Blessed Time: A LitRPG Adventure

by Cale Plamann

  A hand shook his arm. Micah looked over at Trevor. His brother rolled his eyes at him.

  “Micah.” Exasperation filled Trevor’s voice. “You were dozing off there. I’m pretty sure I asked you the same question about four times.”

  “Sorry, Trevor,” he replied, crossing his fingers under the table that no one had noticed his wistful bout of nostalgia. “I’ve been working myself to the bone lately and I must be more exhausted than I thought I was.”

  “Fair enough.” Trevor took another sip of the juushk. “I was asking what your class, level, and blessing were. We have a slot reserved next weekend for a level 11 dungeon. Unfortunately, I think we’re a little rough around the edges right now. We could probably take the dungeon on our own, but there might be casualties if we aren’t careful. I know you’re a spellcaster of some sort, and that’s exactly what we’re missing.”

  “Oh,” Micah replied, suddenly noticing that everyone at the table had stopped drinking. He shifted in his seat, a bit uncomfortable with their attention. With everyone else, he’d long ago shed any vestige of self-consciousness, but with his former team… Well, there was just something that brought him back to his first days as a weak and inexperienced neophyte trying to find his way in the scary world of adventurers.

  “I’m a Magi,” he improvised. It was a rare enough class to get him attention, but not so rare as to be a danger to him. No one needed to know he was a Thaumaturge. That was just asking for the nobility to act. “My affinities are mostly related to healing and summoning, but I do have a few combat spells. As for my blessing and level? I don’t think you have to worry about me in a level 11 dungeon. I’ll let you know if we’re near my limits.”

  “A little cocky, are we?” Sarah sniffed her juushk before pushing it away. “Unless you’ve been in a dungeon, you don’t know how quickly things can go bad down there. One wrong matchup and suddenly even a foe weaker than you can leave you beaten and crippled.”

  “I summon daemons.” Micah smiled faintly as Drekt promptly snagged and drank Sarah’s mug. “I don’t even know how to call up spirits or elementals. Onkerts are slightly stronger than Trevor.”

  For a second, no one responded. The only sound was Drekt’s cough as the juushk burned his already-ravaged throat.

  “Trust me.” Micah shrugged. “I know how dungeons work. Being solo doesn’t mean I can’t go delving. It just means I don’t usually have a team with me.”

  “Great!” Trevor slapped him on the back, while the rest of the team mulled over Micah’s words. “Next weekend it is, then. Good to have you on board, Micah!”

  38

  Summoning Something Larger Than Your Head

  Micah threw the reagents on the ground in frustration as the ritual fizzled once again, filling the air with an aurora of strange colors and smells before the circle burned itself out entirely. From the other end of the clearing, Telivern snorted at him.

  “I’m sure this is funny for you, buddy.” Micah rolled his eyes as he wiped the ash covering his hands off on his trousers. “You didn’t brag about being some sort of incredibly powerful summoner only to have every fucking summoning ritual fail on you.”

  Telivern cocked its head and pawed the grass of the grove before pointing its horns at one of the two Brensens lounging in the shade of the trees.

  “No.” Micah ran a hand through his hair. “I can’t use one of them. Onkert are already incredibly powerful for someone my age. If I show too much potential too early, the Golden Drakes or the Royal Family will either kill or enslave me. I’m not a big fan of either option.”

  He sighed. Unless there was a comet he hadn’t spotted, Micah had performed the ritual perfectly. Four failures in a row wasn’t an accident. Something was wrong.

  Tracing his toe in the dirt, Micah went back through his steps. The only thing that had gone awry was the final step. As the temporal energy coursed through the reagents into the ritual circle, the sense of connection to Elsewhere had been off.

  Rather than the boundless power he was used to, the ritual felt like he was trying to force a bucket of water through a straw. As much as he strained, only a trickle of the other plane came through, not nearly enough to complete the casting and open the portal.

  The entire time, he could feel his connection to the two Brensens. Every time he tried to draw on the energy from Elsewhere, they stood in the way. Micah couldn’t be sure, but it was seeming more and more likely that summoning had a maximum limit.

  Still, he couldn’t help but think of the tantalizing feeling that ran through his body both of the times he had summoned the Brensens. Like he was cracking open a door to peek into the splendor of Elsewhere. Something deep inside him whispered that the door didn’t have to be cracked open. If he just pushed, he could open it completely.

  Two Brensens wasn’t enough to fight the Durgh. If that was his limit, as powerful as the daemons were, Micah might as well give up now.

  He opened the Ageless Folio, flipping through his years of notes on ritual magic. Micah’s face furrowed as he looked for an answer, anything that even discussed the problem.

  Finally, he slammed the Folio shut in frustration. If anyone else had struggled with summoning too many daemons at once, they hadn’t committed their problems to writing. Of course, given the cost in life energy for keeping a demon on Karell, it wasn’t surprising that the limits of the magical discipline weren’t properly explored.

  Micah sighed and slumped against one of the large nearby trees. Only he had developed the ability to substitute temporal energy for life energy. If this problem were to be solved, it would be something he’d have to do on his own.

  A wet snout pressed against his cheek. Without looking up, Micah reached out and ran his fingers through Telivern’s fur.

  Acceptance. Reassurance.

  His mind flashed over everything he had. Another chance to rekindle his friendship with his old team. Telivern. His parents and Esther. Micah’s breath came faster, in short and shallow gasps.

  Things were finally going right. He’d now had a chance to avert the invasion and live his life happily until this happened. No one had ever said anything about ritual magic having upper limits. Hells, almost all the reading on the subject heavily implied that the only limits were his skill and ability to supply reagents or power.

  He had too much to give up now. Micah closed his free hand into a fist while the fingers of his other rhythmically ran through Telivern’s fur. Mursa hadn’t set him down this path just for him to shrug and give up at the first sign of difficulty. He might fail, but he wouldn’t give up without a fight.

  Support. Reassurance.

  “Thanks, Telivern.” Micah looked up at the concerned deer. “I don’t know what I’d do without you around to ground me and keep me sane. I think I have it sorted out now. It might not be easy, but I know what I need to do.”

  Micah pulled back both of his hands and opened the Ageless Folio once more. He opened the book to his notes on the Brensen summoning ritual and began jotting down his own annotations. He didn’t need the full ritual, just the segment that opened a deeper and wider portal to Elsewhere.

  Clearly, there was a limiter preventing him from drawing power directly from Elsewhere. That was his stumbling block, the only thing standing between him and an army of daemons warding off the Durgh incursion.

  All he needed to do was cast the ritual so that he could stand before the doorway of power once more. This time, he wouldn’t peer through or take a handful of the other plane’s energy. He would step through himself. With the power of Elsewhere coursing through him, he would be able to anchor the daemons to himself.

  Frantically, for almost six hours straight, Micah worked without rest, checking astrological charts and cross-referencing it with the Folio’s record of the upcoming weather. He copied runes from the Brensen ritual, making slight changes, repurposing the ritual.

  Finally, almost a half-day later, eyes bloodshot and hands shaking from stress and lack of sl
eep, Micah began carving runes into the dirt of the clearing. He took a sip from his waterskin, trying to steady his nerves as he finished the ritual circle.

  Quietly, he began placing reagents from his supply of common materials around the perimeter of the circle. One of the Brensens squawked at him as Telivern looked on with a fair amount of worry in its soft brown eyes. Micah didn’t even notice; all of his focus was centered on the ritual.

  It would work. He just knew it. Already he could feel the power from Elsewhere singing to him, just behind his reach. His eyes flashed, lit by the internal fires of his ambition.

  Micah slapped the Folio shut and took in a deep and ragged breath.

  He reached forward and touched one the great trees ringing the grove. For a second, the trees sang to him their ballads of bygone times. Then the ritual began. Micah’s voice rose to a crescendo as he recited the words from his spidery notes in the Folio. Rune after rune lit up in the circle as an unnatural wind began to blow through the clearing. Both of the Brensens perked up at the scent of Elsewhere borne on those gusts.

  Micah closed his eyes, no longer needing them to sense the ebb and flow of energy swirling around him. The two daemons glowed like suns flanking the vortex of the portal that would ordinarily be used for the summoning. His hands flickered as he gathered the threads of energy, guiding them to the portal and stabilizing it with the skill of a maestro conducting a symphony.

  The Brensens flapped their wings, chirping excitedly as the vortex of energy connected with a snap. Suddenly, the boundless potential of Elsewhere filled the clearing. The wind whipped through his hair as a mad smile erupted onto his face.

  He stepped forward, Telivern’s worried snort unheard beneath the song of Elsewhere echoing through the clearing. The tree shrank visibly as its history and importance were drained from it. Micah lovingly ran his hand over the edge of the burning, hovering ring of energy. It was cool to the touch, sending an electric tingle of power up his hand as he tasted its potential.

  There, he would be without limits. The Drakes and the Royal Family would be ants beneath him as he became a being of intellect and will. The weaknesses of flesh, the weakness of Karell would only hold him back. Without any further hesitation, Micah stepped through, heralded by the crooning of his Brensens.

  His body disintegrated in a lightning strike of white-hot agony. The roiling energies of Elsewhere tore him apart, leaving not even a scrap of blood or cloth behind. For a fraction of a second, he was nothing more than a cloud of dust before his mind expanded, shedding any connection to his previous form.

  The pain forgotten, a new reality stretched past him. Instantly, he recognized the truth of things. Physical form and distance were illusions, invented by the slab of meat between his ears to try and assign meaning to chaos. The mists of Elsewhere took whatever form his will assigned them, changing shape in time with his thoughts and emotions. Here, he could have anything he wanted so long as his mind could shape it.

  Nothing existed except intellect, time, and primal energy. Everything else—Karell, his family, the Golden Drakes, even Jo—were all a lie. A lie told by the gods because they knew that humanity wasn’t ready for the truth. Limits meant to guide wayward children down a path that would shield them from harming themselves in some careless mistake.

  An entity brushed against his mind. In a fraction of a second, he shared a lifetime of thoughts with the creature, a daemon, tasting its curiosity. Its amusement at the concept of mortality. Its confusion at Micah’s limitations, and why he would choose to be restricted to five senses when he could instead sample reality in millions of other ways.

  In that moment, his mind shattered. Micah knew that he’d gone mad by any conceivable metric, but at the same time, those metrics were meaningless. A shackle holding him back. His mind expanded as he observed the cosmos as it truly was.

  A gentle hand reached out of the mists, its solid yet feminine shape a shock in the formless mists of Elsewhere. It brushed the entity he conversed wordlessly with aside. Softly, it touched Micah, a cool rag against the burning coals of his madness.

  Bit by bit, he came back to himself. Concepts such as family, the Durgh, and Jo regained meaning. His goals and ambitions began to solidify and grow once more.

  Silently, the hand withdrew, its work done. Micah took in Elsewhere once more. Its beauty and untapped potential still called to him, but he wasn’t ready. He knew that now. One day, he might join the ageless entities that lurked here, but for now, there were mortal hopes and ambitions that he could not set aside.

  With a flicker of will, his former body condensed from the mist. He merged back into it and willed himself through the portal as it guttered out.

  Micah fell to the grass of the grove, gasping for breath as he tried to frantically fill his empty lungs. Marveling, he looked at his hands, not even noticing that the great tree that he’d used to power the ritual was nothing more than a sapling. They were without blemish. Every scar and stain was gone. He’d been born anew by his own hand.

  He closed his eyes, a smile spread across his baby-smooth face. In the darkness, he glowed just as bright with the power of elsewhere as the Brensens. Instinctively, he knew that his summoning would no longer be limited. He was no longer just an entity of Karell. He existed with a foot in both worlds.

  39

  Being Social

  The Onkert slammed one of the scale wolves against the dungeon wall. Micah lashed out with his spear, willing mana into it to make it wrap around the wolf on top of Will. The monster clawed and bit ineffectually at Will’s stone face and throat while the portly man screamed in panic. It wouldn't be able to harm Will through his blessing until he ran out of mana, but Micah was getting a headache from the man’s shrill yells.

  He yanked the wolf closer to him with his right arm, taking advantage of his increased Body attribute to overpower the burly animal. With his left, Micah cast Paralytic Sting and jabbed his fingers into the soft spot in its scales right under its right foreleg.

  The green glow flowed from his hand into the rust-colored monster, stunning it. Micah flicked his wrist, releasing the wolf from the spear entangling it, and kicked the limp beast over onto its back. Planting his foot on its chest, he thrust the spear into its throat. The wolf shuddered and kicked twice before it went still.

  Micah glanced over to the rest of the party. Trevor was holding one of the wolves at bay with a series of lightning-fast jabs from his spear, drawing its attention while Drekt stepped into position with practiced ease, his cleaver raised to finish the creature off. Jo danced back and forth, darting in and out of the shadows to drag her shortswords across the fourth monster’s flanks. Meanwhile, Sarah put arrow after arrow into any wolf that presented her with an opening, with smooth efficiency.

  He reached down and helped Will to his feet, grunting and struggling against Will’s weight. The man wasn’t light in any form, but turning his skin to stone didn’t help matters. Will reached down and picked up his hammer, his lower lip vibrating as he tried to calm himself.

  “Micah, it—it—” Will blubbered at him.

  “I saw,” Micah replied, his eyes on the other fights just in case another party member needed emergency intervention or a quick heal. “You have to watch out for the tail on scale wolves. They’re heavily muscled and prehensile. Not enough to harm someone wearing proper armor, but more than enough to loop around an ankle and pull you to the ground. That’s a useful blessing you have there—it saved you a fair amount of bleeding and pain today.”

  The Onkert leaned forward, ripping the wolf’s throat out before dropping the limp body to the dungeon’s floor. Drekt slammed his cleaver down to a startled yelp as he nearly bisected the animal. Micah frowned slightly and thrust forward with his spear, slamming a spike of wind into the final monster’s haunch and disrupting a knee-high sweep of its tail that likely would have caught Jo.

  An arrow sprouted from the back of the stunned creature’s neck as Sarah shot it again. The wolf twi
sted around to snap at the attack, exposing itself to another pair of slashes from Jo. It flopped to the ground, the tendon in both forelegs severed by her sudden attack.

  “—bit my throat, Micah!” He tuned back in to Will’s breathy rambling. Micah knew he should be annoyed, but for some reason, the man’s panicked account was endearing after his years of solitude. “I was stronger than it, but it just kept squirming away from me. I did everything I could, but it kept just biting me. If it wasn’t for my blessing, I would have died, Micah!”

  “I would have healed you in time, Will.” Micah smiled at him. “Don’t get me wrong, it would have hurt like all of the hells at once, and the feeling of the flesh of your throat magically knitting shut while your breath whistles out of you isn’t something you’d forget easily, but other than that, you’d be fine.”

  The rest of the party began to circle around Will and Micah, their eyes straying to where the Onkert crunched and chewed its way through the scale wolf. As far as Micah could tell, the daemons didn’t actually need to eat. For them, it was more a matter of pleasure. They enjoyed the taste of blood and flesh, the act of taking life.

  “Thanks for the save on Will, Micah.” Trevor grinned at him before crouching down next to the corpse of the scale wolf that Micah had paralyzed and slain. “That’s a clean stab there. How’d you manage it?”

  “His spear bent around it.” Sarah frowned slightly as she looked from the Onkert to Micah. “He pulled it off of Will in one quick motion before he stunned it and killed it.”

  “What she said.” Micah chuckled weakly. “He looked like he was having a bit of a rough go of it, so I stepped in just in case.”

  Drekt frowned and picked up the corpse with some difficulty. Jo whistled as the big man’s biceps bulged with effort.

  “What level are you again, Micah?” Trevor asked a bit uneasily as he looked from Drekt to Micah. “Hells, how did you find a spellcasting class that improves your physical attributes? I thought you were just bragging earlier, but it looks like you have the levels to back it up.”