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

by M. H. Johnson

  Val flashed a single cold smile. "Time to die, motherfucker."

  Christos's eyes widened, sensing, perhaps, the buildup of magic as Julia unleashed her hidden card. The one point invested in a direction she had said nothing of, save with her eyes, brimming even now with terrible power.

  Contained within those thirty minutes she had been lost between levels had been a thousand hours mastering a single, terrible spell. One that had almost killed her. One that had almost killed the man she loved.

  And was now at risk of killing again.

  But there was no choice. Not if any of them were to live.

  "Titan's Blast!" Julia roared, her carefully, quietly built up spell suddenly releasing itself in all its dread glory. A massive sphere of crystallized tungsten carbide filled with superheated plasma, blasting straight for Christos.

  And for the boy whose gaze she caught in that instant, the connection between them was undeniable, and she couldn't even hide the love and terror she felt for him.

  Time seemed to slow as Christos's eyes widened. "Impossible, you're just a spirit!" He roared even as his shield grew in desperate complexity, reinforcing itself in unimaginable ways...

  Before he was blasted off his feet, the two vials Val had released suddenly exploding, Christos's exquisite leather boots and the feet within them blown completely free of his body as he was hurled into the air, his shield crumpling as the full force of Julia's spell tore into him.

  And into Val as well, his desperately re-catalyzed shield ruptured yet again, his mind roiling under the strain of force summoning it a third time only to have it ripped and shredded to nothing once more. Even at the outermost periphery of Julia's desperately controlled spell that had turned Christos into bloody mist, armor-piercing shrapnel that could shred tanks still tore into Val, slicing into his legs and gut as if he had been sprayed by enemy fire, his shield at least sparing him from being burned alive as he was slammed into the far wall, the entire chamber roaring and shaking with the fury of the spell, Val's mind blazing with critical hit notifications, hit points quickly draining away, and then all was blackness.

  20

  "Oh my god, Dirk, I can't stabilize him! He's going to die! My Val is going to die!"

  Val winced at the pain he heard in his friend's voice, wishing he could comfort her, yet hardly there himself, feeling like a spirit torn free of his body.

  "I'm sorry, Julia. You see what happened to everything below his waist. Everything caught in the outermost periphery of that spell. I think my potion and our tourniquets might have brought him some time. But only just. I'm not sure what else we can do."

  Julia began to sob, and Val could sense Yin comforting her, wrapping her up in a sisterly hug, and for all that Val's heart went out to the both of them, he could feel another cry as well.

  Just beyond the fascinating rainbow of color and energy that comprised the forcefield keeping the phased realm of dwarves inviolate from the rest of Jordia.

  An ancient spell so similar in application to the hyper-technological wonder of another dwarf city close to his heart, though even now he could remember little more than that. But how familiar it all seemed. Even the minds crying out, lost in arcane stasis.

  An ancient, inconceivably powerful spell, only now running out of power from the single Valorium core that had kept it going for over a thousand years. And Val sensed as well the fragile life force of thousands of souls trapped within.

  Desperate to escape the spell that had become a fatal trap, cutting them off from the flow of life, of time, everything needed to sustain themselves by means natural or arcane. That they had survived so long was a miracle.

  One that would soon come to an end.

  Please.

  Help us.

  Words resonating with such nobility.

  And desperate need.

  Reminding him of someone else he admired as fiercely as he did his own father.

  Arilius Battleborn.

  You know Arilius?

  Surprise, and a desperate glimmer of hope.

  Can you help us?

  Val closed his eyes, somehow sinking between dimensions, one with the ancient dwarven city within. So different from one he had known before. Somehow. In a dream. It was an underground wonderland of bronze and ancient stone, ancient parks and groves and what looked almost like an arborium, all of it fueled by the most complex applications of magic, and hardly any tech at all.

  And Val's heart wept, to see how the groves had withered and died.

  Forests of such beauty and wonder reduced to a dying husk of what they once had been. And as they withered, so did the ancient colony within. Time stretched to a hundredth of the outside world... magic a trickle, and the Valorium core alone not enough to support the ancient dwarven groves keeping the immense magics stable, magics that would soon implode like a miniature star core collapsing, the entire city crushed to an infinitesimally small point before catalyzing in an explosion that would rip through the southern continent entire, if not the world itself.

  Val sensed it then as his mana reserves trickled back to full even as the last of his health seeped through perforated bowels and sternum, and he could feel an ancient soul, a score of ancient souls reach out to his own.

  He did not resist their touch.

  A flash of a beautiful girl's face gazing at him with such adoration.

  He knows Ava. He is one of us.

  And he feared not the embrace of an ancient alien race he would do all he could to save.

  He screamed but did not fight the impossibly brilliant, endlessly vast expanse of ancient minds connecting with his own, sensing at once the spell they wanted him to cast. Needed him to cast.

  In ways he never could have conceived of before.

  His mind echoes with the memory of its casting.

  The lesser. And only once. It had near destroyed him.

  Ancient minds helped him before, we shall do so again now.

  Val's mind screamed as it was seared with a flood of information and experience unlike anything he had ever imagined or fathomed. In that instant he was a young initiate in a robe of undyed wool, treading silently beside his master in the woodlands so close to their hidden city, friends with all the folk and faerie that called the woodlands their own. He could sense the life force inherent to all the plants and trees of the forest, the cycle of life and death, the intricate beauty of every tiny blossom and seedling. A lifetime's worth of knowledge, gained in a heartbeat that lasted for an eternity.

  He was that apprentice taking such joy as his first whispered enchantment coaxed a tiny seedling to flourish into a beautiful young oak, he was the journeyman whispering gentle enchantments that assured his hidden grove of walnut trees blossomed rich harvests even as gentle magics assured the soil stayed rich, loamy and black. He was the master tasked, along with a dozen other masters, to nurture and care for the masterwork grove that was at the heart of their hidden city, all of them sensing the discordant songs in the winds of Jordia and the minds of men, promising death and ruin.

  He was the memory of the lone elder who had poured his heart into the ancient grove before leaving to give warning to his brethren in the north... who never returned.

  Val screamed as his mind was flooded with ancient wisdom, feeling a heartbeat away from being torn free of his fragile body forever.

  Save versus oblivion made! Congratulations! Despite being mind-burned by a score of desperate, panicked dwarves, you've only suffered a single point of damage to Scholarship as your brain seethes with ancient lore! Permanent +1 to Magesight and Arcane Perception!

  Congratulations! Herbam magic is now Rank 3!

  Congratulations! Earth magic is now Rank 3!

  Congratulations! You have learned Greater Plentiful Bounty! (Master Ritual) Level 50 C+M+T / E+H

  Even as Val silently screamed. He felt his body dying, and knew he was out of time.

  Show me what to do, he said, and the voices did.

  Their request was p
ure madness. The odds of catastrophe extreme. And when Val felt the heart of that dying forest withering away, he poured all of his essence, all of his being into casting a spell of such shuddering potency that to miscast would send his soul spiraling into oblivion.

  The apprentice gazed to the masters before him, bowed, and joined his hands to their own, letting all their power and potency flood through him in a desperate bid to save their city from certain doom.

  And even as the first buds upon the tallest trees began to blossom into life renewed, the young human apprentice screamed and cried, never letting go of the ancient druids to either side, until his body crumbled to ash and withered limbs, husks of the very trees now blossoming overhead.

  And when the elder druids looked up from their tears of unimaginable loss and woe, the boy once more approached them.

  How?

  Val grinned. This isn't the first time I've died.

  And the elders joined hands with the spirit once more. The ritual continuing. Endlessly. No matter how much Val screamed and railed against agony unimaginable, dying endlessly for the sake of people he loved deeply, and hardly knew.

  "Val!" Julia screamed, desperately pouring a greater healing potion past Val's pasty lips. "Val, please!"

  Dirk gently clasped her hands, holding her as comfortingly as any father when she sobbed in his arms.

  "He's dying, Dirk! Oh god, he's really dying!"

  "I know, Julia. I know."

  "We have to do something!"

  Dirk said nothing, just holding her close as she sobbed on, Val's breath slowly growing to an awful rattle.

  "Captain. Captain!"

  Dirk frowned, gazing at Chris's trembling finger, only then catching sight of the half dozen powerfully built men approaching them. With thick heads of fiery red or chestnut brown hair and a uniform gray tinge to their otherwise pale skin, they possessed a striking countenance. Yet it was their captivating eyes that held everyone riveted, burning with intensity and alien intelligence, and the first thing Dirk thought was that this must be how Neanderthals had looked.

  But no.

  They were so closely related to the stout, powerful looking figures out of myth and legend, wearing bronze gold armor so like the few incredibly precious pieces Dirk himself owned. Their eyes so hard and knowing. Even the men completely robed like monks had a weight to their gaze that Dirk found deeply unnerving.

  They were dwarves.

  There could be no doubt.

  Their melodious tongue washed over Dirk, and he understood not a word they were saying.

  His eyes widened with awe to see a wondrous forest deep inside the earth where the forcefield had been only moments before. "How?..."

  "Captain, they're heading towards Val!" An alarmed Chris noted, hand suddenly on the hilt of his blade, Yin glaring fiercely at them.

  "Back away!"

  "Stand down!" Dirk ordered, realizing that, all else aside, a mistake against those dwarven warriors and they would be worse than dead. "Stand down."

  They stood there for endless moments, an awkward impasse. Making no aggressive action, moving forward no further.

  Then Val's final breath exited with a rattle.

  "He's dying, Dirk!" Julia screamed. "Let them through! Maybe they can do something, let them through!"

  And he did.

  Faces filled with grim intensity, the handful of robed elders that had approached Val began to lean over him, one gently touching his chest and closing his eyes, all of the whispering words none of their party could understand.

  Dirk grimaced, catching sight of Val's perforated body, bone protruding from shattered limbs, slimy grey intestines seeping from his shredded abdomen. He sighed and cradled Julia's sobbing head, resting it against his chest, knowing the look of death when he saw it.

  Then he blinked as soft light filled the room, growing in luminosity til he closed his eyes against the glare.

  21

  White light. It seemed to be all around him. Inside him. He was floating in clouds of it, billowing in a harmonious orchestra of powerful voices washing completely through him. Part of him wanted to bask in the wonder of it, the sheer sweet joy of it. Then the pitch lowered, vibrating through his shattered bones, and all he felt was pain.

  Congratulations! Hidden quest: A Dying Race I complete! You have rescued a lost tribe of dwarves so very different from the clan you still don't remember! Relying on elemental and druidic magics, they managed to seal themselves in a time bubble no enemy could hope to rupture, even as it slowly killed them. Yet their final plea to the gods was answered by you of all people, self-proclaimed destroyer of worlds. (Don't remember that either, do you?) Experience earned!

  You are considered a Hero of the Skogur Tribe! +6 reaction from all Skogur dwarves.

  Pain bordering on agony. Val screamed even as his bones writhed and twisted back together like broken vines wrapping root tendrils about two halves and sealing themselves as one, organs sealing tight around fatal punctures before regenerating tissue at a frantic pace, excess heat magically channeled away. Yet his nerves... every nerve throbbing with a lifetime's worth of pain in the span of minutes, allowed to twitch endlessly at a hyper-frantic pace, for to interfere with their cry would kill them forever. A hideous truth to druidic healing magics Val only understood at that moment, writhing in incomprehensible pain, pleading for death that would not come, even as his mind was flooded with hyperacute awareness of every arcane spell used to seal his flesh and bond his bones.

  Congratulations! You have learned Searing Cleanse! Level 20 (Creation+Destruction+Transmutation/Corpus+Fire+Herbam) This spell will disinfect and burn away impurities introduced into wounds from cuts, bites, and other infectious trauma. Will not cleanse arcane plagues, but will cleanse typical detritus found in even the most savage injuries. Side effect: Pain.

  Congratulations! You have learned Season's Binding! Level 30 (Creation+Manipulation+Transmutation/Corpus+Time). Broken bones will align themselves and bind tightly together! A Season's worth of perfect mending will occur in a single night! Side effect: severe, unremitting agony until the first night has passed!

  Congratulations! You have learned Season's Mending! Level 30 (C+M+T/C+F+T) Hyper rapid healing of injuries! Excess heat is drawn away and hyperproduction of white blood cells help to cleanse wounds, but critical failure risk, unless Searing Cleanse or other disinfectant measures are taken. Each casting automatically stabilizes an injury, restores hit points, and reduces wound severity by 2 degrees over a period of 8 hours! Critical wounds become medium, serious injuries become light, medium or light injuries are completely healed! (This spell will not stave off death from fatal injuries). Side effect: severe, unremitting agony until the first night has passed.

  You have failed to learn Greater Healing Ritual. You have failed to learn Anesthesia.

  Congratulations! Corpus magic is now Rank 2!

  Congratulations! Time magic is now Rank 2!

  Val screamed with lungs at last free of toxic fluids, writhing with muscles fiery hot with the searing touch of mending, hideously similar to the agony of being burned alive as his body was pushed into many seasons' worth of healing in a handful of hours, his nerves happily conveying all the pain of mending that would have been his, only stretched out over months. His only solace was the overwhelming gratitude pouring into him from the flood of souls who had been trapped in a loop of time that had cut them off from the very magics needed to maintain their great grove. A slow, lingering death in a prison of their own making.

  Until Val had set them free.

  -Forgive us, hero, but we dare not anesthetize you. Your situation is too precarious. You must endure.-

  And at last, after what seemed an eternity of suffering as Val gazed inward at the miracle of magics slowly regenerating his flesh even as his nerves screamed with fire, it was over. Relief absolute and total washed over him, and he knew blackness at last.

  "Val, are you awake?"

  Val groaned, blinking, b
racing himself for a horrific wave of pain... and nothing. He felt strangely relaxed, body sinking into a soft, down-filled mattress. He opened his eyes abruptly, beholding an elegantly appointed room with walls of dark stained hardwood, a plush queen-sized bed, and an exotic looking piece of medical equipment with leads pasted to his naked chest.

  And Julia, gazing at him so tenderly, gold green eyes conveying so much affection before she shyly looked away.

  Val frowned and rubbed his head.

  Something was different, he was sure.

  "Julia? What happened with the mine? Did Dirk bring us back to the manor? Are we in someone's house?" He frowned, a sneaking suspicion growing in him with the way a smile kept tugging at the corner of her cherry red lip, wearing casual clothes that were nothing like their Jordian skinsuits and armor.

  Val abruptly sat up. Sneaking suspicion growing into certainty even as he frowned at the medical equipment that looked like nothing he had ever seen in any hospital.

  "We're not in the game anymore, are we?"

  Julia chuckled softly. "No, Val. We're back on Earth. You're in our upstairs guest quarters." Her grinned only widened at Val's expression, before turning grave. "You were dying, Val." She swallowed. "I ported out the moment that curse was broken and told mom what had happened." Her gaze turned strange. "I still can't believe how easily she accepted it when I told her what had happened, when I explained that your injuries might translate between worlds." She grimaced at that. "Honestly, the look she gave me reminded me so much of Dirk, and she was lecturing me on tactics the whole panicked drive over to your house. Once we got to your house and explained the situation, your father and your friend were in a panic to let us into your room."

  Val blinked. "My friend is there?"

  Julia nodded. "Yes. Your father said he was an old army buddy of yours, just arrived today. He was getting a tour of the house when we stopped by. I think he and your dad were looking forward to surprising you when you were done your game session. The look on his face when we told him you were in trouble, I knew you two must have been close. Anyway, it was a mad rush to get up the stairs, your father leading the way, demanding to know what we knew, and my mother just silenced him with a glare, racing in, pulling out her customized diagnostic kit, and got to work."