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

touched the crystals!” he screeched in horror, sprinting forward, and making both Grizz and I tense. We reached instinctively for weapons, but he barreled straight past us into the smaller room, gasping in horror and starting to pull crystals free of the slots frantically.

In a matter of seconds, the floor was covered in them, and all of the slots were empty again. Frederikk was glowering at us like a couple of truant schoolboys.

“Do you know what you almost did?” he snarled, all deference gone. “You almost killed us all! You had the emergency channels funneling mana into to the engines, but the main channels set to refuse! You’d have created a feedback loop! Not to mention the lift! One set of engines would have fired backwards! You’d have flipped us over!” He jabbed his fingers at slots that looked identical to us, for all the world.

“What the…” Grizz started, when the little gnome went on again.

“You’d have killed us all, and worse! You’ll have sent a pulse of mana through the signaling array! Those creatures will know where we are now!”

“What?” I asked, shocked. “How?”

“The signaling array!” Frederikk repeated angrily. “It sends out mana pulses so that gnome ships know if one of our own is in distress! It was never needed before, and when we left the ship, we had no idea how bad things were. But now?” He shook his head in a mix of fury and horror.

“You said those creatures are attracted to mana!”

“So?” I asked.

“So? SO?” he wailed. “So you just sent a pulse of mana up from this location! You just screamed ‘hey, we’re here, come and get us’ right when the ship can’t fly!”

“It can’t fly because you ripped all the crystals out!” Grizz retorted.

“You were going to kill us all!” the diminutive creature screeched at Grizz, then grabbed handfuls of his moustache and pulled, yanking hard as he tried to control himself. Frederikk panted and hissed for several seconds, while Grizz and I looked at each other in alarm before I finally spoke to the little gnome firmly.

“Fine, make it right, Frederikk. Fix it, get us up in the air, and get us the fuck out of here!” I tugged the last few manastones out of the bag, dumping them into the mess on the floor.

“Fix it… FIX IT?!” he cried, tugging handfuls of hair free as he glowered at us, foaming spittle flecking his mouth.

“Because while you’re in here, safe, playing with those stones, we’ll be out there, fighting anything that comes down,” I went on. “Unless you’d rather swap places?”

Frederikk froze for a few seconds, his mouth open, then seemed to deflate slightly, letting go of his moustache and glancing toward the scum-covered porthole apprehensively.

“You go…” he eventually muttered. “I’ll… I’ll fix this… but I can’t fly it. Not won’t; can’t…”

“I can sort that out,” I said, jerking my head towards the door. “Come on, then, Grizz, let’s go fuck some shit up.”

“Sounds fun,” Grizz said, walking out of the room, and I followed behind him. We skirted around the chair and control console, inspecting the wall ahead and wondering how the hell the ship was controlled from in here, when the deck was out there.

We’d find out soon enough.

Grizz and I emerged onto the deck and gazed around, seeing that the majority of the gnomes were still rushing about. Yen had organized a sling to get Lydia and Bane onto the ship’s deck and was giving orders about moving them below.

I looked out across the cavern, grateful that the barricade was still halfway concealing the ship, but I realized we were also trapped in here, before spotting a complex collection of pulleys and cables up high.

I pointed to them, and Grizz followed my finger and grunted.

“Looks like they weren’t always as crazy as they are now then.” Grizz said, indicating a pair of hinges on one wall that he’d spotted. “I’ll bet a cold beer that the barricade either opens out or folds back out of the way. They’d have wanted a quick way out…”

“Yeah, but after all this time?” I asked. “Look at the trees…” I pointed to a pair of trees that had rooted into a pile of collapsed rubble and were now growing tall and strong close to the hinges.

“They won’t let the damn thing fold back, and there was too much in front of the barricade for them to open outwards…” I paused, rubbing my chin in thought. “Hey, you!” I called, and Giint turned from where he’d been playing with something. He frantically stuffed it back into his bag and half grinned, half glared at me.

“Giiiiint?” he asked.

“Yeah, Giint,” I echoed, smiling, and knowing I’d found the perfect gnome for the job. “I’ve got something you can help me with… can Giint make something explode?” His jaw dropped open, before he remembered himself and nodded frantically.

“Giiint caaan make thiiiings go BAAANG!” he agreed hastily, wiping his clearly sweating palms on his pants, and managing to smear the filth in new and even more convoluted patterns.

“Okay, buddy, c’mere,” I said, leading him to the side of the ship. “You see the barricade?” He nodded definitively. “I want you to make it fall outwards; you understand? I want it to go that way!” I gestured enthusiastically, and he frowned for a few seconds.

“Giiiint neeeed morrrre…” he said sadly, pulling a part of one of the destroyed Badunkas out of his pouch. I hastily took a step back, seeing how worryingly it was flashing, and the way cold blue smoke was pouring out of it.

“You see all those parts?” I asked, gesturing to the pile of bits that the gnomes were trying to salvage below. “Is that enough?”

He squinted, then moved quickly, his habit of bolting from utter stillness to high speed, then slamming to a halt and looking at things intensely seeming reminiscent of a spider’s freaky movement and making me even more uncomfortable around the little bastard.

“Giiiiiint have thisss too?” he asked hopefully, pointing at the