Black Flame in the Barren Steppe: Epic LitRPG (Realm of Arkon, Book 8)

by G. Akella

  Based on the look on his face, the bald man was blissfully unbothered by the thick veil of terror that was spreading outwards from the temple. He was even munching on the same roll he had pulled out of his bag ten minutes back.

  "Run for your lives!"

  A young monk barreled out of a temple side door into the street, wearing a bloodied beige robe. He was no older than twelve, and his face was stained with tears and twisted with terror. His HP bar was down to half, and in his right hand he held a scroll with a wax seal dangling from it.

  "A dark god has come! Run!"

  The boy awkwardly stumbled over a corpse, fell, and jumped back to his feet, waving his skinny arms in absurd warning gestures as he ran towards us.

  "They sent him away so he would survive," Kan grumbled into the channel. “Heal him up and give him some mental resistance.”

  "I know, I'm not an idiot," Raena snapped back. She restored the monk’s health and placed a string of buffs on him.

  The boy noticed the dragons coming his way then and stumbled to the side. Then he saw us and froze, his mouth partly open.

  "What, why..." he sobbed, then waved us away again. “Brother Horym said that... said that I... stop, don't go that way! There’s nothing there but death!”

  "We're going to help him," Kan replied with a gesture meant to calm him down. “Go give your message to the soldiers. They’re straight that way, down the road."

  "He's dead! That thing killed him!" The boy sobbed again.

  "Then we will avenge him," the knight-commander nodded. “Now run, boy, run. You must obey your orders!”

  Having sent the child to join the soldiers, we kept moving, and soon passed the last of the houses. Now, I couldn't claim to be horrified at the picture that opened up before us, since I had seen many such things before, but I was wounded by the injustice of it all. The temple complex had been a unique ensemble of architectural wonder: sculptures, ponds, and pavilions that innocent civilians were enjoying with their children just a few hours ago. Now, it looked like an artillery-scorched wasteland. And all because some beast had decided to attack a neighboring state.

  The gate doors where the paladins had been stationed were smashed, lying on the ground about ten yards apart. Their frame of stone had been taken down, with part of the walls around. Half of the ground had been razed and stained with a hideous slime that glistened under the street lamps. Fallen trees, sparse skeletons of buildings, fragments of pillars and pavilions and statues, broken and overturned benches. The air was filled with the stench of rot, and a giant creature the size of a quarry dump truck stood a few hundred yards ahead, still raging against the landscape.

  This mort looked different than the others. Sadly, it was not smaller, rising to some twenty feet and spanning no less than seventy, with four paws, three rat-like tails, and a skull similar to a crocodile's. But this time, instead of tentacles, it had a long, spiny crest on its back, and two crooked limbs held over its head which it used to pummel the portico of the main temple, ignoring the defenders flailing around it. It had destroyed all of the melee fighters, but about thirty monks and paladins surrounded it on all sides, at respectable distances, and were hitting it with spell after spell. Glowing hammers, pillars of light, and clouds of sparkling dust were attacking the beast nonstop, but doing little to hurt it. Of the twenty four billion HP the beast had, only five percent was gone, if that.

  Rage coursed through me, smashing all the barriers I had built to keep it at bay, flooding my consciousness like a torrent the moment I saw the melted fragments of Myrt's statue. We were too late. Vill had beaten me. The legions of King Rayan would never make it to the steppe, and the orcs would be left alone to fight the white-haired bastard's army. How carefully Vill had planned all of this out! And the second mort was now likely wreaking havoc on the city barracks, destroying Duke Richard’s army. Checkmate.

  "I don't suppose anybody knows a guy with an ICBM," Bonbon frowned as the final columns of the portico collapsed into dust. “That thing will destroy every last brick here before morning comes. How could Myrt allow this?”

  "I'll explain later," I said, teeth clenched as I tried to restrain my fury and determine what we should do next.

  He was right. This dog of the Twice Cursed God would not stop destroying, and Myrt would not come. He knew that there was no threat as far as Erantia was concerned, and he would conserve all of his damn prana for fighting the Ancients. Vill had calculated everything and had limited his risk to near-zero by sending the Fallen Ones to Venern. To the Supreme God, the Great Forest was more valuable than the Orcish Steppes. The Ancients would smash the unified army, and the Twice Cursed God would smash the orcs, thus becoming the strongest divinity in Arkon. Even if the Ancients failed against the Great Forest, the allied army and their gods would be greatly weakened. Celphata would clash with Rakot—Vill counted on that, at least—and then the Twice Cursed God would mop up the survivors, one by one. So what was left for me to do, then? Stand by and watch?! Worst of all, the demon within was screaming its lungs out, pleading to unleash its rage and go pound that monster into the dirt.

  "What do we do, Roman?" Donut asked, touching my sleeve lightly.

  My rage and the continuing alarms pounded my temples, driving away the whirling fog of that hellish whisper. To my left, I heard the clang of metal and the cries of countless soldiers. It was the countess with her three centuries, fighting a desperate, pointless fight trying to keep the spawns of darkness from reaching the temple. The surviving defenders had no hope of stopping the inexorable creature, but they were still trying. Or trying to die glorious deaths, perhaps. A grim world. Grim yet just.

  Having finished the portico, the mort moved on to the walls. Twenty three billion HP! We had not even a glimmer of a chance, but I was not going to run again. Better to burn out than rust out!

  "Everyone leave, now!" I roared to my party as I drew my sword and rushed for the temple.

  Idiocy? Probably. No intelligent man, and certainly no ruler, would have done what I did. I didn't have the right to put my party in danger again, but I could risk my own life. When it came to pointless peril, my friends had more brains than I did. The human in me disliked retreat, but the demon simply could not stand it.

  Just then, the mort stopped smashing the wall, turned sharply, and looked at me. A low, hollow growl filled the channel.

  "Yooooouuu!"

  "Yes, whelp," I grinned. “Your master has sent you to the slaughter. You know that, right?”

  The mort craned its neck absurdly far and bellowed a fearsome roar, as it had back then, on the plain.

  Windows shattered, and a dozen temple defenders fell to the ground. Vaessa cursed loudly in the channel.

  "Diiiee!" it roared, and came at me quickly, its paws scrambling like a lizard's.

  The bells continued, without ceasing. The mort's narrow eye sockets burned a bright white, and the earth trembled as its steps pounded it into submission. The temple defenders stood stymied, frozen, watching the monster run away from them. One cried out and pointed at the houses. Ruination flared up in my hand, just like it had in the ruined temple of Kirana. More Jedi tricks?

  "Come at me, beast!" I whispered through clenched teeth, raising my shield and my sword both, and preparing to strike.

  I had no fear, only fury. It was dizzying, intoxicating—infinitely hungry and infinitely satisfying, just like in Rualt's hall. The demon in me had completely overpowered the man.

  The mort slowed before it had quite reached me, sprayed a wave of rotten slime from its mouth, and dealt a double blow with its curved, bony limbs.

  "Candle, quick! The one you made from those yellow icicles!" Bonbon suddenly barked in the channel.

  Had the others lost their minds, too? As I tried to figure out what bloody icicles they could be talking about, I popped Infernal Rage and stepped back from the bone hammer plummeting towards me. The monster's limb, large as a battering ram, smashed the pavement, sending fragments of stone flyi
ng. The second hit I took with my shield. Despite the block, my forearm blew up with pain, and my whole left arm felt dead. If not for the shield, I would be a stain on the ground. Yet the pain disappeared in an instant, leaving only rage, despite a third of my HP being gone. Ice Blade! Crit! Ruination cut into the creature's bony limb as it slid off my shield, seeming stuck for an instant before passing through like a red-hot knife through rancid butter. A five-foot-long stump of bone fell to my feet, and the mort screamed furiously. Before I could begin to process my surprise, Bonbon Charged right into the beast’s face, holding a scroll that blazed with brilliant sunlight instead of a sword.

  "The hell!"

  "Physics for the win!" the bald man laughed mockingly, poking the monster in its nostril with the scroll.

  The mort squealed like a massive wounded pig, and its HP bar began to slowly dwindle. With a swing of its muzzle it threw the warrior aside, but its next attack was directed at me once again, since my shield's magic was still active. My left arm wasn’t functional, but by some miracle I managed to dodge. My bald friend lay unconscious on the ground. The scroll had rolled away from his hand, but the spell was still active. Ignoring me, the creature took a step towards the scroll, but then Raena emerged from thin air with another activated scroll. What ensued was a waking nightmare. The beast's face grew covered with a gray mold from a spell striking it in the back. Masyanya’s arrow pierced the mort’s eye, and the knight-commander cut into its side. Donut emerged from invisibility from behind and executed a lightning-quick combo attack. Brushing me with her wing, Lola rushed past and crashed into the monster, and then she, George, and Mopsy clung to the creature’s front paws as it tried to back away from the hated sunlight.

  "The hell are you all doing?" I shouted, perfectly aware that I could do nothing to stop them.

  Tongue of Flame! Ruination cut a deep notch in the beast's lower jaw, and I Jumped forty yards back, taking a few steps to slow myself from the inertia of the move.

  This was agony. The sunlight was not damaging the monster quickly enough. We had no tank, with Bonbon unconscious and my shield arm hanging limp as a whip. The mort could take out any one of the party with a single blow, but presently he could attack only me. For ten more seconds, at least. Which meant my party would survive for these ten seconds. What if he failed to hit me before the ten seconds expired? What penalty would the System impose? I didn't know, but that was the only hope we had.

  "Come on, you rat!"

  I turned to look the mort in the eye. Suddenly, that eye expanded to fill the whole wide world, and my consciousness plunged into total blackness.

  ***

  Something sharp pinched my cheek. I opened my eyes and stood up slowly. Well, damn. I was standing on a semicircular platform that was divided by an unbroken wall of rolling gray fog. Underneath, I saw stunted vegetation—dirty green grass and twsited, crooked trees creeping along the ground. The platform cut off sharply along the edge, with a vast black surface stretching beyond it. The Dark Ocean? Well, where else would that black ape send me, if not here? The sky was gray as a slab of lead, with no hint of the sun. No wind, no clouds. Everything was quiet, lifeless, motionless. Even the grass and trees seemed like contrived scenery. I didn't have my armor or weapons—my inventory was completely unavailable, like it had been in the vision with Merdoc. I bent down and picked up some of the grass, examining it carefully. Unnatural, sharp edges. My botany skill was non-existent, so I didn’t bother trying to perceive whether it was alive or not. I tossed it to the ground and slowly approached the edge of the cliff, trying to figure out what exactly had happened.

  I concluded that the mort knew it didn't have enough time to reach me with its claws, so it had attacked me mentally. Was this a control effect? What was happening in Venern right now? If it was a control effect, the mort would still lose a third of its HP. Primordial Chaos worked the same way on everyone, from a rabbit to a leviathan. And since the mort had already lost fifteen percent of its health, it would be just above half. According to Vaessa, the gods took thousands of years to regenerate their life force. Greater Healing didn't work on them since all those billions of hit points were linked to their astral body. This mort didn’t have its own Helstaad here, and I hoped it never would. Not even the brashest of morons would build temples and altars in this thing’s honor, so restoring its HP would take forever and a half.

  So if my reasoning was right, the eight of us sacrificed ourselves to take the dark god down to almost half HP. OK, cool. Death was, of course, rather a negative outcome. Though perhaps in the whole time I had been standing here, only a split second had passed there, or less. I could still feel my left arm, so the fight couldn't be over yet. But what the hell had sent me here? And what was I supposed to do now?

  The Dark Ocean was thick and black, with not even the slightest ripple visible on its surface. Just solid, impenetrable blackness. I couldn't even determine how high above it I was. The edge of the platform was six-seven feet thick, at most. It was a piece of land suspended in the air, over the surface of the ocean. I jumped back from the edge and massaged my temples with my fingers. I could feel the inky black abomination dragging me to itself. I can resist it. I will resist it. I calmed down and gave a gesture to the ocean that made my opinion of it crystal clear, then looked thoughtfully at the wall of fog.

  "Hello!"

  The voice on my right was soft and pleasant, but it still made me flinch. I turned my head and took a step back.

  "It's you!"

  A beautiful young woman stood next to me, though I would have sworn she wasn't there a moment before. She wore light, translucent pants, light blue shoes, and a matching satin tunic, adorned with thick black hair. My woman looked the same as in my first vision of her, except...

  "Yes, my love." Lita looked around the platform and smiled. “What an amazing place! Here, all of your deepest desires come true.” She approached me and offered her hand. “Come on. I'll take you to a place that’s just right for us.”

  "All of my deepest desires, eh?" I looked at her hand contemplatively.

  "That's right." The girl looked into my eyes and cocked her head to the side. “Is there something you want? Just tell me what it is...”

  "Please die." I smiled good-naturedly, without averting my gaze, and gestured back toward the ocean. “I guess swimming in this ocean of shit makes you stupid. Did you really think you would ensnare me with such a primitive trick? No bastard of the darkness can read all of the Dreamer's mind, you know. Now, we’re heading back to my world, and then you’re going to die, freak. And then I'll snuff out your scummy brother."

  A light shadow came over the girl's face, and then the ground split and parted. As I fell, I instinctively caught myself on a protruding root—and was then hanging over the black abyss of the ocean. I guess this is what an astronaut hanging on as the black of space passes by feels like. The stupidest thoughts always came to mind during moments of crisis.

  "Quick, give me your hand!" she said, extending her palm to me yet again as she kneeled at the edge of the abyss.

  "I'm coming for you, you freaks!" I smiled at the creature bending over the edge, and then let go of the root.

  Chapter 9

  I came to and leaped up.

  "You're alive!"

  "We're fine. What about you?" Raena asked.

  A mixture of contradicting feelings was on their faces, but all of them shared one thing in common: the bastards were holding back laughter! Sure, a half-awake man leaping up with sword and shield could look hilarious in any number of situations, but how was I supposed to know the battle had already ended?

  "Where's the monster?" I sheathed my blade and nodded to where the mort had just been, and realized the alarm was no longer sounding.

  "Gone, and so is the other one," Donut supplied, pointing towards the port, above which the crimson aura of a great blaze lit the sky. "When the mort took control of you, its HP bar took a major hit, and those temple guys with the hammers took
advantage and created such a powerful blast of light that the thing lost another ten percent. That dispatched the bastard. Those guys have much stronger Light magic than a scroll, you know.” The rogue's voice grew quieter in respect for the casters. “Their multipliers are nuts. If they had just figured out earlier that a simple Light spell would be so deadly, the mort would never have reached the temple.”

  "I told you so!" Bonbon pulled out a paladin club from his bag which he had picked up back at Kirana's Temple, and shook it over his head. “Who's the great Knight of Light, after all? Sir Bonbon, Bane of the Dark Gods! Protector of the helpless, the abused—” he looked at each of us, then finally at Masyanya—”and cripples and blondes.”

  The huntress looked him up and down. "How old was that roll? It must have gone bad. Or maybe you took one too many hits on the head? And here I thought you had a solid skull."

  "Only Uncle Kan here managed to get hit on the head," Reece interjected. “But auntie here blew her magic breath at him, and that made him feel better. Looks like he wants a few more puffs, actually.”

  Of course, Vaessa looked annoyed at Reece's smartassery, but I cut in before she could go off on him.

  "Where are the temple defenders? And how long was I out?"

  "They went to go help the soldiers," Donut pointed to the next street over. “But it was over before they got there. And you've been lying there for something like ten minutes.”

  "I see." I did my best to sound serious. “Now explain to me, please, ladies and gentlemen, why the hell you joined this shitshow? Did you forget your orders?” I turned to Kan. “They're irresponsible, I get it. But you? You’re a knight-commander!”

  "We did follow orders," Bonbon said, taken aback. “You told us to leave. We left, a little, and then we came back. You didn't tell us not to come back.”

  Kan echoed the warrior's words with a nod at Bonbon. Returning to me, he shrugged and pulled a familiar bottle from his bag, then offered it to me without a word.