Rewind: A Grimdark LitRPG Series (Pyresouls Apocalypse, Book 1) by James Callum (reading tree .txt) 📕

the Smithsonian well over four years ago, Alec raised his shield and charged down the switchback trail. His heavy greaves crunched the long-dead sere grass beneath his rust-splotched boots.

It would have been comical, seeing all the Vacant thrown to their deaths, if Jacob didn’t know how close Alec was to joining them among the dead. All it took was one slip, one Vacant that got a lucky strike, and Alec would lose his footing. White wisps rose from their broken bodies and entered Alec’s charging form as he built up speed.

Each of them had once been a brother, sister, mother, father, son, or daughter to somebody. Now they were empty. Vacant. Stripped of all humanity, they were nothing more than vicious beasts.

Clapping his hands together, Caleb condensed the flame in his hand into three small beads. Jacob’s heart fell at the sight. He may not know much about sorcery but he knew that spell. Sorcerer’s Breath turned their body into one massive explosion of fire.

In the game of Pyresouls Online, that wasn’t a big deal. It was a final spell that would kill you but also had an equally good chance to kill your opponents. You would simply respawn at the last Pyre you visited.

But there were no Pyres on Earth. Death was final.

“Get down!” Jacob cried out.

Caleb’s dark eyes looked up at him, then drifted to the still-charging form of his brother, Alec. Amid the deepening sadness in the sorcerer’s eyes, he clapped his hands together for one final time, triggering the spell.

Half a dozen heavily armored men and women in ancient hauberks, chainmail, and plate mail fell to the hard, dead earth just as the wave of white-hot fire flashed across the clearing. Dozens of the Vacant were incinerated in an instant.

Jacob covered his head with his shield as he hit the rocky trail with a bone-rattling jolt. The wave of intense heat washed over him but he was high enough along the trail that it did little more than make him break out into an uncomfortable sweat.

He was on his feet in a moment, ready to meet the attack he feared was coming. Instead, he stared at nothing but the half-dozen blazes Caleb had set off down below at the forest’s edge.

There was nothing left of the man and nothing left of the raiding force of Vacant and other monstrosities.

They were able to sniff out the last dregs of humanity no matter how far they ran or how deeply they hid in their holes. More monsters would pick up their trail.

Up in the once-green Appalachian mountains of North Carolina, it had been safe for a while. Then they found them. They always did.

Caleb was their best sorcerer, and through his sacrifice, dozens of horrendous monsters were defeated. White wisps, Souls, flew in every direction, split evenly among the survivors. But other abominations would find them before long. And when that happened, they would be one man down.

It was a war of attrition played out again and again in scattered pockets across the dying world. It was one war the human race couldn’t hope to win.

Miraculously, Alec had thrown himself down at the last moment and managed to avoid the brunt of the sorcerous explosion. His surcoat was turned to ash, bits of the ragged cloth still burning. And his armor was blackened in several spots.

“Form up, and fall back!” Alec called, rising to his feet. Jacob shook his head at his resiliency. Not for the first time, he wished he was as strong as him. Or that he at least stayed in the game long enough to level up some more.

Without the Pyres, no matter how many Souls he got, he couldn’t level up on Earth. Still, he couldn’t complain too much. Skills could still be increased and upgraded through extensive use and intensive training.

Even the weakest of surviving Pyresouls players were better off than those who never played. They were perpetually stuck at Level 0 without any hope of increasing their stats beyond the average human’s.

Alec crossed the narrow ledge to Jacob’s position, lifting the visor to his helm as he did. His face was tight with barely-held grief. Caleb was his brother and the big man had a habit of putting the fate of the world on his shoulders. Jacob had known him for years now, there was no way Alec wouldn’t blame himself for his brother’s death.

Jacob lifted the visor on his helm and looked into Alec’s bright blue eyes. He didn’t say anything. They had both seen death often enough to know that no words could suffice. He placed a comforting hand on the bigger man’s pauldrons in a gesture of solidarity.

Alec nodded to him in thanks, then turned his gaze north and hurried off up the trail, his equipment making its customary racket.

A couple heavily armored – now blackened – forms didn’t get up. Jacob sighed. They would be down more than just a single man when the monsters returned. He turned to look up at Alec’s back.

He wasn’t about to ask him to clear the dead.

Jacob raised a gauntleted hand to the woman in a crimson surcoat and a beak-faced bascinet that was coming up the path. “Kat, you’re with me.”

She was among the most gifted among them. Despite being stuck at Level 2, she took to the training well and showed great promise. Only her weak stats held her back. Like Jacob, Kat had quit Pyresouls early.

Many people had underestimated the psychological weight of a Full-Immersion Virtual Reality (FIVR for short) game with no pain dampeners, no memory inhibitors for death, and horrific fiends straight out of H.P. Lovecraft’s mythos. Few stayed logged in past their first death.

While the others followed Alec up the trail to the caves that housed one of the last bastions of humanity, Jacob and Kat picked their way down the smoldering trails to their fallen comrades.

If they were dead, Jacob needed to be sure they stayed that way. And if they weren’t, they needed to