Endless Online: Oblivion's Price: A LitRPG Adventure - Book 3

by M. H. Johnson

  "Well?"

  "It looks clear, up to the lip of that massive cave mouth."

  Chris nodded. "Good work, let's get going."

  Val held up a hand. "There are two men slightly upslope and hidden by terrain, eyeing us. Their hostile glares promise nothing but death. I don't know why, but they're certain they can take us. And at the cave mouth, I spotted multiple men in patchwork armor crouching in the shadows. One definitely radiated the crackling fury of a mage who never learned to control his internal resonance."

  Dirk frowned. "Somehow, I don't doubt they're using magics. Alright, Val, you and Julia will have to take lead with your synergized wards, but Chris and I will be flanking you. Fortunately, our shields are a cut above the typical Dominion reflection disks."

  Val grinned and nodded, admiring not for the first time the burnished bronze-gold material that seemed to be unique to dwarven alloys that Dirk and Chris both used, Chris's two-hander securely strapped to his back in its specialized sheath made feasible only because of his large frame. He also carried a migration era sword much like the one Val himself wore at his belt, shield at the ready, blaster aimed in a shooter's stance. Besides the bronze shields, both men wore various mismatched pieces of dwarven armor, and Val had no doubt it would serve them better than any modern Dominion armor, however much the pair of mavericks they presently looked.

  With a quiet trickle of will, Val forged together his synergized ward, feeling it snap into being more effortlessly than ever before, having no doubt that it would soon be as easy to cast as breathing, and it hardly took more than a sliver of his will to tie it off and maintain it, all his concentration once more on the threat ahead as Dirk signaled for them to proceed cautiously, though Val already knew the plan.

  Val was struck by the oddest feeling as they continued to make their way forward, step by cautious step, somehow tasting a faint stream of blue-gold power crackling in his mind. Sweet nectar of such potency, swirling together in a hideous cocktail of destruction. Val knew he had encountered that mixture before. Had forged that mixture even as he himself had been one with the gloomy caverns he had traversed, stalking prey dark and terrible that had been lurking within.

  And then Val flashed a smile, understanding exactly what he had to do.

  But before anyone could do anything, the clearing just before the cave entrance suddenly echoed with laughter.

  "This is the best the Dominion can do? Fools! Did you not think we sensed you coming? Did you truly not understand the message scrawled below in blood and tears? This is Lord Christos's territory now. The Dominion is not welcome here, and we shall deliver the heads of their champions to your masters on pikes to prove it!" A gaunt man wearing robes of puce with rotted teeth and manic eyes drew a wand of shimmering blue glass, sparing only a second to look to his left, where Val knew the pair of ambushers were stationed.

  "Kill them!" He roared, and the air filled with a flurry of crossbow bolts.

  "Turtle!" Dirk cried, and like a well-oiled machine, all of their party crouched with Dwarven and arcane shields raised, and the dozen deadly bolts cracked against impenetrable alloy and exquisitely reinforced magic, the only one to penetrate was a bolt skimming the edge of Val's Synergized Ward, power so reduced it didn't do more than scratch his polymer plate when it clanked against Val's arm.

  "Val!" Julia's alarmed whisper, but Val paid it no mind, focusing only on the arcing gifts of death hurtling their way thanks to the pair of ambushers, even now at the top of their arc, furious catalyzations needing only a single jolt to send Val and his friends hurtling to oblivion.

  And there they slowed and stopped, at the peak of their arc even as Julia's fingers crackled with electricity. "Impulsa!" she cried, her bolt of lightning striking three of the crossbowmen, the trio collapsing as the other nine prepared to fire a second volley, Dirk roaring for them to raise their shields once more as they survived the second wave of death from the double shot crossbows.

  And a second bolt burst through Val's ward, this time windmilling end over end to his side, so much of his concentration spent holding tight the roaring balls of furious energy heartbeats from exploding, gripped solely by his own force of will.

  Successful metamagic stabilization! The hideous bombs of death thrown your way by fools hardly aware of how close they came to blowing themselves up have not ruptured to hideous effect over your heads. Well done, Val. It's almost like you've done this before!"

  Val paid the sardonic prompt no mind, hit by a sudden flash of memory so vague it was almost a dream.

  "Can you control the stone, without the magic controlling you?"

  A soft voice in a language he had never heard before, yet knew intimately, uttered by a gentle old man in robes of ivory to the young boy even now gripping the stone in his mind's eye, slowly sliding it through the ether without triggering the slightest agitation in the ancient PRM device by the boy's feet.

  And the boy smiled in darkest satisfaction as the old man's eyes widened.

  For he held not one stone in his mind's eye but two, hurtling straight for the rebels at the lip of the cave.

  And perhaps the emaciated wizard in puce who was so effortlessly blocking Julia's bolts of lightning with his own arcane ward, laughing his mockery as nine of his men dropped crossbows for swords and charged, finally sensed what was coming his way. He alone was screaming in panic and raising his hands, futilely trying to ward the fizzing vials of death whipping through the air toward him at that very moment.

  Yellowed eyes widened in disbelief as one of the vials changed course, slamming into the charging men, and then the world went white as exothermic explosions more than the equal of C-4 roared through the cavern mouth and clearing, the air suddenly alive with fragments of men hurtling through the air, Dwarven and arcane shields all that saved Val and his friends from being stunned by the shock wave, even as smoking chunks of flesh and weaponry smashed against their defenses.

  Congratulations! You have ruthlessly slaughtered 13 of your foes! Experience earned!

  Val pushed away that odd sense of the silvery blue bar that promised such power, once filled, somehow recalling that the privilege of rewriting one's very soul also came at perilous risk of losing it altogether, oddly glad that his level-up was still some distance away.

  "What just happened? Oh god, what just happened?"

  Yin, wide-eyed and in a panic as she was helped to her feet, her armored frame covered in gore as they all were.

  Dirk frowned, gazing Val's way. "Ugly ambush. Was that little explosion your doing?"

  But Val paid him no mind, hot fury boiling to the fore as a certain pair of scurrying rats sought to hurtle death at them once more.

  "Glacie Pilum!" He roared, snapping out his fingers, a huge bolt of ice in the form of a massive spear streaking through the air, blasting through the neck of a surprised looking man holding a small glass vial, his head near completely sheared through by the broadheaded ice spear Val had summoned into being, his body collapsing in a fountain of blood.

  And in a desperate surge of panic, Val somehow caught the vial before it could explode.

  Stabilization check successful!

  The rebel's partner blinked, backed up and cursed, Julia raising her arm and whispering the words for lightning.

  Before being knocked aside by Val.

  "Don't! You'll catalyze it!" he shouted, his mind still clamping onto ward and vial both.

  The lone uninjured survivor glared down at the exploded remains of his companions, one fallen rebel groaning as he tried desperately to hold loops of glistening blue-gray entrails bursting past his fingers, the other dragging himself by his arms, leaving bloody streaks where his legs had been, as if to flee his own death.

  Eyes wide with terror and martyrdom locked with Val's own. "Do you think you can defeat me, traitors to Jordia? Do you think you've earned reprieve, fools? No! For you will still die by our hands, die like all the traitors of this town, who will scream for their crimes endlessly as
we purify Elementium in the way our ancestors embraced, with none of that foul dwarven gadgetry and artifice!" The man glared at the clockwork towers so befitting steampunk novels even as Val at last felt his mind taste and latch onto the final vial the fanatic held.

  Holding tight to his sense of it even as the fanatic spun back around. "You will not win, Dominion scum! Your death is only seconds away!"

  And before he could cock back his arm, his head exploded as another broadheaded Ice Spear flashed forth from Val's fingertips, Val's will holding tight the second vial's contents as it fell to the ground.

  Congratulations! You have successfully modified Broadheaded Ice Spear! Twice normal damage against human sized opponents, half standard penetration, which doesn't mean much when you can just blast it right through an unarmored target! You are now an Adept caster of Ice Spear, and can modify Ice Spear on the fly without penalty! Ice Spear is now 20% cheaper to cast, 20% faster to cast, and 20% more effective!

  Yin gasped. "Did you guys feel that? Through the Spirit Link! Val just tweaked that spell on the fly and now... now I think I can cast it just like that too! It's like he just made a spell! And now he can modify it endlessly because he's an Adept with it?" Yin turned to Julia. "Is that how Adept spell ranks work?"

  "No, Yin. You should have to cast it hundreds of times. Perfectly. And if you're really good, you'll hit Adept status. Most likely you'll just get skilled at it and be able to use it competently in combat, no special bonuses given." Julia's brows furrowed. "And I've never heard of being given the ability to modify anything like that. Hell, I never dared to try. The risks of catastrophic spell failure are just too high, and Val's somehow an adept after a couple dozen castings and a single battle?"

  Yin's grin widened. "I know. And it's like the universe talked to him! You could hear it through the Spirit Link! It never talks to me. I'm just grateful when my blue bar goes up and I can choose how I want to grow upon leveling! And is it my imagination, or is the universe, well, mocking Val?"

  Dirk's intent gaze felt like it was burning a hole through Val's back, but he paid it no mind, in a rush to approach the two ambushers and retrieve the vials tingling through him like an itch.

  "Val, be careful, man, these fools are no joke!" Chris called, but Val already knew they had wiped that squad out.

  And a heartbeat later he was there, tingling with excitement, grinning like a fool to see those two vials sparkling a mad medley of azure obsidian and gold, kept from erupting by his will alone. He sighed with odd satisfaction, feeling the weight of them in his hands, and in an odd daze found himself pressing the vials against his belly, as if he could somehow lock them within his soul.

  Storage check failed!

  Val frowned, gazing down at himself, somehow knowing that there was more to him that even he could see, flexing out of his own mind for a moment to see the shimmering interdimensional strand connecting him like an umbilical cord to some odd pocket dimension both microscopic in scale and impossibly vast, shivering with awe and disbelief at the treasures he sensed locked inside.

  "Shit," he hissed, feeling the vials in his hand begin to tremble, clamping his will down on them tightly once more, refusing to let himself be distracted any longer by what he could just barely sense.

  "What do you have there, Val?"

  Val blinked and turned, catching Dirk's heavy gaze, his fellow companions gazing at him so oddly.

  Val blinked, putting his racing thoughts into words. "Flasks of Elementium and Silbion. Mixed together, they are the one and only explosive combination that works on this planet." That's not quite true, is it Val? Val shook those troubling thoughts away. "Anyway, it's about as stable as liquid nitrogen, as you could tell, and it's a fool's gamble to use, as you are just as likely to lose your own life if it explodes on your hip, jostling and maneuvering in combat, as it is to kill your enemies."

  Dirk looked at the pair of ambushers that had been near decapitated by Val's Ice Spears. "Unless of course you've set yourself up at an ambush point and expect no more jostling than gently lobbing death down on your foes. Obviously, these rebels have an alchemist with access to Elementium and Silbion, preparing the flasks and handing it to the ambushers as they waited for us to approach."

  Chris whistled. "Wow. Pretty deadly. I've never heard of that before. Do alchemists normally have access to this arcane explosive?"

  Dirk shrugged. "I guess I shouldn't be so surprised, considering the Silbion groves nearby and the Elementium mine we are about to enter, but I've never heard of rebels daring such a maneuver before. I do know that it's death by pain vat to muck about with this stuff, and still as like as not to kill you as your enemy, unless set up at an ambush choke point like this." He frowned, gazing up at the sky. "Whatever your opinion of the Dominion, no one can deny that things have gotten a lot more chaotic here in the South, ever since the former Overlord managed to blow himself up."

  Val stumbled at those words.

  "Val?"

  Val cleared his throat, the momentary dizziness passing. "Yes, sir?"

  Dirk quirked a comradely smile, for all that his eyes were hard. "Mind telling me how it is that we're the ones alive and the ambushers are the ones who look like they just got shredded through a meat grinder? And even better, how the hell is it that those flasks haven't exploded?"

  Dirk's intent gaze discomfited him, though not nearly as much as the indecipherable look Julia was giving him. Val cleared his throat, lifting several stone pebbles with the barest whisper of his power, that low level spell coming so naturally it was as smooth as thought.

  "Stoneflow is just a level 1 spell," Val said. "Effortless to cast."

  Dirk nodded. "And?"

  Val shrugged. "What is glass but a form of silicate stone? And I can lift a wet stone or a dirty stone as easily as a clean dry stone. See?" He said, levitating several stones for their inspection. "So when you get right down to it, what is a vial full of highly explosive arcane compounds, but a wet stone?"

  Julia's pretty brows furrowed. "No, no, no! That's not how magic works, Val. Not for the rest of us, anyway."

  Val caught her gaze with his own. "What's wrong, Julia?"

  Julia gave a frustrated shake of her head. "It's... I don't know, everything about you, Val, it doesn't make sense! You yourself told me how horrible you were as a student, but now you are able to modify spells on the fly and learn new arcane skills and spells so quickly, when I've spent hundreds of hours busting my butt at this game, just trying to learn what comes so easily to you! And you shouldn't be able to modify Ice Spear like that. It's not part of the spell formula. I mean, how do you even know which of the dozens of carefully woven threads of the spell to alter on the fly without making a disaster of it? And how is it that those madly bubbling vials of death aren't exploding even now?"

  "Sorry," Val frowned, focusing his will fully upon both vials. The bubbling stopped completely.

  Julia swallowed. "And you shouldn't be able to do that, Val. Not at all. No one can."

  Julia caught a good look at the expired pair of corpses, shuddered, gazed back down at the ambush site, one wounded enemy still groaning piteously, the other who had lost his legs having dragged himself surprisingly far, pouring blood behind him all the while, before collapsing at last. Julia shuddered, hugging herself, Dirk's hand gently gripping her shoulder.

  "And now I'm being a bitch," Julia whispered, "coming down on you because I'm envious of how easily it all comes to you. Because I'm not the golden girl anymore, adventuring beside two geniuses," she flashed a rueful, almost apologetic smile to Yin. "When all I should be feeling is gratitude, because you probably saved us from being wiped out just as easily as the original contingent of Dominion Troopers that had been guarding this town had been."

  Dirk nodded. "We were all idiots for dropping the ball. I should never have parked the velimobile out in the open all night, treating this just like the game I warned Yin not to."

  Chris nodded. "Yeah, we all dropped the ball on
that one. That's for damn sure." He turned to Val, raising his hand. "Hey Val, thanks for saving our asses back there."

  Val grinned, accepting the high five. "No problem, battle buddy. Come on, I'm sure there's lots more trouble we can get into."

  Chris chuckled at that, Dirk nodding and taking the lead. "Hey, Val?"

  "Yeah, Captain?"

  "You okay with those vials?"

  Val grinned. "For some reason having them ready to flow on the fly feels like old hat, to me."

  "Really."

  Val nodded. "Most people's tunnel vision gets way too extreme in a firefight to use explosives effectively, only remembering how to use the gun they've held in their hands and trained with for endless hours. But sometimes there's no better way to start an ambush than throwing a couple grenades, then easing back and sniping all the panicked fools running around like headless chickens, as Colonel Yancey might say."

  Dirk chuckled softly. "It is a great way to stir up a hornets' nest, and people busy panicking aren't really thinking clearly."

  Yin was gazing at Val curiously. "You seem really good at this sort of stuff for a kid who looks younger than me."

  Val grinned. "I've lived a lot, for my age."

  Julia rolled her eyes. "He's 22, Yin, not that he looks it. Now keep focused, sister. Here's where things get real."

  Dirk nodded as they came back to the entrance, arcane wards and dwarven shields raised once more, Yin almost trembling as she held her blaster tightly to her.

  "Relax," Val counseled. "But most importantly, only take a shot when you know there is zero chance of you hitting us. Nothing would be worse than hitting us in the back. Far better just to hold steady and wait for orders."

  Yin gulped and nodded, even as Dirk cursed. "What's wrong?"

  Dirk sighed, gazing down at the broken crystal fragments that had once been a wand. "I think we might have lost a real treasure here. Besides a few chunks of gold, this mage has nothing else of value on him."

  Val nodded, himself taking the time to put the pair of flasks he had found in his belt pouch, needing only the barest trickle of his will to keep them stable.