Berserker: A LitRPG Urban Fantasy Adventure (Apocosmos Book 1) by Dimitrios Gkirgkiris (books for 20 year olds txt) 📗

dropped dead with just one hit. They really didn’t stand a chance against him. Just as two more reached him, I circled around them and started to attack one that looked like it was preoccupied with the dwarf. My slashes weren’t enough to kill it outright, but I saw blood—or whatever this creature had in it—fall to the ground, the colorful lights around us reflecting in its dark surface.

The disgusting mushroom didn’t turn toward me. Instead, it seemed to absorb the corpse of a recently deceased ally and suddenly all of its wounds were healed. What’s more, it grew in size, and the strips of flesh pulsed even more quickly.

“Guys, can you—” My sentence was cut off as something yanked my ankle and brought me to the ground.

Another one of the monsters was directly behind me, its tendrils quickly wrapping themselves around my leg. As soon as it had a good grip on me, I felt my leg under immense pressure and suddenly wet. The sharp pain that followed hinted to me that the wetness probably wasn’t just some bodily fluid of the glorified mushroom, but rather a kind of acid. The fucker was trying to dissolve me little by little.

A gust of wind slightly ruffled my hair and immediately after it the pressure and tugging of my leg ceased and I was able to pull myself out of its grip. There was now a large spherical hole in the monster’s body, opened up by Leo’s Gale Blast spell.

I tried to stand and found it was much easier once Louie’s warm healing light enveloped my leg. Once I was up, I could see that Rory had already taken care of the magnified fungus and was moving toward the final two creatures.

“Let’s make sure the rooms are clear!” Leo called and ran toward the first open door on the left. I ran beside him, Louie next to me, and glanced into the room. The far side of the room was full of boxes but there were only a few signs hanging on the walls, illuminating the gruesome sight on the floor. The entirety of the room was littered with the corpses of animals in different stages of decay and the scent of death pushed us back.

“Clear,” I said and moved to the other side of the hallway, glancing at Rory to see him smashing one of the two monsters.

“Not clear at all,” Louie remarked. “This whole place stinks.”

The situation was the same in the next room. Feathers, fur, and blood all over the floor, but no sign of any monsters or our enemies. For the sake of expediency, we divided into two groups to check the rest of the rooms. Rory was alone on one side, having already slaughtered the monsters, and we were checking the other. Once we made sure the last room on our side was empty, Rory tried pulling open the only door that hadn’t burst open as soon as we entered the dungeon.

“Damn thing’s locked,” he said and before I was able to tell him that we didn’t need to waste our time here, he’d moved a couple of steps back and rushed at the door, shield first.

The wooden slab stood no chance against the muscular dwarf. The door completely shattered around the lock and what remained of it swung wide open on just its top hinge, since Rory had destroyed the bottom one. I took a peek at the room ahead as he stepping back. It looked as though it must have been a server room of some sort though it hadn’t been used for quite a while.

“Empty,” he said and moved toward the end of the corridor.

“How do we get to the next layer?” Louie asked and Rory pointed his sledgehammer toward a faint glimmering outline on the wall.

“Once we cross through this portal,” he explained, “we’ll appear back at the entrance.”

“We’ve got fourteen minutes left on our buffs,” Leo reminded us.

“I’m going in first,” Rory said. “Follow me after four seconds.”

“Why four—” I managed to say before the dwarf disappeared into the wall.

“So he can pull aggro,” Leo responded, and once he had counted to four on his fingers, he too jumped into the wall.

“Go on, buddy,” I said and followed right after Louie.

Moving through the portal was a bit disorienting. My body had expected to hit a wall, but I was suddenly standing in front of the corridor again. Since the trip was instantaneous, it only took me a moment to glance around me and absorb the information on the new monsters Rory was already fighting.

Name : Astral Jaguar Cub

Type : Magic Creature - Beast

Level : 14

Disposition : Aggressive

HP : 230/230

Physical Attack : 28

Magic Attack : 16

Speed : 100

Attack Range : Melee

XP : 490

Description : This beast is native to the Astral plane but can be found in almost all planes of existence. They usually settle down in ecosystems where they can be the apex predator, something which is not difficult due to their superior hunting skills and the fact that a fully grown Astral Jaguar can become larger than 600 lbs. Their greatest advantage is temporarily shifting to the Astral plane, making it seem like they can perform short-distance teleportation.

Is this some kind of fucking blink jaguar?

Rory, though not visibly hurt, seemed to be having quite a hard time dealing with the three cubs that had already attacked him. As soon as he struck at one of them, it would blink and reappear a couple of feet above him, slashing its claws at the dwarf’s face while the other two would rip at his legs and ass. If this is how the cubs hunted, it was no surprise a fully grown astral jaguar could easily become an apex predator.

“Ye little shitholes,” he cursed as he caught one of them in his fist, only to see it disappear before he could crush it.

I ran to assist him, not having a concrete plan in mind until a spiky ice