Rewind: A Grimdark LitRPG Series (Pyresouls Apocalypse, Book 1) James Callum (best large ereader .TXT) 📖

Mack glared at Jacob through the bars. “I’m going to find your little girlfriend too and I’ll make sure you have some company in that other cell. The both of you can sit out this whole affair and after I win the competition I’ll come back for you.”

Jacob could hear the lie in Mack’s voice. It was incredibly unlikely Kim was as stupid as Jacob and had done something to get on the Vile Covenant’s bad side. Considering what Mack said earlier, it wasn’t so much the man’s ability to track him down as the Covenant’s magic that allowed him to find Jacob.

Despite it being a clear consequence for his reckless, vengeful behavior against the Vile Covenant, Jacob wasn’t about to let it go.

If the Vile Covenant wanted to escalate things, he would be more than happy to oblige. Every single one of them would fall to his sword when he was done.

Mack lifted his lion-faced visor, his face was flushed and twisted with rage. Face pressed tight to the rusting bars of his cell, he added, “And I haven’t forgotten what you’ve done. I’ll make you beg for me to kill you. For each of my men that you’ve killed, you will suffer.”

“All this because I hurt your feelings? Whatever, Matt,” Jacob said turning his head away.

Mack spluttered and went apoplectic at the slight. It was oddly amusing watching his face turn progressively darker shades of purple. If he ever found him again, he would go out of his way to kill him. Slowly.

Before Mack could open the cell to kill Jacob, he managed to calm himself down. Damn, really thought that’d get him. Oh well.

Jacob ignored him, turning his head away. Just about the biggest middle-finger to an egomaniac like Mack.

The man ranted and raved for a little while, costing him precious time in getting ahead. But after nearly thirty minutes of monologuing, Jacob had enough.

He turned back to Mack. “Listen, Mort, or whatever your name is, just kill me now because all this cheesy bad-guy monologuing is more torture than you could ever imagine.

“I get it. Mommy and daddy didn’t love you enough. You’re acting out in the only way you know how. Nobody respects you, blah, blah, blah. Just shut the hell up, dude.

“Or better yet, give me a dagger and I’ll cut my own throat so I don’t have to listen to your whining. Don’t you have a competition to win or something?”

That was enough for Mack to snap.

Unfortunately, one of the crossbowmen had been given the key to the cell with explicit orders to leave. There would be no luring the guard into the cell to kill him or stealing the key from him somehow.

So as much as Mack bellowed and raged, trying to get into the cell, he couldn’t. Tantrum played out, he composed himself and flipped the visor down over his pretty-boy face.

He was about to leave when Jacob called out to him, “Hey, guy.”

All three men in the room turned to Jacob, which only made Mack angrier. “No, not you guys. That dude in the middle. Yeah, you. When you get to the Burgon Beast, I hope you don’t choke. That would be super embarrassing for you.”

Jacob’s laughter chased all three of them out of the guard tower and he was left utterly alone. As he wandered around the room he realized he only had two options available.

He could wait and let everything fail which was utterly unacceptable or he could kill himself. Whatever heavy metal collar they had snapped onto his neck had removed his ability to take off his armor or summon his weapons. He didn’t think something like that even existed.

And that meant with even a quarter of his Health remaining, it would take a while to reduce it to zero.

And it was going to hurt.

Pressing his back to the wall, Jacob pushed to his feet. He lined up with the opposite wall and charged head-first into the stone. A jolting, shocking pain rippled through his head and neck taking off a grand total of… 1 Health.

One Health down, thirty-two to go.

No matter how he did it, he simply could not harm himself more than a single point of Health. The cell was not big enough to get a running start. With his arms pinioned behind his back and that horrible collar on his neck, he couldn’t move around properly.

The pain and dizziness from slamming his head into the wall made it hard to keep going. It went against every instinct he had.

More than an hour of ramming into the wall to chip down his Health and he was hardly able to stand. At least two vertebrae in his neck were crushed but by some stroke of luck, he could still stand.

It was too much to ask that he sever his spinal cord and die that way. More than likely he imagined he would be left paralyzed but alive. Forced to stay where he was without any way of getting out.

With only 2 Health left to go, Jacob got to his feet and turned around. He lined up once more with the opposite wall and charged. Except, this time when he hit the wall he rebounded and felt a warm wave of comfort pass through him.

His Health jumped up by half, then half again until he was at full. Jacob cast a murderous look around to find the man in white-hemmed robes sitting on a simple stool facing the bars.

In his stupor and haze of pain, he didn’t even notice his arrival. How long had he sat there, watching Jacob bash his Health away 1 point at a time?

“Already here, Al?” called a voice from up the stairs.

“Yeah, just watching this guy try to kill himself.”

One of the crossbowmen came down the stairs, his weapon held in the crook of one arm already loaded with a bolt. “How’s that possible?”

“Ran into the wall over and over, taking a