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

frowned. There should have been some sign left by now; we’d cleared the far side of the room and started down the next corridor, but there was nothing. As we’d been going, Tang or Bane had been using a pair of damaged weapons, and Yen, Arrin, or myself had used fire spells, to mark the walls, making sure that when the gnomes followed, they could pick up our trail.

There was nothing here, though, and there should have been…

“What are…” I started to ask absently as I looked around. In fact, the floor there looked different, the path seemed to end at the wall abruptly, but…

“Ambush!” Yen roared suddenly.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Yen leapt forward, tackling me at the shoulder and slamming me aside as a bolt of lightning as thick as my leg slammed into her, instead of me.

I went sprawling, the wall I’d expected to hit vanishing as I touched it, and I staggered, then fell, as I threw myself down to avoid an axe being swung at my head.

The walls… we’d come to a crossroads, and someone had covered the branching paths with a goddamn illusory set of walls!

I hit the floor, bounced, and lashed out, grabbing the ankle of the man who’d just tried to behead me as he glared down at me. I’d landed with my naginata underneath me, so I released it and yanked hard, pulling the man off balance, and making him hop to stay upright.

He swore and lashed out, forcing me to release him and roll aside to avoid being hit. As I tumbled, I saw Bane. He was laid limply further up the branching passageway that I was in now. If I hadn’t seen the glowing spell-web that held him down, I’d have sworn he was dead, there was that much blood.

Next to him was Tang, being slowly bound in gleaming golden lines of magic, slowly rotating as a pair of mages worked, fixatedly staring at their victims.

I rolled again, the grunt of effort all the warning I needed, and the axe slammed down hard, glancing off the metal floor in a shower of sparks. I’d rolled back in the direction I’d come from and came to a stop against the leg of the armored axe wielder as he drew his weapon back up to strike again.

I didn’t have time for this shit. My eyes blazed with fury as I triggered ‘Mana-Overdrive,’ lifting my legs as high as I could and wrapping them around the backs of the towering figure’s knees, yanking hard and taking him down.

He staggered forward, his balance lost, falling over atop me, as I yanked out my Dagger of Ripping and rammed it up under his helm and into his brain via the underside of the chin.

I felt the parting of flesh, the crunch of cartilage and bone, and then the spasm of the fresh corpse over me, even as hands reached out, trying to pull their friend free.

I grinned up at the pair of soldiers that stood over me, one dragging their friend back, the other holding a sword and shield combination half ready but lowering it in shock as I yanked the blade down, releasing a spurt of fresh arterial blood across myself from his final heartbeats.

I ignored the guy with his hands full of corpse, using the body to sit myself up, Mana-Overdrive granting me the speed and strength to rise before they could attack me.

I grabbed the shield of the man on my left, yanking it forward to block both his view of me and any chance of striking, as well as bringing me close enough to drive the dagger into the joint of his armor around the knee.

It scraped across a section of metal before sinking in deeply behind the next piece, and as it hit bone, I yanked it back out… sideways.

The soldier screamed in pain as his lower leg was practically severed at the knee, and I twisted, looking back at the pair of mages and throwing the dagger, hard.

Unlike other times I’d thrown one, this time, it struck true, the blade sinking into the man’s upraised left arm as he tried to bind Tang further, cutting off his casting with a scream. A scream that was echoed by the other mage, as their spell tore out of control and lashed them with feedback.

The soldier who’d lifted the corpse let go and swept out his mace, slamming it down at my face.

I yanked the corpse back into his path, making him pause for a second with the crunch of the mace against the side of his friend’s head.

The pause was all I needed. Shoving the corpse aside and grabbing at the man whose leg I’d ruined, I rolled to my feet and backhanded the wounded man across the face with my gauntlet.

It wasn’t enough to do lasting damage, but it stopped him from being able to stab me, and then I was up. I stepped in, whipping my left hand down, the armored plate on the back of my hand making a ringing sound as it slapped the swordsman’s thrust aside. I stabbed out with my right hand, fingers stiffened into a bar of bone encased in steel, driving them into the exposed Adam’s apple as the open-faced helm lifted to look at me in horror.

Behind me, I could hear the fight being joined. As soon as Yen had leapt at me, the others had unceremoniously dumped Lydia, and a barrage of spells, the ring of metal on metal, and the screams of the injured filled the exposed corridors.

The man I’d just hit dropped his sword, fingers rising frantically to scrabble at his crushed throat, and I yanked my kill-stick free of the bag, flicked it on, and rammed it home in the gap granted by the open-faced helm.

There was a crunching whirr and blood sprayed everywhere. A high-pitched squeal of pain was ripped from my victim as he collapsed to the ground.

I spun around, lashing out instinctively at the figure I’d crippled