Titan: A LitRPG Adventure (UnderVerse Book 4) Jez Cajiao (top ten books of all time TXT) 📖

We passed around some dried meat and a kind of oatcake the Legionnaires had packed as we went, passing down the switchback and breaking into a jog across the cavern floor to move through the remains of the fungus fields and storage areas. I grimaced at seeing the water that was all that was left for the ferals to drink now, including the sheen of chemicals that floated on the top of it.

Always, there was the feeling of eyes watching us, and occasionally, we’d see some of the more feral gnomes, but as long as we kept moving, they seemed to decide we weren’t worth the hassle.

“Giint, will you be safe enough going back to join the others through this?” I asked at one point, and he just laughed. I shrugged and dismissed it as unimportant for now, remembering what a handful he’d been to fight, now that he was aware of himself properly again. I almost felt sorry for the ferals if they attacked him.

He led us to a large door in one wall, braced and barred, with a circular lock on it, operated by a lever.

“There,” he said, turning and walking away.

“Oi!” I called after him, making him pause. “Anything we need to know about the area past this?”  I asked, exasperated, and he bared his teeth at us in what I took for a smile.

“Don’t dieeee,” he snarled. As he passed Tang, he reached out furtively, and Tang passed him a small bag of something before holding his hands up as Yen grabbed his shoulder.

“It’s sugar, for fuck’s sake, nothing else…you know gnomes!” he said, and I shook my head, resolving again to let Restun deal with whatever it was when we got back.

The door took a few minutes to unlock, twisting and pulling on the metal that had settled into place over the years, but eventually, we managed it.

“Everyone ready?” I asked, and got a round of nods in return, as those without dark enhancements to their vision secured magelights to their armor. “Remember, people, we can’t slow down. Kill everything but keep going. The sooner we reach the Lich, the less time it has to gather its forces; let’s go!” I yanked the door open and jumped back as the first undead lunged forward out of the hallway.

Chapter Twenty-Four

It was a decrepit skeleton, its armor barely holding together. It bore no weapons and seemingly was barely able to move under its own violation. It had clearly been stationed there long ago, in the vain hope that the door would be opened.

Now that its reason for existing was fulfilled, I imagined a sense of relief as Grizz smashed it from its feet with a single blow of his gladius.

While not the ideal weapon for the undead, his incredible strength made short work of the creature, hacking its head clean and sending bone shards flying.

The animating force fled the skeleton, and Grizz ploughed into the hallway, his magelight casting weird shadows as he went.

“Go, go, go!” I shouted, matching action to words as I followed Lydia, who was second through the door. It was filled with filth; one wall was bulging inward, and there was a constant ‘drip-drip’ sound coming from somewhere overhead, along with a steady rivulet of foul water and scum that ran down the left-hand wall to gather on the floor in shallow puddles.

We ran on, coming to a crossroads and pausing to look at the choices: left, right or straight ahead. Grizz looked to me, and I pointed forward, shrugging, as Tang and Yen took turns scratching or burning an arrow into the wall where the gnomes would be able to see it.

Grizz nodded, and we were off again. The slight downward slope made it feel like we were almost falling as we ran forward, thundering along, with the clatter and racket of our weapons and armor building as we picked up speed.

“On the left!” Yen shouted, and Grizz altered his direction, seeing a skeleton come out of the darkness. It had been laid on the floor, but at our approach, it started to clamber to its feet. Grizz lashed out with his shield, smashing it into the wall with enough force that it collapsed back to sit on its ass, stunned. Jian took its head as he sprinted past, while the rest of us barely slowed.

Two more crossroads came and went before we hit our first dead end, retracing our footsteps and taking the right passage, then a left at the next one.

Ten more minutes passed before we took a turning that led out into a large room, skidding to halt.

We’d barely seen any undead up to this point, but here, we found dozens, and worst of all, they weren’t the docile kind.

As soon as we left the cover of the hallway, they struck. Four Shir, creatures I’d not seen since I first arrived in the UnderVerse, ran at us, lumbering towards us side by side.

They were huge creatures, humanoid, but more ox than man, with wide horns and massive shoulders. As the four lowered their heads in unison, I saw the plan. Either we’d split up, and they’d defeat us in detail, as dozens more undead ran behind them, or we’d stay together, and the Shir would smash us into paste.

I paused for a second, trying to figure out what to do, but for the first time, Lydia didn’t.

“Grizz, right flank! Jax, center… Shield! Jian, get their legs!” she snapped out, hunching behind her shield, and I followed her, seeing Grizz slide in on the right, locking his shield alongside my own.

As I settled into place, I felt a sudden searing heat wash over us as Jian’s demon let rip with its beam ability.

A terrible flare of heat seemed to fill the air, slamming into the four Shir and cutting from left to right. The plasma burned deep into their lumbering corpses, making them scream in fury as they caught fire, bones exploding and rotting