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

you. This wisp will help you; she can advise you and possibly even help steer the ship? Hell if I know, but she will help, and you CAN do this.”

I broke off as a new sound started up in the distance, and I turned my gaze upward, seeing the light filtering down momentarily cut off as something, and then several more somethings, passed overhead. Seconds later, we heard the engines of an Airship firing, and the tell-tale hummm of engines as ships lowered into the cavern beyond the barricade.

We might be out of sight for now, but that wouldn’t be the case for long, I knew.

“Jian,” I said, turning from him and looking towards the hole in the barricade. “Go, now. Do whatever you have to, but get us up and out of here,” I ordered as I started walking forward. The final battle for the fallen Prax, ‘Glorious Retribution,’ was about to begin.

Chapter Thirty

I strode to the side of the ship, gazing down towards the barrier, then scanning around, working the place out in my mind.

The ship was around sixty meters in length, and maybe ten across at the widest point, coming in at twenty meters high, with the small decks above the wheelhouse and bridge, another five meters above that. The shattered half of the building which the ship had been hidden in was taller and wider, but not by much, and the heavily overgrown final level that rose above it had hidden most of the ship entirely from outside sight.

The cavern we were frantically organizing in was mostly hidden from sight by the surrounding walls and overhanging ceiling of the floor above; whatever this section of the Prax had looked like originally, there had been dozens of huge buildings.

Between the buildings that had collapsed, the sagging ceiling, and the centuries of storm damage and ‘garden level’ overgrowth, it now resembled a dark scar in the land from above, with trees and overhanging buildings sheltering it.

Inside the sheltering structures and plants was a deep cavern, with sections that dove back under the overhangs. I doubted the sun ever reached many of the corners. Instead, there was a constant low-level internecine war going on between the forces of foliage and the ever-present fungus.

The occasional holes and shattered remnants that let light in from directly above the ship and across the rest of the area created a dappled light source, one that would have almost been soothing, especially with the tropical breeze and pleasant temperature, if not for the very visual reminders that we were essentially squatting atop a corpse of the old Empire. A corpse that we had stirred to a semblance of life, and as that life fled again, more of the structure collapsed.

As a crash and boom in the distance echoed around the cavern, and the screech of escaping seabirds rose, I wondered honestly if there would be anything left to recover later.

I contemplated the thick trees, vines, and general foliage, and I was gloomily certain that we could have hidden for hours at least before the SporeMothers would have found us, if not far longer.

If I’d not sent up a damn dinner bell for them, anyway.

The barricade which the gnomes had built to conceal and protect the ship long ago was now, in part, holding the building up, and the greater area beyond it, where the ships were slowly lowering into, judging from the sound, was a far bigger chamber than the one we were in now.

That cavern had been formed by dozens of larger buildings collapsing. Some were now rubble strewn across the floor, while others had fallen into each other, creating lean-tos and more or less solid structures, especially now that vines and trees had secured them together.

The growth of hundreds of years had spread over them, and the slow sagging of the final upper floor into this one had created an area that was almost inaccessible by land above, yet open in parts to the sky, making it a perfect place to dock and hide an Airship.

I looked over to the rest of my small team, regretting bitterly the loss of Lydia and Bane. They were, between them, my rock. I literally relied on them, and Oracle, to keep me sane and safe.

I shook my head and exhaled, forcing the gloom and jitters away as I acknowledged that this time, I’d be keeping them safe.

Grizz stepped over to me and pulled something out of his bag, making me grimace uncomfortably.

It was my arm from earlier, or at least, what was left of it. The armor was fine, beyond the gash that had cut through the top layer like butter, but the flesh inside of it… it had decayed into a black, pungent mush that was dripping out of the gauntlet and stinking up the deck.

“Dude, why?” I asked him, frowning into his eyes questioningly.

“Old Legion trick for when you need to look like you’re stronger than you are,” he said simply, unhinging the gauntlet and separating it from the Vambrace, making a face at the rotting mush that fell out along with the blackened bones.

“Errr, didn’t think about this before…” I said, looking down. “But… could you pass me the rings?” Grizz snorted and plucked them out, dumping them to one side, where I summoned a fountain of water to clean them off. He quickly sluiced out the armor for me, then reassembled it so it looked complete and intact, pulling up small hooks that I’d never noticed before and locking them into place. Then he stepped in and latched it all back together, attaching it to the dangling section of my elbow joint.

“What…?” I stammered, but he just grinned and kept working. Finally, I realized what he was doing as he attached his own secondary shield to me. It was smaller than my normal Tower shield, whose twin Lydia carried, but it was locked in place and reasonably light enough that I could maneuver it around with only half an arm.

It