Hive Knight: A Dark Fantasy LitRPG (Trinity of the Hive Book 1) by Grayson Sinclair (poetry books to read TXT) 📗

Richard raised his sword, and the air in front of it rippled and distorted. In rapid succession, he slashed his blade through the air twice as each strike finished. A arc of pure energy shot forth from the tip of the sword. The two jagged waves met Harper's arrows and destroyed them. Only ash remained. They continued after taking care of the arrows as they crashed into the ground grass burst alight, and the blades of plasma burned deep furrows into the dirt.

Hyper Slash. The ability could only be stopped by magic or hero-tier weapons and armor. Anything lower and they would burn straight through it. Even my sword might suffer some burn damage if I tried to parry them.

Our attempt to stop the mages from recovering their mana failed, and they greedily downed the contents. Some of the pallor of disappeared from their faces, and they looked a little healthier, if for only a moment. The venom still wreaked havoc on them, eating their bodies from the inside. They were still just dead men walking.

Dead men walking. That errant thought struck a chord through me. They knew they were dying, and nothing would save them.

“Son of a bitch!”

They’re going to kamikaze us. Try and drag as many of us down with them as they could when they died. The two mages joined one hand together and raised their palms towards us. Two bright neon lights erupted from their hands. With each passing second, the lights grew more vivid and more detailed. Soon a pattern emerged as they chanted.

Each mage built half of the design in their hands. The design resembled an intricate pentagram split in half, each side with swirling letters forming, dissolving and reforming. Each time it did so, the pattern grew more elaborate. I couldn’t read or speak Script, but I’d seen this spellwork once before.

Nova Wave. Cataclysm class magic, also known as mutually assured destruction. It was the atomic bomb of Nexus, and required two mages of level fifty or higher. To perform. As a secondary requirement to cast, it cost the lives of both mages. Once complete, it would send a wave of pure kinetic energy forth, destroying everything in its path.

It was so powerful that not even antimagic could dissipate it. My Aura of the Antimage would be useless here. Even Evelyn would find herself powerless against such devastation.

I turned to look back at my guild. Recognition shone across a few faces, but some didn’t know what to make of it.

“Nova Wave! How the hell do we stop it?”

Harper and Yumiko tried to pick off the mages. They let loose arrow after arrow at them, but every time the arrows got close, the magic absorbed them. The spell kept building. I even attempted to run in and use Rush Strike anyway, to see if I could do anything, but as soon as I got close to the mages, I was flung back by a wave of turbulent energy. I landed painfully and retreated to our defensive line.

“We can’t,” Markos shouted.

Yeah, I know. I dropped my sword, succumbing to the inevitable, my heart heavy. Our teleportation scrolls wouldn’t work. We didn’t have the time. We only had seconds left. I spared one last look at my friends who’d stood beside me for a decade now. It was a damn good run while it lasted. I’ll see you guys when we respawn.

Adam shouted at me from the back of the line. He made his way toward me and reached out to grab me by the shoulder, shoving me out of the way before tossing a pitch-black crystal onto the field. It stopped about halfway between our two groups.

As Nova Wave reached its completion, the two now giant halves of the spell formed into one. The design stopped shifting and competed itself, glowing a bright red. Then all at once, the color melted into black.

The spell was cast.

Blinding white light emerged from the mages as their spell consumed them. The blistering wave of light reached a critical point in its brightness and imploded in on itself, coiling into a tight ball of pure energy before releasing a massive explosion. The heat lapped at my skin as the Nova Wave unleashed its power. It shook the world to its core, and oblivion itself descended upon us.

Chapter 8 - Nova Wave

The top layer of earth tore itself from the ground in the onslaught of blinding hellfire, chunks of dirt and grass swallowed whole as the Nova Wave destroyed everything in its path.

I grabbed Adam and flung us both down the hill, knowing damn well we were going to die, but bracing myself anyway in hopes of surviving. As the pure white light rushed ever closer, I shut my eyes tight and waited for the end.

But death never came.

When my skin and bones weren’t reduced to dust, I risked a peek and gaped at an incredible sight. In the middle of the once-grassy field, now nothing more than scorched earth, stood a void golem.

What? What’s it doing here? How did it even get here?

Adam was lying next to me in the dirt, grinning from ear to ear, the widest smiled I’d ever seen on him before. The slight maniacal shine running wild in his eyes told me he wasn’t entirely behind the wheel anymore.

“Did you summon it?”

“You like it?” Adam asked in a sing-song voice.

I gaped like an idiot, my mind not comprehending the literal tear in the fabric of reality which was the void golem. “What the—how the—how?” I spluttered, my eyes glued to the scene in front of me.

The void golem was a humanoid fragment of the void, manifested in our world—a vessel for the eternal darkness where nothing could survive. An unthinking construct to be controlled. I’d heard about them, but never