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

and I forced myself to swallow my feeling of helpless rage. Oracle was better with our magic than I was; I knew it. Nerin was better than she was, so the only thing I could do was act as a mana-battery.

I sat down, popped two medium potions and started to meditate, giving Oracle as much as I could, alternating one greater and two medium, or four lesser, depending on what came to hand first.

It was a terrible twenty minutes that followed, but eventually, after seeming years had passed, Nerin ordered Oracle to stop, looking solemnly at Augustus, and then me.

“He’s stable,” she said, looking and sounding exhausted. “Whatever that poison was, it’s horrific. A few seconds longer, and there’d have been nothing I could do. He’s not going to be doing much fighting for the next few days, and he’ll likely have issues for weeks, but he’ll live.”

“What about his face?” A pretty, dark-haired female Legionnaire asked in a low whisper that carried.

“He’ll be fine; I’m more concerned about his stamina at this point,” Nerin said.

“Oh, he’s got lots of that…” the Legionnaire reassured her, going bright red as she realized what she’d said.

Smiles broke out around the room, followed by full-bellied laughter as the tension was released, and I half-fell, half-leaned back, letting out a long breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.

“I need to talk to you, Jax,” Bane muttered from beside me, and I jumped, immediately sagging back and wincing in pain as my back flared.

Oracle was there in an instant, using our quickly refilling mana pool to repair the damage, and Nerin joined her a second later, pulling a potion out of her bag and downing it before advising Oracle on the best way to fix the injury.

“What is it?” I asked him, and he sank to his knees next to me.

“I failed you,” he said, shaking his head and barely speaking above a whisper. “All this time, I’ve been desperately working, spending all day and night in stealth, trying to see anything and everything, and the one time you need me to face the assassins, I’ve failed you. I couldn’t find either of them, not even with your gifts…”

“What…?” I started to say, but he shook his head sadly, interrupting me.

“I failed you. If the rogue hadn’t been affected by Lydia’s Taunt and broken cover, Stephanos would have never been able to kill him. When we return, I will surrender my post to Flux. I will take whatever punishment you or he decrees. I will even be willingly banished. I ask only that you allow me to try to protect you until then, as best I can. I have lost my honor with my failure. I will not…”

“Bullshit,” I snapped harshly, reaching out and grabbing his shoulder. “You didn’t fail… for fuck’s sake, Bane, you’re what? Level thirteen?” He shrugged disconsolately.

“Fourteen now.”

“Yeah. You’re level fourteen, and specialized to protect my sorry ass, while you just faced two level twenty rogues in an arena full of noise and fucking insanity! You didn’t fail anyone, let alone me. Bane, I forbid you to surrender your post. You’ve not lost any honor; you’ve goddamn gained it! You heard what Nerin said. If Grizz had been a few seconds slower in getting to her, he’d be dead. You did that. Don’t think I didn’t see how much of his weight you were carrying, because I barely had any of it. You barely sleep, watching over me at all hours, because I haven’t bothered to recruit a team to help you. It’s not your failure, my friend, it’s mine!” I stopped and drew in a deep breath, realizing I’d practically shouted that last bit.

“Look…” I forced my voice back to a calm tone. “I fucked up here. I’ve made you all do more with less than you ever should have. I don’t care about if that’s normal for a lord; I know you’re all on the ragged edge…”  I said, looking around the room. “You’ve all agreed to uproot your life on my say so. You’re here, committing all sorts of insanity because I asked you to, and not one of you has complained or asked me if I’m fucking mental, which, let me tell you, I am!” I drew another deep breath, meeting their eyes as I considered my team. “I’m sorry, all of you. I‘ve asked more and more each day of you, and today, I ask the most. After we win the last fight, we’re doing something that will get you branded as traitors if we fail. I’m asking you to risk everything, and yet you’ve all helped me, smiled, and nodded, instead of telling me to go suck a barrel of dicks. So… thank you.”

I got up and walked slowly, painfully, into the center of the room, ignoring Oracle’s muttered orders to stay still while she worked.

“Tonight, I ask the most that I’ve ever asked of anyone. I ask you to stand with me, to turn your back on all you know, all that your Oaths tell you is right. I ask you to walk away from the people you’ve protected and laid your lives down for. I ask you to follow me, to leave your homes, your lives, and for many of you, your friends and family.” I saw the hesitant looks in their eyes, the uncertainty as I laid it all out.

“I ask you to follow me, not because I’m the Scion of the Empire, not because I have a ‘blood right’ to tell you to do something… I ask you to follow me because together, I believe we can fix this. We can raise the Legion Standard high again. We can walk out into the sunlight, facing everything the world throws at us, because we can bring back the light to these lands. We can throw down the false lords, burn the temples and the slave markets. We can fucking burn the monsters of the deep out of their holes and make the