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

out from my weapon made the gnome shy away, raising one hand to cover his eyes, though he held Oracle tighter to his chest.

“Let her go, or I swear you’re dead meat,” I growled at the diminutive figure. He glared up at me, squinting past the light, and I readied myself to give the order, pausing as I noticed a blur that I knew to be Bane shifting around behind him.

“No!” Oracle said holding a hand out to me and getting crushed to the gnome’s chest again. “No, Jax, honestly, it’s okay… we need him!” She reached up and twisted herself around. She planted her hands on his chest and pushed hard, arching her back to make the gnome release her, but she didn’t flee when she fell to the ground.

She landed lightly, her wings growing again, and I realized I’d missed them vanishing. When she reached up, she took the gnome’s outstretched hand on her left, then patted it lightly with her right hand as she faced him.

“Come on; you can understand us now, can’t you?” she asked him, and he grunted, looking confused. “My words… do you understand them?” she asked again, slowly, and he squinted at her, moving his lips, as though sounding out what she’d said, before tilting his head in thought.

“Jax,” Oracle said, turning and looking up at me. “There’s more going on here than ‘crazy creatures in the darkness.’ Seriously, I don’t know what happened here, but the buildup of metals in his body was toxic; they were making him crazy, and I’ll bet that the rest of the gnomes are the same.”

“So, they’re not evil, they’re sick?” I clarified, and she nodded. “What about the undead?” I asked, and she paused in thought.

“Maybe they’re not all one team?” she hazarded a guess. “Maybe the undead are controlling one side of the ruin, and the gnomes run the other? Or maybe there’s a gnome necromancer who’s gone mad? I don’t know, okay? All I know is that, with the toxins in his body, he was driven mad, desperate to fight and kill. He was filled with all sorts of contaminants… I hope… I mean, there’s a chance they might not all be like this….?”

“Do they know they’re mad?” I continued, and the gnome surprised us all by croaking a response.

“M….aaaa…dddduuur,” he said, his voice raspy and clearly unused to speaking.

“What?” I asked, and Oracle smiled up at him, nodding encouragingly for him to continue.

“Maaa…aadddurrrr… brrrrriiiinggg… mmmmetttttalll… maaadddduuurrr giiiiivvvesss cllllleeeean… wwwaaaaaatttuuurrrr,” the gnome ground out, making us glance at each other in confusion.

“Master!” Oracle said suddenly, working it out first. “The ‘master’ makes you bring metal, in exchange for water?” she asked.

“Waaaaattttuuuurr, speciiiiiaaallll wwwatttturrrr….” The gnome whined, and the rest of us looked at each other grimly.

“Special water?” Oracle repeated, and the gnome nodded eagerly.

“Waaaattturrrr sppppeciiiiiallll… taaaake youuuu? Giiiivvvve to maaaaadddurrrr! Givvvvessss morrrre waaaaatttturrrr tttto Giiiiinnt?” the gnome half-asked, half-insisted, pointing frantically down the corridor into the darkness.

“He wants to take me and give me to his master; I think his name is Gint?” Oracle translated, and the gnome nodded to her frantically.

“Taakke yoouuuu, giiiiivvve! Ggettt moorrrrreee!”

“That’s enough,” I said firmly, stepping forward and leveling my naginata at the little figure. “Nobody takes Oracle; never!” I insisted, the last words coming out in a growl.

“Jax, it’s okay…” Oracle said quietly. “I don’t think he understands, not really. He’s been conditioned to give things to the ‘Master’ to such a degree that it’s all he can think of. His brain’s been full of poisons for so long, it’ll take a while for it to make real sense; for now, he’s trying to fall back on what he knows. That’s all.”

“So, he’ll attack us?” I asked, and surprisingly, the gnome was the one who responded when Oracle paused.

“Nooooo, nnnoooo fiiiiight…” the gnome said, shaking his head sadly.

“You attacked us,” I snapped, and he nodded, smiling.

“Meeeetallll, lotttts... and meeeeaaat!” he explained, then regarded the collection of debris that filled the corridor. “Saaaaaad…. Giiiint fiiiix?” he asked plaintively, pointing at the smashed parts.

“You can fix them?” I asked, and he stared blankly at me, then pointed at the broken, twisted wreckage.

“Fiiiix?” he asked again, licking his lips nervously and clenching and unclenching his hands as Oracle lifted into the air and landed on my shoulder.

“He doesn’t know what to do…” Oracle said sadly as I reached up and patted her leg, her hand reaching down to rest on my own. “His mind is broken. I’ve fixed it enough that there’s no physical reason he can’t get better now, but the things he must have seen… and if the others are the same…”

“Yes,” I agreed, nodding to him and pointing to one of the strange little bikes. “Fix this.” He smiled wildly at me, his teeth gleaming in the dim light.

Spinning, he ran at the debris, digging his fingers into a twisted section and tearing it free with ease before tugging tools out of his belt and falling to work. We all watched him in awe for a few seconds, amazed by the difference in him, going from a feral creature to, well, a feral engineer. He was totally uninterested in anything around him suddenly, focused only on the problem and fixing it. I had flashbacks to some of the mechanics I’d known back home, never happier than when they were covered in oil and muck, swapping corroded and damaged parts for new shiny ones, or worse, those weird-ass network engineers…

“Jax!” Miren called, and I looked over, realizing that the glowing cylinder was dying away, and that both Jian and the demon were coming out of their daze.

“Shit!” I grunted, rushing to interpose myself between Jian and the creature before it could do anything to him. “Bane! Watch the fucking gnome!” I ordered. There were a dozen feet between the space where we’d moved to stand and where Jian swayed almost drunkenly, but I covered it in record time, visions of the creature ripping his throat out filling my mind.

Instead,