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

I reached up, clutching at my mouth, trying to stifle the groan of pain as the damage I’d taken from the darkness-facilitated ability finally stopped. I had thirty-seven health left, despite no wounds on my body, and I felt Oracle’s fear and love reaching out to me.

“I’m okay…” I sent to her, and I felt her disbelief, even as I built up the courage to run. I examined the sides of the pillar that I was hiding behind, and discovered that it was melting, crumbling away as the Beholder focused all its fury on me. “I take it I got him?” I asked Oracle.

“A glancing blow… it cut its face, and the weapon is sticking out of its jaw.”

“Damn…” I sent, thinking about how close I’d come to finishing the fucker off with a lucky hit.

I felt a wash of healing energy flow through me, and I groaned in relief, looking over and seeing it wasn’t Hellenica as I’d expected, and I knew that I didn’t have enough mana for Oracle to have done it… which left Nerin. Crouched down behind a pile of rubbish, weeping and shaking, the poor woman was in obvious pain, but she was still determined to heal whoever she could.

I shook my head, and she released the weave, collapsing back into cover. I thanked her silently, my HP having jumped to a much healthier seventy-six.

“Might last a whole second now…” I muttered, blowing out my breath in one go and sprinting across the space towards the next pillar. I almost made it, but the blast that took me in my trailing right leg punched through the calf and out the far side, the bone cracking and the meat flash-frying as I screamed and fell. I rolled out of sight as the other eyes locked on my location, starting to destroy the pillar I hid behind now.

I swore in pain, gripping my right knee and trying not to cry out again. Tears pricked my eyes and my teeth felt like they might shatter if I clenched my jaw any harder.

Hellenica hurled spell after spell, pounding on the Skyking’s shield, while her Djinn escort tried to block all of its counterattacks, and the Legion and my squad battled toe to toe with the last of the Prometheans. I head a scream of pain, recognizing Stephanos’ voice and whipping my head in his direction. I watched him change from a healthy, if low, green to yellow, amber, and then red. My entire party was dropping the same; Tang was bleeding out, Bane was moving relentlessly, diving in and out of cover while flinging daggers, spears, and his throwing knives at the Skyking.

I saw the Mer slide to a halt on the other side of a pillar across from me, and I had a sudden wild idea.

It took a few seconds of surreptitious waving to get his attention, but I finally managed it just as he was about to run again. Death rays lashed into the pillar he hid behind and carved bits free, even as the pillar behind me went from warm, to hot, making me feel like I was leaning on a griddle.

“Your Worldsense!” I shouted to him, and he cocked his head in confusion. “Blast the fucker with it!” I screamed, ducking as a section of the pillar near me exploded from the heat, an unseen inclusion making it shatter.

I’d flinched away, but now I looked back, seeing Bane freeze as he realized what I wanted him to do.

“Hellenica!” I shouted. “Shield Bane!” There was a second’s hesitation, but then she was twisting her hands and chanting. I looked back at Bane. He met my gaze, nodded, then stepped out into full sight of the Beholder.

The monstrosity spun, the beam cutting off from aiming at me and blasting toward him. Shields appeared, courtesy of Hellenica, instantly glowing red.

More Djinn joined in, casting from their positions, or flashing forward to stand around him, pushing back with their smaller, weaker shields against the central eyebeam of the Beholder and his stalks.

More and more Djinn joined in, and I noticed Hellenica losing some of her outline. Her form became blurry and indistinct as she poured her mana and her life into holding the shield. Arrows flew through the air, some from Miren and Stephanos, who fired from the floor where he lay, and others from a wounded Legionnaire. They hammered into the Skyking’s shield, each strike making it flare and costing more and more mana to maintain it.

Bane held out his arms, took a deep breath, and blasted the loudest, heaviest eruption of his Worldsense I’d ever felt. It even shamed the search that Flux had done for the missing Mer children on the shore of the lake, and I cried out, clutching my head in pain.

The feeling of it reverberated in the air, bouncing back and forth, constrained by the walls. The waves compounded, shattering the boarded-over glass in the windows and eliciting moans of pain as we all fell to the ground.

Even the Skyking.

It screamed in piercing anguish, its eyestalks thrashing wildly in all directions as it fell from the air. Its misshapen mass struck the ground with a disgusting thump. Two of its eyes burst under its own weight, and a warbling scream of agony rose from the incapacitated creature.

The only one in the room who wasn’t affected, nor at least partially paralyzed by the scream, was Bane. He rushed forward, his hands wrapping around my naginata where it jutted from the Skyking’s face and ripped it free in a burst of blood. His face twisted in pure rage, he whipped my weapon up over his head and drove it down, slamming the tip into the middle of the single main eye. The impact made a disgusting popping crunch as the blade penetrated the enormous orb, and the Skyking shrieked in pain. Agony overcame its shock, and its eyes simultaneously glowed bright, about to unleash death, until Bane twisted my naginata, pushing deeper, and