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

people were scared of that place. Add on the fact that the skeletons didn’t die or award Souls, and the whole place was downright terrifying.

“I’m only twenty-five points of health off,” he said, staring into the Pyre and thinking about his next move. The Pyre shifted, a faint wispy second image of it danced at the periphery and Jacob realized what happened with his wisp.

How could I have been so stupid to forget about my curse?

Looking around, he could see the hazy dreamlike quality of the room around him. Everything looked far less substantial than normal and he knew it would only get worse if he didn’t curb it right now.

Even if he could find a secret pathway by using the curse to his advantage, he’d be a hindrance to Camilla. Even if he was able to walk on a bridge she couldn’t see, without the same curse, he wasn’t sure if she would be able to use it.

Fractured Sight gave the afflicted a view onto an alternate plane of reality. At curse levels of 1 or 2, it was mild and rarely triggered. Starting at 3 the hallucinations grew more severe.

Eventually, around curse levels of 3 to 4, you could see hidden pathways and alternative routes that weren’t visible or even possible for anybody else.

The curse would allow Jacob to not just view into an alternate plane of reality but to walk it where the barrier between was especially thin. Doing so, he could walk upon a bridge of light over a chasm that would require hours of backtracking.

Unfortunately, as he just witnessed the hallucinations were not friendly. At higher levels, the creatures on the other plane were able to not only hurt him but cross over as well. And then they would be a problem for Camilla as well.

For now, he had no choice but to expend an [Anima] to reset his curse. Summoning the black piece of coal in his hand, Jacob plunged his arm into the fire. The [Anima] crackled and shattered, its soothing energy rolled over his body and rid him of his curse.

While they were rare, a single [Anima] would reset his curse back to 0. At least he didn’t need to use one every time he died.

Camilla seemed content to lean back against the nearby wall and shut her eyes while Jacob finished with his business at the Pyre.

Reinforcing VIT by 1 would raise his Health by 8 and cost 2,114 Souls. He needed to not only meet the bare minimum of 149 Health, but have over it to account for damage variance.

With the number of Souls he had left, he wasn’t sure that was possible.

He would need at least 4 reinforcements to bring it up high enough. Only doing 3 would have him equal to the strike that had killed him which meant he would die in a single hit again if hit in a similar manner.

At the rate the required Souls was raising per parameter reinforcement, there was no way he could increase VIT 4 points.

Taking a look at his armor gave him an idea. Armor was, by all accounts, pretty simple in Pyresouls. It resisted a set amount of damage and anything over that damage would hurt you. Otherwise, it would do nothing.

Physical damage was the most common to receive and was split between the three major types; blunt, slashing, and piercing. While his [Knight’s Armor] claimed 90 physical protection, that wasn’t entirely true.

Its total physical protection was nothing more than the total sum of its individual protections. Medium armor like that, especially plate mail, excelled at slashing protection and to a lesser extent piercing.

His [Knight’s Armor] had 40 slashing protection, the most common type of damage, and the damage that had killed him. He could up his VIT high enough to have enough HP to withstand the damage, or he could improve his armor enough to lower the incoming damage.

Raising his armor was raising his “effective HP,” since each point of reduced damage was, in the end, little different than raising his HP by 1.

While upgrading his armor would likely cost fewer Souls, it would cost him [Dull Sparks] which took time to acquire. And if he ever found better armor, it would be a waste.

There was a good reason why most people ran naked through the catacombs. The damage you took was so high that even with a hoard of Souls like Jacob had, it was still hard to get enough Health to survive a single hit from even the weakest enemies.

Most people ran through, spending as many of their Souls as possible so that if they lost it all it wasn’t a waste. If they died, they would return to the Pyre to try it all again.

It was somewhat insane but made sense. This was undoubtedly the fastest way to Hollow Dreams where he could not only find plenty of loot but merchants and the start of the quest that would point him toward the Burgon Beast and how to awaken it.

Not that he needed it.

Everything hinged on Jacob getting to Hollow Dreams as fast as possible and that would be easier done if he accepted the loss and sprinted through. After seeing how swift Camilla was, he doubted she would have any trouble keeping up with him. In her lighter robes, she wouldn’t be slowed down.

And now that she attuned to a Cairn, she was in no danger of dying. But if he could get the [Ring of Broken Vows] on his first pass, he could avoid coming back to the catacombs entirely.

That alone would shave off days of time. And the last time he ignored Alec’s adamant advice, he had died. But it turned out for the best in the end.

If Jacob had never gone inside the bridge - regardless of whether or not he had a choice, which he didn’t - he would be in a vastly different predicament now.

So maybe there was something to the Doc’s suggestion.

“What do you know about the Desecrated