant experience.”

  Micah turned beet red as Jo snickered at him. She still looked exactly as he remembered her, slim and pretty with a quirky smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. Everything about her brought him back to their months together, from the way she tilted her head to the clear chime of her laughter. It all crashed into him at once.

  It might be the loneliness from more or less living in a hole with a magical buck, but he missed her. It’d been years of Micah’s time since he’d seen her, but it didn’t dull how he felt around her. His pulse still raced at her jokes and he had to make a conscious effort to not get lost in her smile.

  In his first timeline, Micah might have convinced himself that he was okay with their breakup, but he wasn’t. Intellectually, Jo was right—he wasn’t self-assured enough to be in a relationship with her. Emotionally? Her dumping him had been devastating. Her sacrifice during the Durgh incursion had made everything worse.

  Of course, she wasn’t the same Jo that he knew. To her, this was their first time meeting and he was just the kid brother of her team leader. He winced thinking about Sarah’s accusation, and amended his thoughts. The creepy and possibly stalker kid brother of her team leader.