The Fourth Secret: A Fantasy LitRPG Adventure (Divine Apostasy Book 4) by A. Kay (best fiction novels of all time .txt) 📗

minute, probably weighing the same things Ruwen had. The old man’s shoulders slumped, and he winced. “Let’s go around.”

Ruwen nodded at the wise but painful decision. He looked out into the glade to find the Elder Viper, but it had disappeared. Picking up another rock, he threw it to the far left, hoping to trigger some movement. Still nothing appeared. He wondered if maybe it had left and turned to tell Pine.

At the edge of the glade, ten feet behind Pine, hundreds, maybe thousands, of snakes knotted themselves into a mass that lifted itself off the meadow floor. In a blink, the Elder Viper raised its tubular body and faced them.

“Meditate!” Ruwen screamed at Pine.

To Pine’s credit, the old man immediately tried to sit. But a stream of vipers struck his back, pushing him forward. Ruwen grabbed Pine’s outstretched arm and tried pulling him away, but more snakes covered the old man, all viciously biting him.

In a second, the old man’s body had disappeared, as if he’d never existed. As the snakes crawled back toward the Elder Viper, the four red sorrow fruit Ruwen had given the old man sat in a pile. All that remained of Pine.

The Elder Viper turned its head toward Ruwen.

Chapter 31

The Elder Viper launched a stream of snakes at Ruwen, the mouths open and fangs bared. He leaped to the right, deeper into the bamboo, using the trunks to block the airborne snakes. Three snakes bit him, two launched from the Elder Viper and one from an unlucky landing when he’d jumped.

Moving through the forest, he pulled the grape from his right sleeve and ate it, his body instantly feeling lighter. He ate one of the three remaining red sorrow fruit and his senses amplified, bringing the surrounding forest into focus.

The Elder Viper made a coughing hiss noise and the snakes near Ruwen slithered toward it. He ran parallel to the glade, hoping that the Elder Viper wouldn’t follow into the bamboo and he could skirt this fight. A viper curled at head height jumped at him and he slapped it away, feeling the cold pulse on his left palm as his total increased by a minute.

Vipers covered the ground under the twenty-foot black snake and propelled it past Ruwen, but it stayed inside the glade. He suddenly stopped as a thought struck him. The Viper Steps were based in part on a striking snake. They were aggressive and powerful moves. Running away only made the situation worse.

Glancing at his palm, he read one hundred thirteen minutes. The fifteen minutes from the grape had offset the damage he’d taken while fleeing the larger snake. He received a minute for each snake he killed, so if he destroyed five for every one that damaged him, he could survive.

In fact, as he thought this through, having so many snakes around provided an advantage. They supplied a ready pool of minutes to anyone skillful enough to avoid their strikes. By hiding and being cautious, he had made things more difficult. Success in the Viper Steps dictated he do the opposite.

Ruwen embraced his aggressiveness, turned, and moved directly at the large viper. Instead of avoiding any visible snakes, he shifted toward them. The green sorrow fruit increased his strength and speed, and coupled with his Gold Fortified reflexes, the snakes were easy to kill if he saw them in time. And the red sorrow fruit had increased his senses, making everything around him visible.

During Ruwen’s Step training with Rami, she had made him practice deflecting arrows and bolts. As long as he could see, he could even snatch them from the air. The flying snakes terrified him, and that fear slowed his reactions.

Instead, Ruwen imagined the airborne creatures were arrows, and the Elder Viper just another one of Rami’s terrible training ideas. He smiled as the large snake stopped, and the swarm of snakes under it crawled over the giant viper like armor. It sent a stream of snakes at his head.

The red and green fruit amplified Ruwen’s Gold body, and years of training provided the confidence to keep going. As the flying snakes closed on him, he batted them out of the way, as if avoiding the attacks of a dozen archers. There were too many, coming too fast, to get them all, and a few found purchase on his body. They hung like ribbons from his arms and side.

The red fruit made the ground feel like a second skin, and the vipers there were easy to locate. Ruwen leaped back and forth, killing a viper every time he landed. It made it harder for the Elder Viper to hit him, too.

As Ruwen drew within fifteen feet, the Elder Viper stopped its stream of snakes. It hissed, opened its “mouth” wide, and coughed. A wall of vipers, like a net of snakes, flew at him.

Many of the vipers struck the bamboo trunks, and Ruwen turned sideways behind a trunk. He quickly stomped on all the snakes that had hit his tree and fallen. A viper landed on his neck, biting him before he could pull it off. He moved from trunk to trunk until he’d closed within five feet of the glade and the large snake.

The Elder Viper had stopped launching snakes, and Ruwen studied it as he moved closer. Without a sound or movement, the Elder Viper shot a stream of liquid at him. He moved to the side, but the liquid struck the surrounding trunks filling the air with a spray that covered his skin and clothes.

Ruwen’s skin tingled where the mist touched, and his eyes watered. He blinked quickly, hoping the tears would wash what must be venom from his eyes. As his skin numbed, he also lost his vision, and he stopped advancing. He pulled his shirt over his nose and mouth, unsure what consequences breathing the venom might have.

The loss of vision depressed Ruwen, but he hadn’t expected an easy trial. He smothered the panic before it got a foothold in