Titan: A LitRPG Adventure (UnderVerse Book 4) by Jez Cajiao (free ebooks for android .TXT) 📕

and braced in place, as though she was physically holding the spears back. The magical projectiles surged forward and back, restrained only by her will.

Ten meters… seven… I staggered again, pain radiating from my back, my thighs, my shoulders, as I forced myself to put one foot in front of the other, pushing off with all my strength, rushing along as fast as I’d ever run on earth, but now I had the weight of a fully armored tank on my shoulders, one who weakly pleaded with me to abandon her, to leave her behind.

“Not… today!”  I grunted, five meters…three… I stumbled past Yen, catching sight of Miren and Stephanos, who were firing arrows into the forming creation. Jian and Grizz grabbed at Lydia, dragging her free of my shoulders and passing her further back as I fell, catching myself on the wall and groaning in pain.

“Motherfuckers!” Yen screamed, throwing her arms forward as soon as I was past her, and the five spears flashed along in concert, slightly staggered to increase their damage. They cut through the air with a violent whistle and whine, picking up speed as they flew.

I struggled back upright, feeling Grizz grabbing me under the right arm and tugging me to my feet. He shoved me forward just as my mana dropped into the toilet, and I staggered again, my second debuff hitting me and making me almost too weak to move in my armor.

“Move it, Legionnaire!” Grizz screamed at me as Tang appeared, taking my left arm and ducking under it, half lifting me as he started to run. Stephanos took my other arm from Grizz and they worked together, half dragging, half carrying me.

Yen was stumbling along with the others, helped by Miren, as Grizz and Jian dragged Lydia along, her metal-clad sabatons dragging along the filthy metal floor raising an ear piercing shriek, one that was quickly occluded by the explosions behind us.

For me, it felt like a giant hand slammed into my back, lifting me and tossing me along the corridor. The entire team was thrown from our feet, tumbling and collapsing as the blast wave washed over us. The majority of the impact was luckily being directed away, instead barreling into the undead creation that had been forming.

The first spear had hit it on the cheek of the massive skull that had begun to form, cracking the structure and blasting the bone apart. The second impacted a millisecond later, to the left and slightly higher, punching deeper into the horned skull and detonating, the explosion peppering the walls, ceiling, and floor with ballistic bone shards.

The blast wave grew, conical in shape, as the next hit to the right by a few inches. It slammed through the monster, taking a dissolving undead Xon’dike in the face and smashing it backwards before it practically vaporized. The fourth hit further, punching through the back of the Xon’dike’s carapace and emerging into a hail of disassembling bones, before the final missile flared through the gap created by its predecessors and detonated.

The blast wave, no longer constrained by solid bodies, but instead meeting flying, magically-dragged individual bones, roared out, clearing the corridor and erupting back into the room beyond, sending thousands of flaming shards in all directions and shredding the hundreds of undead on the far side, the final blast turning the room into a bone grinder.

The overpressure that had punched us from our feet vanished, only to be replaced by the cracking, creaking, and screams of metal as the corridor’s stress tolerances were surpassed by a force never envisioned. The ceiling, walls, and floor abruptly collapsed in a rolling wave of destruction.

We barely escaped, staggering and limping into the room the others had found and falling to the floor in heaps, too exhausted to fight.

I noticed the ceiling above me shuddering, and I closed my eyes, barely able to breathe, let alone escape. The world slipped rapidly from me, turning black.

Chapter Fourteen

When I awoke, it was hours later, judging by the rested, painless state of my body, and my helmet was off. I blinked slowly, trying to reconcile the view before me and the sensation of my intact body with the way I’d felt in my last memories. Confused, I slowly looked around, catching sight of a glowing campfire pushing back the darkness nearby.

I was half stripped of my armor and laid out on my bedroll. My head was cradled in Oracle’s lap, and I reveled in the softness as she sat and stroked my hair back. She was full sized and glaring at me, even as our link spoke volumes about how relieved she was to be able to scold me again.

I lifted one hand, bracing it palm down and levering myself upright. I turned slightly and slid the other behind her head, pulling her in close and cutting off her rising complaint with a hard, relieved kiss.

When I broke it, I glanced around, seeing the amused looks on everyone’s faces, and I grinned at the realization that everyone was okay.

“Now, how come all I got when you woke up was a smack?” I heard Jian whisper to Miren, and I shot a grin at him as I turned and inspected the room. It quickly became clear that we were camped in the last room we’d found at the end of the corridor.

“What happened?” I asked, and Lydia clambered to her feet, stomping over to me and glaring down.

“Yer almost cost us all our lives, is what happened!” she snarled. “I was happy ter die there; I woulda held th’ line! Instead, yer came after me, just like yer rushed th’ damn undead in the first place. Then everyone else had to come stormin’ in to save us both! Yer nearly cost everyone their lives, just ter save me!” I blinked in shock, remembering the chaotic struggle, and feeling that I was being unfairly shouted at.

I remembered the pain, and the damage I could feel happening to my body as I carried