Titan: A LitRPG Adventure (UnderVerse Book 4) by Jez Cajiao (beach books .txt) 📗

alone, but she told me that in your lands, slavery isn’t the done thing, so I figured, what the hell; not like I’ve got much to lose, after all.”

“Shit.” I shook my head and stepped close to her. “Do you mind?” I asked, gesturing to her neck.

“Uh… no?” She looked at me quizzically as she leaned back slightly. We paused, looking at each other for a long second, before Oracle, who’d been silently observing from her perch on my right shoulder, floated into the air between us.

“You’ll all get used to this; Jax isn’t very articulate,” she explained reassuringly. “Athena, he wants to look at your collar. Is this okay?” Athena looked from Oracle to me, and I gritted my teeth at my own forgetfulness.

“Sorry, everyone. This is Oracle; she’s my companion, my lover, and also the keeper of knowledge for the Great Tower,” I said, figuring it was best to get it all out of the way straight away.

“Uh… okay… I guess… wait, lover?” Athena stammered, inspecting Oracle’s diminutive size and then considering me, flashing a reflexive look ‘downwards’ before she could help herself.

“God dammit. Oracle, take your full size, please. The last thing I need is rumors starting…” I grumbled, rubbing the bridge of my nose.

Oracle laughed and blurred; there was no better way to describe it, really. One minute, she was about a foot tall, while the next, she hovered slightly before touching down, just over five and a half feet of stunning, voluptuous beauty.

“She changes her size whenever she wants,” I clarified. “She is usually around six inches to a foot tall most of the time now, for some reason.”

“It makes people act nicer to me,” Oracle clarified as she bounced her hair with one hand. “Besides, when I’m this size, everyone just stares at my tits and ass, and it’s not like I can’t cast spells the same, big or small,” she added, and Athena, Romanus, and Alistor flinched, looking away quickly, even as I felt the amusement flowing through the bond I shared with Oracle. She’d deliberately been bouncing gently on the balls of her feet so that she could draw their eyes and catch them. Restun had glanced at her once, clearly assessing whether she was a threat, and had gone straight back to standing at attention, unphased by her beauty, while Augustus was used to her and her tricks by now.

“Uh, so… my collar?” Athena said, shaking her head and trying to get the conversation back on track. I reached out and hooking a finger under the rim of it as she pulled it back up into view for me.

“Right, moving swiftly on…” I muttered, studying the collar. I decided to try something I’d not done for a while, but something that had been in the back of my mind for days. I reached out, or in, to Amon.

“You there, you crazy old fart?” I directed to him, only to be met with silence. “Amon!” I tried again, and I felt… something, a stirring… like when you’ve woken up after a long sleep to find you’ve slept on your arm and it’s gone numb. That sensation just as feeling starts to return, when it’s as much looking at your fingers moving, as it is actually feeling the motion, the point where you can just feel it starting to respond.

That was what I felt.

“Amon, are you there?” I tried again, and this time, I felt Oracle join me, doing something I couldn’t quite define.

“S…laves…” I felt and heard him respond. “No… slaves were banned, they were… freed… that’s it… they were freed. No slavery in the Empire…” he continued, before reverting to mumbling and muttering.

“That’s the point, Amon!” I growled at him. “I need to know how you helped me to shatter the collars before!”

“Break them… yes… break them all…” I heard him mumble. A sense of anger rose briefly, followed by confusion, and just as I was about to give up, a sudden ‘burst’ of information flooded my mind, staggering me mentally and physically.

Chapter Two

“My lord!” Romanus cried, darting forward, but before he could reach me, Restun caught me under the arms and steadied me.

“Lord Jax?” Athena asked, concerned, stepping back and tucking away her collar as every Legionnaire in the room went on high alert.

“I’m all right…” I said, shaking my head, dazed by the information.

“I’ll deal with that, Jax. Just relax. You do what you need to do here, but then you need to rest,” Oracle said firmly, taking my hand as Augustus dragged a chair across and Restun helped me into it.

“I’m all right…” I repeated, panting, my heart hammering at the barely sensed information I’d just absorbed. It felt as if someone had poured the ice water melt from a glacier directly into my brain, shocking and freezing me at the same time. I could feel so much knowledge bubbling away in my mind, but even as I frantically tried to grasp and understand it, it began to seep away, a weak human mind such as mine unable to absorb it all.

“Oracle…” I whispered. “Find the key.”

“I will.” She nodded soberly to me, before shrinking down and landing on my chest. Leaning back against me and closing her eyes, she dove into the mass of knowledge, searching for the key to that lightning attack we’d unleashed on the city, the way we’d torn the collars apart, interrupting the owner’s control and slamming the power back into the control devices, causing them to explode.

I didn’t need the explosion now, but I knew instinctively that I needed the key to that power to completely free the slaves we had brought aboard.

“I sent Legionnaire Grizz to verify whether you were well enough to join us, Lord Jax; I apologize. I should have waited. You had, after all, sustained terrible injuries. Let us get you safely back to your cabin, or perhaps an interior one? Captain, can one of the storage cabins be cleared now? With speed, please?” Romanus said, his