Hive Knight: A Dark Fantasy LitRPG (Trinity of the Hive Book 1) Grayson Sinclair (book recommendations website .TXT) 📖

struck once more with the knife, I maneuvered around it and stepped into her space, catching her hand by the wrist and breaking it with a twist.

She screamed and tried to punch me in an attempt to free herself. I caught her weak punch on the chin, wincing when she glanced off my jawbone. I shrugged it off and pivoted on my feet. Clutching her arm with both hands, I used my back as a fulcrum to throw her over my shoulder and to the ground. She gasped as all air forced out of her lungs and struggled to catch her breath.

With her crossbow, she was a fiend, but she hadn’t mastered even the basics of hand-to-hand combat. I knelt before she could take another breath and clamped my hand over her mouth and nose, effectively cutting off her airflow. My sword would be clumsy for the task at hand, so I blindly reached behind me, never taking my gaze off the panicked young girl who struggled in vain against my grasp. It was useless; she didn’t have the Strength to break my grip.

I found the object I needed in the dirt, and after some clumsy pawing, I had Crossbow’s dagger in my hand. Her eyes widened in fear as I brought it into her view. She struggled in a fit of desperation, like an animal caught in a trap, willing to do anything to survive.

I slammed it home under her chin, and the light fled from her eyes.

I stood and glanced around; one look at the battlefield, and I was impressed. We’d taken down half of their number without losing any of our own.

An explosion blasted into the ground next to Levi, sending clods spraying haphazardly all around us. Levi went flying after trying to deflect the Fireshot with his shield. He landed with a sickening thud some fifteen feet away. Behemoth was unhurt and still in the same position where Fireshot had landed. He’d activated Barrier, a bright red dome was all around him, as the fire around the Barrier died, the color changed from bright cherry to a dull crimson, and finally a clear translucent glass.

Markos and Gil rushed to check on Levi. I didn’t know what condition he was in, but I knew he wasn’t dead, one look at the guild tab told me that much.

With the safety of my friend in good hands, I wanted to find the mage responsible. The crater venom should have taken both out of commission, and it hadn’t.

Weakened as they were, I still should have killed them myself before focusing on anyone else.

Mages were the most versatile players on Nexus. As such, they were always the first targeted during a fight. It’s for that reason I kept Markos off the front lines. His cloth robes would do little to protect his life. Putting the mages out of my thoughts after they were struck with the poison was a grievous mistake.

The fire mage regrouped with the remaining forces of the Order of the Dawn on a nearby hill. They were down to one warrior, a rogue, the two poisoned mages, and Richard. I glanced around for the last tank that had been fighting Evelyn. I found his twisted, broken body, nothing more than so much meat and blood now.

Richard and his group formed a defensive line to try and recover from the battle. Everyone’s battle fatigue must be high. The only reason I could even stand right now is because of my auras. Once drained, that would be it for me. I knew that the others would be in similar straits. We’d been fighting for what felt like hours, and if it went on much longer, we would all collapse from the fatigue long before we could kill each other.

Richard looked a little worse for wear; he had a deep gash over his left eye that streamed blood down his face, and his right arm hung limply by his side. He pulled out a health potion from his inventory and went to drink it, but before he could, an arrow sailed through the air and shattered the potion. Bright red liquid rained to the floor, and Richard shouted in alarm.

I followed the trajectory of the arrow to find Harper grinning like a madman while looking as smug as he could. Even I had to admit that it was a great shot, with perfect timing. It figured. Harper’s going to boast about that for weeks.

Richard, having been denied his chance to heal, was furious. By the looks on the faces of his mages, I doubted they were in any shape to provide healing. Both had ashen faces, dripping sweat. It looked like the venom was doing its job, albeit much slower than we needed it to. From the looks on their faces, they could tell they were dying.

The two mages huddled together, speaking in hushed tones; they seemed to reach an agreement and stumbled over to Richard. After a brief conversation, Richard's face grew solemn. He patted both mages on the shoulders, and they marched forward down the steep hill towards the grassland where we resided. I didn’t like this, not one bit. They're up to something.

As the pair of mages reached the foothill, they stopped. They were about two dozen feet from us. Damn, out of range from my Rush Strike. This would’ve been over in an instant, but they could easily build a quick Fireshot and snap it off at me before I reached them, and I didn’t like my chances of surviving an explosion at such a close distance.

Both mages unstopped mana potions and raised them to drink. Harper tried his trick shot once again, but Richard was prepared for it this time. In the blink of an eye, Harper fired one arrow, loaded up another one, and released that one as well. Harper’s arrows sailed through the air to their intended