City of Fallen Souls: A LitRPG Adventure (UnderVerse Book 3) by Jez Cajiao (fb2 epub reader .txt) 📕

“Should have thought of that myself,” I muttered, considering the corpse. “Could have sold the bits.”

“What was it?” Yen asked, and Barrett filled her in on the fight that had taken place, while I moved to the motionless ‘Fenris Heavy Automaton.’

“Okay, how does this work…” I muttered to myself, looking the construct over and scouring my memories for the commands. I knew it’d had a fuck-ton of commands available, but…”

“Fuck it,” I muttered; I didn’t have time to dick about, not with Tommy possibly close by. “Wake up.” I knocked on its nose with one hand, and predictably, nothing happened. “Okay, ‘Start’?” I said, shaking my head. “‘Activate’… ‘Awaken’… ‘S…”

The Fenris had shifted to look at me when I’d said ‘Awaken,’ and I froze, the memory of fighting the damn thing still fresh in my mind. “Okay, so ‘Awaken’ works. How about ‘Follow’?” I tried, and it shifted its weight. “Great, okay…”

“I take it you don’t know what to do with that?” Yen asked, and I grimaced .

“Nope, not a fucking clue.” I responded, and she nodded, grinning.

“Just order it as we go. Tell it to wait and to come, to open its storage, or empty it, to…”

“Storage?” I asked, perking up.

“It’s Gnomish built, right?” she asked, and I nodded. “Then there should be a manual, but…”

“Nope, manual didn’t work.” I said, unwilling to discuss the details of my fucked-up brain yet again.

“Okay, well, they usually have limited internal storage, like a Bag of Holding, but bigger. This is a Warhorse, so I’d imagine it’d be designed to carry a full field kit, tents, gear, weapons, armor, and so on. I haven’t seen this model before, but the civilian models are generally designed for speed, and they have some storage, so why wouldn’t this one?”

“Any idea of the commands?” I asked hopefully.

“The people I’ve seen with these don’t share the details with the likes of the Legion,” Yen said sourly. “The noble houses hate us, and nobody lower than a noble is going to have something like this…”

“Great; just one more thing to have to hide, then…” I muttered, shrugging. I grinned as Oracle slowly buzzed around the Fenris. She’d been quiet on our run here, just staying close, but she finally seemed interested in something.

“What’s his name?” she asked, landing on its nose and staring into a glowing red eye.

“Name? No clue. You can name him if you want?” I told her. “He’s a ‘Fenris’ model apparently, but…”

“So, he does have a name!” she slowly stroked the automaton’s nose. “Hi, Fenris! We’re gonna be such good friends!” She cooed, trying to give it a hug.

“I’m not sure it can hear you, Oracle, but…” I shrugged again and looked into the horse’s glowing eyes and spoke slowly and clearly to it. “Your designation is now ‘Fenris,’ and you are to take orders from Oracle,” I gestured to her, “as well as myself. Nod if you understand.” Fenris nodded once, its head moving smoothly up and down with a faint whirr of servos, and I grinned at Oracle. “Now you can try to figure out the commands!”

“Wait. Did I just get a pet horse, or a job?” she asked confusedly, and I smiled.

“Yes!” I said, walking off in the direction which Barrett had gone. The tiger was laying at the back of the cave again, out of sight of the main area, and was contentedly sleeping off a huge meal… of one of the two giant lizard things that I’d been planning on using to transport the bulky stuff from the main cavern.

“Well, shit,” I muttered, hands on my hips as I looked down at the tiger. It slowly opened one eye and locked onto me, immediately dismissing me as unimportant, like every goddamn cat I’d ever known.

Barrett stepped closer to it, and it let out a warning growl, rolling to its feet as Oracle shot between us to reach it, screaming, “Kitty!” It swiped a huge paw at her, and she dodged it easily, laughing and giving off a bright light.

Instantly, the cat was up, batting at her as we backed away. It was an odd experience, watching a tiger the size of a shire horse acting like a kitten with a laser pointer as Oracle giggled, spinning and dancing through the air.

We let the pair of them play for a few minutes before I put a stop to it. I felt bad, but we needed to move on.

“Oracle, let Barrett try to talk to… Kitty… please,” I said, trying not to smile as he glared at me.

“Seriously?” He asked me, frowning. “Kitty?” I just grinned at him. He sighed and moved over to crouch closer to the tiger, speaking in a low, calm voice. “Hi, you remember me. I…”

We left him to it, easing away to remove any additional distractions. He’d told us on the way back that he had a vague idea of how to form an animal bond, and he wanted to try it out. He said he’d done the first bits already when the tiger was injured, and they were waiting for me to wake up.

I thought he was fucking mental, as it was a giant cat. Everyone knew cats were evil sociopaths in furry coats, but hey. It was his life, no matter how short it might be.

I returned to Fenris and looked it over briefly, then letting Oracle take over to do her thing. She immediately started talking to it as Yen and I chatted, getting a bit more familiar with each other’s backgrounds. She’d grown up in the Legion. Her father had been a Legionnaire and had raised her to work towards the Praetoria, the elite force of the Legion. She’d never known anything but Legion life, as had most of her friends. I asked her a few more questions as we waited and found that life in Himnel was pretty much split into three groups: the nobility, the Legion, and the citizens.

Joining the Legion was a twenty-year service, but it was