The Forgotten Faithful: A LitRPG Adventure (UnderVerse Book 2) by Cajiao, Jez (little red riding hood ebook TXT) 📕

you, and you fight at our side.” He shook his head, tendrils rising and then falling in rhythmic patterns. “You confuse us, but we trust you, not because of your words, but your actions.”

“Good job, really, since my words are usually wrong.” I muttered self-consciously, then realized he’d have heard that and had to explain. “Where I come from, actions matter more than words as well, Bane. I’m not good with words; always say the wrong thing at just the wrong time. I’ve had a lot of experience of people that stab you in the back…” I said, thinking back to my ex and the last time I saw her, naked with her ‘friend’ Martin. A quick blur of faces and memories scrolled through my mind. She was far from the worst, just the latest in a long list of reasons to distrust people.

“Look, I helped you because it was the right thing to do. I’m not going to let a child get hurt, not if I can help it, and I wanted to recruit Decin and his crew, so I was getting something out of it…”

“You risked your life to save those that might have refused you, Jax, because you wished to give them a home? It is not a gain to only you,” Bane said, entirely dismissing my point. He strode alongside me, half carrying the smaller T’lek. I looked over at him and checked my mana. I’d wanted to do this before, but had decided to wait until my mana had recovered enough to help all of the Mer. Now that Flux and Cheena were off scouting, though…

I waited until we were back in the main room, then spoke to them both again.

“I’m going to summon some water for you. It’ll only last about fifteen seconds before I need to let it go, so make the most of it, okay? You both ready?” I asked, getting quick nods from them both and I cast ‘Summon Water’ beside Bane and T’lek. The purified cool water bubbled up from the stone floor to form a spring five feet high like a small fountain. There was a moment of shock from T’lek before Bane pushed him forward into it.

The smaller Mer stood reveling in the water, breathing it in and seeming to absorb it as fast as drink it, his gills fluttering like crazy. Eventually, Bane gently shifted him and leaned into the water in his place, catching the last few seconds that I was able to extend it by. When the spell died, and the water fell to the previously dusty floor, T’lek slumped despondently.

“Don’t worry,” I said reassuringly. “I’ll summon another as soon as we get people healed and the control room activated. We just need to find it!” With that, a much livelier Bane began striding around the room, poking and prodding at the seemingly arranged piles of debris. Hanau and Riana joined me, and the four of us started searching the room, T’lek jumping to help when Bane snapped at him.

We soon realized the piles of debris were actually loot, or at least what goblins considered to be loot. Some were totally worthless, shiny pebbles and weird shaped wood, small piles of what looked like birds’ wings, and in pride of place on one heap was a pile of broken glass. There was also, thankfully, some actual loot. A pile of copper and silver coins, the gold ones being kept in a bag near the matriarch. A set of cooking pans and some shells that shone strangely, but that Bane insisted were valuable.

There were also a handful of gemstones, three flasks that bubbled even when kept totally still, which reminded me of lava lamps, and a pair of manastones, both were inert, completely drained of mana, but they were intact, placed atop a pile of stones that were shattered into pieces, so I guessed either they could be recharged, or put to some use.

When we were nearly finished searching the room, Riana finally called out from where she’d been examining the far wall.

“Is this something?” she asked, and we all dropped everything to crowd around and look at it.

The wall itself looked the same as the others, composed of simple carved stone blocks that stood one atop the other in an offset pattern. Typical brickwork, I thought…but then a sense of wrongness tugged at me.

I examined it closer, trying to figure out what it was, Oracle joining me. We searched it for a few seconds before feeling a throbbing that made me shake my head. It felt like we were coming in for a landing too fast on a plane; the rapid pressure change lasted only a few seconds before stopping, and I looked at Bane questioningly.

He stared at T’lek, who had all his tendrils extended out like a lion’s mane. The pair of them spoke quickly.

“There, it’s…”

“Solid, it’s not…”

“It’s a door!” T’lek finished as they cut each other off in their excitement.

“Where?” I asked, and both of them pointed at the wall where we’d been looking.

At first, I couldn’t see it, just observing an unbroken wall, but after a few seconds, my meridian enhancement finally activated, and I saw a faint blue glow outlining a symbol carved into the wall.

There were dozens of them. Various carvings dotted the room, and they were all coated in hundreds of years of dust, and, more recently, soot from the goblin’s fires, the smoke of which had gradually escaped through small cracks in the ceiling.

What made this symbol different was the glow; as near as I could see, it was identical to two others carved into the other walls, but as I studied them, the glow started to build on them as well, but … it was red.

My instincts mixed with my trap knowledge, and I knew instinctively that using the wrong symbol would be a fatal mistake. I was fairly confident in the blue glowing symbol, but I still ordered everyone else from the room