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

so slowly, poured the crystallized mana concoction out. The glowing fluid, currently filling in the carved channels, was a rare and valuable commodity. He’d intended the concoction to be his gift to Tern’s father, if he ever got up the courage to ask her to accept him as mate.

Once the mana had filled the channels, it began to harden, slowly at first, but then like cooling wax, the surface solidified, and it began to glow gently, reacting to the ambient mana leakage beneath.

“I did it…” Mattin whispered in shock, staring down at the plate in his claws in awe.

“Mattin!” Tern hissed, and he turned to her, waving it frantically.

“I did it!” he cried, then immediately froze as his voice echoed back from the vast emptiness all around him. In the deep places of the realm, silence was life, as noise…

A roar sounded from his left, and Mattin spun to gawk up at the S’barrr that by now had wrestled almost a third of its body through the Shieldwall. He forced his gaze away and chittered in horror upon seeing the tell-tale shimmers of others closing the distance, running to join in the feast of whatever had been foolish enough to make noise in their territory.

“Run!” Tern squealed, matching her advice to action, as she scrabbled out of the burrow and scuttled across the ring to head for the wall, shouting to the others to retreat back inside.

Mattin scanned the area with his manasight, the familiar bronze bumps revealed within the mana flow of the Holy Prax of Marauder, even as the deadness of the S’barrr started to break through the final shield, and he felt it.

He felt the need to fix it, as his father and his greatfather had said he would. The knowledge of a turning point in his life awoke, and in feeling those around him, he knew.

For the first time in his life, he wasn’t too scared, too small, too hungry, or too weak to do what he knew was right, and he stood straighter as he pushed the plate into the port on the floor. Feeling the click as the hidden springs depressed underneath it, he slid it in along the runners.

A thin line of metal curled up where it had caught against a burr on one edge, and he gibbered in fear. Terrified that he’d just ruined everything, but on he went still, pushing it into place until it clicked, and the air changed.

All around him, the atmosphere suddenly felt subtly wrong, his fur standing on end as tiny crackles and faint lights flickered across his form, jumping from hair to hair. Mattin backed away, slowly at first, then rapidly gaining speed until he was bounding along. His limbs worked with a coordination he’d never known he possessed, making the ground fly away beneath him as he raced for the wall.

The first S’barrr was almost entirely through by now, only its hooked stinger left outside as it roared and pulled, trying to break free. Three more were shoving at the shield nearby, their preternaturally sharp senses having spotted the fleeing Xon’dike inside, and their tiny brains sensed a change in the shield that protected their quarry.

More monsters slowly pushed through, and cries of alarm rose from the walls of the city. Bells rang out, summoning the Warrior Sect to fight as Mattin ran closer. Panic filled his chest, his twin hearts pounding in fear as the gates slammed shut, barely a dozen feet ahead of him.

He skidded to a halt, digging his claws into the metal of the outer ring deck, and he let out an unconscious moan of fear, the acrid stench of urine filling the air around him.

He ran forward the last few feet, shoving at the doors, pounding on them and pleading to be let in, but it was no use. He’d heard the bolts slamming home as he’d come to a halt. The great doors couldn’t be opened now, not without hours of grueling work to haul the stone blocks free again. He knew this, but it didn’t stop him from pleading, promising anything to the guards as he scrabbled on the doors. A tiny, disconnected part of his brain noted the chips and scratches left in the past by others in the same situation.

“What’s that?” he heard a voice from the ramparts cry out in shock, and he turned, almost gibbering in fear, as the S’barrr that had first attacked the Shieldwall tore itself free at last, roaring in triumph.

“It’s coming for me…” Mattin whispered, dread filling him, until he saw what they had been talking about.

It wasn’t the S’barrr they’d meant; it was the light. The faint blue light that was glowing, growing steadily stronger and filling the cavern, rising from hundreds of symbols on Imbenim Steel plates that ringed the outer deck of the Holy Lost Prax… it was lighting up, like it used to, but with so much more power!

The luminous streams flickered, the S’barrr snorting and biting at a mote of glowing blue light that floated upwards from its feet. Then they solidified, a wall of bright blue light arcing upwards to meet in a dome above the city, high overhead.

In the light particles’ race to rejoin, to complete the Shieldwall, they tore through everything in their path, including shredding the dozens of S’barrr that had been attempting to pass through the space which the freshly activated shield now took up.

Mattin screamed along with all the others as his sensitive, darkness-adjusted eyes were almost burned out by the light, and he felt tears running free, even as he panted in fear at his sudden blindness.

Minutes passed, and still nothing moved, before a great voice called out above him, and he sighed in relief.

“Who activated the Second Shieldwall?” the voice asked, its strange timbre echoing, as the First Warrior Himself spoke, and Mattin broke down. He wanted to cling to the knowledge that he was safe again, but being this close to the First Warrior was too