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

flared into brilliant life, glowing fit to outshine the sun, I heard the creation under me scream in agony and fear.

Whatever had been summoned to animate the bones, whether, like my own Bob, it was a fragment of the summoner’s soul that grew and developed separately, or a spirit or demon, I didn’t know, but it sure as shit didn’t like Life magic!

The light of the spell rippled through it, flashing from head to toes and back again, assessing, evaluating, and then striking at the heart of the issue.

The glowing red mist that filled the creation had a core of sorts, right in the most heavily armored part of its chest, and my magic went for it at the same moment as the flames of the ‘Cleansing Fire’ spell tore into the behemoth and the Lich.

The shield the Lich had been conjuring fell apart, and he staggered, screaming with the spell backlash. The disc of bone he stood upon sagged as he frantically tried to escape the ring of fire.

He would have made it, even as my ‘healing’ spell savaged the undead core of the behemoth, snuffing out the red mist in a final bright explosion of clean white light, if not for Arrin, Miren, and Stephanos.

The arrows landed first, smashing into his back and making him jerk in pain, before the Firebolt took him in the back of the head, sending him somersaulting over the front of the disc to faceplant onto the floor.

His robe caught fire, the flames quickly spreading as he frantically tore at his clothes. He managed to get his hood down while writhing on the floor, but before he could crawl free of the rest of the robes, more arrows and Firebolts struck him, repeatedly slamming him back into the sand .

Arrin and the archers approached slowly, firing more arrows into the dying Lich, and I turned to Lydia, grateful to see Oracle landing next to her. My companion said something as Lydia popped the top off a greater health potion, and I sighed in relief. She was okay.

Bane! I turned, searching for him anxiously. My concern eased considerably at the sight of him following Lydia’s lead, laboriously lifting a health potion to his mouth with his lower left arm. All of his other limbs seemed to be out of action. His body was a mass of burnt leather and he’d lost a load of tendrils; he was bleeding in several places and he looked like shit, but he gave me a little wave with the bottle once he’d downed it. He gingerly reached for a second one, only to drop it as Oracle hit him with a ‘Battlefield Triage’.

I pulled open my belt pouch, quickly pulling free a greater mana potion. That left me with only two mana potions: one of the most powerful, and a single weak one. I needed my friends to live, and for that to happen, Oracle needed mana.

It wasn’t over yet, though, so I turned back, walking towards the Lich where he screamed and rolled in an attempt to put the flames out. He looked more like a pin cushion now than anything else, with at least a dozen arrows sticking out at all angles. More had been snapped off as he writhed, and his robes were badly damaged, exposing the dried, desiccated thing underneath.

He had once been a humanoid, that was clear, but the flesh had withered so badly that it was impossible to identify what race now, and it was smoldering and blacked in places from the fire.

He twisted to look up at me, snarling as he started to spit out a string of syllables and reached up one clawed hand to gesture at me. I swung the blade around, cutting him off mid-curse, his hand flying through the air to land next to his head.

“I’ll suck you dry!” he croaked, his eyes flashing with malice as a bright light grew within them. He glared up at me until Arrin hit him full in the face with a Firebolt. The Lich screamed as the flesh of his face was consumed in flames, yellow-white bone showing through as he lifted the charred remains of his arms to try to stop the fire.

“Get fucked,” I snarled, bringing my naginata overhead and sliding my grip down to rest just below the blade, then whipping the metal-clad base down as hard as I could into his skull. It shattered, releasing a wail of fury, fear, and pain into the air as a cloud of black mist rose from the corpse, then flashed and vanished through the bars into one of the booths.

“It must have its phylactery up there!” Oracle shouted, disgust filling her voice.

“Well, folks, I… we have a development here!” The voice of the Announcer echoed around the Arena as the South Side Gang started running from their booth, only to find Mal and a few others rushing from their booths to face them.

The sounds of battle rose from the corridors beneath the boos and screams, followed by silence. After an awkward pause, voices raised in anger once again, as the crowds around the arena muttered and grumbled.

I made my rounds to check on my people, finding that the healing potions and Oracle had done wonders. Even still, we were all exhausted, wearing damaged armor, and running low on potions .

“Okay, everybody!” The announcer returned, a clearly furious Mal standing behind him. “It seems the South Side Gang had decided that if the phylactery—the repository for the soul of the Lich, for those who don’t know—wasn’t destroyed, then they had not lost. If they didn’t lose, then they didn’t have to pay out on their bets! The Arena management and other… interested parties… have convinced them to change their minds. All bets have been transferred to the final round, and the phylactery is now an additional prize for the victor! In the final round, the Harpies will face off against the Legion, and guess what, folks? To make it even