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

sprinting at full speed. I turned, forcing my eyes open to look through pain-constricted eyelids at them.

All three, Augustus and two others I didn’t know, hit the Golem at once. They took it head on, no weapons drawn, leaping and piling onto it, driving the tons of magical construct to the floor through sheer determination and aggression.

“No!” I managed to get out, horrified, as a huge hand reached down, grabbing an arm of one of the men I didn’t know. It crushed the bones almost effortlessly, and then Grizz and Lydia were there, adding their weight, followed a second later by Stephanos and two more Legionnaires, who hurled themselves onto a second Golem that had just emerged from a nearby recess in the wall.

The Legionnaire who’d been grabbed screamed in pain, then grabbed the arm holding him and tried to pin it down.

“Go!” Augustus roared, and Arrin flew past me, jumping onto the second Golem’s head, pulling back and slamming it in the face with a spell.

“Fuck!” I screamed, my brain rattled by pain and my friends being in danger. I turned, glaring around, when my eyes snapped back to the alcove the last Golem had just abandoned. It was empty, and far too shallow for the construct to have been hiding in; in fact, why would it hide? It…

Just then, I remembered Jenae’s gift, and I frantically activated the ability ‘Seek That Which is Hidden.’ A number of places in the room flared to life. Some, I saw at a glance, held hidden objects, like a painting on one wall with something glowing behind it, but the one that stood out to me most of all, was the suddenly obvious false wall at the back of the alcove that I had seen the Golem exit.

I was moving before my sluggish brain had made sense of my thoughts, sliding to a halt in the alcove and hunting around. I focused, frantically searching through it as more screams rose behind me, until I saw it: a ledge outlined in blue, matching the rest of the decorative patterning, except for a worn edge, as though it had been touched again and again over the centuries.

I grabbed the ledge, fingers questing desperately, and I felt the catch at the back. Pushing it frantically, I gaped as the ledge shifted and sank, a soft ‘clunk’ sound coming from the back wall as it slid back.

I strained to see into the darkness as I rushed forward, the pained shouts of my companions spurring me on as my DarkVision activated.

The space beyond was totally different from the outer floors; all grey, worn stone, dust and cobwebs, with a flight of wide, shallow steps that descended into the underbelly of the building. I hurried down the stairs, passing another exit that I assumed led out onto the lower public floor, before the stairs came to the hidden lowest floor. Four additional Golems waited, three on one side and one on the other. The gigantic constructs stood at attention, their eyes closed and the gemstones on their chests glimmering gently. As soon as my foot touched the ground, their eyes opened and they started to move. I caught sight of something glittering on a desk at the far end of the room and I sprinted to reach it, activating Mana-Overdrive and powering myself forwards.

I hadn’t used it yet, reserving it in case Oracle needed the mana, but if I failed here, it was all for nothing.

The Golems were moving, slowly at first as they pushed free of the wall. Their weapons rose as eyes like a warship’s searchlight tracked me. I saw the spear coming, the first Golem stabbing out, and I twisted, feeling it scratch my shoulder as I passed it. I continued sprinting forward. A fist flashed out, and I dove under it, rolling and springing to my feet, just in time to take a kick to the side of my chest. The blow snapped ribs and bent my armor, flinging me across the room to smash into the opposite wall.

I grunted, unable to breathe; the pain was that bad. I reached up, feeling the crushed-in side of my armor. It was bent inwards, and my right lung was being squashed by it. I opened my mouth, desperately trying to breathe, but my diaphragm quivered in shock, the injury overcoming my need to breathe as I tried and failed to pull in air.

I frantically tried to force air in, tried to make myself breathe, when I saw them, glittering on the desk. A golden wreath of what looked to be laurel leaves, laid casually on a velvet cloth alongside books and a dagger, a spyglass and a handful of gems.

I grabbed the wreath, and not knowing what to do, waved it frantically at the Golems, who came to a slow halt, facing me.

“Re-relea-se the people upstairs…” I managed to gasp out, my chest shaking as I forced out the little air I could get in, to order the Golems to stop.

I heard relieved shouts from upstairs and a scream of panic from Oracle as she tried to find a way in to help me.

“Jax!” she shouted. “Where are you?!”

“Obey her…” I managed to get out, sinking to my knees, then collapsing onto my back. Coughing up blood as I scrabbled in my pocket, I pulled out a powerful healing potion I’d been given by Augustus and forcing it down my throat, mentally ordering the nearest golem to help me. It reached forward, long flexible fingers sliding into place beneath my armor and effortlessly bending it back out. I gasped,  a small amount of air filling my lungs. The potion helped with the pain, but my ribs were still crushed out of place.

I heard a crash upstairs, and a second later, the light of Oracle’s fury and panic filled the room as she flew to me. She landed quickly, skidding as she examined my wounds. Wasting no time, she hit me with a supercharged ‘Battlefield Triage’ spell.

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