The Demonic Games (Disgardium Book #7): LitRPG Series

by Dan Sugralinov

  Searching the rest of the room, I cast a glance at the wall. My inner hamster Pepper squeaked with glee for the first time in the Games:

  Blade of the Bloody Tide

  Epic sword.

  Damage: 444-666.

  Injuries dealt by this blade cause a bleeding effect for 3 minutes, dealing 36 damage per second.

  +180 strength.

  +270 endurance.

  +24% critical hit chance.

  Only for the Demonic Games!

  Sell price: 850 demonic gold coins.

  Chance of loss after death lowered by 90%.

  The two-handed sword with a worn handle encrusted with red gemstones hung on rusty chains. Its curved, serrated blade flashed crimson.

  My hand reached out for the sword on its own. It had to be the weapon I needed against the boss! Although… Judging by the stats, the blade would be useless in combat against Despot, but it was still worth a try.

  After half a minute or so, I came back — the sword was about as useful against the demon as a toothbrush against a mechatank. My life was hanging by a thread again after that experiment, but I had to try!

  Ignoring Pepper’s shrieks, I left the epic where I’d found it. Once I solved my demon problem, I’d be sure to come back. There was no point in taking the sword just yet; if I stopped using Unarmed Combat, then I wouldn’t have Rindzin’s Ghostly Talon, whose damage was always equal to the opponent’s level. The sword was unlikely to come in handy even later on, but I could sell it or give it to my allies.

  Crash, crash, crash came Despot’s steps like the swing of a huge metronome. Flying out of the cache, I put a marker on the map so I could come back, then headed for the center of the dungeon again.

  I studied the labyrinth as I flew, looked closely at the walls — still no mobs of any kind, but something had changed: the closer I got to the dungeon’s heart, the less lichen was on the walls, but now there were shining delicate beetles all over. As soon as I neared them, they scurried away into the cracks in the walls. Apart from them, I saw something like an anemone with phosphorescent tentacles. A beetle glowed weakly in the transparent stomach of the creepy creature. Even here, the game designers had built an ecosystem — just like dad told me about how zones in Dis are made.

  The corridors on the periphery were more reminiscent of a quarry, but now they were like gigantic intestines covered with channels, pulsating red moss and scuttling insects. The walls seemed alive and ready at any moment to close in.

  Despot’s trample stopped sounding like the strikes of hammer on anvil. Now it had more of a sucking quality, as if the boss was walking through a shallow marsh.

  Comparing with the map to keep my direction, I flew on and didn’t stop until I found myself in a spacious corridor. This one bent in a semi-circle around a strange wall, reddish-brown and speckled with channels that oozed slime. Red and blue vessels pulsated beneath the repulsive surface.

  I focused on the wall, suspecting it was a mob or other NPC, but couldn’t see any stats. On the map, it just showed up as a dark spot of unexplored space. Following the corridor around the wall in the hope of finding an entrance, I saw there was nothing of the kind. The wall was like the trunk of a gigantic tree, seamless all the way around. It was clearly different from everything I’d seen so far.

  Despot’s steps approached, but I decided to take the risk of trying to break through the wall.

  Remembering how my attack on the demon ended, I went into Clarity just in case and delivered a series of strikes. My attacks didn’t meet the resistance of stone; the wall was soft like jelly. My fists plunged in and threw out scraps of flesh and muddy crimson liquid in all directions. The slime stuck to my face, slowed my movements. My fists cracked against the wall like machine guns, and although it took no damage, my arms went in deeper and deeper.

  A final Hammerfist smashed through the obstacle before me, and part of the wall collapsed with a squelch. The sludge dripped away slowly, revealing a narrow passageway into a small room filled with orange light.

  Leaving Clarity, I darted inside and stood before one of the weirdest looking altars I’d ever seen… I don’t know what the game designers were smoking, but it was clearly something strong! It looked like a nerve cluster interwoven with pulsating vessels, like the ones they showed us in anatomy class. At its top, fine threads enshrouded a transparent chest. Something alive was struggling to get free inside it, like a chick trying to break out of an egg.

  Below, the nerves and vessels descended into the floor, which shifted and trembled. Holes opened here and there, shot out streams of foul steam — a creature breathing? Not far from the chest, a mass wrapped in veins opened and an unblinking eye stuck out of it, staring at me.

  At the same time, Despot squirmed and stamped outside. The boss reached an arm through the hole I’d made, but his chitinous spines got him stuck and he couldn’t get through.

  I had to hurry. If I could break through the wall, then nothing stopped Despot from doing the same. Flying to the altar, I grabbed the chest and pulled. I recalled the Caressing Creeper — I was putting in the same effort now as then, but the chest seemed to be rooted to the altar. It wasn’t easy to tear from the pedestal. Once the final roots snapped, bleeding out brown blood, my momentum threw me back into the wall. I stuck into it.

  I didn’t risk dropping down to the living mass, which pulsed and breathed, growing tentacles and eyes that stared with hatred. Hovering not far from the altar, I tried to open the chest, which was filled with a murky yellow liquid. Something splashed inside. Two dark, clawed hands pressed against the glass. I nearly dropped the chest in shock. Turning it in my hands, I regretted leaving the sword behind; I could have used it to just cut the chest open.

  Now I had to figure out a way to open it. There was only one option: the keyhole, but where was the key?

  As if sensing something, Despot roared and began to smash himself against the living wall. Woah. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I sped up my search for the key, but couldn’t find it even after flying around the room.

  What next? I stopped to think. I had no lockpicking skill, and I doubted I’d be able to open the chest without lockpicks anyway. That meant I had to think along other lines. Break it? No. That couldn’t be the answer. Hmm… It wasn’t a given that only a rogue could get in here — here I was, and I was no rogue. That meant there was another way…

  A strike came from outside. The floor vibrated, bristled. Despot no longer roared — he boomed like a rocket taking off, deafening me and causing the living walls to swell as if trying to crush the interloper.

  Getting as far as I could away from them, I thought for a moment. If the game developers planned for anyone who came in here to be able to open the chest… Then that meant there had to be something that could do it on this floor, and that something must be… The demonic gold!

  I suddenly remembered how Meister had used it to remove Abaddon’s buff. There was no point in eating the money, I thought, but what if… I pulled out a coin and it fit perfectly into the slot on the chest.

  Then things got weirder, although I didn’t think they could!

  The chest burst open and some kind of small imp stuck out a puffy face, spitting sticky acid slime at me. Screaming, I jumped back and my health began to drop — Demonic Poison Spit took away 1% per second.

  My eyes burned, and while I wiped the slime off my face, the imp jumped out and began to trot along the surface. After brushing away the poisonous spit, I just barely managed to dodge a fireball headed straight for me. Just the edge of the fireball hit me, but took away 13% health! The imp cackled with a baby’s laughter, the outline of a second fireball forming in its chubby hand. Little bastard!

  Clarity!

  I dropped down on the imp with all the rage I’d been building up, all my seething indignation. The world froze, as did the sounds coming from outside. I heard only my fists working, boom, boom, boom, like in a nightclub. The monstrous face was thrown from side
to side.

  I kept beating on it, taking a moment to realize that the demon was already dead. I didn’t get any of the experience I so badly needed either.

  The imp’s body, skull caved in, twitched in agony and wasted away before my eyes, leaving behind a black crystal in a disgusting sticky sludge:

  Despot’s Heart

  Unique event item.

  Destroy the heart to banish Despot from the Cursed Chasm and send him back to the Inferno, but remember — the life of the loser is worth nothing in the eyes of the demon princes. Disincarnation awaits Despot.

  Health: 10,000,000 / 10,000,000.

  In shape, the crystal looked more like a cluster of anthracite icicles than a heart. It seemed dead already, cold to the touch. I had already long since come out of Clarity, but the world around me had changed subtly: the substance beneath my feet no longer moved, but seemed to be waiting in tense expectation. Despot no longer stamped either, and the deep pulsing and strange crackle had also silenced.

  Now I knew why the monster wasn’t tearing down the wall to get to me; he would be tearing his way inside himself. And now I knew the demon’s secret: Despot couldn’t be killed by even the most powerful raid. The only way to destroy him was through cunning.

  I clenched my fist around the black crystal. A long, drawn-out breath echoed through the corridor. Squeezing the heart in one hand, with the second I began to beat against it, taking away hundreds of thousands of health in damage — it was a fragile thing.

  The silence exploded with a roar from Despot that seemed more like the screech of a mortally wounded bird scratching its claws on glass. The noise twisted my stomach, but I kept beating on the heart, watching as its health fell into the red.

  The room’s walls shook and covered over with trickling droplets, as if they were crying. I heard the gigantic boss collapse outside the walls, the scream turning to a wheeze. With my hand held above the heart for the final blow, I stopped. 3.1% — two or three hits.

  Whether from curiosity or intuition, I felt an urge to fly closer, see what happened to Despot when he was banished to the Inferno. I carefully struck my head out of the room, which seemed to be melting like a snow fort in the spring. The boss was stretched out in the corridor, head back and mouth open, his clawed fingers weakly scratching against the stone floor, but no longer melting it. On the contrary, the claws were snapping. The chitinous spines on his head had also cracked, sticking into the ceiling.

  The demon was expiring. The fire in his belly dimmed with each breath. As if feeling my eyes, he turned his head, blinked. Tears of magma rolled down from his eyes, hissing. This creature of the land of Disgardium, twisted by chaos and sent to the Demonic Games by the princes of the Inferno, was dying. A little longer and he would return home.

  Despot lay immobile, not trying to attack. Either it was just my imagination or there really was a glimmer of plea in the depths of his eyes. Suddenly, I didn’t want to kill him anymore. Firstly because there was no pleasure in killing a defenseless foe; on the contrary, it made you feel like a loser. Secondly, if this entire labyrinth was something akin to a part of Despot, then the demon’s death might cause the place to fall down and bury me under the wreckage.

  “Hey, Horns, I did try and solve all this peacefully from the start, you know,” I muttered.

  The demon kept looking straight at me, frozen, waiting. I froze too, ready to break the heart if Despot tried to attack me, with five seconds of Clarity in supply. But the monster shifted, breathed in and out, kindling his internal flame, then raised himself on his arms, holding onto the wall, and knelt down before me.

  Despot, Demon, level 531 Gate Guardian, has surrendered.

  Level 531 dungeon Despot’s Labyrinth completed!

  Attention! Despot, Demon, level 531 Gate Guardian, wants to become your ally.

  If you refuse, Despot’s incarnation in the Cursed Chasm will die, and the demon will return to the Inferno.

  Attention! Pets of the ‘ally’ class make their own decisions. You can give them orders, but you cannot control their actions.

  Attention! If you accept, Despot will become your ally for the time of the Demonic Games only, at the end of which he will return to his lair and continue to kill contestants in future Games.

  Accept? Refuse?

  Yes! The heart in my hands began to pulsate, brightened a little and started restoring. The demon rose from his knee. Fire flickered in his eyes, not out of hatred, but something more friendly, and… mischievous.

  Unlocked event achievement: Tenderhearted Demon Fighter!

  Demon Despot, who has defended the interests of the Inferno in the Demonic Games for centuries, lost to you in battle and was ready for death. One hit and you would have absorbed a portion of his power, learned some of his skills and gained his aura of Hellflame, but you showed weakness. You had mercy on the demon, forgetting that these creatures are corrupted by Chaos and are deadly enemies to all sentients of Disgardium!

  Attention! This achievement is an event achievement, and is active only for the duration of the Demonic Games.

  Reward: Tenderhearted Demon Fighter perk.

  Tenderhearted Demon Fighter

  In battle against demons, you cannot deliver a killing blow on the first attempt.

  The ‘reward’ was harsh, but didn’t particularly bother me. When trying to deliver a killing blow in Clarity, the second strike would land almost in the same instant as the first.

  It was a risk to agree to spare Despot; the system might have not given me the victory at all and taken away my experience. Thankfully, the designers had at least some sense of justice. There was no loot, but notifications flooded my logs…

  Experience: +5,310.

  You leveled up! Current level: 2.

  You leveled up! Current level: 3.

  You leveled up! Current level: 4…

  …and the last lines showed me where I was now:

  You leveled up! Current level: 102.

  101 free attribute points available!

  Experience at current level (102): 58 / 103.

  Another hundred and one points automatically poured into charisma and luck — definitely the most important stats when it came to demons. Oh well, I didn’t care. The main thing was that it would take a hundred kills to get me out of the Games now!

  I split the stat points between strength and stamina out of habit: fifty into one, fifty-one into the other. Then I looked at the frozen figure of Despot again, smiled.

  “Congratulations, you big mute monster! You made the right choice, and evil uncle Diablo won’t kick your ass! I hope we manage to get off this floor, and then you’re going to have lots to eat, believe me!”

  The demon’s chest burned even brighter, he even breathed louder.

  “Patience, Dessspot! Soon I’ll introduce you to Dessstiny! I think you’ll like her — she’s beautiful, delicious, just like you like ‘em!”

  Imagining Marcus and Destiny’s faces when they saw the level 531 demon fighting on my side, I couldn’t hold back an evil grin.

  “Well, wanna go upstairs? Spread some chaos in our enemies’ ranks?”

  A wave of heat washed over me. Who knew what it meant — agreement, or refusal? There was only one way to find out. Mapping out the shortest route to the unexplored part of the dungeon to complete my map and finish my explorer achievement, I turned the demon:

  “Follow me,” I ordered and started moving.

  The beast followed! I flew, the demon stomped. All the way, I kept looking back nervously to make sure I wasn’t dreaming it. I was still subconsciously waiting for the catch — what if he was just about to attack?!

  Despot kept up, and it was strange — sometimes it seemed I’d lost him and his marker was too far away, but then his face with its bony halberd-like growths appeared from around the corner, scraping sparks from the ceiling. The walking forge was following closely.

  By the end of the day, my goal was achieved:

  Unlocked event ach
ievement: Conqueror of Despot’s Labyrinth

  You are the first to have explored 100% of Despot’s Labyrinth and to defeat its boss.

  Attention! This achievement is an event achievement, and is active only for the duration of the Demonic Games.

  Reward: +25% to damage against demons.

  Despot flashed with flame as if he could sense my reward.