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

that could harm them, but he wanted to destroy everything to fulfill that goal, and he couldn’t see the  catastrophic flaw in his plan.

He was well and truly broken.

“I…” I started to say, when a memory came to me, a memory of anger, of Amon standing by me as I faced Jenae in the realm of the Gods, and I remembered what Tuthic’Amon had given me…

“Aegis!” I gasped, and I felt it activate.

Power spread out from the center of my chest, rippling out across my skin. It flowed up and down, spreading to cover every inch of me in glowing white light that lasted barely a second, before it changed.

What had been a glowing covering of white light, suddenly became solidified silver, condensing into full-body armor made up of overlapping tiny scales that fit me like a second skin. Larger plates protected my chest, back forearms, upper thighs, shins, and head. I reached up and found that I could feel through it, a cool sensation of perfectly wrought metal under my fingers.

I admired the silvery claw that overlaid my hand, each finger tipped with a short, jet-black talon. As I considered the obsidian points, they grew. and I grinned, running my tongue over newly sharpened teeth.

I met Amon’s glowing eyes, and I saw his hesitation. I saw the energy, the rage he’d been so filled with a mere second before, leaving him…

I frowned, glancing at my HUD and realizing that my HP, mana, and stamina bars were all steadily dropping. I remembered that Tuthic’s gift had a cost: to make me essentially invulnerable to outside influences, to shield my mind to this degree, would cost me my life as long as it was active.

I glared at Amon, watching him weaken more and more. The blackness that had spread out from him to darken the waters of the Veil was dissipating, and…

I looked around the cavern; the crackling power that had been eating through the stone, ready to tear me apart, had vanished. My head spun as I looked back to Amon, who was slowly sinking backwards. His eyes were fixed on me, but the power that had filled them was gone, and I knew what it meant in that instant.

The powers he’d been using weren’t his! He’d been using my own power to fuel his rage! In his maddened state, he’d been lashing out at me with it,  and I’d been letting him!

I concentrated, flexing mental muscles and cutting Aegis off. As I felt the drain cease on my HP, mana, and stamina, I saw the glow in his eyes begin to grow again.

This time, I didn’t wait; I didn’t watch or try to understand…

I reached down within myself and grabbed onto my power. I tore it from him, sealing it deeper inside my soul as I glared at him, at what he’d tried to do.

I felt something resist me. I felt... pain… a deep pain in my chest, and spiraling along my spine, a sensation of something that had integrated itself with my spinal column and had spread up into my brain. Thousands of tiny filaments had taken root within me, similar to the way the Pearl had bonded with my body, but this felt deeper and far more sinister.

It had been there since before I was born, a parasite that fed on me to sustain itself. It was a vestige of this terrible facet of Amon, and I knew immediately that the injuries that Jenae had sensed, that Oracle had sensed, the drain on my experience that had been holding me back, it was connected to this.

I didn’t know how it had come to be, or how it had infected me, but I knew it for what it was now. I also knew I only had seconds to act before it used my own magic to shield itself again.

I reached out, ignoring the surrounding cavern. Holding my hand up before myself, I concentrated, activating Aegis again, but forcing it to not form the full shield it was designed to be.

I directed it to coalesce around my right hand, and before I could think better of it, I drove it into my stomach.

I felt pain as my claws burrowed deeper into my body, digging through the layers of my flesh and my psyche at the same time.

I pushed harder, feeling sudden resistance as something pushed back, and I grabbed it. Pain tore through me as it writhed in agony, digging its pseudopods deeper into my nervous system.

I screamed, white-hot torture lancing through my nerves as I felt it digging in deeper, frantic to hold onto life. Gritting my teeth, and knowing it would likely kill me, I pulled on it, hard.

I tore the thing from me, separating first along my spine, then higher. Each section that came loose released massive gouts of blood and viscera, as well as ripping fragments of my soul away. I felt nerves being torn, my spinal column snapping, and the messages from my brain being cut off as the parasite tried to stop me. I focused everything I had on the Aegis. I flexed the power inside me, using it on my arm, forcing the muscles to contract. I maintained my shielded hand’s grip on the creature, and I pushed and pulled, forcing the muscles that were now beyond my nerve control to continue their bloody work.

I felt heat bloom in my head as connections were torn, as bleeding began inside my brain. I felt my physical body, distant and heavy, being jostled and bounced as it was carried by frantically shouting people, and I felt the damage being done to it as I tore out this invader.

I lost the sight in my left eye as bloody chunks of my brain were torn out, the last hooked tips of the parasite coming free in a shower as it was yanked down and out of my stomach.

I held it up before me. The thing coiled furiously, twitching and spasming, a hideous black mess of tendrils