Arcane Kingdom Online: The Fallen City (A LitRPG Adventure, Book 3)

by Jakob Tanner

  I turned around, searching for an escape.

  Across the room Shade and Bella traded knife blows. With each slash and block, a sharp clank echoed forth. The two Lirana circled each other.

  “You talk about disloyalty Bella,” hissed Shade. “What the hell is this?”

  “I’m protecting my home.”

  Their daggers clinked and clanged as they knocked into each other. The two fighters barred their teeth and hissed at one another.

  My eyes circled back to the pirates on the ice. They’d regained their composure, helping each other up. They each lifted their cutlasses into the air and clinked them together in a Three Musketeers, “All-for-one” kind of way. A wave of energy emanated from them and passed through me. What kind of team combo move had they initiated? I checked my HUD and saw it had picked it up.

  Edward, Al, and Fisk initiate Parley

  What the hell is parley!?

  “Enough of this stalling,” yelled Serena, rushing towards them, sword raised. She leaped in the air, preparing a crushing blow on the pirates. Yet something strange happened. As Serena flew through the air, her sword remained clutched behind her. It was in a prime position to swing, to arc across the air and land in the skull of one of the pirates, but she didn’t move it. Serena landed on the ground, her attack stalled.

  “What the heck is happening?”

  I stretched my arm out. My arm made the motions of a fireblast, but no elemental magic exited my palm. My arm was like a gun with a jammed trigger.

  Bad news: I was unable to attack.

  Good news: whatever was effecting us was also happening to our opponents. They weren’t even attempting to attack us. A message popped up in my HUD.

  Parley (debuff): Offensive abilities disabled within the proximity of those with the pirate class. You’re being attacked by pirates currently, you say? Arr shucks (duration: 3 minutes).

  “What kind of weird move is this?” complained Kari.

  “A bullshit one,” said Shade, locked in a deadly staring match with Bella since they were unable to swing their blades at each other.

  “I don’t get it though,” I said. “What’s the point of negating all offensive abilities of your opponents, if it does the same thing to you?”

  The red bandana pirate smirked. He clutched his fist and threw a coin in the air. A purple mist showering him as he did so. The two other pirates followed suit, even Bella did something similar.

  Now what were they doing? My HUD laid it out for me.

  Ed initiates Pirate’s Philosophy

  Al initiates Pirate’s Philosophy

  Fisk initiates Pirate’s Philosophy

  Bella initiates Pirate’s Philosophy

  “Here it comes guys,” said Shade, taking another step back away from Bella. “Some extremely overpowered bullshit.”

  “What the heck is Pirate’s Philosophy,” said Kari, looking at our enemies with concern.

  “It’s an ethos,” said Ed, clutching his sword with a new vigor and making practice swings in the air. “A way of life. A religion. A governing spirit. A set of rules”

  “Basically, what he’s trying to say,” said Shade, frustration leaking into his voice. “Is pirates only follow one rule: there are no rules.”

  “Exactly,” said Bella, charging Shade with her cutlass.

  The others headed towards us, swords raised.

  “But what about the parley?” I said, taken aback by the onrush.

  “Pirate’s Philosophy stripped us of all our debuffs, bitch,” yelled Ed, swiping his blade across the air in an attempt to slice Serena’s head off. She met his attack with her blade raised. The metal clamored against each other, creating an awful shrill echo.

  “Looks like we can still defend ourselves,” said Serena between gritted teeth. She held her sword up against the onrush of attacks. “Kari—I need you to increase my Toughness stats and keep me healed.”

  “On it,” said Kari, waving her staff in one hand and conjuring support magic in the other.

  One of the pirates ran towards Kari.

  “Aw hell no,” yelled Serena. “Protect Thy Allies!”

  A rippling wave shook through the room. The pirates gunning for Kari spun around with an urge to fight Serena.

  “What are we supposed to do here if we can’t attack?” I asked.

  Serena triggered sword shield again. “Goddamnit! This would be so much easier if I could kick their teeth in.”

  “Do we have any updates on how we’re supposed to get out of here?” I asked.

  Kari stepped back and placed her hand on the elevator door button. She jammed her fingers into it repeatedly. No dice.

  “The elevator’s locked,” said Kari. “There’s a master key lock under here. If we can get the key, we can get out of here.”

  Shade stumbled backwards across the chamber, defending himself from Bella’s onslaught of attacks.

  “Too bad I hold the key,” grinned Bella, lunging forward with her cutlass against Shade.

  I checked the debuff timer on parley and saw we only had ten more seconds left.

  “We’ll be able to attack again in a few seconds guys,” I said, revving myself up.

  The pirates attacking Serena retreated and raised their cutlasses in the air again.

  “Oh no,” I yelled. “They’re initiating parley again.”

  Serena ran towards them but without being able to attack, I didn’t know how she’d be able to stop them. We needed to cancel the move without actually attacking them.

  Aha.

  I trigged electric blink, disappearing in a sparkle of electricity from the spot I was standing in, and reappearing on top of one of the pirates. I fell to the ground, collapsing on the cloaked pirate and dragged him to the floor with me, disrupting the trio from triggering parley.

  I rolled over the pirate and got back to my feet.

  “You shouldn’t have been able to attack us,” said Ed, red in the face.

  “It wasn’t an attack,” I said. “I was simply falling with style. I call it coordinated buffoonery, dickhead.”

  “You’re wasting your time.”

  I shook my head. “Serena, Kari—let’s finish this,” I yelled as I disappeared in a burst of electricity.

  I reappeared behind Ed and threw out my hand, bright purple tendrils of electricity swirling around each of my fingers as I planted it into my enemy’s head, offering free electric shock therapy. His whole body vibrated and shivered, seizing up and losing control of his senses.

  Serena stomped the ground with her boots, triggering her move, Release Me. The two other pirates stumbled away from her. She took the clear path to Edward who had collapsed to his knees after my devastating attack. She leapt through the air, arching her giant sword behind her. As she came in for landing, Serena’s blade touched the ground first, slicing through Edward’s head and body, blood and guts flying everywhere. The two sides of his body bent and peeled in opposite direction like an unzipped jacket.

  +148 EXP!

  Serena hyperventilated. She lifted her blade from his divided corpse and turned to the next two players. Right. Our fight here wasn’t over yet.

  The two remaining pirates took a frightened step back as Serena turned towards them with her bloodstained sword. Their arms shook, their teeth chattered. They shared a nervous glance to one another. I suspected the parley and pirate’s philosophy combo didn’t work with only two.

  The pirates gave a loud battle cry, regaining their lost confidence. They took a step towards us. I held my arm out and stretched my fingers wide, creating a small wave of fire at their feet. The flames got larger and larger until they curtained us from our attackers.

  “Unleash the combo Serena,” I said.

  Kari waved her hands through the air, adding attack buffs to Serena. “Finish them!”

  Serena ran towards the flame. She triggered blade tornado, becoming a swirling cyclone of unrelenting steel. She was a human chainsaw. The flame caught hold of her sword, enve
loping it, and sharing its power with the blade. The pirates held up their cutlasses to stop the attack, but Serena’s flaming great sword spinning at rapid speeds, simply knocked the thin swords out of the pirates’ hands. Then, on the next rotation, it sliced through their bodies, cutting them in half, turning their corpses transparent even as she still spun.

  +148 EXP!

  +148 EXP!

  “That was so badass,” said Kari, turning to me. “Do you ever wish you were a tank?”

  Serena, her arms covered in blood, shivered from the weight of the huge sword she held and fought with. I shook my head. It took a certain kind of strength to face one’s fears as up close as she did.

  “Guys,” said Shade. “A little help… Please…”

  Bella knelt overtop of Shade. His body was filled with little cuts. Slits leaking blood and draining Shade of life. He only had a sliver of HP left.

  “I don’t want to do this,” cried Bella, holding her knife with both hands over Shade’s chest. “You know I hate to do this.”

  Bella was about to stab him. I turned to Kari, hoping to see a wave of healing magic shoot out of her hands, but instead she’d materialized an MP potion and was uncorking it to replenish her mana pool. We didn’t have seconds to waste.

  I lifted my chest and let a vapor of healing mist surround my person. I then pulled my hand back so it was aligned with my chest, surrounded by the curative mist. I pushed my hand out, triggering air blast. A gust of wind swirled out of my hand, capturing the particles of the healing mist in its movement. The airborne healing magic flew towards Shade as Bella’s sharp knife descended towards his chest. My wind magic swept the healing particles onto Shade’s skin, raising his HP by 30%. Cuts and wounds closed up and life returned to his face. My wind magic went an extra step further and knocked Bella over.

  Shade scurried away from the close death. Kari flung out cure spells at him until he was back to max HP.

  We stepped towards Bella who remained on the floor.

  “Shade—she has the key to get off this floor and back to the ship. If we get going now, we can escape the Arethkarians coming to stop us. What do you wanna do?”

  The pirate captain was on the ground, defenseless. Her life was currently in our hands. I didn’t want to kill her. I understood her actions. Even if Shade disagreed, it was as Bella had said: it was nothing personal.

  “Give us the key, Bella,” said Shade, softly. “Give it to us and we’ll go.”

  The captain grimaced, materializing the key in her hand. Shade swiped it out of her palm.

  “You can’t escape,” said Bella. “Kaige and his crew docked while we were speaking. He won’t let you leave.”

  “We’ll see about that,” said Shade. He turned around and left the pirate queen on the floor. He headed towards the elevator. It had been a brief trip, but our visit to La-Archanum was officially over.

  22

  Glass cracked. Broken shards rained down to the floor. We all looked up and saw the Horizon’s Dream floating in the sky. Jackson poked his head over the edge of the deck. “Arethkarian ships have surrounded the city. We need to get out of here.”

  He tossed down a rope into the destroyed penthouse chamber.

  “Shade you go first,” I said. I wanted him to get away from Bella. I cast lightning cage and paralyzed her with the electric vines. She didn’t fight it. Not one squirm. She’d given up. She wasn’t evil this woman; all she had been doing was helping her people. Like I was doing. Like even Oren Kaige was doing. It made the pirate queen admirable, but also blind and dangerous as well.

  Shade pulled himself up the rope, while Jackson threw down three more. I gripped the rope and pulled myself upwards. The door to the penthouse shook as somebody pounded behind it. I tightened my grip on the rope and pulled myself another few inches. The pounding didn’t stop. It became the rhythm to my rope pulling until the pounding stopped with the metallic shriek of the elevator door wrenching open.

  Oren Kaige stepped into the room. His boots crushed the shards of glass into dirt. He pointed his one remaining human hand at me.

  “Your bold claims to take over Illyria end now,” he said.

  I hung halfway between the ceiling and floor. I turned around and pulled on the rope harder. Kaige’s footsteps quickened as he ran across the room and leapt towards me. His pincer arm sliced across my legs, taking out a whopping 25% of my HP.

  “Agh,” I yelled. A hot burning pain embroiled my leg. I strengthened my grip on the rope. I didn’t want to fall back to the penthouse where Kaige and his pincer arm waited. Thankfully, the rope was moving on its own. Crazy Jackson was dragging us through the clouds.

  I clutched onto the rope and emerged from the skylight. I was now out in the open air.

  “You won’t always get away,” bellowed Oren Kaige from below my feet.

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I hauled myself up another meter, getting closer to the deck. Shade was already up top and was helping Kari over the edge. Serena was ahead of me as well.

  The wind whipped my hair. My nostrils filled with rushing air and the smell of burning mana exhaust. My palms and fingers ached. In the distance were the silhouettes of a fleet of ships. Metal slabs of destruction. Arethkarian warships. My stomach lurched. We were ahead of them in the quest for Ariellum, but barely. A lead they were clearly catching up on and fast.

  Serena groaned as she pulled herself up the final bit, the others reaching and pulling her aboard.

  I was slowing us all down the longer I stayed on this rope.

  I kept my concentration and pulled. I released my legs from the rope and raised my chest to my gripped hands. I let go of one hand and reached higher up on the rope. I pulled my other hand up and then the rest of my body. I repeated this a few more times, slowly getting more and more nauseous, tired and sick. I pulled myself up and felt the warmth of other hands grabbing hold of my arm, then their strength as I was pulled up onto the deck.

  I collapsed onto the wood and rolled on my back, hyperventilating.

  “Just another day in the life of a sky captain,” said Jackson offering me his hand. “Get used to it kid.”

  23

  I stood up and took in the night sky around me. It didn’t feel like a sea of clouds but rather an ocean of stars. The crew worked diligently on the sails.

  “Emergency meeting,” I said to the party. “Captain’s quarters now.”

  The party came with me while the crew continued to work on keeping the ship moving forward, quickly and efficiently.

  Once in my quarters, I materialized the map to Ariellum and laid it out on my desk. I straightened it and smoothed the crinkles of the old worn away parchment. I placed my finger on a faded dot on the map.

  “We’re more than halfway to Ariellum,” I declared. The label was innocuous enough, but the surrounding areas on the map were more disconcerting. According to the old crumbling scroll, we were currently heading straight into a nest of deadly Sky Wyrms. My whole body shuddered at the thought. We’d encountered such creatures once before when we first travelled to Land’s Shield. They were giant high-level sky serpents with dragon-like heads with teeth large and sharp enough to rip through airships. Without a doubt, we were nixing such a path to the gates of the fallen city.

  To the west and east of the Sky Wyrms was a lightning belt wrapped around the area. Getting to the gates of Ariellum would be no easy feat. Everyone’s skin was pale, goose bumps forming on their arms as they took in the difficult truth of our current situation.

  “On top of the environmental obstacles facing us,” I said. “Oren Kaige is on our heels.”

  The presence of the distant ships permeated through the room. “Will they be able to catch up with us?”

  Jackson crossed his thick arms and harrumphed: sucking in air through his big nose and blowing it out in contemplation. “The Arethkarian ships are built with powerful engines. They also have a higher supply of mana fuel than we do; meaning, they won’t depend on the wi
nd as much as we will. They’ll burn it all until they close in on us.”

  “Of course they’ll close in on us,” said Serena, pointing to the map in front of us. “We have nowhere forward where we can go.”

  “I say we hedge our bets and go through the lightning,” said Shade. “It will give us a speed boost against the other ships.”

  Jackson shook his head. “The lightning belt is suicide.”

  “And the Sky Wyrms, aren’t?” asked Kari.

  The party turned to me. What was the most appealing: death in a lightning storm, prisoners onboard the Arethkarian armada, or the main course for Sky Wyrm dinner? Then I had an idea. A smirk grew on my face.

  “I don’t like that smile,” said Serena.

  “Neither do I,” said Kari.

  “What are you two talking about?” grinned Shade. “That’s the smile of a plan. An audacious, insane, they’ll-never-be-able-to-pull-it-off plan.”

  “You say that like it’s a good thing,” said Kari, nudging the thief’s leg with her elbow.

  Shade’s pointy cat ears wiggled. “I’m all ears, captain.”

  Jackson kept his arms crossed and grunted in accordance with Shade.

  “Alright, listen up,” I said, telling them the plan.

  Wind whipped across the deck. In the distance was the nest of Sky Wyrms. Their tails swayed through the clouds. We were too far away to make out any of their deadly heads, yet the hisses of their long tongues travelled through the air. My stomach lurched. The fleet of Arethkarian ships were getting closer and closer to us.

  “As your first mate, I want you to know I think this plan is nuts,” said Serena.

  “I agree,” said Shade. “Which is precisely why it’s brilliant.”

  Jackson pulled the engine to a stop. The ship kept moving due to the wind but we weren’t thrusting at the exact same speed anymore.

  “I hope this works,” said Serena, nervously.