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

“Now he’s gaining every reserved point in one go, all the points he’d earned but not allocated. He’s level thirty-seven; I saw that much, and gnomes get plus two points to Intelligence, and one to Dexterity, with a free point to allocate each level, so he’s just gotten…”

“More than seventy points into Intelligence,” I finished, wincing in understanding.

“Exactly,” Oracle confirmed softly, and all around us, my people gritted their teeth in sympathy.

“Will he live?” I asked her, and her expression became heartbreakingly sad.

“I honestly don’t know. I’m sorry, Jax; maybe Nerin or Hellenica could have helped him more. I didn’t realize what the issue was until I’d undone it, and now…”

“And now it’s too late,” I said, sighing. “Okay then, that’s fine. There’s nothing we can do, I guess. Would another round of healing help him?” I offered hopefully, and she shook her head.

“If it would, I’d have done it already. It’s the shock that’s the problem. If anything, his body is growing stronger and fitter; rather than needing healing, he needs to rest.”

“What if we…” I started to suggest, when Bane suddenly tackled me roughly from the side, driving me against the wall as something flew past me, smashing into the barrier and leaving a green smear to slide down it.

“Watch out!” he cried to the others as Tang drew back on his bow and fired a black-fletched arrow down the corridor into the darkness. The bolt struck true, eliciting a shriek of fury from something whose voice seemed to shake the air.

Bane growled long and low before looking to me. “Leviathans,” he ground out, and that single word was filled with fear and hatred in equal measure.

Chapter Eighteen

Two creatures slunk out of the darkness at the far end of the corridor, their skin the color of the walls, allowing them to blend in easily. They clacked and hissed at each other, tracking us warily.

“What are they?” I asked Bane as I studied them. The pair were tall, almost shoulder height, but not humanoid; instead, the closest I could get was a cross between a wolf and a squid. Their incomprehensible bodies were at least a dozen feet long, with four eyes set in a triangular face. Out of each forehead, a long horn jutted upwards, and directly beneath, a vicious beak pointed down. The creatures had six legs, each with bone flanges jutting out from the sides that made them look like they’d be just as happy in or out of the sea.

In addition to the legs, four arm-like appendages protruded out from behind their heads. The limbs moved like tentacles, but after a foot or so, they each narrowed to a long, clearly sharp claw that waved lightly in the air.

I couldn’t help but draw comparisons with Bane, and upon looking over at him, I suddenly felt a low growl reverberating from him.

“Leviathans,” he growled again, and I frowned.

“Really?” I paused, backing up and preparing to fight. “In my homeland, we have legends of them. They’re a lot bigger…” I started, before Bane cut me off.

“Yeah, these are freshly spawned; maybe ten or fifteen years old, that’s all,” he said grimly. “But if they’re here, we’ve got a much bigger problem than I thought.”

“What?”  I asked with concern, feeling my nuts shriveling as I watched the creatures moving slowly forward.

“Their mother. A leviathan doesn’t spawn frequently, and they tend to keep their spawn around, as snacks, if nothing else. Leviathans grow to be as large as the food source can supply. They don’t die of natural causes, either, so if you have legends of them and they were huge, they might be true,” Bane admitted, an edge of fear and respect filing his voice.

“So, if there’s a bigger one than these around…” I faltered when one of the creatures suddenly screamed, quickly followed by the second. The noise started high, and then shifted straight into horrific. I winced in pain, the noise reverberating through my skull and making my guts twist, even as I felt my ears starting to bleed.

Bane staggered, all four hands clutching at his head as his knives clattered to the ground. The sonic attack was decidedly painful to me, and it made me fear that I was going to need fresh trousers soon, the way it was twisting my insides, but for a creature that saw the world through a form of sonar, it was obviously beyond agonizing, and I gritted my teeth, scowling at the creatures as they slunk closer down the corridor, still screaming.

“….” I forced out, then gritted my teeth and tried again, louder this time. “……” As soon as the first syllable failed to materialize, I started trying to cast sub-vocally.

When that failed, fizzling out and sending a tearing pain through my skull, I hissed, glanced at the obvious pain that was tearing through my friend and bodyguard, and I let the chains off the low-level fury that filled me almost permanently these days.

I felt the welcome heat building, and I dug deeper, pushing off hard, determined to close the distance as quickly as possible.

Small rocks, fragments of debris, and general rubbish coated the floor, and I sprinted as fast as I could, bounding over the crap that was strewn everywhere and closing the distance to the screeching monsters.

The one on the right cut off its scream, slinking forward and honing in on me, its beak clacking and tongue flashing out as its four grasping tentacles flexed and tugged at the air, as though desperate to drag me into its maw.

I growled as I ran, leveling my naginata. I sensed as much as felt the others following me, just as arrows flashed past, burying themselves into the first Leviathan’s body.

I saw it flinch back as a long black arrow, Tang’s… a part of my mind coldly informed me, flew past us all, thudding into the shoulder of the still-screaming creature, staggering it and making the sound cut off momentarily. It hissed in fury, and