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

push up, roll onto your back, sit up, roll over, start again,” I explained, demonstrating the ‘jumping jack’ portion.”

“Oh, I like that!” Yen said. “Good point about the area, though; I’ll let him finish his hundred, and he can do the rest tonight when we make camp.”

“I’ll leave it with you.” I returned her salute, watching as Bane dragged the injured gnome up. The Mer dumped him unceremoniously on the floor before us, just as the one pinned under the Golem lost its white coating and gasped as it was crushed.

I looked down at the sound of breaking bones, and saw the blood running from her mouth and nose.

“Ah, well, never mind,” I said simply, surprised at myself for not feeling anything at the prisoner dying. I’d planned on just holding it until we could take it prisoner... “Anyway, you were saying?” I asked Lydia and Yen.

“Ah, right!” Lydia said. “Yeah, I used ter drink with a couple o’ gnomes; they were twins, pretty crazy, but as I say, that’s gnomes, right? These, though? They’re crazy. Like, not in the normal way.”

“Yeah, the chewing on my leg is a good hint!” Grizz called up, and Yen squatted down to whisper something to him. I couldn’t hear it, but I saw the fear on his face, and when she stood up, he was back to doing the pushups perfectly, as fast as he could.

“So…” I said, turning back to the groaning, bleeding gnome on the floor who glared at us all while clutching a crossbow bolt that protruded from the front of his right leg. “Anyone speak gnomish?”

“It’s common,” Lydia said shortly.

“What, everyone speaks it?” I asked.

“No, it’s ‘Common’ that they speak, usually, like we do. Whatever they were sayin’ before, it’s not a real language…”

“You understand us?” I asked the gnome, and he glared up at me through gritted teeth. “Bane, get the bolt,” I said shortly. Bane squatted down and grabbed the tiny leg in one hand, the creature’s two arms in two more, and then yanked the bolt free with his remaining hand in one smooth motion.

The gnome screamed in pain, then spat at Bane, who slapped him, hard.

“Oracle?” I said quietly, and she hit him with a healing spell, then swore.

“What’s up?” I asked her.

“I need more mana,” she said urgently, and I felt her building a spell. I immediately recognized it, and trusting her, I pulled a potion free and downed it, then sighed and moved to the side of the corridor, where a dry patch remained. I sat, closing my eyes and beginning to meditate, as Oracle used ‘Battlefield Triage’ on the gnome.

After a few minutes, she’d burned through the mana I had regenerated, and I groaned at the mana migraine that started to spread, before managing to ignore it again and sinking my mind into my meditation even deeper.

I locked the world away, envisioning myself first as I was. Working my way from the top of my head to the tips of my toes, I separated out every individual muscle I could identify and relaxed it.

Once they were all loosened, I envisaged the energy field I could feel flowing through my channels, the mana, forming a box around me. I visualized it pulling at the nearby ambient mana, twisting it and tugging it down into the form of the box around me. I created six sides and closed myself inside on a whim, drawing the mana into channels that twisted and compressed the mana down, without knowing why I did it. Then I created a second box just slightly larger, surrounding the first, and visualized the mana that moved from the outer box to the inner as being purified on the way, compressed and given a slight spin, for some reason.

The more I visualized it, the more natural it seemed to become. Every so often, I felt the mana inside me dipping down, before being slowly refilled by the mana in my ‘box’.

“Jax… you can stop now…” I heard Oracle say to me, as if from a great distance, and I blinked, slowly opening my eyes and looking around, an afterimage of a glowing blue-white box around me fading away into the ether.

“Hell, that was impressive, boss…” Grizz panted, nodding to me as he stretched and recovered from his exertions. As I continued looking around, I discovered that the others were watching me intently as well.

“Okay…” I said, shaking myself and glancing over at the gnome, who sat rubbing at his head and moaning, but he sounded… hell, he looked totally different. “What happened to him?” I asked in surprise, and Oracle flitted around him to land next to me, laying her hand gently on my arm.

“We cured him,” she said simply, and I turned my gaze back to the gnome, who was gaping around at the rest of us with a mixture of horror, fury, and terror.

The tiny gnome stared at our group before finally settling on me and Oracle. He shuffled to his feet and reached out a hesitant hand for Oracle, then when nobody did anything to stop him, he snarled and grabbed her, pulling her close and glaring defiantly at us all as he held her cradled to his chest.

“It’s okay!” Oracle called out quickly, halting us as we all reached for weapons. The little gnome pulled her closer to his chest and started to growl defensively.

“Well, shit,” I muttered. “Looks like we’re gonna have to housetrain a gnome now…”

Chapter Seventeen

“It’s okay…” Oracle repeated, but this time, she said it to the gnome, reaching up and patting his cheek. He made a cooing sound down at her, then bared his teeth at the rest of us, before growling and attempting to back away in the direction he’d come from.

“I don’t think so,” I said warningly, hauling myself to my feet and glaring at the little bastard while pounding the base of the naginata down once, hard, and channeling a flare of mana into it for emphasis.

The light that flared