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

he growled. “You killed my brother?!” He screamed wordlessly, the sound raw and full of fury as every undead in the room shifted, and the Lich’s eyes began to glow a sickly green. “You murdered my brother!” he shouted again. “Now die!”

The room exploded into movement as I swore and lunged forward. I heard the others behind me starting their spells, and felt the Iceshield growing around the group, while I sprinted forward, trying to get close enough to the Lich.

The first dozen meters were open as I ran to get clear, but then I reached the first of the incoming undead, and the battle began.

The smallest undead got to me first, the ones that had looked like gnomes. Their strange, tubular limbs flexed and crunched as they moved, but they seemed made up of joints, dozens on each limb, and the resulting range of motion both allowed them greater speed and flexibility as they darted around their slower, lumbering brethren.

The huge amalgamations of bone that had carried the palanquin were moving as well, and the standard skeletons and crab-like undead between them and me were sent flying when the foremost lashed out to clear itself a path.

I realized that the glow around the larger ones matched the Lich’s eyes, and I grinned, seeing that he obviously believed bigger was better. I fed a little healing magic into my naginata and started striking out, as I continued running for him.

The first of the little ones bunched its ‘legs’ underneath itself and leapt for me, its short bald head opening as if on a hinge to expose a huge maw, filled with missing and damaged teeth.

I smashed it from the air with the butt of the weapon, spun it around, and skewered a second one, catching the third on the haft and flinging it aside before kicking another back and sweeping the blade low to medium height. My blade made short work of cutting through ankles, knees, thighs, and in case of a few actual gnomes, throats.

Then it all went to shit as I frantically dove aside, rolling and jumping, then diving again, trying to get clear of the impact point.

The palanquin smashed to the floor right where I’d been, flung by one of the amalgamations, I guessed. I’d literally just seen it soaring towards me, and I’d dove aside, realized I was still within the edge of the target area, and had gone again.

When it landed, it easily smashed a dozen smaller undead into splinters, with the larger group curving around to follow me as I rolled to my feet and started to run.

We were encircled by the Undead, several hundred standard humanoid corpses, if I had to guess, with at least a dozen larger heavily armored aquatic crab things, dozens upon dozens of the little ones, and while there were only the four larger ones so far, there were ten of us. While the undead were generally weak individually, all they had to do was pin us down.

That didn’t even factor in the bigger ones, or the Shir that could simply trample us, breaking bones before coming for a second lap.

I just hoped we wouldn’t face another bone colossus.

I ran headlong at the main body of the undead before me, saving my Mana-Overdrive for when I really needed it. I started swinging and keeping the enemies’ focus on me, until the wonderful sound of rolling explosions could be heard.

The rest of the team had joined the fray.

I stabbed out, taking a skeleton in the face, the blade crunching through the moldy remnants of flesh and punching into the skull itself, then I yanked the blade to my left, ripping the remnants of the skull free of the neck, and bringing the metal-clad butt up to smash into a second creature.

It was sent hurtling into its fellows, the undead’s lighter weight making it less able to shrug off my blows as I dipped the blade down and spun. Extending the naginata outwards as I crouched, I continued sweeping around me in a wide strike, hacking and slicing through dozens of limbs before coming to my feet and getting kicked in the chest with the force of a car wreck.

The remnants of my mana shield popped, and I was sent flying, slamming into a group of the undead and scattering them like a bowling ball through pins.

I gasped, coughed, and shook my head, trying to get my lungs to work, for my diaphragm to stop clenching and damn well pull in the air I needed. I rolled to the side, grabbed a shifting, bony arm as the skeleton under me tried to clutch my throat, and I forced myself up, half reaching, half gasping for air, then punched another in the face, knocking it backwards.

My naginata was gone, lost somewhere when I was sent flying, and the mass of undead was rapidly closing in around me.

At last, my diaphragm unclenched, the spasm relaxing, and I sucked in a deep lungful of air, relief flooding me as it came.

I was surrounded, and the mentality of the Royal Marines rose in me as I grinned at them all. I wasn’t surrounded; this was just a target-rich environment, that was all.

“As the Americans say,” I mumbled, pulling the components of a spell together, “’Enemies to the left, enemies to the right, enemies to the rear and enemies to the front…’” I forced more and more mana into the spell, ignoring the grasping fingers and the sword that clanged off my vambrace, sending a jolt of pain through me, but little else.

“I HAVE YOU RIGHT WHERE I WANT YOU!” I screamed as I threw the spell. ‘Explosive Compression’ hurtled forward, slipping between the bodies before hitting the knee of a giant form and detonating.

The giant staggered as the lower leg was cracked, entire sections of bone flying away or being reduced to splinters; then the second phase went active, and the stooping figure was yanked downwards, as was everything else in a three-meter radius.

I’d wanted