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

“Momma always wanted me to join the Guard…” he mumbled happily, admiring his reflection in a bronze mirror.

“Well, she’d be real proud of you now, Jay. Now, get out there and keep an eye on things!” Soween interjected, before going back to directing people.

In less than a minute, they were all out of the guardhouse again, moving through the night, but this time, they were on the inside of the wall, having passed through the interior gate. Apart from the stealth types, they all wore a mixture of freshly stolen and knocked-up close approximations of the guards’ cloaks.

Mal walked steadily down the middle of the path, staying in plain sight, as he tried not to gawk at the piles of building materials around him. Expensive thick oak planks lined one side of the path, while the other held drums of nails, tar, and pitch. He could feel the hairs on the back of his neck rising as he stomped along, his boots splashing in and out of puddles left by the wagons that frequented this route, and he tried to look everywhere, all while walking and spinning his cosh nonchalantly.

To the sides, he glimpsed his people slinking along, staying deep in the shadows as he closed on the guard hut up ahead. A handful of his people slipped away, cutting off in the direction of the flickering torches of the roving patrol.

“Idiots,” he muttered, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “It’s like they don’t want to find anythin', torches glarin' in their eyes…”

A splash from his right made him scowl, and a thief went white with fear before flushing bright red with embarrassment. quickly vanishing again.

Amateurs; he’d been forced to hire amateurs and idiots beyond his own people, in order to make sure this went off without a hitch. Half of them had nearly soiled themselves when they realized what the target was, and who they’d be stealing from. The others had barely been able to restrain their excitement.

City Lord Barabarattas was going to go apeshit when he heard that the city Stockpile had been raided, and Mal loved it.

Not only was he already insanely rich, thanks to the gambling he’d managed to pull off the last few days, but he’d have his own ship in a few hours, and that had always been a dream. All of that, and he was even being a patriot and helping his city, which was a bonus, really. He’d have done it for half the promised deal. Hell, he’d been so bored, he’d have practically done it for free, but getting a home port and free repairs and upgrades for his ship? Hell yes. The gold that had originally been offered was nothing compared to the wealth he’d made on the four nights of fights.

His father was going to shit a brick.

“Who’s that?” came a call from the darkness next to the guard hut, and a tall figure stepped out, his mail gleaming wetly from the rain. Mal swore under his breath, hunching his head down and pretending not to have heard as he readied his crossbows. “I say… who’re you?” the figure called again, stepping into the light given off by the small lamp. He was human, the guard always were, but this guy looked like he had some ogre in his family, and that mustache… it was huge and black, dropping down both sides of his face like he was being nose-fucked by a pair of snakes.

Mal shook his head in disgust at the mess and brought up his crossbows. It was time to get the party started.

***

Elise swore as she heaved the final post into place, while her team of three went to work with their hammers, sinking the bracing pins into place and locking the final support down.

She checked the hourglass in the corner of the room, hissing out a last breath as she saw the time. An hour until it all kicked off, and she hadn’t managed to so much as test fire the engines yet. Even with the dozens of workers that had turned up to help for free, she was behind.

“Marik!” she called, and a dwarf on the far side of the room straightened, nodding to her as he wiped the sweat from his brow. “Get to th' main controls an' make sure th' damn elf got those mana channels laid down and workin'. If not, we’re all fucked.”

“Elise!” called her nephew, ducking under a beam and sagging in relief as he found her. The rest of the mixed team of engineers moved on to address the next in a seemingly never-ending collection of problems.

“Bolvar.” she said, nodding politely and taking the time to stretch her back out.

“There be a pair o' engineers in the main hold. They do be sayin’ they bin sent by Finbar? Somethin' about a problem?” He shrugged, and Elise started to swear. She loved the lad dearly, but even though he was the son, nephew, and brother of a family of engineers, he couldn’t keep two facts straight if his life depended on them. He’d been apprenticed to a carpenter until he’d nearly cut his nose off, and now he was running messages for the family… badly.

“Ach, lad, I’m comin'…” she said pinched the bridge of her nose and hoped against hope that it wasn’t going to be something serious.

The pair set off jogging, scrambling down ladders, scooting across narrow beams laid between unfinished sections and up the far side of the main hold, finally dropping down onto a hoist to reach the only room they’d managed to get sealed fully from the elements: the main hold.

The entire rest of the ship was missing windows, portholes, walls, and in many places, decks and ceilings. The skeleton of the ship was barely finished, yet still they’d bolted the engines into place, adding extras wherever they could, and soon, if all the Gods were good, the damn glass for the