Rewind: A Grimdark LitRPG Series (Pyresouls Apocalypse, Book 1) James Callum (best large ereader .TXT) 📖

crazy. With no time to warn her properly, Jacob reached and grabbed a handful of the chains she had crisscrossed around her robes.

He narrowly managed to pull her back just as her foot fell onto the pressure plate, activating the rows of five-foot-long metal spikes from the sides and ceiling.

They fit together perfectly, creating a mesh of thin spikes. Camilla turned and slugged Jacob right in the face, splattering his nose to his face. A steady stream of blood trickled down over his lips and his eyes watered from the sudden bright spots of pain that danced in his vision.

Purely - stupidly - on reaction, he popped a [Cinder Ampoule], bringing his supply to just a single ampoule left. If they didn’t find a Pyre and soon, he would run out. And that was extremely bad.

Camilla tried to mouth that she was sorry, going so far as to place her hands on the sides of his helm to inspect the rapidly healing damage. Jacob shook her off and pointed at the hall.

The spikes were gone now, retreated back into the cunningly worked holes set within the shadowed mortar above. Jacob took the tip of his sword and pressed on the slightly off-colored stone tile.

Spikes sprang out from the walls and ceiling silently.

They looked back at each other and knew that despite the risks they needed to press on. Their options were limited and though they couldn’t see the source of the rhythmic vibrations they occasionally felt through the stone, they could guess the size of the beast that might make them.

Neither of them wanted to run into a Minos, or worse. His last run-in with the creature required two ampoules to survive the encounter. Now he only had one and without his sense of hearing a Minos would gore him before he ever saw it coming.

Taking out a small glowing jagged piece of white stone the length of her middle finger, Camilla crouched down and marked the tile with a slightly glowing white X.

It didn’t escape either of their notice that the tile was set in the center of the narrow hall. While it would be awkward to sidle along the edge, it might be a decent way of avoiding traps.

Then again, that might make it easier for either of them to end up as shishkabobs.

Forced to tap each of the stones ahead with his [Longsword], Jacob finally understood the old joke about Dungeons and Dragons, and ten-foot poles. He would have killed for one at the moment.

Each trap they came to, he would trigger and Camilla would mark. Thankfully, most of the traps were simple. Spikes were incredibly common, once or twice a bladed pendulum would slide out of a narrow channel set in the wall and sweep across their path.

The darkness of the deeper levels made it impossible to see where a trap might spring. And only an occasional shimmer from Jacob’s Fractured Sight curse gave him any clue which pieces of the flooring might be trapped.

And even then it was a coin toss whether it was correct or not.

Without the subtle illumination coming off their bodies, they would have died a horrible death many times over. Thankfully the monsters couldn’t see it, or else they would stand out like torches in the dark of night.

Nothing explosive reared its head and there were no trap doors. Still, it took them the better part of an hour to reach the end of the hallway. They took to the stairs immediately, only to find out the horrible truth.

They were an illusion.

Jacob banged his fist against the illusory image of a darkened stairwell, feeling only the hard stone. The hall hit a T-junction where they stood, so Jacob struck off down the left path.

There would be no “Perception Skill” that would highlight things for Jacob if he kept trying to peer into the lightless murk more than fifteen feet out from him. The upside was, the traps were fairly obvious once he got used to them.

While the traps themselves might vary, the trigger plate was always in the center of the room and was slightly darker than the surrounding ones. Not enough that a casual observer would note the difference as being odd but after repeated observations, it was easy to spot them.

Tight corners and long halls made this section of the asylum an ambusher’s daydream as they crept deeper in. Focused on the traps, Jacob went around the next corner. Finding it clear, he looked back for Camilla only to find her gone.

A brief glance farther down the hall they came from revealed a door slightly agape that wasn’t before. Jacob turned on his heels and ran toward it, heedless of the traps he might have missed.

The door across from the partially ajar one burst open as he came upon it, the heavy impact arrested his movement and even managed to throw him back 3 feet. The wooden door shattered on impact.

Though he lacked the musculature to support the years of training, Jacob managed to stay on his feet. He wasn’t as strong as he had been but he was close.

Out of the door came a brute half-again his height and nearly three times as wide with biceps that bulged and ripped its straitjacket. Buckles and straps flailed as the creature squeezed through the open door, its milky-white eyes snapping to Jacob.

Shit.

Overbalanced as he was and seeing the size of his adversary, he knew he was in trouble.

The monstrous creature grinned at him through a horrifying lipless visage with teeth that were filed down to resemble a shark’s. With a soundless roar, it charged.

Blocking it would surely take more Stamina than he possessed, and getting his block broken would leave him dazed and vulnerable. Against such a monstrosity, that was a death sentence.

And if Camilla wasn’t already dead, she would need his help. Unlike him, she wouldn’t come back.

With the creature’s bulky shoulders practically scraping the walls on either side of the hallway, Jacob’s only recourse was to find a