Viridian Gate Online: The Jade Lord: A litRPG Adventure (The Viridian Gate Archives Book 3)

by James Hunter

  And the tussle against the cultists wasn’t going much better.

  Butchered bodies had piled up at the entryway, but there were still more Disciples coming. Abby was doing alright—currently frozen with a fierce snarl on her face, one arm thrust forward, a golden fireball forming in her palm. But Cutter and Amara were decorated with a myriad of bloody wounds like war medals. Forge, likewise, was upright but stooped over, clutching at his gut, covered in blood, with a grimace etched into the lines of his green skin. Yep, this looked about as bad as things could be.

  The countdown timer hit zero, and I emerged into the material realm, letting loose with my warhammer, swinging for the fences, and putting my whole body into the attack while triggering Crush Armor. Crush Armor was meant for opponents in heavy plate, but so far my attacks had been largely ineffective, so changing things up certainly wouldn’t hurt. Besides, it was always possible whatever spell the Priestess was using offered her the magical equivalent of heavy armor.

  My weapon whistled as it flew, and it landed square in the back of her skull with a sickening crack—a critical hit—wiping out a tenth of her HP and knocking her forward several feet. Not bad, but not the crippling death blow I’d been hoping for, either. My victory—as small as it had been—didn’t last long. She wheeled around with preternatural speed; one hand shot out like a cobra strike, wrapping around my throat as she hoisted me into the air. She regarded me with golden reptilian eyes as my feet dangled half a foot above the floor and I labored to pull in even a handful of air.

  I clawed fitfully at her wrist as black crept in along the edges of my vision, but then, before I passed out completely, she hurled me across the room with a contemptuous flick of her wrist. Just tossed me aside as easily as an angry toddler throwing a rag doll. I smashed into the far wall and slid to the floor, crumpling like a Styrofoam cup as a dull ache exploded in my back and sprinted along my arms and legs. I groaned—holy crap that hurt—then thanked my lucky stars I hadn’t earned myself a combat debuff.

  I easily could’ve ended up with a broken spine, which would’ve meant game over for sure.

  When I glanced back at the Priestess, though, my stomach dropped as fear reared its ugly head: She was facing me, arms back, jaws yawning, only a second away from another flame attack. And this time, Shadow Stride couldn’t save me. Nothing could save me. There was no way out. I scrambled to my knees, thrusting my left hand forward—palm out, fingers splayed—and summoned Dark Shield as she unleashed a fresh wave of scorching Dragon Fire. The shield popped into existence an eyeblink before the fire rolled over me, saving me from immediate respawn.

  But even with the defensive barrier firmly in place, her attack was brutal, powerful, and borderline unstoppable.

  Currently, my Dark Shield absorbed 110 points worth of projectile or spell damage per second, but even with that, and the extra protection from my Night Armor aura, my health still plunged by the second. For a heartbeat, I contemplated trying to dive into a roll, but I had the creeping feeling that if I dropped my Shield even for a moment, she’d roast me like a marshmallow on a stick. So, I steeled myself and held the spell even as my skin burned and my cloak caught aflame. I screamed in agony as a new noticed popped up in the corner of my eye, confirming just how screwed I was:

  ∞∞∞

  Debuffs Added

  Burn: You have been burned! 5 pts Burn Damage; duration, 1 minute.

  Flame Trauma: You have sustained a severe burn! All physical attacks do 25% less damage; duration, 1 minute.

  ∞∞∞

  Then, suddenly, the attack ceased and the Priestess let out a cry of rage as a flurry of frost and snow swirled around her. Vlad gave a whoop, pumping one fist in the air, before hurling another ball—this one a shimmering crimson—directly at me. The orb crashed near my feet with a tinkle and burst in a hazy cloud of red mist. The pain radiating through my body guttered and died as my HP shot out of the red and back above the 50% mark. An AOE healing spell, and a good one. I wanted to kiss that crazy Russian.

  The Priestess wheeled about, charging the Alchemist in a fit of furious rage. The color drained from Vlad’s face as he retreated. He quickly found his back pressed up against the wall with nowhere left to go and a terrifying dragon-lady closing in. He fumbled fitfully for another throwing orb, but his fear left him shaky-handed as he whispered some prayer under his breath. She was five feet out, sword raised high—ready to cut him clean through with a single stroke—when Forge smashed into her like a linebacker, shoulder driving into her side.

  She was a tough, tough lady, but even with her transformation, she was rail thin and couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and fifty pounds soaking wet. The hit drove her through the air like a cannonball and straight into the far wall. And Forge didn’t relent. Oh no, he followed through with a colossal axe blow like a lumberjack bringing down a mighty redwood. The Priestess howled as the curved blade, wickedly sharp and etched with glowing runes of power, sank deep into the meat of her shoulder, lodging in the bone.

  For one sweet second, I thought that was it. The killing blow. The victory shot. But then she merely sneered at the weapon and swatted Forge away with a contemptuous backhand slap. The meat-slab Risi cartwheeled across the room, landing on his side with a groan, alive but unmoving. Probably, he’d suffered a paralyzing debuff, so common after taking a nasty fall. The Priestess lurched forward—Forge’s axe still protruding from her shoulder—and turned toward Vlad, lips pulled back to reveal row after row of deadly shark-teeth.

  Before I could decide what to do—how to beat the Priestess or her horde of cultists—Nikko appeared beside me, materializing from the Shadowverse into the Material Plane. Even a casual glance told me she was in bad, bad shape. One of her simian arms was clearly broken, twisted at an unnatural angle, and bloody gashes and black scorch marks marred her fur. She grunted at me, pulling her lips back in a grimace, then gestured across the room. I followed the motion with my eyes; the breath hitched in my chest when I spotted Devil.

  He lay on the ground like a car wreck, blood spurting, body mangled, though alive. Barely. True, the Bone Dragon wasn’t a picture of good health—one of his wings was missing, the tapestry was ripped and burned, a myriad of bones ended in jagged, blackened stumps—but it was still doing better than my poor minion. Devil would fight until his final breath, kicking, scratching, and biting all the way to respawn, but it was evident he couldn’t win this fight. Not while the Priestess was animating that monster with necromantic life.

  Suddenly, the weight of this mission hit me like a load of bricks. This was impossible. I was going to die here, and even more importantly, my friends would die here, too. And there’d be no respawn for Cutter and Amara. I glanced at Nikko, preparing to recall her so she could heal, when I noticed the bandolier strapped across her chest. Many of Vlad’s alchemic bombs were gone, used long ago, but a handful remained—including one filled with swirling gray gas. An orb identical to the one that had nearly killed Vlad and me back in the Crafter’s Hall.

  Maybe I could finish this thing after all … But only if I timed it just right. If not? Well, we were almost certainly dead anyway, so what did I have to lose?

  I hustled over to Nikko, pulled the cloudy gray orb free, then recalled her back to the Shadowverse for a well-deserved rest. The Priestess was ten feet away, herding Vlad into a corner so she could finish him off right and proper. With Forge still down for the count and the rest of the party occupied with the cultists, it was up to me, and I’d only get one shot. I glanced at the Shadow Stride cooldown timer and grinned as it disappeared—the ability was available again. But I didn’t attack, not yet. Instead, I dropped into Stealth and slunk away, watching patiently and praying things panned out the way I hoped.

  Vlad held a blue-tinged orb clutched in one hand and an enchanted dagger in the other. He snarled in defiance—a cornered animal that knew there was no way out. And the desperate, feral glimmer in his eyes told me he didn’t expect to live through
this encounter; he would fight, would do his damnedest to put a dent in her before dying, but he was prepared to die. The Priestess raised her sword and I felt my heart lurch into double time. No, no, no. If she attacked with her sword, there was no chance of my plan working … But then it happened. She lowered her sword and threw her arms back, her face shooting forward, mouth stretched wide.

  Ready to burn Vlad alive.

  I triggered Shadow Stride, letting the world screech to a stop. I took a second to collect my thoughts, then carefully picked my way across the impromptu battlefield, avoiding the scattered corpses, heading for the Priestess. I circled her once, then again, a pang of guilt bubbling up from my stomach. She may have looked like a monster now, but she wasn’t a monster, not really. I felt genuinely awful about how everything had shaken out, but at this point, there was no other way.

  It was her or me.

  No, even that was wrong. I was prepared to die, but I wasn’t prepared to let her kill my friends.

  I slipped my warhammer back into my belt, then held up the orb swirling with deadly gray gas. Finally, I positioned myself at the Priestess’s side, steeled myself for the inevitable pain to come, and stepped back into the material realm with a resigned sigh. The second the world lurched back into motion, I jammed the orb into the Priestess’s open mouth, shoving my fist all the way to the back of her throat as my fist curled around the fragile glass. The glass crunched in my palm; scorching flame and toxic gas enveloped me like a giant hand, tossing me up into the air like a pop fly.

  I landed in a heap fifteen feet away as a combat notice with a string of debuffs popped up:

  ∞∞∞

  Debuffs Added

  Alchemist’s Toxic Cloud: You have been poisoned: 2 HP/sec; duration, 2 minutes or until cured.

  Burn: You have been burned! 5 pts Burn Damage; duration, 1 minute.

  Fractured Arm: You cannot use your right arm and cannot cast mage spells requiring hand gestures; duration, 2 minutes.

  Concussed: You have sustained a severe head injury! Confusion and disorientation; duration, 1 minute.

  ∞∞∞

  I dismissed the notice with a wave, but a brilliant purple afterimage stained my vision, making it nearly impossible to see. Quickly, I blinked it away and stared at the chaos erupting in the cavernous chamber. The Bone Dragon—before only seconds away from killing Devil—now writhed on the floor, head and tail whipping this way then that as bits of tapestry burned and chunks of bone broke away, crumbling to dust now that the Priestess’s magic no longer powered it. And the cultists themselves weren’t faring much better. Twenty or more corpses lay scattered across the room, and my party was making short work of the few remaining stragglers.

  Not that it much mattered to me, since my HP was flashing scarlet and all the debuffs were chewing up what little remaining HP I had. Still, Cutter and Amara would make it out of this debacle alive, and that was the most important thing. I closed my eyes as blackness crept in, preparing for respawn …

  TWENTY-FIVE:

  Aftermath

  I blinked my eyes open, expecting to feel my mammoth bed beneath me and see the ceiling of my master suite overhead. Typical respawn. Instead, my palms brushed over dusty stone and Abby stared down at me, her lips drawn into a worried line as she searched my face. Searching for any signs of life, no doubt. I tried to sit up but broke into a coughing fit that left my ribs feeling like a pro boxer had just used me as a punching bag for the last hour. Oh, my God, everything hurt. My skin was too tight, my head ached with a dull throb, and my muscles screamed in a mixture of protest and pain.

  Still, Abby’s worry disappeared a second later.

  “Wow, that was close,” she said, dropping down next to me and letting out a long sigh. “Seriously, Jack. You had a single point of HP. One. Measly. Point. I wasn’t sure there was a potion in the world that could bring you back from that.” She pressed her eyes shut and reached one hand up, gently rubbing at one temple. “Maybe you were right about this whole adventuring thing. Paperwork is awful, but these high-stakes missions are too stressful.”

  I smiled weakly. “Everyone else okay?” I asked, conjuring the strength to prop myself up on my hands.

  “Everyone but Devil,” she replied with a grimace. “Even at a distance, that explosion was enough to kill him. Frankly, I’m astounded it didn’t kill you instantly. It certainly did a number on the Priestess.” She swept a hand toward a fallen body ten feet away. The explosion had obliterated the Priestess completely. Her bottom half was scorched and ragged, and her top half—everything above the chest, anyway—was simply gone. A disgusting splatter of charred meat and burned blood surrounded her in a halo. “A few of the remaining cultists fled, but Forge is hunting them down now.” She blanched and looked away. “Mopping up.”

  And suddenly, I was mad.

  Mad at the game, mad at the Devs for creating this stupid quest chain, mad at the Dark Conclave for sending me here to wipe these people out. And Amara, I was fuming at her. This was her fault, I was sure. Everything had been going fine—nice and peaceable—then she stormed off, distraught and angry, and then everything was Cultists, Chaos, and Bone Dragons. True, things probably would’ve ended up this way even without her anger issues, but maybe not. Maybe we would’ve been able to come to a compromise with the Priestess and her followers.

  But instead, Devil was dead, the Disciples were all history, and the Priestess was a corpse decorating the floor of a sacred temple.

  I scowled and gained my feet, locking eyes on Amara—currently looting the body of a female cultist with a vacant stare and a giant gash running diagonally across her face.

  She did this. This is all her fault.

  I beelined for her, stepping over the dead Priestess without giving her a glance—not wanting to see the devastation again—grabbed the Huntress by the shoulder, and yanked her away from the body. She spun in an instant, drawing a curved blade in a single fluid motion, lashing out. Her attack was instinctual and lightning fast, but the blinding rage gave me strength and purpose. I caught her blade with my spike vambrace and casually batted the knife from her hand. The weapon flew, clattering along the stone floor a few feet away, coming to a rest next to a deeply charbroiled cultist without a head.

  “Grim Jack?” she asked, confusion flashing across her features.

  “Shut up,” I hollered, giving her a rough shove away from the dead woman with the oozing diagonal gash. “Who told you to go and pick a fight with them? Who? Because it wasn’t me, that’s for sure!” I was in her face, only inches away, jabbing her in the chest with one finger as though it were a dagger and I was going for the kill.

  “But, but—” she sputtered, flabbergasted as she backed away, attempting to get a little breathing room.

  I didn’t let her finish. I didn’t even let her start.

  “No,” I said, shadowing every step she took, keeping the distance between us uncomfortably close. “I don’t want any excuses, Amara. None. I understand you didn’t like what they were saying—but storming off that way? Picking a fight with a room full of powerful enemies without telling us? You could’ve gotten someone killed! Heck, you could’ve gotten all of us killed. All because of your pride.” My fist was by my side, trembling, ready to swing. To pop her in the mouth—

  Cutter stepped out of the shadows, materializing in a blink, then popped me in the mouth. One good hook right across the cheek, busting open my bottom lip and sending me stumbling away. It was a warning shot if I’d ever seen one. “That’s enough, friend,” he said, glaring at Amara and me in turn, forehead creased in concern. “You’re being a right arsehole, and you need to get your head on straight, Jack. Understand?”

  “What?” I demanded, shaking with a combination of pent-up frustration and hot-blooded adrenaline. “How can you defend her? She picked a fight that nearly got us killed! A fight that turned into a massacre that maybe could’ve been avoided entirely.”

  “Listen to yourself, Jack. Just
listen!” he shouted back, slipping between Amara and me like I might be a rabid bear ready to maul her. “I know you’ve got your blood up right now, but ask yourself—does that honestly sound like Amara? Meticulous, professional, honor-bound Amara?”

  I paused. Faltered. Some of my rage died away as I thought.

  He was right, it didn’t sound like Amara. Not one bit.

  Cutter could be impulsive at times, and Forge, likewise, might pick a fight for a sideways glance—I knew from experience—but not Amara. She was always prepared for every eventuality, and though she could be ornery, disagreeable, and even downright unlikeable at times, there was one thing she did implicitly: follow orders. She’d wanted to kill Cutter and me the first time she found us trapped in a spiked Punji pit, but an order from her superior, Baymor, had kept us alive. Same thing with Chief Kolle, and my initiation into the ranks of the Maa-Tál.

  “That’s right, I can see you working it out, Grim Jack,” Cutter said, relaxing and loosening his clenched fists. “She didn’t do this, not because she didn’t want to, but because that’s not who she is. And I bloody well know because I saw it all go down and it was this sod”—he strutted over to a copper-skinned man with a thick mustache and blood-drenched robes lying dead near the tunnel—“who started this whole mess. The bloke that high priestess left in charge. Makin, err no, that’s not it … What was it?” He paused, eyes hazy, tapping idly at his chin.

  “Nasim,” I said, feeling a hot surge of guilt stampede through me like a herd of wild horses. “His name was Nasim.”

  “Bloody right,” Cutter replied with a nod. “So this Nasim fella, why he’s leading the chant one second, then charging Amara the next, carrying on about how we’re all infidels and that we wanted to steal the divine secrets of the Sky Maiden or some such shite. There wasn’t anything we could do. It happened like that”—he snapped slim fingers—“and when Amara went to defend herself, why the rest of the blighters went right mad. Like they’d contracted the bloody plague, but with a case of the crazies instead of a case of the pox.”