The Skull Throne: A LitRPG novel (Kingdom of Heaven Book 1) Read online

  Still, seeing the effect my force was having on the Shadow took me by surprise. Was Ori right? Was I actually a viable threat to him? Was there a chance I could win this?

  With our swords still crossed, the Shadow lifted his foot and leveled a huge boot into my armored gut. Even covered and saved from the worst of the pain by my High Pain Threshold Power, the force of it was enough to knock me backward with a jolt of gut-wrenching agony. I flew through the air, landing hard against the marble of the temple and sliding fast and far. By the time I skidded to a stop and looked back up, the Shadow was galloping toward me, his glowing sword ready to strike.

  Okay, so maybe I wasn’t a viable threat after all.

  The bastard swung his black blade at me, and I reacted without thinking. Spinning around, I barely dodged the sword as it smashed against the floor with a hiss and thud. Good thing too, because the sword cut right into the stone, the heat of its energy melting the area around the strike mark into slag.

  I gasped, swallowing hard and fumbling as I pulled up my (by now) really helpful Lightning Bolt.

  The Shadow glared at me, jerking his sword free of the sundered ground and glaring at me as I thrust my sword forward and unleashed the lightning at him.

  Without even looking up, the Shadow twisted his hand, calling forth an Enchanted Shield that completely blocked my Lightning. I might have gained a lot of Ranks in Nature Magic, but I hadn't earned them all naturally, and I certainly hadn't taken the time to train and purchase the full range of spells I could have, while the Shadow had earned his Spirit Magic apparently fair and square, with a full range of options at his disposal. He knew exactly how to counter my one trick.

  As my spell dissipated into nothingness, I threw off the despair that threatened to worm into my heart. I was being stupid, the same stupid jerk that Ori had rightfully called out before. I couldn’t win in a straight brawl; I had to do what the quest was telling me to do. Only the barest hint of the Principalities’ Power was inside me now; I would need a lot more to beat the Shadow who was drunk on the blood of one Principality and had tasted a bit of all the rest.

  The Shadow’s maleficent power spun around him as my heart sped up. I had to be better than this. Ori was counting on me. Hecate and the rest of KOH were counting on me. My family was counting on me for Christ’s sake. I would not fail them. Not now. Not ever!

  The Shadow drove his sword at me. I narrowed my eyes, twisting sideways, and, to the Shadow’s surprise, I danced back in a sudden retreat.

  “What is this?” he laughed as he slowly circled my retreating form. “Is the mighty Iron Jack running like a scared child?”

  I spun, yanking the Ghost Dragon’s Tooth off my belt. “Not running,” I shot back as I hurled the tooth to the ground. “I’m just fighting smart!”

  The translucent fang dug into the marble floor, and with the crash of four simultaneous thunderclaps, the air was rent with swirling portals between the Shadow and me. Even Captain Evil was taken a bit aback by the four immense dragons that shoved their way into the Upper Levels from who-knew-where.

  “Sic ‘em, boys!” I shouted, pointing my sword across the way toward the Shadow. Just as they had under the ghost dragon’s command, all four colored dragons swept forward as one, letting loose coordinated blasts of fire, ice, sand, and wind.

  Unfortunately, I knew that this little gambit wouldn’t buy me much time. Trinkets, even from raid bosses, would never be so powerful as to match something like Mr. All-Consuming Darkness. Still, their initial volley seemed to nudge his Energy bar of nonsense down somewhat. The dragons hurting him was really more of a bonus though because what I really wanted was time, and those dragons would ensure he would have to deal with them before coming after me.

  Now that I could breathe, I had to figure out how the Shadow had stolen the Power of the Principalities.

  It wasn’t the act of killing them or else I’d have already lost. As dragons roared and screamed, the clash of raw elements and dark powers thundered, and new tremors rocked the ruined temple, I ran over to the ruined angelic corpses. Their blood still flowing out wet and thick onto the floor.

  As I looked around, hoping my friends had gotten free, my mouth fell open in surprise. The storm and fury caused by my previous clash with the Shadow had a way worse effect on everyone not imbued with the Principalities’ Power.

  The Hyena and the Shadow’s goons had been cast around like bowling pins, alive but knocked unconscious. Hecate, still bound in the monster’s glowing threads, was in a crumpled heap against a shattered column, the impact too much even for her solid ogre skull.

  Ori, somehow, was still conscious, her feathered wings ruffled and her perfect face bruised from an end-over-end tumble across the stone floor. It made sense; she was like the number 2 around here, just under the Principalities themselves. If anyone could withstand being in the blast zone for a while, it was her.

  As a dragon’s death throes shrieked behind me, I skidded to a halt in front of her. “Are you okay? Let me get you out of that; see if you can–”

  Barely clinging onto consciousness, Ori shook her head. “Don’t worry about me, Iron Jack. Fulfill the quest! Take up the Principalities’ Power!”

  The pooling blood on the ground all around me caught my attention. It was faintly pulsing with a brilliant, glow-in-the-dark, ruby red color.

  “Right, I like that idea, but how?” I asked, looking to her for help.

  “The blood–” was all she got out before another blast rang out, a scarlet ripple of dark energy shooting from behind me onto the horizon, accompanying the death of another of my dragon minions. The vibrations made my teeth rattle, shielded as I seemed to be by the Avatar buff I had, but Ori was blasted across the room. She slammed into the broken marble throne and collapsed into a broken, unconscious heap.

  A snarl of rage filled me as I stared at Ori’s crumpled body. I was completely on my own now, but that was fine. The angel had given me a shot to pull this out.

  Leaping to my feet as dragon number 3 (the green one) bit the dust, I dove for the closest dead Principality. As I landed hard into pool of shimmering silver blood leaking from its body, a message appeared in front of me.

  Do you want to take the Quest Item “Blood of the Principalities”?

  “Yes,” I snapped, and as I said the word the Principality’s blood seemed to move on its own accord. It flowed around me, through the joints of my armor and toward my face before soaking into my pores. As my blood mixed with the blood of the angel, I felt a surge of energy; a prickling of a power I had never felt before.

  Quest “Hero of the Principalities’”updated!

  The blood of a Principality mixes with your own!

  You gain 30 Essences of the Principalities! 50/100 Essences to a new Attunement unlock.

  Quest updated: Collect more Essences from the blood of the Principalities!

  Without a second thought, I dove for another puddle of blood, the last one fully absorbed into me within split-seconds. Those split-seconds were enough for the last dragon to be slashed down. Time was running out now.

  “Stay away from them, you fool,” the Shadow bellowed as his armored boots slammed with insane speed against the marble floor. “You have no idea what you’re doing!”

  I didn’t listen to him, plunging my hands into this next pool of glowing blood. Another 30 Essences hoovered up into my eager body and that Power that had been thrumming in my veins felt like it was going to pop my eyeballs out.

  It was that thrumming power that gave me the presence of mind and the speed of movement to spin in time, bringing my Blade of Judgment up not a moment too soon to parry the red-ringed sword of the Shadow before it cut me in half … assuming it could at this point. My statistics and Attunements were surging along with my Energy as the blood finished soaking into me.

  Our weapons clanged together like before, creating another shockwave of energy.

  “Now you die, Iron Jack,” he snarled, unperturbed by my growing
power. He leveraged his weight to press his sword closer and closer to my neck. Though my own power had grown from the angel blood rushing inside of me, I was still twenty pieces away from unlocking the Attunement, something I was now sure the Shadow had already finished. Whatever Attunement I was so close from unlocking was the unknown one the Shadow had, the one that was undoubtedly making him so damned powerful.

  “I haven’t even begun to die,” I snapped, trying to keep the sword at bay, but I knew it would be no use. He had the positioning. He had the Strength. He had the experience and perhaps the better weapon. It would take a miracle for me to win this.

  The Shadow gritted his teeth and then added a Leeching Hex to his sword. The damned charm, a classic Heretic Ability, would pull at my Energy and increasingly lower my Strength as long as we were in contact with each other and, as I got weaker and weaker, it would become more difficult – and then impossible – to keep his sword from digging into me.

  He had me. Normally this would suck, but his Heretic Attunement and all of his stats had been so amped by the power he stole, the Shadow’s hex was of incomparable power. He was about to eat up all my Energy so that, by the time his sword finally drove into my body, it would provide the killing blow, and I couldn’t so much as move to try and stop it. One flinch and I would lose the few moments I had left.

  “It didn’t have to end this way, Jack,” he said, his voice thick with sickeningly sweet venom. “I wanted you to be part of this. I wanted you to be right there with me. That’s why I fed the Principalities your name.”

  “What?” I balked as his blade drew closer and closer to me, my Energy now low enough for the system to understand as it drew nearer and nearer to the null area of the bar.

  The Shadow’s Leeching Hex drains you! You lose 4,782 Energy and 18 Strength! 17,872 Energy and 218 Strength remaining.

  “I told you, Jack. I have spies all around, people in the highest places of power. I used that influence to finally convince these fools to join the game, to break the oath they made.” He smiled. “And then I gave them you. They didn’t know it, of course. That foolish ogre thought it was her idea, but a helpful hint here and a stray word there brought you to the forefront of her mind. I knew your performance would be enough to clinch the rest.”

  “Wh-why?” I muttered as the heat of the sword began to burn me again. I was getting too weak to hold it back. He was progressing quickly now as my Energy bled out of me.

  He laughed hard. “Really?” he chuckled. “You really don’t recognize me in this body, do you? I guess it doesn’t matter now.”

  With a final thrust, he drove the sword into my neck. I felt my energy pour out as he violently tore his blade from my ravaged throat, leaving me to collapse onto the ground.

  “I’m so disappointed in you, Jack.”

  I tried to breathe, but I couldn’t. My Energy was flickering red, one beat away from death.

  Iron Jack, Level 63

  Energy 1/UY+qazd*567 (.00001%)

  I turned my eyes away from it. I wasn’t going out like this. Not on my back. I might have one health left, but that wasn’t zero. I flopped over onto my hands and knees, pushing myself to my feet, and as I did, the Shadow pushed me toward the tangle of remaining angel bodies.

  A smile crossed my face. The Shadow had just made the one fatal slip the bad guys always did when the hero was on the ropes.

  I stumbled backward, tripping over the first body of a Principality, and as I fell crashing into his body, I flopped into what was practically a lake of blood, the collection of the last three angels. As it had before, the blood leapt into action, pulsing with silver and blue light as it dove over me, engulfing me with Power and the Essences of the former masters of this world...

  You absorb the rest of the Blood of the Principalities!

  You gain 90 Essences of the Principalities! 140/100 Essences to a new Attunement unlock.

  You have gained the Attunement “Power of the Principalities”!

  Congratulations! You gain 99 ranks in the Principalities Attunement!

  Suddenly, my Energy bar started to refill. My eyes got clearer, and my body felt stronger.

  “What the hell is this?” the Shadow asked, looking at my stats as they rose and rose at unprecedented levels. “No matter,” he said, raised his sword again, and drove it toward my face.

  I lifted my hand to fruitlessly try to block it. The sword stopped in midair. I pushed my hand forward, and the sword flew out of the Shadow’s hand.

  “What?” the man asked, looking at his discarded weapon and then back at me. I could feel the world under me, could feel this plane and the others connected to it. Like before, I was connected to everything. I was everything.

  Twisting my hand again, the Shadow flew through the air, slamming hard against the wall and falling into the pile of severed wings. He had stolen the Power of the Principalities and displaced it. Was it possible that, as a child of Earth, I had snatched it back up?

  Seemed as good a reason as any.

  I stood quickly, the godly power flowing through me, gaining in Strength by the second, to the point where I wondered if my body could take the strain. The Shadow stood up too, calling forth a metal fan, sort of like the one Kitana used to wield in all those Mortal Kombat games. It glowed with the same red energy as his sword. Breathing hard, he flung it from his hand. It rushed through the air toward me, glowing brighter and brighter as it neared.

  I didn’t bother moving. I knew it wouldn’t hurt me. Nothing could hurt me now.

  I raised my hand and the weapon fell flat the ground. Twisting my hand, the Shadow flew into the air, his throat closing up like I was freaking Darth Vader or something. The great Shadow was about to become nothing more than just another fallen boss. His Energy bar plunged down to almost nothing from the incalculable levels it had begun as, just as mine had been moments before. It was about to deplete entirely, leaving him a flickering mess of death.

  Still, at the cusp of victory, I sensed, my perceptions stretching out over infinity, that something was terribly, horribly wrong. I tensed my hand, wanting to finish off the bastard but couldn't.

  Even with all that Power and Insight, I didn’t know that it was already too late. To my right, spaced between the Shadow and me, a portal opened. It was bright and large, and it spun like the hands of a clock, ripples moving quickly. I felt the pull of it instantly, and not some kind of beautiful, serene pull. This was no lullaby, helping me Zen out and putting me to sleep. The pull I felt was hard and sharp. It was instant and violent.

  That pull was directed right at me. I fell flat on my face, pulled backward by my heels. Energy still crackled inside of me and I still felt the Power of the Principalities swirling around inside of me. I couldn’t access it though because something about the portal was rendering it useless.

  As I slid backward across the ground, all my attention went to clawing at the temple floor, trying and failing to keep myself from being drawn closer to the portal.

  “Did you think I’d come into this without a failsafe?” the Shadow asked, rubbing his throat and walking toward me. “Did you really think I was going to lay the pieces out in front of you without having a plan?” He shook his head. “I was always two steps ahead of you, Jack. Even as kids, you were always playing catch up.”

  What was he talking about? Who lived behind that avatar?

  “The Power of the Principalities can’t reside in one person, not even a child of Earth. It has to be split, so I let you take as much as you wanted, knowing exactly what you’d do.” He laughed loudly. “Do you ever wonder why the Principalities were always so damned careful with everything? I did, and I found out. It’s because this realm won’t allow them to act too recklessly. Sure, the power allows one to shape the world, but it has to be done in a certain way. The power can’t just be flared up and used so vulgarly. When that happens, the world itself kicks into gear. It does what it has to do to protect itself.”

  “You- you …” I muttere
d, being pulled closer to the portal.

  “Threw you into the angels’ blood on purpose? Tricked you into making an ass of yourself? Gave you just enough power to flip the great natural switch of this place? Completely and totally outsmarted you? The answer to all those questions is yes.” He shook his head as I felt the portal at my feet. It was sucking me in. He had tricked me. This was all an elaborate ruse.

  I screamed.

  “Don’t bother with the theatrics. They won’t help you. You used the Power of the Principalities in a way that makes this world think you’re a threat to it, you broke the balance of power, and now it’s banishing you.”

  “I … I’m going home?” I asked, feeling a pang of guilt and hurt about Ori, Hecate, and the people of KOH, but still feeling hopeful about seeing my family again.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he shot back as my lower half was eaten by the portal. I felt heat. I felt pain. I felt hopelessness. “KOH is all about balance. You’re in the Upper Level now, where those who wisely use their power reside. Those who don’t use it wisely, they go somewhere else entirely.”

  “You bastard!” I screamed.

  “You can’t have Heaven without Hell, Jack,” he grinned. “Have fun down there.”

  And then the portal sucked me in.

  Quest “Hero of the Principalities’”failed!

  Objective failed: The Principalities are dead, and the Shadow now has access to their power!

  25

  I woke with a start, heat and noise surrounding me and jostling me from a sleep that may have lasted seconds or may have lasted days. There was no way I could tell in this weird ass place.