City of Fallen Souls: A LitRPG Adventure (UnderVerse Book 3) Jez Cajiao (best color ebook reader txt) 📖

The greater part of my mind was filled with fury and a hunger for blood.

I saw the naginata’s bladed tip fly straight and true, the eyes of its Promethean target widening in horror as he tried to decide whether to fire, or to dodge, and in that split second of indecision, his fate was sealed. The tip punched into his chest on the left side, the remainder of the blade following. An entire foot of metal sank deep between his ribs to carve through his lung, into his heart, coming to a quivering halt as it struck the inside of his ribcage. The half-sideways-turned nature of his firing position had allowed the naginata to do far more damage than if he’d been standing straight on.

His eyes bulged as he released his now un-aimed arrow to flash toward me, only to be batted aside. I planted one foot on the wall of the stairwell, using it to jump off and send me rocketing into him. The impact took us both backward into the room behind as I hit him left foot first.

I braced that foot on his stomach, grabbing the naginata with my right hand, and as he fell, I pulled, my right foot coming to land on his throat.

I yanked my naginata free, spinning it over, and splattering the dozen creatures in the room with the still-hot blood of their companion.

“Who’s next!?” I bellowed at the shocked mix of Imps and Prometheans, flicking the blade forward to punch through the tiny form of a grey-skinned Imp who’d been in the process of summoning what looked to have been lightning.

My blade lanced through the crackling ball of energy and into its chest, bursting out the back to tear a wing free, before being yanked back, hard.

The spell burst, the uncontained lightning sinking into the Imp. The small creature screamed as it fell from the air, dying. I spun, left hand holding my shield in place as I started rapidly rotating the naginata around. My high Dexterity made it easier for me to strike as I sliced another Imp’s wings free, then took a third in the mouth, the tip erupting from the back of its head in a spray of bloody chunks.

I wrenched my mana out of ‘Mana-Overdrive’, ripping it free of the channels that were soaking it up like the parched sand of the desert. Instead, I began ramming it furiously into my tattoos, activating them while I threw my shield through the air to hit one of the Prometheans in the face with a solid ‘thunk’.

I activated the shield tattoo on my left palm. It was weaker than the group of tattoos that worked in concert on my chest, but it had an advantage over them: it was smaller, and allowed me to activate the ‘Shock’ and ‘Add’ tattoos on my right wrist and palm. Crackling lightning began spreading across my body in fits and starts, the power flashing for all to see, before sinking back into my skin.

I suddenly realized that I couldn’t control it properly, not yet. I could feel the power flooding through me, and I knew instinctively that it would discharge into anything I struck, but I also… felt… that there was more to this, that there was more I could become.

I felt HIM then, the remnants of Amon, speaking up desperately, exulting at the power I was using. He tried to advise me, to direct the power, and I savagely ripped it from his reaching, spectral fingers.

I shoved him down, mentally stomping down on the trapdoor to the space where I’d locked him away, even as I bared my teeth at the room before me. The first room on this floor was squared off, the far end evidently leading out into the main floor. A dozen Imps and Prometheans had either been waiting in here, or they had rushed in the door as I arrived. Now, it was down to two Prometheans and seven Imps, and I was determined to clear this place alone.

I caught the first Firebolt on my left clenched fist, the spell bursting in a flare of light. They froze at the sight of me apparently punching a spell out of existence, and I took advantage of their petrified shock as I stabbed out again. My charged naginata smashed into the nearest Promethean’s shield, and before it could counterattack, my Shock spell discharged into it, making it gasp in pain.

I altered the angle of my naginata, sliding the blade across the top of the shield to sink the edge into its throat, punching through its windpipe, and erupting out the back with a crunch of bone and the tearing sound of gristle. Snarling, I yanked it back, slamming the base of the weapon into the floor with a resounding ‘thump’.

“Come on, you fuckers,” I growled at them, catching a lightning bolt, then a spray of frost I vaguely recognized as ‘Cone of Cold’ on my fist-shield.

It held, barely. Unlike the pattern I’d used before, it couldn’t absorb the mana attacks to charge itself. Instead, it was draining me as I used it, and I could see my mana bar dropping steadily.

I still had my party collected in my vision; they were opaque, barely there, so as not to interfere with my sight, but I watched Bane’s symbol as it switched from red… to black. It flickered back to red, then black, then red. I felt Oracle pulling hard on my mana, and I cut my shield, knowing she’d need every drop to save him. I felt myself shaking with uncontrollable fury.

They’d started this.

They’d come after my people. It didn’t matter that I’d barely met them at that point; the Skyking had painted a target on their backs. It had come for them, and it had found me. It had sent its slaves after my Oathsworn family, attacking again and again, and when they’d begged for help,