Rivera did not stop hammering on Corbin’s ritual circle, but had little to show for his efforts. Sure he grabbed up Strength and Endurance every time he took damage off the magic circle, which was every strike, and sure his strength was now over a hundred and fifty, but ritual circles were meant to summon and imprison demons and djinns.
“It’s not working,” Dane said, just as the warlock screamed out, and the real magical fireworks began.
Dane hadn’t seen flame-haired fae before, but the principle was easy enough to understand. “Rivera, belay that!” he called. “Come here.”
The golemite dutifully complied, and just in time.
He lowered a pair of goggles in front of his eyes and saw her aura blasting off her in all directions, much larger than everyone else in the temple: a big black and red mass of dripping tentacled goodness, interspersed with strangling gold vines twined around it, emanating from the base of her skull and the center of her chest.
Now, with Findell in the middle of his own ritual, the nellwynian assassin taken down, and Grotok dead, she was the only one left to oppose the Rangers.
Although, she managed pretty well. Swirling magic lashed out and sent spikes of blackish goop racing across the floor. These lanced up and poked holes in the rest of his party. Prissy, Guzman, Rinna, Drell, Hale, and Lieutenant Daniels all ended up skewered on these and lifted into the air like they were about to be crucified. Only Dane and Rivera were spared, since they were on the other side of Corbin’s ritual circle. Daniels, once again, was killed outright, and a bunch of inventory items fell to the ground.
One of those was a Knowhow: (Rituals) skillbook.
“What?”
Serrell peered through the magic and locked eyes on the two of them.
“I’ll go take care of her,”
Several armor scraps, scraps of pelt, coils and gears, lengths of rope and a power core later, he had a workable gadget like a grappling hook. Instead of the hook end though, it had a claw. He fired off in the direction of the LT’s body, grabbed up the skill book, and reeled it back in. Meanwhile, the fae warlock stood and, dripping dangerous black red magic from her hands.
“Serrell!” the floating guy inside the other ritual circle shouted. It was a scream full of pain and discomfort, but also anger… which still sounded a little adorable, given that he was a half-fae. “Complete the ritual!”
Serrell instead began skirting around Corbin’s circle, and occasionally blocking expertly shot spit rockets from camel Corbin. “Let me swat these insects first.”
Dane grabbed the skill book and marveled at the thing.
Do you wish to learn the basics of Ritual spellcasting? This skill book will be consumed upon absorption. Indicate your answer verbally or mentally.
“Yes,” he said, and blacked out for a moment.
One second he was edging around the ritual circle opposite, and hopping to avoid a tentacle of black magic trying to skewer him, the next he was in Rivera’s arms. His head felt full… like a serious headache was about to start over the entirety of his skull. He wasn’t sure how the books worked, and was amazed Daniels hadn’t thought to show him the books in the first place.
“We need to break the ritual circle,” he moaned. Rivera darted aside and took a magic spear in the shoulder. Dane felt even sicker from spinning around, but still the Ritual Spellcasting knowledge came to him.
Duh.
“Rivera, you need to break the floor! And after that, launch me at the warlock, and go break that other ritual. Got it?”
“Understood,” Rivera grumbled, and immediately pummeled the temple’s tile floor. The cracks were enough straight from the first shot: the barrier surrounding the ritual flickered and failed when the greasy black circle ended up cracked.
Corbin wasn’t human yet.
Still, Dane found himself launched through the air straight at the warlock’s face, with Voluminous Sack in hand. He had meant to unload a whole salvo of armor scraps into her face, but there wasn’t time. He instead ended up with the bag tangled around her hands. For a brief instant, he hoped she’d be sucked into the bag and suffocate in there, but it wasn’t to be. Instead he commanded the eagle to start in on her again. She snarled at him, her eyes began to glow, but luckily he was small enough to grab onto the drawstring and swing down under whatever horrible fire attack came next. He actually swung around far enough that he ended up kicking her in the face by accident. Still, the 4 damage was done, and he looped around the rest of the way, trapping her arms inside.
“You infuriating little stak!” she snarled, and began to wrench her arms this way and that.
And as soon as she got a sliver of wiggle room, he started calling everything to come shooting out of the bag.
It was fun to watch her take several hundred projectiles in the stomach, watch her eyes widen in disbelief and pain, watch the green bar above her head rapidly shrink, turn yellow and then read. The best was watching her spit blood before she finally staggered backwards, fell on her ass, and died.
He grabbed up the loot without looking, and turned to see Rivera break the ritual circle surrounding Magistrate Findell.
***
Dane came to in an instant; he sprang up in the bed the succubus had provided for them, noted he was still semi-transparent, and leaped out of his bed. He wasn’t worried she’d be there, not really, but just in case a mob bearing pitchforks and torches was ready to stab him back to death, he wanted to make it a habit not to die unprepared.
An avatar of Vethros (level unknown) murdalized you.
You have died!
Oh, woe is you!
You lost half of your inventory items, rounded down. They’ll remain with your corpse. For the next 48 hours, you’ll lose your entire inventory, should you die again, and after that you lose levels. But you already knew that.
Pro Tip: Don’t go up against an avatar of Vethros when death is on the line, or get involved in a land war in Asia.
You are reading story Un-Familiar Sidequest 1: The Squad (A LitRPG isekai fantasy adventure) at novel35.com
Luckily nothing came screaming at him. He wasn’t surrounded by a bunch of enemies, or an enraged avatar of Vethros, whatever that was.
He was, however, surrounded by three concerned faces: Niederhauer, looking more irritated and intimidating than concerned, Daniels, who also appeared impatient and stoic behind that friggin enormous beard of his, and Guzman, the only one of them to radiate anything like concern.
“What–“ Confusion overtook him for a second. He’d been… in another world. Fighting in a temple or hall of some kind, against incredibly powerful enemies. Saving Corbin. Corbin!
“You died after us. What happened?” Daniels asked.
He mostly ignored the question. “You didn’t come back through the portal?”
“Your portal gizmo was already broken,” Niederhauer said, and showed the crystal ball. It had a crack down the center, and now the thunderstorm within glitched, and the thunder within was audible. “No getting back. Not even sure we can use this to contact the thane.”
“Not you too.”
Niederhauer winked at him.
What an idiot. “What about Prissy and the others?”
“They didn’t sleep down here. They must’ve respawned wherever they last slept.”
Dane cursed in his adorable gnomish voice, which actually caused Guzman to go ‘aww’. That stopped when he realized the bronze eagle had been destroyed and
Rivera came to a moment later, groaning and putting a hand to his big stone head. Niederhauer and Daniels immediately dropped the issue of Dane, and went to look after Rivera, who was complaining that one of his favorite cards was missing.
“You okay?” Guzman asked quietly.
“I think so… my eagle got blown up, and I’m not happy to have been killed, and there might be a serious BBEG out there now, but I’m alive.”
“BBEG?”
“Big bad evil guy. End boss. Even worse than that warlock who was doing the rituals.”
“Ah.”
Since they were all whole, the discussion naturally turned to next steps. Niederhauer and Rivera considered it the mission to take on The Five (but really four) and revert the world back to the way it was before the portal opened. Dane wasn’t certain taking out The Five (really four) would stop it…
“And seriously, guys… there’s magic here. Real magic. We stepped through a portal and went to a fucking other world.” He stared up into each of their eyes, and was gratified to see the same spark of fascination in Guzman’s and Niederhauer’s when they returned his gaze. “You’re not interested in what’s beyond the portal? We only got to see a sliver of it, and I tell you right now, I’m very close to saying fuck the mission.”
“One does not simply fuck the mission, laddie,” Daniels said.
“But what if…” Dane said, and leaned in close, as though the thane-general could hear him somehow, “What if we went through the portal after our inventory items? What if our mission was to help Corbin get turned back into a human, to do recon on this other world for the best way to get rid of The Five… fucking, The Four, and, and… what if our mission ends up being more than The Four? If taking them down doesn’t change anything, we need to give the general an idea of what to do next.”
They were nodding, and exchanging glances at one another. Going off mission was… honestly, sort of what they’d been doing for a while now. The short game was probably best achieved by bringing in the full on US armed forces, which Canada would never agree to, and even with thousands of level 1 noobs, he wasn’t sure they could achieve the objective. The level progression had started to become logarithmic, which meant taking down The Four wasn’t something they could throw cannon fodder at with any expectation of success. That left the long game: exploring, leveling, looting, and linking up with the one man who’d managed to succeed so far.
“I’m in,” Guzman said.
“You canna just–“ Daniels started, but Niederhauer cut him off by throwing down a scaled hand.
“Count me in, pogue.”
Rivera’s huge hand fell on top of it, followed by Guzman’s on top of his, and finally Daniels. Dane put his tiny hand on the pile.
“On three,” Niederhauer said, without a single iota of explanation.
“What are we doing?” Dane asked.
“One…”
Guzman swore under her breath.
“Two…”
Rivera’s eyes burned with inner fire.
“Three…”
Daniels went ‘augh’.
Niederhauer threw his hand up in triumph. “Niederhauer’s giant cloaca!”
“Jesus, Niederhauer!”