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

they had strange, thick flexible limbs like tentacles but solid looking, and strange ridges on their hairless bodies.

“Now you see that you have no chance…” a raspy voice addressed us, as though unused to speaking aloud. I spun, looking to my left, and saw a palanquin of bones being carried forwards through the massed undead, four enormous amalgamations of bone bearing it in spiked claws. “Surrender, and answer my questions truthfully, and perhaps I shall let you live.”

“Everyone always wants me to fucking surrender,” I muttered, and Grizz looked at me, cocking his head to the side. “Seriously, that’s what they all say. ‘Surrender…’ like anyone’s going to believe they won’t slaughter us, first chance they get. They always start with that, don’t they? ‘Drop your weapons,’ as if they don’t just want us to be easier to kill…” I muttered, then I raised my voice and called back to the figure I couldn’t quite make out on the Palanquin. “No, thank you. We don’t want to be murdered today, thanks very much!”

There was a long silence as the palanquin cleared the undead, several smaller skeletons being crushed by the bigger ones as they went.

“If you give Oath to leave my city with nothing beyond what you brought when you entered, I may permit you to live.” The figure eventually suggested, as though unsure.

“Nope. Want to go for strike three?” I called back to it, turning and whispering to my people. “Stephanos, that earth Golem, can it make things? Manipulate the ground, I mean?”

“Uh, yeah?” Stephanos said slowly. “But this is metal under us…”

“Fuck, okay, good point. Grizz, get ready to use your Iceshield. When it runs out, Lydia, you use yours. All ranged attacks are on the Lich: bows, magic, everything. Keep your back to the pit; we can run down there if we need to. Jian, is your demon ready for a second blast yet?”

“I can use my power once per day,” Ty’Baronn said coldly.

“Well, that’s just fucking peachy. Next time, you save it until I tell you,” I snapped at him, moving on to Yen. “I want the most powerful Flamespears you can manage, and I want them all around the palanquin. Make them land one after the other in a circle, that way, the blast will reinforce itself.”

“You are from Earth,” the rough voice rose again, and I paused, putting the multiple keys together with the bodies I’d seen so far.

“So are you,” I called back. “Lost your key for the portal though, didn’t you!” Silence greeted my words for several seconds.

“I will permit you, and you alone, to leave right now, by my Oath. Carry whatever else you want, but you leave your companions and any manastones and portal keys,” the voice said, suddenly forceful and demanding. “You cannot win this fight, not without likely dying. You know this… and what are they to you? I need the bodies. In fact… I’ll go one better. Name your patron, and when I return to Earth with my minions, I will spare their life, by your grace,” the voice offered, slowly stepping out of the palanquin.

At last, I could see the figure, and I shook my head in disgust.

“Holy shit, you’re ugly; you know that?” I called to him. He was tall and rail thin, the pallor of the dead gleaming out plain to see, even at this distance. “You don’t look healthy!” I jeered, and he growled in anger, lifting one hand between us to flex the clawed bony fingers.

“I was trapped here, cut off from my supplies, from any escape, hemmed in by revenants and twisted insane gnomes. I took the chance I was given and used the knowledge of the Vault to transform myself into a Lich. While not the existence I’d hoped for, it is satisfying, and there is no more mortal hunger, no thirst, no need for food or companionship…”

“Still fugly, though,” I retorted, bracing myself. “When I start moving, hit them with everything you have,” I muttered under my breath to the group before turning back to the Lich, who glared at us. “So, you’re ‘Barry the Lich,’ then?” I called to him. “Now there’s a name to inspire fear!”

“Bartholomew!” he screeched at me, lifting one hand and summoning a ball of necrotic energy, while I started circulating mana through the channels to my tattoos. “My name was Bartholomew! Never Barry!”

“Looks like Barry to me, mate; even says so when I ‘Examine’ you!” I called back, not bothering to check if that was true or not.

“Bartholomew!” he screamed, thrusting both hands forward in a necrotic display of temper. The bolt flew straight for me, a sickly black and mottled green that glowed in the darkness, splashing harmlessly across my hastily raised magical shield. I let out a sigh of relief, as it’d literally coalesced less than a second before the impact, and I’d thought it was going to be too little, too late.

Thankfully, unlike the spell hurled by ‘The Master,’ the dickbag that had been abusing the gnomes… this was powered mainly by anger and didn’t have the same kind of effect as a spell powered by a manastone. I paused, then grinned, sighing in relief as the magic was sucked into powering my shield instead of slamming into my body.

“Oh, come on, even the wanker in charge of the gnomes put up more of a fight than that!” I called to him, slowly walking forward, trying to close some of the distance between us before he realized.

I knew that, as a Lich, he was the linchpin here; the freeing of the revenants had removed the inhabitants that were roaming under their own power, and when I summoned Bob, I was warned that if I stopped powering him, he’d die. I had to assume it was the same here; kill the controller, and the undead would collapse.

That, or smash us into paste, but as it was the only plan I had, it was the one I was going with.

“You killed Grant?”