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

“Okay, look… History 101. Back before the cataclysm, there weren’t just asshole spiders. There were also sentient ones, more or less; an entire clan of Giant Cave Spiders had sworn to serve the Empire. They walked the streets of this city, sold their silk, traded for various meats, and so on. They even helped the Legion, from what I heard.” I watched the scouts, seeing disbelief on their faces. “Look, it seems weird to me too, but I know it’s true, okay? Amon confirmed it when we met their queen down there, deep underground. She’s old, and I mean OLD. She remembers the cataclysm.” Yen exchanged glances with Amaat and Tang. A memory from my training surfaced, and I realized that Ashrag would have to be nearly 700 years old. I couldn’t really blame them for their disbelief, but I pressed on. “She remembers her sister being sent for the Legion to beg for help, for the Oaths they all swore to uphold. The Legion kicked her aside as a monster, leaving her to die in the gutter as they fled to the ships to return to the capital. The sister and her escort were slaughtered, their corpses stripped for their alchemical properties. The queen helped to punish those that were responsible, but she ended up being hunted for it, when she was villainized as a monster attacking the citizens. She was betrayed by those she had faith in, and then attacked when she tried to get justice. The Legion and the Empire failed her, and she went into hiding.”

“My lord, are you sure?” Tang asked me, and I nodded grimly.

“I’ve spoken with Amon. He confirmed that she was a citizen, and her Oath transferred to me at the same time yours did. The only difference was that she set me a quest before she agreed to become a full citizen and follower of mine. She asked me to kill the Drow. With your help, we did just that, and now, she and her nest will be preparing to support me. Knowing that the head of one of her daughters is mounted in a smuggler’s den… isn’t going to be helpful, if she ever finds out about it.”

“Then let’s not tell her,” Amaat said, shivering. “A spider the size of a dog is disturbing enough, but I have heard tell of larger, and I personally saw one the size of a small horse once. Don’t need to see that again!”

“Hah, well... let’s just say that Ashrag is even bigger, okay?” I shook my head. “Arrin, how big would you say she was?” I asked, calling across the room and getting confused looks from the smugglers.

“Oh, I once stayed in an inn that was a bit bigger, but not by much!” he said cheerfully, and the scouts looked sick.

“So, yeah… not someone you want upset with you,” I said quietly to them.

“Definitely,” Yen agreed. “So, with regard to the city above…”

With Bane’s help, she drew a rough map of the building we were in, marking the hidden wall to the basement where we were currently sheltering. She slowly sketched a general layout of the city, before showing me where we hid.

The City of Himnel was shaped like a giant ‘C’ angled slightly upwards, the harbor filling the mouth of the city to the east, and high walls surrounding it on the other three sides.

The city lord, Barabarattas, occupied a large keep that stood alone on a promontory to the west, on its own small hill attached to the city. The area immediately around the keep was filled with the homes of the nobility, while the area to the south of the noble quarter encompassed the slums and the Legion Enclave. To the north and east of the noble quarter was the Cloudring, and that included the underground arena. Past the arena sat the airship shipyards, and finally, the industrial area filled the remaining end and ran all the way down to the harbor.

The industrial sector’s border ran along the harbor shore until it changed from industrial docks into commercial docks halfway. The merchant quarter ran adjacent to the commercial ports and filled the center of the map. Adjacent to the southernmost border of the slums and the Enclave, the remaining bottom third of the map was broken into standard housing, with the army and guard-training facilities around the wall on the southeast, with further training areas constructed outside the city along the coast.

The smuggler’s path exited into the basement of the disused weaver’s shop in the northern sector of the industrial zone.

“Okay…” I said, frowning. “So, we’re here, and the arena is here…” I touched the map. “And the Legion is all the way over here?” I got a firm nod from Yen and the others. Joy; the damn Legion Enclave was on the far side of the city from where we stood, but… “What was that?” I asked as a loud explosion sounded somewhere in the distance.

“I don’t know,” Yen said, looking upwards. “We need to go. The Legion…”

“Lead the way to the roof,” I said, gesturing. “We should be able to see something from there, right?” I asked, and Bane nodded, darting away.

“You three stay here,” I instructed the smugglers. “Jian, keep an eye on them.” With that, the rest of us set off running, chasing after Bane.

The basement stairs ran up along the wall, exiting onto the main floor and into a small room that held the mechanism for the hidden wall. Slid back as it was, it looked bloody obvious, but as we barreled past, I had to concede that it was well made, composed of a series of gears and chains that looked well-maintained.

The next room appeared to be a stockroom, with a loading bay attached for wagons. We ran past the large doors that led out that way, and instead found a small stairway at the back that took us up to the next floor.