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

Kat lifted her visor, her face was streaked with grime and sweat. Her blue eyes met Jacob’s green. “I’ll get Daniel and Melissa.”

With a nod, Jacob split off and went to the first lifeless form. Sal never did like being crammed into a suit of armor. Nothing they ever found fit the man’s rotund frame. And yet, when the enemy was at the gate, he was the first one to squeeze into that uncomfortable armor.

Unlike modern, comfortable fabrics, and flexible nanoweave, the suits of medieval armor they wore were bulky and difficult to move in. But they were the only armaments that offered true protection against the horde of creatures that now dominated the world after the Collapse.

Without Guilt, a force imbued into equipment by its previous wearers over many long years, even the sturdiest steel plates were little better than tissue paper. Replicas didn’t work, even melting down the ancient metal failed to produced decent armor. It had been one of Jacob and Kim’s first real discoveries.

Raiding local museums and collectors was the only reason their group - diminished though it was - still survived. Guns were useless. Tactical armor a joke. But dress up like you were going to a jousting match, and you could weather blows that would take down a tank.

With Sal’s body facedown in the smoldering dirt, Jacob nudged the man with the toe of his metal boot. When he didn’t respond, he rolled him over and crouched at his side. Placing his sword to the side, he drew a thin-bladed dagger from his hip and carefully lifted the man’s visor.

His stomach churned at the sight of the grouchy, fatherly figure burned to a crisp. With a practiced motion, Jacob tilted back the man’s head and drove the thin tip of the dagger from the man’s chin into his brain.

The Vacant liked to come back wearing the faces of friends and loved ones. Damaging the brain prevented that from happening. Once they were Vacant, they were much harder to put down.

It was hard work, emotionally and physically taxing. But it was a necessity after the Collapse changed all the rules.

After cleaning the dagger, Jacob picked up his sword and waited. A moment later, a glowing fiery sphere of sapphire light drifted off the man’s chest and floated in the air. He reached his hand out and touched it, willing the wisp into himself.

You gain [Stygian Iron Helm].

You gain [Stygian Iron Breastplate].

You gain [Stygian Iron Gauntlets].

You gain [Stygian Iron Greaves].

You gain [Ring of Bitter Dreams].

The words flashed across Jacob’s vision and vanished with a mental confirmation. All of Sal’s effects were contained in that wispy orb of blue fire.

It was one of the quirks of this new post-apocalyptic reality.

One of the very few benefits of the Collapse was the inventory system that provided everybody with a [Boundless Box] that seemed to hold an impossible number of items without weighing them down.

Any item you had on you – or within your [Boundless Box] – would be contained in your wisp. Unlike monsters, the wisps of people stayed at the site of their death. Long after a person’s body turned to ash, their wisp would remain in place waiting for somebody to collect it.

Simply touching a person’s wisp allowed you to gain all of their usable items and in rare cases, it might contain a fragment of the Souls they had collected in life.

Jacob turned to Caleb, or rather the blackened blasted stone where Caleb had once stood. All that remained of Caleb was a glowing azure wisp that hung in the air above the charred stone.

Caleb had gone out on some secret mission almost two months ago. They all thought he was dead until the scouts saw him and the horde of Vacant on his heels an hour ago.

Unsurprisingly, the man had little left. But aside from his equipment, which Jacob collected and would give to Alec, there was another item. One he had never seen before.

He summoned the [Ember of Probability] he collected from Caleb’s wisp. He watched as shimmering images played out like a kaleidoscope from within the tiny glowing mote in his leather-clad palm. Every so often it vanished, the only trace it was still there was the comforting warmth it spread even through his armor.

With a shrug, Jacob put the item back into his [Boundless Box]. He’d seen stranger things in the ten years since the Collapse. He made a mental note to see Doctor Jasieux, she was the one who sent Caleb out after all.

After the Collapse, a lot of strange things happened. The laws of the world faltered and were superseded by those of a new and obscenely popular game, Pyresouls Online.

Players who managed to survive the First Wave found they had stats outside of the game. Spells and abilities that were impossible just a few days prior were suddenly commonplace.

The bystanders were the first to die en masse.

A world of stats, skills, and levels caught them by surprise. Without any frame of reference or instruction on how to utilize these new gifts, most people were helpless against the flood of undead abominations, hellspawn creatures, and horrors without name.

When they were finished with their grim deed, Kat and Jacob marched up the winding narrow trails to the caverns in relative silence.

“Sent those monsters straight to Hell, did ya?” George asked, standing beside the heavy gates set deep into the walls of the cave on either side. He threw a heavy lever, the rattle of chains echoed deep within the stone.

Somewhere inside the half-foot thick blast doors, there was another lever being thrown that would open the way for them into the bunker.

Kat gave the younger man a tired look. “Can’t very well send them to Hell when we’re already there.”

Without a word more, the pair passed into the opened doors and the guardroom beyond. They passed through three more blast doors until they reached the heart of the bunker. The mess hall. The whole place had once belonged to