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

“Damn, it’s good to see you all,” I said cheerfully, getting smiles and laughs in return. Lydia stepped forward, nodding to me.

“We’re glad to see you, too, believe me. That last arrow scared the shit out of us…” she said, looking me over carefully, to make sure I was all right, as I did the same to her. Lydia had changed since I’d first recruited her to fight for the Tower. The freed slave, who’d been scared and determined that I was going to try to take advantage of her somehow, had grown from a half-starved, raw-boned woman into a warrior that filled her armor and intimidated people with far higher levels.

Now, she was tall, heavily muscled, and grim. She rarely seemed to smile, but when she did, it was clear and honest, from the heart, and it transformed her appearance entirely. She was the ‘Tank’ of our little group, wearing heavily patched armor we’d looted from a heavy guardsman that had died assaulting the tower and carried a mace and shield. She was brave and steadfast, and I knew I’d struck gold when I’d managed to somehow win her loyalty. With her stood the rest of her squad, a team that had been with me since leaving the Great Tower. Jian was a short, dark-haired man that loved to dual wield, with a pair of silvery Drow-made scythes on either hip, and a pair of matching swords on his back. He was a quiet man, but the last few weeks of constant battles had shaped him to be a deadly opponent for anyone who crossed him.

Holding his hand was Miren, his partner, or lover, at least. She was the youngest of the group, not even twenty yet, and had started to train as a hunter in her old village, before she’d been taken as a slave. I’d inherited her when I’d killed the slavers and had promptly freed her and her companions. She was a slight half elven girl with long blonde hair, which she typically wore braided. and she had settled into her position as a ranged fighter with alacrity, her Drow-made bow helping to improve her shots.

Standing next to her was her fellow ranged death dealer, Stephanos. Where she was short, he was tall and thickly muscled, but the pair of them were inseparable, at least when she wasn’t jumping Jian’s bones, anyway.

Arrin, the mage for our little party, chatted quietly with the others. He’d been practicing at every opportunity since I’d given him his first Spellbook, and now, after only a few weeks, he’d leveled and invested his points to make himself into the kind of war-mage that would have a job in almost any fighting or adventuring force I could imagine, if not for the fact that he was a crazy adrenaline junkie. Yen and Tang stood at attention as they waited, two of the first three Legionnaires to swear to me, both elven scouts. With them, standing proudly while his ‘wing’ flew overhead, was the Alkyon, Amaat. He was a birdman; specifically, he looked like a humanoid eagle, and he’d seized control of several dozen of his race that had been enthralled to the Skyking, physically beating most of them into submission. Now they followed the Legionnaire, and he carried himself with a pride that had been missing when he, Yen, and Tang had sworn to me in the Smuggler’s Path under the city.

There, he’d been just another member of the Legion, a highly skilled member of the Praetoria, the Legion’s elite, but his body had been weakened by a lifetime of poor food and nutrition before signing up.

When I’d healed him, using the spell that Oracle had helped me to create, we’d straightened crooked limbs and regrown feathers long lost. He’d transformed from a poor example of his species, who’d risen through the ranks through sheer bloody determination, to an Adonis-like specimen. To display his fathomless gratitude, he’d set out to beat all those who opposed me into the ground.

The result was that now he ruled his own wing of Alkyon, and he had integrated any Djinn flyers that weren’t healers. Even the dozen or so lesser Imps that had come along could be seen wheeling around in the formation above us.

Next to the group, leaning against a handy wooden brace, was Barrett, the former ship’s first officer of the first Airship I’d captured… well, the Airship I’d damaged and sent crashing to its doom, but… meh, semantics.

Barrett was human, apparently, but he was short enough that he’d pass as a beardless dwarf easier than a human. Despite being a particularly fugly guy, he’d previously dated Joya, the huge, heavily muscled caravan guard who was currently towering over him as she stood nearby. She worked for Mal, or had until recently, so seeing her with the rest of the group was a surprise.

Mistress Nerin, the Great Tower’s official healer, glared at me while adjusting her bandoliers of bags. She was clothed in a long grey dress, two belts running from shoulder to opposite hip on either side, and attached to them were dozens of bags.

Leaning against the railing and looking like he’d be comfortable on the edge of a razorblade, stood Nigret, a Trigara. He was a heavily armored feline humanoid with white fur, and while he was new to our group, he was also a lethal ex-arena fighter who had sworn to follow me when I agreed not to kill him.

Lastly, the Legion contingent gathered in around us. Rinko, Plas, Denny, and Grizz I knew, having talked to them over the last few days, and there were two others with them that I recognized, although I didn’t know their names.

“Are we only missing Hellenica and Augustus?” I asked, searching around, and got a variety of nods, affirmatives, and a single call of ‘Gnomes rule!’ from somewhere at the back.

I ignored that. As far as I knew, we didn’t have any gnomes with us, so it must have been a