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

“Thanks, Oracle,” I whispered back, smiling up at her as she wrapped an arm around the back of my head and kissed my forehead. I shifted the bow a little, so that we’d come closer to our fliers, and waited for them to reach us, as Hellenica spoke quietly.

“You’d really allow the Imps to join us?” she asked cautiously, and I sighed.

“Yeah, if they’ll swear the Oath and behave, then they can come. I won’t lie, I’ll be watching them carefully, but the Imperial Citizen’s Oath contains a section about not harming your fellow citizens. If they do, they’ll regret it, and I’ll kill them if the Oath doesn’t. There was an Imp called Grebes that died when we were rescuing you. He didn’t have to die; he was a prisoner and he spoke up to warn us about traps in the stairs. His Oath to the Skyking was killing him, slowly, so I finished him off quickly. If he hadn’t done that, we might have lost more people, but his sacrifice earned his people a chance with me.”

There was silence for a few minutes before Hellenica spoke again, just as the Alkyon were coming in to land.

“Imps are not born evil, it is true, no more than many races, but their predilections for sentient meat and their closeness to the demon realm influences many. It will be interesting to see how you handle this, not to forget that if an Imp grows strong enough, it can evolve to a Greater Imp, and they are much harder to control.”

“Well, at least our lives won’t be boring,” I muttered, stepping back and relinquishing the ship to the Alkyon that had originally piloted it, his assistant flipping levers and turning dials to make us leap back up into the air, taking over an overwatch position again.

“As soon as the cruisers are fired up and ready, they’ll take our place up here, sir, and we can get you onto the battleship,” the Alkyon at the helm said calmly, his partner moving to the stern to watch out for any other ships taking off.

I nodded to them in thanks and moved out of the way to stand with Hellenica, Miren, and Stephanos, gazing over the railing at the swarming figures that had taken over the Shipyard.

It was less than half an hour before the wagons rolled into the Shipyards, and in that time, the nearby warehouses had opened, disgorging hundreds of people to rush towards the gates. They’d clogged them up pretty badly, and then they’d filled the spaces inside the walls, until Barrett and a few others had taken charge, splitting them up into groups and settling them in to wait, while the Legion patrolled the walls and watched over the ships’ crews.

As the last of the wagons rolled in, the first cruiser lifted into the air, filled with over a hundred people, a full crew, and rammed to the gunnels with supplies looted from the small stockpile inside the airfield.

As soon as it was up and patrolling next to us, we tilted and dove down, the ground seeming to rush up to us, until at what felt like the last possible second, the now much more confident Alkyon landed us gently into the docking cradle.

I waved to them, marching my people off the ship and past the waiting group of refugees that rushed up. A Legion team came to take the crew into custody and led them to join the other crews, where they were being held under guard. Oracle took off, flying just a few feet over my head and watching around suspiciously.

The Legionnaires froze as I walked past them before a Centurion barked at them. As one, they stiffened and saluted with their fist to their chests.

“Not the time for that now,” I said, smiling to them, but I returned the salute and moved off as they started talking quietly.

I’d seen the wagons draw up to the side of the battleship, and they were being unloaded by dozens, if not hundreds of hands now, so I headed in that direction, figuring that wherever Mal was, he’d have the leaders of each of the groups close by.

I’d gone maybe a hundred yards before Lydia pushed her way through to me, having caught sight of Oracle flying above me and waving to her. She nodded once to me and took up a position on my left, Augustus on my right, and the squad started pushing people back as Jian, surprisingly, was the first to speak.

“It’s my fault, Lord Jax,” he said quietly, stopping in front of me and bowing his head.

“What is?” I asked, and he looked at me in surprise.

“The Fireball, the deaths…” he said cautiously, searching my face for a reaction. “I’m sorry Jax, truly. It was an accident… but…”

“You took over flying the ship?” I asked him, and he nodded. “Then it’s not your fault.” I said, I’d had time to think about it on the way back, and two things stood out in my mind.

“Firstly, and this is the most important…” I said to him, before looking around at the rest of the group. “This is all on me. Where I come from, there’s a saying: ‘The buck stops here’. It’s complicated, but it basically means that I’m in charge, so regardless of what happens, the responsibility is mine. I put you in that position, and you did the best you could, so don’t worry about it.” I put my hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “You didn’t mean to fire, did you?” I asked, and he shook his head frantically. “That’s what I thought. And that’s the second point; I didn’t think of the training you’d need to control a ship like that; even after seeing Oren and the others flying the ships, it still didn’t click for me. You took over the ship and saved everyone on it, so don’t worry about