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

“…but it helps to say it aloud, as then we can all bounce details around?” she finished for me.

“Yeah, close enough,” I said, letting out a little groan as she worked my scalp. “And Bane, while you don’t live in my brain, you do see more of me than anyone else…”

“I know, and I’ll have nightmares for the rest of my life,” Bane interjected quickly.

“Ass,” I said, smiling. “I meant you know me well, you prick. I need to figure out what we’re going to do. I know I’d said three days to have a rest and refit here, get things ready to move on, and then head back to the Tower, but does the information from Jenae change that? We need to know everything we can about the Valspar, and knowing that spells and knowledge related to them is hidden somewhere below…” I mused, inspecting the rough burrs and whorls in the wood of the deck above, and hearing the distant clunking and rattling, shouts and thumps of the ship being worked on.

“It has to,” Oracle said seriously. “We need that information; without it, we can’t be sure that what you did in ripping it out is enough. Where did it come from, after all; can it regrow? Does everyone have them inside, or is it another example of how special you are?”

“Yeah, I’m ‘special,’ all right…” I grouched. “Try the windows; they’re strawberry flavor…”

“What?” she asked, confused.

“Nothing; it doesn’t matter,” I said smiling and banishing the stray thought. “Bane, what do you think?”

“As to the information, Spellbooks, and all of that, yes. When a Goddess says you need something, I tend to think she knows what she’s saying. Add to that, she’s saved your life, and while you’ve had your… disagreements… in the past, you work well together. I doubt she is telling you to get them without a good reason,” Bane said seriously.

“Okay. How do we do it, though?” I asked. “I mean, I had intended to take Lydia and her squad, a few Legionnaires, and maybe Nerin with me, go exploring, maybe have a little fun as well as raiding the place. Now, it’s a bit more serious… Do I take the entire Legion? Hell, they’re professional monster hunters; maybe I should just send them ahead, stroll through after them…” I said, before shaking my head. “No, no, I can’t do that. Not only would it be cowardly and boring, but I need to improve, to grow stronger, and so does the team.”

“We do, but we also have a large area to cover,” Bane interjected. “Perhaps use your team as you intended, but split off a significant group of the Legion and send them to the other entrances?”

“What entrances?” I asked, looking over at him in surprise.

“There are apparently dozens of entrances into the City; that’s part of what the researchers were doing, mapping out the City and its entrances. I asked around a little earlier, and it seems this is just the top floor of the city, and the least intact area. There are at least three more levels…”

“Six,” I corrected him, as memories surfaced suddenly. “There were six levels. The third was the largest; if we take the top as floor one and count down from there, floor one was literally the garden level, so that the residents could relax when not at war. The next was a mix of military facilities, and the homes of the nobility. Then three was the main barracks, quarters, and the command center, with four and five being storage, production, and training areas, and six again being military, as that was where the troops would launch from, and the mages would cast the portal or attack spells from.”

I wandered through the designs. coupled with my fractured memories of a similar city that Amon had visited with Shustic, the amusement She had felt at all the effort mortals had to make to move about her realm, while Amon had appreciated the sheer level of determination and effort his engineers and the Golem King had used to create such a marvel.

I saw the dreams of Amon, and the meeting he had with the Golem after touring it. I heard fragments of the discussion regarding the City Eternal, which the Golem had sworn to build, a city that would be the shining Jewel of the Empire… then it was gone, the memory instead being filled with the anguished howling of a young boy as he died, alone, being slowly crushed to death by a slab from one of the buildings demolished in the Cataclysm.

My mind was suddenly filled with them: an elderly woman, her face wreathed in laughter lines, who had once gifted the Emperor’s sixty-third grandchild, Cora, with a small handmade doll, all red and gold, crafted with love and adoration. She died slowly as a Moloch, a carnivorous worm, tore through her insides. No healers had been left alive within hundreds of miles to help.

I saw them, hundreds, thousands, all in a rush, as Amon poured them out into my mind, the smallest fragment of the loss that had driven him mad. I saw them all dying, the young, the old, the fit and healthy, and the decrepit. I saw Fintin, known as the ‘Lord of Lust and Excess’ amongst his peers, a grossly fat man who had devoted his life to trying every possible food, crushed by a falling pillar, viscera bursting across the floor to be eaten by his tiny white hound. The creature had been all that he loved, and it gorged itself on his entrails before dying weeks later, when all the food and water ran out, trapped in Fintin’s mansion.

“No!” I heard a shout, and suddenly I was jerked clear, the river of memories yanked away by Oracle. I collapsed back into her embrace, my eyes still streaming tears as I remembered the deaths.

“What…” I managed to gasp, stunned and shaking my