Titan: A LitRPG Adventure (UnderVerse Book 4)

by Jez Cajiao

  “I…” I started, only to have Yen call out as well.

  “You already got jumped once, Jax…” she pointed out, and I grunted, then started to laugh.

  “Yeah, alright, that’s true…” I said, rolling my shoulders and looking ahead. “But you can’t keep up with me.” I took a deep breath and activated ‘Mana-Overdrive’.

  I was getting a better handle on it, I knew that now; I could feel it. Instead of the frantic sensation that had met me when I first started to use it, my very atoms vibrating at an insane rate, I felt a difference flowing through me as I crouched, then exploded forward into the oncoming undead.

  My muscles seemed smoother. Each movement was enhanced, but instead of the jerky, powerful motions I’d experienced before, it seemed somehow more refined, like going from an old diesel engine from the seventies to a slick modern car, the graceful momentum building as power was supplied from the engine to the wheels. I felt vitality humming through me, and I almost danced through the undead.

  Effortlessly, I slipped between two of them, ducking beneath their outstretched arms while swinging my naginata around to behead them both easily, then darted forward. It was as though they were moving through treacle, while I danced and struck, beating their clumsy counters aside.

  The Xon’dike pair were next, and I ran straight at them, planting the base of the naginata on the ground and using it like a pole, vaulting over to bypass three normal skeletons who staggered, twisting around to follow my flight, as Grizz and Lydia charged forward and struck them down.

  I landed feet first, slamming into the rightmost Xon’dike’s face and sending it hurtling from its feet to land on its back, rocking from side to side in its bowl-shaped shell.

  I kept my balance easily, my body seeming to vibrate with energy, and I spun around, smoothly ducking beneath a jerkily-swung spiked club to sweep the left one’s legs out from under it as well.

  Once it was on its back, like the other, it appeared to be stuck, and while the living versions would presumably have some trick to getting back up, whatever was controlling them clearly didn’t know it.

  I grinned viciously and raced ahead again, channeling a little more magic into my naginata and noting that my mana was at thirty percent.

  I had maybe another ten seconds, I guessed, judging by the speed it was dropping, and I started to run, swinging my polearm out as fast as I could, bringing my trajectory around in a half circle and charging back to the rest of the group.

  I moved my arms steadily, the motion more like I was trying to draw a mobius strip with an enormous two-handed pen than anything else. The figure of eight that I carved through the air, aided by my flame-imbued, magically razor-sharp weapon, left devastation in its wake, and by the time I cut off the ability, staggering as the vicious debuff took hold, I was nearly free of them.

  I braced myself as the world seemed to speed back up; everything became harder as the minus ten to all stats debuff kicked in.

  I stumbled, then forced myself forward, grunting and lashing out as something leapt onto my back. I felt sharp fingers digging down into the back of my neck, and I reached up with my left hand, punching blindly.

  I hit something that rocked back but continued hanging on grimly, when Bane appeared before me. I barely had time to register his presence before he was leaping over my head. I felt a tug; then whatever it was, was gone, and I staggered the last few feet to rejoin the rest of the group as Grizz, Lydia, and Bane fell back.

  “Looks like there’s a limit on how many their necromancer can guide at once,” Yen said thoughtfully as she prepared to cast another flaming barrage of spears.

  “W… What…?” I huffed, bending over and trying to catch my breath, nodding my thanks to Arrin as he pressed an open mana potion into my hands. He waited until I downed it and then pointed to the far left.

  “Over there…” was all he said, then he fired a Firebolt in that direction as I straightened and tracked the glowing spell’s trajectory. A few seconds later, the firebolt slammed into the wall about three feet from an open doorway leading off into the darkness.

  “Oh, fuck yes,” I whispered, taking another deep breath as I felt Oracle struggling with a healing spell, obviously aiming to get me back to top condition again as quickly as possible.

  I checked my health, finding it at three hundred and forty-seven of four hundred and sixty.

  “Not bad… I mumbled, then spoke up louder so that all my people could hear. “Right, everyone… we’ve… got a chance! Follow… me!” I ordered, and I charged for the distant doorway, hoping I wasn’t leading them all into a dead end.

  “What… were… you saying…?” I huffed at Yen, discouraged that clearly my recent input into Endurance wasn’t enough, as I felt terrible.

  “Whatever’s controlling them,” she clarified, easily jogging alongside me. “If it could control them all at once, it’d just bury us in them, so clearly it can’t. It seems as though it can only directly control a few, maybe a dozen at a time; the rest are given general orders and set away to follow them.”

  “Is that a good thing?” I wheezed, stumbling, before I felt Oracle’s spell hit me, and suddenly the world seemed to grow brighter and easier. I drew in a deep breath and let it out, feeling my mind become clearer again.

  “What the…” I muttered, looking over my shoulder and seeing the group following along. Turning back to face the doorway, I saw Bane appear and tear through first one, then two, then three of the undead, clearing the path.

  “Poison,” Oracle said grimly. “That last one on your back injected some kind of poison into you.”

  “Fuck,” I muttered. “I didn’t realize…” I said lamely.

  “Neither did I, until I’d already started casting, but that got rid of it, luckily.” She hovered alongside me. “We need to find somewhere to rest and recover; we can’t keep this up for long.”

  “I know,” I agreed, watching as the spell cleared my last few points of damage away, and then I felt it: the relief of the debuff fading away, and everything became just a bit more manageable again.

  We reached the doorway without any more incidents as Bane cut us a path. Glancing back, it was clear that the glow from the charged magelights we’d scattered were being blocked by hundreds of bodies, and I swore.

  “We need to get out of here.” Tired agreement rose from the rest of the party. We had no idea what the new passage led to, but the best thing about it was that it wasn’t this goddamn room.

  I hoped.

  “Grizz, Bane, Tang, lead the way down that corridor. Yen, Lydia, Jian, you’re with me on rear guard. Miren, Stephanos, Arrin, you’re in the middle; hammer those fuckers when and where you can,” I ordered, and we got moving. There was a little confusion as people started to shift around, but in a few seconds, we were all working cohesively.

  The flickering shadows thrown by the growing avalanche of the undead moving past the magelights threw strange patterns around the surrounding structures, and the walls seemed to writhe as we ran, the eerie silence of the undead mass broken only by the occasional clatter or snap as bones were broken, metal harnesses jangled, or weapons clattered against something.

  We ran, with Grizz and Bane vanishing into the corridor first, Tang mere seconds after the others, and by the glowing light of Grizz’s magelight, we could see them taking down stragglers in the corridor. Meanwhile, Lydia, Yen and I jogged backwards, watching over the rest.

  Miren and Stephanos had sprinted ahead, getting to the corridor close on Tang’s heels, spinning around to take aim, then firing arrow after arrow into the oncoming mass.

  Occasionally, one of the undead would collapse, the arrow having taken out the head, but more often than not, the bolts simply knocked them down to be stomped by the oncoming tide.

  “Okay, get inside!” I ordered them, and they fired a last arrow each before rushing after the others, followed by Yen, as Lydia and I backed into the corridor.

  The first of the next wave had re
ached us then, and Lydia’s mace proved to be a far superior weapon in the confines of the corridor as we battled side by side.

  The space was too tight for my naginata to be wielded properly, so instead I flipped it over and started using the weighted, blunt end to shove them back. Each time they’d run at me, I’d wait, then stab out, aiming for a knee or skull, either slowing them down or knocking them from their feet, while Lydia killed any she could.

  As the corridor continued to lengthen, I eventually gave in, and, thankful for the amazing properties of bags of holding, slid the naginata into my Bag of Spatial Folding, tugged my shield out and strapped it to my arm, and started using a sword.

  It wasn’t the best option for the tight confines of the corridor, but I’d been about to use my ‘go-to’ spell Firebolt and realized at the last second that, due to its evolution to ‘Fireball’, it wouldn’t end well.

  “Oracle…” I grunted, stabbing out and deflecting a sword thrust by a rotting adventurer, then shoving their sword further aside and using my shield to bash them back. “… any chance of a little help here?” I continued swiping the sword across the front of my shield to clear away the reaching, grasping hands that tried to rip it free.

  “Jax, I can barely fly and speak right now!” She growled at me, and I swore viciously under my breath.

  “Okay, get ahead, then. Keep an eye on Bane and the others, but stay safe!” I ordered her, and she vanished in a flash, as Yen spoke up from behind me.

  “I’ve enough mana for two more Flamespears…” she said dubiously. “If we ran for it, and then blasted them down the corridor, it’s tight enough that it would funnel them, making them a lot more damaging, like it did to the Drow . I’d need time to cast them, though, and as weak as the structure is in here…”

  “Do it,” I said quickly, shoving forward with my shield again, then stepping back three quick steps and stabbing out at head height, sweeping the blade across in a blind attempt to do some damage. Lydia backed up alongside me, striking out repeatedly for knees and arms, working to incapacitate rather than destroy.

  “It might collapse the tunnel, though…” Yen warned me from behind, and I shook my head.

  “Doesn’t matter; we stay here, we’re getting swamped anyway. If they get buried, they can dig their way through to us while we rest.”

  Yen acknowledged my words with a grunt and lashed out, killing another undead.

  “Get back down the corridor, a hundred meters or so, and start building the spell. We’ll hold them up as long as possible, then we’ll run when you say,” I ordered her, then growled and stepped back before ‘Sparta’ kicking the face of a skeleton that had dragged itself forward under my shield to grab at my leg.

  “Go!” Lydia cried to Yen. “We can hold the line.”

  “Shouldn’t be the fucking lord holding the goddamn line!” Yen spat as she turned and sprinted with the kind of speed and grace only the elven-born could manage.

  “Jax, there’s an almost empty chamber at the end of the corridor. It’s got stairs leading down that are clear, and ones leading up that are blocked…” Oracle’s voice came to me through our link.

  “Fuck! Fine; get Bane to check out the stairs leading down. We need somewhere we can defend, so we’re going to fuck this tunnel up,” I sent back to Oracle, before cutting the mental communication off.

  “Yen?!” I cried to her, stabbing forward again, and biting back a cry as something hit my forearm, somehow gouging into my armor and making me drop the sword. I put my shoulder behind the shield again and drove forward, slamming it into the mass of bodies over and over, trying to force them back, as hands grabbed at the edge of the shield and pulled… hard.

  “Working on…it…” Yen cried back, and a flicker of light began to build from behind us, reflecting dimly off the dark, stained, and scored metal walls.

  “Fall back,” Lydia snapped at me. “I’ve got this.”

  “The… hell you… have!” I grunted, yanking hard on my shield with both hands, forcing back a scream as my right arm flared in pain.

  Whatever had hit it earlier and stripped me of the sword had done serious damage, and the trail of dripping blood was inciting the undead into greater fury.

  More and more bodies slammed into the pair of us as we backed away, and they seemed to have forgotten weapons, uncaring of damage as they reached with their rotting fingers. Flesh cascaded off their corpses as they grabbed and tore at us, frantic to get a solid grip to bring us down.

  “I said…” Lydia growled at me, “… I’ve…” She started to glow a deep ominous red. “…got…” Her breath was coming out in faster and faster bursts as her arm sped up, the mace blurring as it smashed hands, legs, and skulls. “… this!” The last word erupted in a bellow as the light began to pour off her like a star going nova.

  She screamed in rage and lunged forward, striking out again and again, her mace blurring, her shield no longer a defensive armament. Suddenly, it was spinning, lashing out and smashing targets into walls and the floor.

  She took out a skeleton to her right with a mace strike to the side of the head, the skull disintegrating and showering those behind his flying teeth and shards, while her shield simultaneously moved so fast that it slammed into a rotting adventurer on her left hard enough to spin it into the wall, sending it to the floor in a clattering heap of broken bones and armor. A Naga, the flesh sloughing off it as it coiled its tail beneath itself, saw the opening and dove forward, only to meet Lydia’s foot.

  She’d kicked out with an insane amount of force and booted the creature full in the chin as it lunged forward, sending it soaring upwards to hit the ceiling with shattering force. The lower jawbone turned into splinters as the rest of the skull flew away into the distance somewhere, ricocheting into the enemy.

  Before the shamblers could recover from the sudden assault, she was driving through them, mace striking out over and over again, smashing one skeleton after another aside, her shield taking on all comers, even as she punched, kicked, and headbutted any that stood in her way.

  For five seconds, all I could do was gape, seeing for the first time what it must be like for others when I used my Mana-Overdrive, as she became a full-on tornado of destruction.

  Then her light began to dim, her breath began to come in short, fast gasps, and she staggered, nearly falling.

  “Run… damn you!” she hissed at me, and I did.

  I lunged up the dozen steps to reach her, grabbing her by the shoulder and spinning her around, then driving my shoulder into her gut and lifting, hoisting her fully armored form onto my shoulders and grunting as I felt something twang in my back.

  I staggered, then bit down on my pain and thrust my left hand out, trusting to the straps on my shield to hold it in place as I fired a Fireball off, practically at point blank range into the reeling, uncoordinated undead.

  Whatever was taking personal control had been too slow in changing to new minions when the last lot were killed, and I managed to fire it through a gap in the front lines into a particularly diseased looking minotaur three rows back.

  The Fireball hit him in the middle of the chest and washed out, the blast wave stripping the remaining scraps of leather, flesh and straps that had covered it, and it staggered back before detonating in a growing rose bloom of flame.

  I’d already turned, glad Oracle had managed to heal me all the way, and I triggered Mana-Overdrive again, conscious that I was doing myself damage, but having no choice in it, as I forced my muscles to not only carry me and my full Legion-armored weight, but to transport Lydia in her heavier Legion armor. I managed to run for a few dozen steps before I started to stagger again, sheer bloody-minded determination all that was keeping me going.

  I pressed onward as fast as I could, while Oracle took up station next to Yen, preparing a second Fireball and hurling it over my shoulder into the mass of undead that seethed and rumbled behind me.

  “Jax! Move it!” Oracle screamed in my mind. “They’re jo
ining together to form a Behemoth!”

  I got a confused welter of images through our link as I strained forward. Glimpses came through, of bones slamming together, leather and armor, weapons and gear flying apart, being discarded in the frantic rush of something that was determined we wouldn’t escape.

  The bones were melding together, absorbing the trail of shattered minions and the oncoming intact undead alike. All were dragged into the forming colossus, and for the first time, I heard a sound from the undead, as something screamed out in rage and hunger from behind me, making my eardrums vibrate with the force of its hatred.

  I staggered along, desperate to reach Yen, and I could see the strain that holding her spell was having on her. Five glowing spears, each at least six feet in length, wrapped in flames and glowing a roiling mix of yellow, red, white, and blue hovered above her head, quivering in the frantic need to be unleashed.

  The sweat was running down her cheeks and she was shaking, her hands uplifted and braced in place, as though she was physically holding the spears back. The magical projectiles surged forward and back, restrained only by her will.

  Ten meters… seven… I staggered again, pain radiating from my back, my thighs, my shoulders, as I forced myself to put one foot in front of the other, pushing off with all my strength, rushing along as fast as I’d ever run on earth, but now I had the weight of a fully armored tank on my shoulders, one who weakly pleaded with me to abandon her, to leave her behind.

  “Not… today!” I grunted, five meters…three… I stumbled past Yen, catching sight of Miren and Stephanos, who were firing arrows into the forming creation. Jian and Grizz grabbed at Lydia, dragging her free of my shoulders and passing her further back as I fell, catching myself on the wall and groaning in pain.

  “Motherfuckers!” Yen screamed, throwing her arms forward as soon as I was past her, and the five spears flashed along in concert, slightly staggered to increase their damage. They cut through the air with a violent whistle and whine, picking up speed as they flew.