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

off staggering to reach it, pouring a Health potion into my mouth as I shambled, followed by a Stamina and a Mana. I was going to need them all for this.

I could feel HIM watching; Amon. Since the battle for life between me and the fragment of his soul, things had changed between us. I was a lot more cautious, but he seemed a bit more stable, evidently no longer wrestling to live; at least not to steal my body. He actually seemed to want to help, but I wasn’t going to trust that.

I pushed him down, ignoring his muttered advice as I felt bones and ligaments popping, flexing, and sealing again.

Anger filled me… my rage at the stacked deck. The way the gangs kept pulling a fast one. There was nothing about a fucking Lich and its behemoth that was allowed in the deal the gangs had struck, but I knew there would be no repercussions for them.

As usual, people bent and broke the rules. They shattered the very things that everyone else tried to uphold, because they were above the law. It was always like that, seemingly in all of the realms. Powerful people thought they didn’t have to play along. Because it was ‘just them,’ and it didn’t matter if they made their own rules. At home, it had been refusing to pay their fair share in taxes, taking bribes, milking the system, or cheating on their partners. It had been rooted in the belief that those regulations were for others, not for them. ‘Just this once’ wouldn’t hurt…

Here, it was just more blatant. As so many more of the common people disregarded the rules, so the criminals pissed on them in turn.

People like me and my crew, believing the rules were there for a reason, were suffering. I’d been stupid enough to believe that the magical contracts that were supposedly enforced in the arena would be different. They weren’t.

But that was fine.

Because I’d been holding back as well.

I’d kept a little fucking trump card of my own, and now? With my people getting hurt—good, honest people—it was time to let it out. In three hours, the whole city would be in an uproar anyway.

It was too late for the Harpies to back out now, and they were the only fuckers I’d really needed to surprise.

It was time to teach the South Side Gang not to fuck with the Lord of Dravith.

Chapter Twenty-Six

I wrenched the naginata out of the sand and gritted my teeth as the mace slammed down again on Lydia, though I felt a flare of pride at hearing her shout in pain and anger, calling the Lich a cocksucker.

I grinned darkly.

“Time to fuck up your day…” I muttered, sensing Oracle as she entered the final phase of the Cleansing Fire spell, while I poured mana into my body, triggering my ‘Mana-Overdrive’ ability. I grunted, feeling the thick cords of mana flooding my body as I rocketed forward, covering the distance between us easily. The behemoth turned slowly, as both it and its master felt my approach; the leakage from my new skill was too high to hide when I turned it all the way up.

A full spread of six ‘Magic Missiles’ flew past the Bone Golem to slam into the shield, followed by two more arrows, and the shield went black, flickering dangerously close to failure as the Lich screamed in fury.

The Lich pointed at me, one desiccated hand extending. Black lightning flickered to life as he started to cast a spell, before he screamed again, this time in pain. Bane had appeared from nowhere to hack off the offending hand.

The shield failed as the stealthy Mer struck, a blast that hurled him down to the sand, but the Lich cradled his ruined arm, the hand hanging by a thread of skin as he howled in fury and fear.

Then I was there, sprinting in from behind Lydia. She’d seen me coming and somehow knew what I needed, pulling her shield in tight where it covered her prone form.

I leapt onto it, jumping upward as she pushed with all her might and sent me flying into the air with my naginata held overhead in both hands. The minion’s whip arm came around, just a second too slow as it passed under my feet, and I struck, driving the blade as deeply as I could into the bone-plated chest.

I plunged it down at an angle, the force of my fully armored body slamming into the behemoth, and the damage was enough to knock it back. I hadn’t managed to get all the way through the thickened bone plates, but that was fine, as Bane rolled behind it. Crying out in pain at the weight, but managing to be in the right place at the right time, he tripped the huge bone creation and sent it to the floor on its back.

More arrows and missiles flew overhead, slamming into the Lich as he tried to raise his shields again. The crippled old man raged, screaming curses and promises of what he would do to our bodies and souls.

He didn’t get far in his promises before Oracle finished the spell, ‘Cleansing Fire.’ The intense waves slammed out from where I stood atop the bony fucker, surrounding the three of us. Bane waited just outside of the ring as the Lich, the behemoth, and I were overtaken by spreading lines of glowing fire.

I felt the caress of the flames, felt them start to heal the damage that Mana-Overdrive had done, when I released it. The world sped back up, and I channeled my own ‘Battlefield Triage’ spell instead.

This time, I didn’t try to heal myself, or even my companions that needed it so badly; oh no. I’d remembered the conversations I’d had with Nerin and others, about how most creatures born of necromantic arts had serious issues with healing magic.

I didn’t know if the behemoth was going to be one of them, but as my naginata