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

hold back its unbridled fury. The creature sailed through the air. Jacob turned to see Kim lift her visor and gape in wide-mouthed shock at the sheer size and ferocity of the thing.

It landed with a heavy crash, scattering the stone tables and sacrificial altars. As it did, Jacob crawled forward to peek out from the ledge.

He had a front-row seat to the slaughter. Mack, to his credit, tried to organize a defensive line against the thing but its raking bony claws were too great. It swept aside an entire row of defenders, disemboweling them on the backswing and leaving them to die a horribly slow death.

They never stood a chance.

The Skeletal Beast had no lungs, no ability to roar or make terrifying bestial sounds as you might expect. The only thing Jacob and Kim heard were the sounds of men and women dying.

Those few that managed to make it halfway to the ledge were pulled down, impaled on spear-long fingerbones, and then ripped apart.

Rolling back to the cover of darkness, Jacob donned his armor once more and didn’t dare look. Understanding that the show was at its end, Kim inched her way back until she was pressed up tight against him.

Neither of them said anything for a while as the beast rampaged around the room looking for something else to kill. Jacob knew it could detect life but with so much blood and viscera around he hoped that it would get confused and wander off.

The stone trembled beneath its assault as it demolished what was left of the room and any poor soul still left alive. A whirring sound filled the room followed quickly by a flash of red and the squeal of old rusty hinges swinging open.

For several long, tense minutes, they stayed together silently. At any other time, Jacob would have appreciated the closeness. He could only hope that the Skeletal Beast, finding no further victims, had left.

Making his way as quietly as he could, Jacob peeked over the ledge. The floor shimmered wetly with blood, not a single inch was spared. None of the bodies were recognizable, they were little more than lumps of meat.

But there was no Skeletal Beast.

The exit was easily visible, wide rust-flaked iron doors stood open to a large corridor beyond. One last look to make sure the way was clear, Jacob lowered himself down to the floor.

“That’s one way to solve the puzzle,” Kim said at his side, a clear tremor in her voice. “It’s like somebody had a balloon fight with blood.” She squinted her eyes at the exit. “Shouldn’t that be a fog gate?”

Jacob nodded. Something wasn’t right. With great care not to slip on the slick bloodied floor, they picked their way to the metal doors. He looked back at Kim. “The way is clear.”

She had stopped halfway to the door, staring in queasy horror at the carnage around her. The same carnage that Jacob merely shrugged off. He’d seen worse.

Kim hurried up next to him and poked her head into the hall. She snapped her visor down. “So it seems,” she said doubtfully. “You’re pretty cold, you know that?”

Jacob turned to regard her. “They were going to kill you.”

She shrugged. “Who am I to you? How did you know I had a flail, which I would like back now,” she said, holding out her hand expectantly.

He handed her back her weapon, which she dismissed with a thought. “I guessed you picked it up early on. I saw one and decided to leave it since I can’t stand how unwieldy they are.”

Kim nodded along in agreement but still remained suspicious. “Well, it looks like we’re stuck together a bit longer then, huh?”

“It would seem so,” Jacob said distractedly.

There should have been a fog gate here. He remembered Alec telling him about it clearly. Did he do something to all of the fog gates when he burned away the first one?

He swallowed hard, trying to work through the complications.

With the fog gate destroyed, and the appearance of the Skeletal Beast, they had been pulled into Jacob’s shard. His semi-private instance of Pyresouls Online.

Each person was given their own little world, not quite solo and not entirely private either. You could make a pact with somebody at a Crossing and invite them over to your world but if they died they were sent back to theirs so most people didn’t bother.

Those that did often backstabbed the one who invited them, like Emily did to him. That way they could take the spoils while resetting the progress of the naïve player.

The list of player interactions was decidedly short. Cooperative opportunities even less so.

Without the Skeletal Beast, he would have had to sit by and watch Kim die, or else get pinned down and eventually slaughtered alongside her. Though he didn’t appreciate the thought of following behind in the beast’s path, Jacob did admit that without its help he might not still be standing.

“Want some free Souls?” Jacob asked with a grin, pointing at a nearby pile of meat. A red wisp floated over the remains of the body. Now that he took a moment to take stock of the ruined room, several more wisps were visible. They were hard to pick out amongst all the blood.

Kim looked at him, then at the red wisps. “I don’t follow.”

Motioning her to follow him, Jacob went to the nearest corpse and reached toward the wisp. It quivered, then flew into his chest. A quarter of the player’s Souls went into Jacob.

Since it was a monster and not a player that had killed them, Jacob didn’t automatically acquire the Souls.

He explained as much to Kim. Even with her visor down, Jacob could sense the waves of nausea from her as she understood what he was proposing. She clearly didn’t want to be around the lumps of gore that were once people. Even if those people had been about to kill her.

Her practical side won out, however, and they agreed to split the bounty 60/40 with