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

The back stabber yanked his knife free and clambered up to stand onto the wounded gnome, gesturing at me, her eyes filled with a wild, frenzied bloodlust.

Other crowded in around and behind her, and I saw the wary hatred reflected on their faces; they watched each other as much as they did me. As the little female backstabber licked her blade and giggled, I frantically pointed behind them.

“Look out!” I shouted, and the room dissolved into chaos. Some turned to look; others took advantage of the distracted state of the nearest gnome to stab, bite, kick or hit them, and I couldn’t help but shake my head in amazement.

It was like a mixture of the Three Stooges, a rabid kindergarten, and the worst kind of horror movie, as they fell on each other, screeching, screaming, and sending blood flying.

I quickly started casting the ‘Explosive Compression’ spell again, but this time I left the ‘standard’ size of impact at six feet in all directions, and I grimly kicked out at those that came too close.

It only took a handful of seconds to put the spell together, and I targeted it just outside the door, where the majority of the gnomes still fought and writhed.

Just as it left my hands, I grunted, staggering to one knee and glaring to my right, where I found a small figure shaking. He’d slammed a length of metal into my knee, and it’d probably caused him as much pain as it had me, thanks to the metal armor I wore.

I reached out, grabbed his bar, and yanked him forward. Clutching his long, grimy beard with my right hand and pulling his head down into my knee, I knocked the little fucker out on the metal plates that covered it.

“Oracle!” I shouted, reaching out and grabbing a stanchion that braced the wall to my right, using it to haul myself up. I drew back with the metal post and slammed it down hard on a struggling figure that was screaming and trying to escape the morass of flaming bodies caused by my spell. “Where the ever-living fuck is my weapon!”

“I don’t know!” she snarled, obviously as pissed as I was, and we both paused for a second as the sound of magic being exchanged high above us rang out. “We’re down here, while everyone else is getting hammered up there, and I’m digging in the sodding rubbish trying to find it!”

“Fine!” I snapped. “Get up there and protect them. I’ll kill my way across the entire goddamn cavern if I have to!”

“You’ll die,” she fired back, becoming full-size and solid long enough to drag a section of sheeting aside and peer underneath.

“At least I won’t have my last minutes filled with nagging!” I roared, then pulled back and drove the post into the pile of debris, levering it up and tipping it over, exposing the floor. “Fuck! It’s not here!” Oracle turned back to the door, firing off a Fireball into the pile of bodies, making me stagger backwards.

“It must have fallen outside somewhere…” she said after a moment in a scared voice, glancing from me to the doorway, to the sounds of battle above us.

Guilt stabbed through my chest. I stepped in close to her and, reaching out, I pulled her into a deep kiss, both of us pausing for a second to stare into each other’s eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I admitted softly.

“I know; it’s okay,” Oracle replied, clearly still pissed and trying to be calm.

“Go on; you need to go to them,” I said, gesturing upwards with a jerk of my head. “I can sort this, so go.” She hesitated briefly before kissing me again and shrinking back to her small state, taking a last look at me, before zooming up out of the hole in the ceiling. “I love you,” I called out to her in the privacy of our bond.

“I love you, too. Fight smart. I wouldn’t leave you if I didn’t know you could handle this,” she replied, and I nodded to myself grimly as the spell in the doorway died away.

There was a long, pregnant pause, then the moans, growls, and screaming began, as the dozens of gnomes that had survived the spell were attacked by their former comrades.

“Well, I’ll not be turning my back on you fuckers!” I said grimly, drawing back and smashing the post into the back of a gnome’s head as he hunched over one of his dead fellows, trying to pry a bag free of the corpse.

“Outside! A hundred feet to the right of the building and one level up; I think I can see your naginata inside a window!”

“Got it! Thank you!” I called back to Oracle, grinning at the dozens of gnomes who gathered themselves in the doorway and outside. The ones inside slowly edged forward, glaring at me suspiciously.

“Looks like it’s time to dance, motherfuckers!” I snarled, flipping the post over in my hands. Catching it by the other end and swinging for the fences, I smashed the end into the chin of a gnome that had stepped too close.

His teeth shattered and his jaw fractured, the tip of his tongue flying through the air in a spurt of blood as the rest of the pack pounced.

The entire room devolved into a flying, screaming mess of gnomes, bloody teeth, and bits. Less than a minute into the fight, the post bent, and I threw it at a gnome’s head, resorting to my fists.

I caught one as he leapt at me, stopping him with a flat palm to his chest and slamming my other fist into his nose, sending him flying. I struck out with a high kick to my left, then struck downward, heel first, taking another creature in the face before jumping at him and stamping down on his neck, hard.

A stab came in from the right; the small blade, barely better than a penknife, clattered across my greaves. I grabbed the gnome’s extended arm, twisting it backwards