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

This time, he didn’t manage to recover in time, and he hit the wall full-on, turning the strangely crafted device into an explosion of parts that flew everywhere. A split second later, the second bike hit the back of the mangled first one.

The corridor was filled with the tearing, screeching sound of steel on steel, and I realized that was what their strange war-cries were supposed to imitate, even as the two weird bikes exploded. Whatever they were using for fuel detonated, filling the corridor with flames.

We paused, observing the devastation, then heard the scream rising again. The rider of the wheel was dragging himself out of the debris, his right leg trapped. He left a bloody trail on the floor behind him as he went, but he gritted his teeth and pressed on, his skin slowly filling with color as the stone coating dropped away.

In seconds, he slowed, then sagged, his head falling forwards in death, as the third rider leapt out of the flames, skidding and slapping at his leather-clad left leg to smack the fires out.

He glared at us, stomping forward and kicking the corpse of his fellow from behind. When it didn’t move and he noticed the color of it, he grinned, then flipped it over and started rifling through its pockets, pulling out two small manastones, a single black stone that I thought I recognized, as I jumped in shock. Then he dragged the other rider’s knife out of his belt, and made us all gag.

He drove the blade into the lower jaw of the corpse, digging it in and wrenching about, frantically working while blood ran everywhere. He’d just managed to free the rider’s artificial teeth before the next one arrived.

This one was perched atop a massive pair of balls… literally. It made me think of a normal mountain bike, but with gears that glowed with power, and wheels that were the size of beachballs; somehow, the main body of the bike hovered over the pair of balls.

“I do not fucking believe it,” I said flatly, shaking my head as I looked at the device.

“What the hell is it?” Grizz asked, nonplussed, and I clapped him on the shoulder as we both stared.

“No clue,” I said. “But it looks a lot like they’re making these things from the goddamn magical gear we need to fucking salvage!”

“That makes it easier, than,” Grizz replied, and I blinked at him. “They’ll have been collecting it; all we have to do is kill them all,” he said with a shrug, and I grinned at him, nodding in agreement.

“Yeah, that works; I just hope they’ve not broken it too badly.” I watched as the gnome on the ‘bike’ slowed down and hissed something at the one that was pocketing the teeth.

He hissed back, and they spoke for a few seconds, their language a mixture of hisses, growls, and grunts. The one who was still astride his bike eventually straightened up and slapped his chest like a gorilla.

The other one stood up straight and spat something at him, reaching into a pocket to produce the black stone and hooting in laughter. I swore viciously as I saw it, now sure what it was.

“What’s wrong?” Lydia asked, and I pointed at the gnome.

“You see that key? The black thing?” I asked, and she nodded. “It looks exactly like the one I was given to open the portal from this side to let those fucking dickbags through. That needs to be destroyed,” I said grimly. “The nobles of the Empire are assholes and must NEVER be allowed to return. They make Barabarattas and others look like fucking saints of honesty.”

“How’d it get here?” Lydia asked slowly, clearly confused.

“They’ve been sending people through every five years for centuries; makes sense we’d find a trace of them eventually. Anyone they sent probably came through a Portal here, found these assholes, and boom. They ate the poor fucker.” My jaws clenched involuntarily as I watched the gnome wave it in the air, then put it back in his pocket, before screeching like he’d won the argument.

He even smiled, his teeth glittering in the reflected firelight, until my Fireball took him in the side of the head, slamming him into the wall as the flames rippled out to encompass the one on the bike as well.

He shrieked something, then strangely spun his bike around and vanished through the flames, causing them to whirl and dance in the slipstream of his passage.

The other one, which I’d hit with the Fireball, pushed himself up, shaking his head and glaring at us, before checking his hands and realizing that the white coating was bleeding away slowly.

He blanched in shock, then glared at us before turning and rushing into the flames, running through to the other side and vanishing up the corridor on foot.

“Where’s the magelight?” Arrin asked suddenly, and I realized that at first, we’d still been able to see the light through the flames, but no longer; something had taken it.

“Well, now what?” Bane asked from behind me, and I turned, eyeing the way he lounged against the wall comfortably. I looked at the gaps between us, and shook my head. There was no way he managed to slip though us, was there?

“Ta…” I started to say, only to cut off when Tang spoke up from behind me, and I spun around again, seeing nothing, only to find him seated on the steps a few up from Bane when I turned back.

“Hey, Jax,” he said simply, and I shook my head.

“How the hell did you do that?” I asked. “Seriously, I mean, what the hell!”

“We’re just that good,” Tang shrugged dismissively and Bane nodded as though it was simply a fact.

“I hate you guys at times,” I muttered, getting a grin from Yen.

“That’s perfectly normal, Jax. Nobody likes Tang,” she reassured me. “I got a promotion to take him on my team, and I still only did it because I