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

to make a bigger AOE, but I had neither the time, nor had I expected to get enough space to use it, so I spun, grabbing the nearest undead and throwing it in the direction of the compression.

Dozens were being pulled in, the lack of screams made all the more eerie by the cracking and crunching of bones.

I saw them then, as the Flamespears that Yen had been building up and charging were released, flashing through the air and aimed at the Lich, who was still controlling the giants.

The first slammed into him directly, sending him flying to the ground, wreathed in flames. The second hit just to his left, then the right, then on the far side of him, barely missing his screaming head.

The shockwave of the impacts, the flaming explosions and the sheer overpressure induced by the spell did horrific damage, but even as the damage began to hit it, a shield charm on its belt flared and activated, and I assumed the charm had been tied to its health dropping below a certain point.

Protected from the strikes for a few seconds, it reached out, grabbing onto the leg of an undead that ran to it, and ripped the imbuing half-life free.

The animating energy flowed into Bartholomew the Lich and began to repair the damage Yen had done, just as the second volley arrived.

Magic Missiles, Firebolts, and more slammed into it, rocking the shield and making it flare and pulse, followed by arrows that shattered as a dome of black energy flared brightly around the Lich.

The undead paused as it abandoned them, concentrating on a few that were close enough and pulling them in to defend it. The rest staggered as their driving force for existing wavered, and we struck.

Grizz was the first into the fight, whooping with joy as he slammed out into the reeling undead. Lydia raced from the main group , barreling directly for me as the Iceshield was dispelled, and the others maintained their focus on the Lich.

Lydia thundered through, activating her ‘Shield-Bash’ and practically flying across the intervening distance to slam three undead backwards, shattering the first and damaging the second and third, while I lashed out, punching, kicking, and tearing my way through the creatures.

It was true what the movies had told us in one respect: all you had to do to destroy a standard animated undead was rip its head free. That was the focus of the spell; remove it and the skeleton was still ‘alive’… but its body collapsed to the floor in a clatter of bones, and the skull was suddenly rendered impotent.

As much as I preferred to kill everything around me, for now, the most efficient method was to tear the corpses apart with my bare hands, so I snarled and kicked, punched and drove stiffened fingers into rotting flesh, grasping spines and jaws, ripping skulls free and tossing them aside.

Lydia battled her way to me, smashing the bone-bags to the floor, before grabbing one that was clambering onto my back.

She tore it free of me, lifted it overhead and smashed it down, stomping on its skull over and over until it shattered. I grabbed the next one, a decaying adventurer with a strange bell-shaped breastplate. I dug my fingers under the rim that ran around the neck and yanked it forward, clutching the chin in my right hand and shoving the jaw to the left as far as it would go, before releasing the chestplate and grabbing the back of the head in my left hand. I quickly snapped the neck, tearing the head free in a single rough movement.

As the corpse collapsed, I turned, wild-eyed, then saw Lydia, grinning at the sight of her stomping her enemy into submission. Suddenly, I cried out as a blade sliced into my right jawbone, glancing off the joint and tearing half my ear away.

I brought my right forearm up, blocking the spear that had been so close to taking my head, and grabbed onto it, just below the head, pushing it aside as I yanked a dagger free.

I drove the blade into the skeleton’s face in retribution, snarling as I shoved, the flesh of my cheek and jaw torn open and flapping in the wind of my movement.

The dagger entered its right eye, the blade scraping across the back of the skull, and I felt it for the first time clearly: the bundle of magic and animated half-life that drove the creature. I snarled louder, ripping the dagger to the left, tearing the skull free of the collapsing body.

While we fought hard, especially Grizz and Lydia, who methodically smashed their way through the undead, the Explosive Compression spell ran out, and the undead that had been previously constrained, which had meant we only had to fight on three sides, were released to attack again.

“Jax!” Lydia shouted. “We have to fall back!” She grunted and slammed her mace out, deflecting a sword that was thrust at my blindside as I whipped the spear up and around, driving the undead back in a display of wild force and aggression.

I couldn’t keep this up much longer, I realized.

The damage to my face was painful and distracting, but it was the stamina drain and the swarming undead that was the real problem. There might still be a way to win, I realized, but it was a ‘Hail-Mary’ pass.

“Hit it again!” I screamed to the group, then shouted to Lydia. “Keep them off me as long as you can!”

I hated trying to do this without Oracle, but I needed it. I wasn’t stupid; trying to alter a spell in a major way without her help would almost certainly fail, but the High Explosive version of the normal Firebolt/Fireball spell was one I’d used enough for it to be familiar already. All I wanted to do was overcharge it way, way past what it was supposed to be able to handle, in a truly short period of time.

I went for it, even as Lydia screamed