Rewind: A Grimdark LitRPG Series (Pyresouls Apocalypse, Book 1) by James Callum (reading tree .txt) 📕

Using Sword Forms and taking proper advantage of any and all openings with his [Longsword], he regularly hit for 300 to 400 damage.

The [Vile Mace’s] light attacks did at least that much while dazing the opponent more often than not. And its heavy attack smashed aside any defense arrayed against it, doing nearly 700 damage at once.

Of course, he still needed 20 to 30 points of Stamina to weather the blows of the enemies before him. They hit hard but with the [Phoenix Tree Crest Shield], he came out of the exchange unscathed. Provided he had the Stamina to absorb the damage.

The Rot Soldier crouched like a feral creature and Jacob recognized the first stage of the leaping attack. His [Vile Mace] was far too slow to intercept it… but his [Longsword] was not.

With only 24 Stamina left, Jacob risked lowering his shield and dismissed the [Vile Mace] with a flurry of ash quickly lost in the black smoke. He replaced it as he stepped forward with his [Longsword] in one unbroken motion.

Just as the Rot Soldier pushed off the ground, Jacob was there, sword leading. Hummingbird’s Kiss took it right in the heart and its springing leap impaled it the rest of the way.

Letting go of the blade, Jacob watched as the creature half-heartedly continued its leap and flopped to the sooty ground. Camilla leaned down with her rusty cleaver and finished it off as he dismissed the [Longsword] and swapped back to the [Vile Mace].

They continued on in much the same fashion. A monster would rear up out of the roaring pits and Jacob would batter it down if there was only one. He didn’t have the Stamina to deal with two at once.

That was the major drawback to the powerful weapon. But there was nothing stopping him from swapping weapons after landing a crushing initial blow to finish them off.

Camilla kept her hand on Jacob’s back, allowing his enhanced vision, courtesy of the [Ring of Broken Vows], to lead them through the deadly maze. Even with the [Ring of Covetous Breath], he would have been nearly blind in the black smoke that filled the Smog Rifts.

The smoke began to thin somewhat and they came upon their first clearing. Though the miasma was all about them, the blinding - and painful - blasts of noxious oily fumes were blessedly absent. As were their sources, the large cracks in the ground that were more often than not hidden under a layer of soot.

At the center of the clearing were the barest hints of an old structure. Its blackened bones listed dangerously to the side as if the slightest breeze might cause the ancient stones to come tumbling down.

To the side of the structure was a dais upon which a large stone skeletal hand held aloft a black lump of coal. The coal floated an inch or two above the skeletal hand.

Everything about it told Jacob to be wary, the place had all the hallmarks of a boss fight arena. Alarm bells rang in his head but he could find no danger.

Not until he approached it.

The ground suddenly shook with a terrible rumbling. A vicious roar echoed through the smoke, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. It was met by another roar, this one much closer and to his left.

Jacob barely got his shield up in time to meet the coming rush of the tall demonic creature. Like the Rot Soldiers, it had no skin. Only sinew and bone.

In place of armor, it had an exoskeleton of bony plates overlaid upon the red muscle. Its skeletal head was that of a deer’s, complete with broken horns. Red glowing pits of flame flared out from its eye sockets as it chopped down with a large femur fashioned into a club.

The heavy blow numbed Jacob’s arm but he managed to keep his footing. Camilla cast a wheel of fire at the thing’s back, garnering its attention. Jacob took the momentary lapse in its attention to swing his [Vile Mace].

Breaking Rocks took it in the bone plates along its side, by activating the mace’s special ability a thick oozing green sludge coated the Defiler Demon’s armor.

Even as Jacob leaped back and out of the way, his Stamina depleting to a thin sliver, the transformative sludge ate away at the bone.

Snapping its attention back to Jacob, the Defiler Demon struck with lightning speed. One, two, three hits crashed into his shield.

The first blasted through what was left of his Stamina after the leap and heavy attack of the mace. Dazed, Jacob was unable to stop the other two blurring strikes.

One came low, and Jacob could only wince at the coming agony. He could see the intelligence in the creature’s measured actions. If he couldn’t shake the dazed status preventing him from moving he might not survive the assault. His femur was crushed from the blow and stunned as he was, he was knocked off his feet to the side.

Even as he began to fall, the Defiler Demon swung the club around and up high, bringing it down in a fast chop to Jacob’s right arm. The bone splintered to dust and he crashed to the ground with a guttural shout of pain.

As he laid there, dazed and reeling he knew there was nothing Camilla could do to stop his impending death.

Expecting the final blow to fall any second, Jacob could only blink in confusion as another ground-shaking roar split the air. The Defiler Demon raised its club up high for the finishing blow and… then it was just gone.

The whole chain of events only took a couple of seconds. When Jacob’s dazed effect wore off, he crushed a [Cinder Ampoule] to heal up to full and rolled to his feet looking around in confusion.

“You have got to be shitting me,” he said as he realized the truth of what happened.

Back in the lowest levels of the Desecrated Catacombs the