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

three of the tentacles near its face wrapped around the arrow. Gripping it tight, the Leviathan yanked it free with a small spurt of black blood, taking a deep breath and screaming again.

The sound it emitted was weird; it built steadily, rising from a pitch that was merely uncomfortable all the way into ‘takes paint off the walls’ levels in less than three seconds, all while shaking as though it had a taser applied to its butthole.

The noise reverberated off the walls and funneled down, loud and agonizing enough to make me stagger, even as I gritted my teeth and leveled my naginata, rushing at the closest creature once again.

It crouched, then bounded forward, leaping aside as I stabbed out and thrusting its clawed front foot down hard, slamming my blade aside and trapping it.

Before I could bring my weapon back or dodge, the thing struck, all four tentacles spearing forward, claw tips lunging for my flesh.

They hit me hard; two deflected cleanly off the upper slopes of my breastplate, the Legion-made Cuirass shrugging the blows off. The third slammed into the joint where the pauldron and cuirass met on my left side, and its tip skittered across the attaching leather to dig into a loose section, making me grunt as it drew blood.

The fourth claw struck the bottom of my helm, snapping it down and making it hard to see, until suddenly, the pressure was lifted as the tentacle hastily retracted.

I stepped back, heaving on my naginata and glaring furiously at the creature as Grizz barreled past.

He ducked down behind his shield and shouted something before slamming it into the Leviathan’s face, staggering it back several steps. It switched its focus to him, all four claws flashing around the shield to grip it, pulling him inexorably close as it opened its beak to scream or bite him.

Before it got the chance, though, two things happened. The first was that the other Leviathan, the one that had been keeping us all off balance by screaming continually, finally ran out of breath or mana or whatever. As soon as the sound cut off, it felt like the world came back into focus, and three arrows, a Firebolt, and a full spread of five enhanced ‘Magic Missiles’ slammed into it a bare handful of seconds later, staggering and severely wounding it.

The other thing that happened was Lydia. She bolted past me, then jumped up and kicked off the wall, twisting her body around to face the Leviathan that was grappling with Grizz from the side. As soon as she was in the air and oriented correctly, she screamed out “Shield-Bash!” and the ability took over, slamming her forward with tremendous speed and force.

She hit the creature side-on, slamming her shield, with her fully armored bulk behind it, into the side of its face. The impact culminated in a loud crunch of bone, the two tentacles on that side went flaccid, and the bottom half of its beak dislocated, the beginnings of a sonic scream dropping into a warbling, distressed whine.

Lydia bounced off the beast, hitting the wall and then bouncing forward again as she lashed out with her mace, smacking the weapon down hard into the creature’s left front claw, just as it lifted the appendage to slash as Grizz.

There was a second crunch of bone, and a louder whine, as it tried to pull back before Grizz lunged forward. He swept aside the remaining tentacles that still clung to the left side of his shield and slashed out in a circular rising swing. The tip of his gladius flashed from left to right and sent the remaining two tentacles flying with a gout of sticky blood.

Before the creature could do more than rear back, he’d switched from a swing to a thrust, and the tip of his blade punched into the Leviathan’s throat, biting deep.

It staggered, trying to move back, but Grizz followed it, yanking the sword from left to right, widening the wound before driving it deeper. As I glanced back to check on Bane, I heard the gasping whistle of Grizz cutting into the creature’s windpipe.

Bane remained slumped against the wall, two hands clutching at his head, as another arm braced against the wall, and his remaining limb scrabbled for his daggers on the floor. He was stunned, clearly, but I felt my mana dip as Oracle’s hands began bursting with light, and I knew she’d have him back together in no time.

I nodded grimly in her direction and looked back at the furthest creature, watching as another barrage of spells and arrows slammed into it. It screeched in pain and fury, turning and starting to run for it.

“Hell no!” I snarled, dropping my naginata against the wall and pulling in my power as my lips started to speak the arcane words, my fingers twisting like snakes on acid.

The spell built faster and faster as I poured increasing amounts of mana into it, compressing it and shaping it, more with my mind and fingers now, it seemed, than the phrases and words I barely understood. Whatever Amon’s mind-dump of information had been, it’d filled in tiny gaps I’d never even known were missing from my knowledge, taking all of my spells to the next level.

In three seconds, the spell had taken a basic form; it was bulbous at the back end, closest to me, with a long, thin tip at the further end, a tip that sighted in on its quarry and quivered with a suppressed need to be released. I inspected the additional forms I had laced into the ‘Explosive Compression’ spell, inspired by the spell I’d created when we fought in the Skyking’s Tower. Now they felt… better, more integrated, and infinitely more graceful. I tied off the last section and splayed my fingers, releasing the spell with a ‘Huuut’ of forced exhalation, shoving forward with my hands as the spell took off.

The Leviathan had vanished into the darkness at the far end of the corridor, barely