Seventh Realm Part 1: A LitRPG Fantasy series (The Ten Realms Book 8)

by Michael Chatfield

  “Good!” He patted Erik’s shoulder.

  Erik pulled out his repeater, loading it.

  Roska walked over to them. “We’ll take control of the undead in the area. Make sure you have some people picked out for that. Erik, you want lead on this?”

  “Sure, I’ll take it.” Erik nodded. “I’ve got the domain, which’ll help with seeing everything that’s happening.”

  “Can’t wait to increase my cultivation.” Roska checked her repeater.

  “Yeah, it feels awesome being walking charcoal with silver coming out of your veins.”

  “You bleed silver now?”

  “Bleeds like the fucking rainbow. Looks like blood, but there’s all these flecks of color in it. Like someone injected glitter into him,” Storbon answered.

  “Thank you for making my blood seem like a four-year-old’s clown party.”

  “I had nothing to do while you went full blood donor.”

  Roska snorted at them both.

  Memories, unbidden, came back as Erik slung his repeater. His voice softened. “You remember when we were defending Alva? Like the village?” Erik’s voice softened.

  “Yeah, I thought I was over all that,” Roska said.

  “I was nearly shitting my pants the entire time.” Sadness colored Storbon’s voice.

  Erik let his repeater hang as he flexed his jaw. Neither Roska nor Storbon had any family to speak of. He had relied on them and they had not failed him, rising to the challenge.

  He felt a deep pride in them. It had always been there, but now it hit him with full force. His eyes watered as he lifted his helmet and put his hands on their shoulders, looking at their mirrored lenses.

  “I’m proud of you, both of you.” Shit. Pull it together, man. Maybe this is what it feels like to be a dad?

  He shook his thoughts free and tried to think of how to express how proud he was.

  “That means a lot, bBoss,” Roska whispered as she patted his hand.

  Storbon nodded, but Erik could feel the weight of their sentiments.

  He patted them once more and sniffed, pulling his helmet back into place. “Now, time to earn our pay.”

  “Don’t you technically pay us?” Storbon asked.

  “Terrible fucking investment.”

  The three laughed, storing away the moment, and focused.

  The lift they were on slowed rapidly before it rocked to a stop. They moved sideways with the momentum and recoiled backward, a few stumbling.

  “Off the pad!” Erik yelled.

  They jogged into a series of tunnels, passing through a secret door built into a shelving unit. They took the stairs up two at a time and exited a cooling room that was powered off with the contents removed.

  The first two out of the freezer had their repeaters up, clearing the room.

  “Clear right!”

  “Clear left!”

  The rest of the teams poured out.

  Erik could hear the distant sounds of fighting.

  “Team Four high!” Storbon yelled. They went for the stairs and headed up.

  “See you on the flip side!” Roska said.

  “You got it.” Erik ran up with Special Team Four as Roska pushed Special Team Two out through the ground floor to the street.

  Erik ran with Team Four up the stairs, slamming through the roof access door. Four scanned the other rooftops in the area. Lucinda released her tamed birds to give them overwatch.

  Chaos ruled the skies and land.

  A sword of ice missed a kestrel and hit the city. Ice, like cracking glass, spread over a path a hundred meters long across buildings before it shattered in a frigid shower, crushing the buildings.

  Repeater bolts enhanced with air shot filled the skies. The towers were bastions of fire as kestrels’ door gunners earned their pay.

  The sparrows dove and weaved, hitting the aerial mounts and flying off. Erik couldn’t see the front lines outside Vuzgal, but he could hear fierce fighting.

  Erik closed his eyes for a second. Instead of holding all his power in, he released it. His senses expanded in every direction, through the floor beneath his feet and the door behind him.

  It wasn’t like he could see in every direction, more like he resonated with it. He felt the elements that made up the materials around him: the metals of armor and weapons, the compacted dirt used as tiles, the heat of the sun, the mixture of air. He could so easily call out to those elements, bringing them under his command. He felt the flow of mana through it all. It permeated the world, but it was thicker in the buildings than it was in the air. The members of the special team were beacons of mana density to Erik.

  Erik thought the sensations of a domain were similar to when someone touched another’s arm.

  “Yao Meng, you take this side of the street. I’ll take the north,” Storbon said through the team channel.

  “Got it.”

  Storbon and his four ran and jumped, clearing the thirty-meter-wide street with ease.

  “Good?” Erik asked.

  “Good and ready to rock.”

  Erik flicked to the command channel. “Roska, ready to move?”

  “Yes, boss. Split up into two teams to take either side of the street.

  “Okay, good. We’re heading west, then dog legging north. Move out, Storbon. Yao, make sure you’re always in visual contact with one another and see Team Two.”

  “Sir!”

  “On it.”

  “Let’s move. Head on a swivel.”

  They took off. Erik scanned as they ran and jumped between buildings.

  Their light jog ate up ground as they utilized their Body Like Iron cultivations.

  “We’re getting close. Storbon, push right. Yao, let’s jump onto the other side of the street we’ll orientate north and—”

  “Contact!” Storbon yelled as spells struck the building he and his people had been on. The structure collapsed under the attacks.

  “Returning fire!” Storbon yelled.

  Erik watched the explosive bolt trace as it connected with a rooftop.

  “Calling in spell scroll!” Erik took out a scroll and tore it.

  A spell formation appeared above the building.

  Chaotic power swirled together and turned into a lance that blasted through the building.

  Erik checked the map on the inside of his wrist. “Use the next main street to orientate north. Storbon, I want your people on the west side. You take the point. Yao, we’ll hang back and go farther west.”

  They leapt across the street, over Roska’s people, who were pushing hard up the street for the next large intersection.

  They organized on the run, two half teams on the road, with two half teams on the roof like the left side of an arrowhead.

  Several buildings collapsed beyond where the spell scroll had struck.

  “Buildings went down in the distance. They must be clearing out an area around the teleportation formation,” Erik relayed.

  “Roska, move your people forward to this building.” Erik put down a pin on his linked map.

  “Got it.”

  “Storbon, take this roof. Yao, this one.”

  “Got it.”

  “Okay.”

  “We’ll establish a fire base there and react. Be ready to shift as needed. They have the ability to crack buildings, so they’ll probably try to bring it down on our heads.”

  They crossed the buildings in no time. Yao Meng was on the left flank, Storbon on the right, with Roska in the middle.

  Arrows and spells lanced the building they landed on.

  Erik threw his hand up. A building was torn apart, thrown into the air. Red magma threads appeared in the stone as Erik landed on the other roof and threw his hand forward.

  The building sections hammered the cleared ground as the special teams added in their own spells. The ground was pounded with attacks, giving them the cover they needed to get to the edge of the building.

  Erik raised his repeater using the explosive shot
spell. The repeater arm bucked and recoiled as a line of tracers broke up across buildings. They raked the mana barrier, following after the spells.

  In what had been a park, there were now hundreds of soldiers fighting the undead soldiers that raged in their formations. The undead were powerful, but they were few, getting isolated and cut down. A barrier covered the formation in the middle and the soldiers around it. Buildings had been torn apart by mages that were readying new spells.

  “Barrier buster?” Storbon yelled as they fired into the barrier.

  “Roska, prepare your mounts at the rear of the building for a charge,” Erik yelled. Gilly grew on his shoulders in anticipation.

  “We’ll charge. We don’t know if the buster will break them. Two will lead. Four will follow on flanks. We run through them and into the formation.”

  “Mages, smoke!”

  Spells appeared in front of the mana barrier, pouring out prismatic smoke and making it impossible to see through.

  Erik saw movement below. Roska made her entrance. Her war mount, a purple-streaked panther with lightning crackling through her fur, blew through a wall with a flash of lightning, coming out of the building he’d ordered her to move up to.

  Her team punched holes out of the building, spreading out behind her in an arrowhead, dodging between the remains of buildings as they drew their weapons, and charging for the smoke.

  “Here we go!” Yao yelled and jumped with the rest of the half team. Erik leapt from the five-story building. They hit like rocks, leaving craters on the ground as the team members waved their beast storage devices.

  Gilly expanded to her full size and Erik sprang onto her back, grabbing her harness with his left hand, hoisting his repeater in his right hand.

  “Move!” Yao barked. Their mounts’ claws dug into the stone and rock, throwing it up as they raced toward the smoke.

  Erik felt the thrill of wind against his body as he checked left and right. Gilly moved underneath him as she tore up the ground, her body shimmering with power. He checked on the masked riders to his sides, who held their repeaters as they rushed to the enemy.

  He gathered his power as Roska dove through the smoke, the rest of her team right on her heels.

  They disappeared as Team Four hit the smoke in a skirmish line.

  Erik was anything but blind. He saw the enemy through the mana-filled smoke and solid mana that represented the barrier in his domain.

  An oldie, but a goodie.

  They passed through the smoke and right into the infantry that had been softened up by Roska’s team, driving headfirst toward the teleportation formations.

  Erik lowered his repeater and fired as Gilly breathed out her power. A beam of water cleared a path ahead as her head traversed from left to right and back again.

  He fired his explosive shot into the infantry; spells appeared inside the barrier. He raised his left hand, using his legs to hold on as his body glowed. He punched forward, sending a mana blast tearing through the air, leaving a trail of mana vapor before it struck the ground, exploding.

  He changed his aim with his repeater, his domain acting as his eyes while he sprayed explosive shot spells into the groups of enemy fighters trying to pull together.

  The mana barrier over the formation plate popped, bringing back the noise of Vuzgal.

  Roska and her team cut down those controlling the mana barrier and reached the teleportation formation just as a new force arrived.

  Team Two’s spells covered the formation plate. It broke, sending out a wave of power that threw fighters to the ground.

  Erik grabbed onto Gilly’s saddle and ducked low as the wave rushed over them.

  He stored his empty repeater and gathered his power. Spell formations appeared around him as he closed his eyes, looking at the world through his domain, locking onto the fighters around him. The spells completed. Tens of mana bullets fired out of them, striking fighters with unnerving accuracy. They collapsed to the ground.

  More mana bullets flew out of the spell formations, gathering around Erik, whizzing off to hunt down targets.

  Erik raised his hand. A healing dagger appeared next to Tully, stabbing into her with a jolt. Her wounds started to heal rapidly.

  Roska led them to the left as fighters started to flee.

  “Break into five-man teams and clean up this mess.” A spell lit up. Erik raised a barrier just in time to stop it.

  Erik felt the strain of energy as other spells rained down on his barrier. A group of mages behind a short wall hurled spells at him.

  Spell formations appeared above them and fired down to meet a mana barrier.

  Spells struck Yuli. Her barrier was torn apart, and her mount died nearly instantly.

  Erik felt his chest tighten as he hurled out healing daggers. She crashed into the ground, rolling to a bloody stop as he threw out a revival needle. It shot out like a bullet, striking Yuli in the chest and delivering its payload.

  She breathed on the ground almost in a convulsion, her armor in tatters.

  Erik hurled attack after attack down on the mana barrier, making it near impossible to see out of or in as Yao’s half team and Erik wheeled to the left, centering on the mana barrier, charging.

  They readied their spells and went through the small barrier.

  Jurumba’s spells were all around the front of his mount and went off like a claymore, tearing through the ranks of fighters as he wielded a halberd with devastating effect.

  He cut down on the mana barrier, tearing the formation apart.

  Tian Cui and Jamie, who were on either side, cut a bloody path along the edges of the enemy formation. Erik and the rest threw in attacks at the rear at those who had escaped the first three.

  “Eleven o’clock!” Yao Meng yelled.

  An explosion went off next to Jamie, throwing him from his mount. Spells wrapped around him to protect him as mana barriers snapped up around him. The sect’s attacks were dashed across the barrier, coloring the sky and ground holding steady against the barrage.

  Erik traced the spells back to their origin and fired upon the fighters. The special team opened up with him. The fighters broke under the fire.

  Erik threw heals into Jamie who was moving on the ground, and a stack formation and a healing mana barrier enveloped Yuli and Jamie.

  The special team didn’t let the enemy fighters have time to recover, keeping them pinned down or on the run. The Undead legions ran across the open ground, smashing through buildings and jumping into the midst of the sect fighters.

  The remaining forces broke or were too focused on surviving to attack the special teams.

  “Yao Meng’s people on me. Roska’s roaming patrol, clean up anyone that’s left behind. Storbon, check in with command.” Erik turned Gilly toward Jamie and Yuli. “I’ve got Jamie; Sang, get Yuli!”

  Erik set to work, using healing spells to stabilize Jamie.

  “I need stretcher-bearers!” Erik yelled as Jamie’s stamina bottomed out.

  Erik pulled off Jamie’s armor, pulled out a revival needle, and stabbed. The potion went in and spread. Jamie’s heart had stopped. Erik started compressions as he heard feet on gravel sliding next to him. “I’ve got no heartbeat or breathing!”

  Lucinda pulled out a breather and affixed it to Jamie’s face, pumping in air.

  Erik stopped his compressions to check if Jamie was able to do it himself.

  Nothing. Shit.

  He glanced at Jamie. He’d seen it enough before to recognise the look.

  “No, you fucking don’t!” Erik pulled out another revival needle and stabbed it into Jamie and did his compressions. He pulled out a third needle as Lucinda reached out and caught his hand.

  He stared at her as she silently shook her head.

  Erik felt his body go limp as he looked at Jamie.

  Two undead ran across to Erik. One pulled a stretcher off the other and they held it out next to Jamie.

  Erik gritted his teeth and moved to his feet. Luc
inda grabbed his shoulders. They put him on the stretcher. “Go!”

  The undead ran off with Jamie.

  Erik checked on Sang.

  Tian Cui was with him, watching Yuli taken away. Sang patted Tian Cui’s shoulder. She nodded numbly, and they headed for their waiting mounts.

  Shit.

  “Erik?”

  “I’m sorry, Yao. There wasn’t anything…” Erik hung his head.

  “I understand. We’ve got to keep moving.” Yao Meng’s voice strained.

  “Yeah,” Erik and Lucinda mounted up. “Storbon, how are we looking?” Erik forced out through his tight throat.

  “Command has two more possible teleportation formations in the area. Nearest one is northeast.”

  “Sit rep?”

  “Mana recovering. No issues. Good stamina. Mounts good. All okay,” Roska reported.

  “Mana recovering. No issues. Good stamina. One mount wounded, will recover. All okay,” Tully reported.

  “Mana recovering. No issues. Good stamina. One mount killed, two wounded, will recover. One KIA,” Storbon said.

  “Mana recovering. No issues. Good stamina. One mount down, one KIA,” Yao Meng said.

  Erik pulled his thoughts together. “Storbon, you take point. Yao Meng, follow behind. Roska, Tully, have your half teams move in the parallel streets back from Team Four.”

  “Yes, Boss!”

  The teams orientated off Storbon, who moved through what was the battlefield, away from the destroyed buildings.

  “Command has ordered us out to hunt the teleportation formations,” Niemm yelled in Rugrat’s ear.

  “Got it!” Rugrat swiveled his dual repeaters and fired. A line of blue tracers arced through the sky ahead of his target like an inevitable fate. Tracer and target intersected, the target trying to escape their fate. The rider’s barrier flared for a few seconds before disappearing, dropping the rider and mount into the city below.

  “Gunner!”

  A man ran over.

  “Locked and loaded. No issues. Make sure you lead them,” Rugrat said.

  “Yes, sir.” The man grabbed the dual repeaters and started checking it.

  “Let’s go.”

  Rugrat and Niemm walked into the tower and ran down the stairs.