Path of Dragons - A LitRPG Apocalypse (BOOK TWO ON KINDLE SEPT. 2)

Green, silver, and gold armor glinted in the ambient light as column after column of disciplined soldiers descended the mountain. They filled the pass, snaking along for nearly a mile.

Benedict had seen armies before. He had even fought a few – particularly the war elf army that had attempted to invade his territory. With enough summoned creatures, he could stand toe to toe with any force.

And yet, when he looked upon the forces of Ithalon, he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of fear. The sheer numbers they could bring to bear made up for part of his dread, but the bulk of his anxiety came from the eight figures who’d stood at the head of Ithalon’s government for hundreds of years.

Eight demi-gods at the peak of their powers.

All M’yakein could muster to fight them were two people. Certainly, Elijah was the lynchpin upon which their entire strategy depended, but Benedict’s summoned forces would also play a significant role. Less important were the thousand or so other fighters waiting in the wings to lance in if everything went wrong.

Until then, it was just Benedict and Elijah.

And Elijah had already disappeared, leaving Benedict to feel like he was standing all alone against a force he could never hope to match.

He wasn’t ashamed to say that he was afraid. After his childhood – and the years leading up to Earth’s transformation – he was intimately familiar with fear. Normally, it presented as a formless dread hanging over him. Rationally, he knew it came from the mere echo of his father’s memory, but that didn’t make it any less impactful.

Now, it was more solid. The origin was obvious. And to a degree, Benedict found that comforting.

So too did his preparations contribute to that feeling. He was as ready as he could manage. The essences of a thousand monsters filled his reservoir. The product of hundreds of other sacrifices hung off his shoulders like an ephemeral cloak made of crimson fog.

He could feel the power coursing through him, begging to be used. Soon, he would do just that and summon an army of his own. The only reason he hadn’t already opened the portal and dragged them into his reality was because of the limited duration. He needed to wait until the very last second so he could get the most out of his summoned force.

Until then, he stood alone.

Nearby, the permanent ritual circle stood. It was no more than a channel for his power – a spell writ large in solid reality – but even so, the stones pulsed with subtle energy. They pulled against their surroundings, draining a trickle of ethera from the scrubby plants.

So far, Elijah hadn’t had a chance to fully terraform the area, so it featured only sparse vegetation. Not like the inner circles embedded within the continent.

That was part of the reason Elijah had chosen it for the site of the upcoming battle. A good decision, because when everything was said and done, nothing would remain standing.

Not if things went right. And certainly not if the plan went awry.

Somewhere down below were Treebie’s roots. Why Elijah had given such a powerful entity such a ridiculous name was a mystery. Or given the man’s personality, perhaps not as inexplicable as Benedict might have wanted to believe.

Whatever the case, they were down there, and within them rested the key to saving the entire planet. That was worth protecting.

And Benedict knew enough about the Synod to recognize that they wouldn’t allow Treebie to exist. At best, they would corral the tree and use him for their own benefit. At worst, they would try to harvest him so they could distill his essence into a usable form.

Because at their core, the Synod didn’t care about Gorveth or its people. They only cared for themselves.

And for that, they needed to die.

Those thoughts and many more rushed through Benedict’s mind as the enemy army drew closer. Once they were a little more than three miles away, Elijah struck.

Benedict didn’t actually see his attack. Rather, he only saw the resulting chaos. The neat columns erupted into motion as they attempted to shift into defensive formations. But Benedict knew from experience just how difficult Elijah was to pin down – especially when he was in his scourgedrake form.

Peering closer, Benedict caught a few glimpses of green-and-black scales, but nothing more.

Thousands of soldiers turned inward to meet the threat he posed.

And that’s when Benedict started to cast.

Dense flows of ethera and vitality rushed out of him and into the circle he’d built. The runes upon the stones lit up, the resulting illumination coalescing into free-floating symbols of red light. They flashed, then began to rotate as the energy within the conjured crystal reservoir joined the flow.

Faster and faster, they spun, sending a column of light to pierce the sky. Through it all, Benedict forced the conduits of his soul to expand. Elijah had built his own soul based on anatomical principles and the structure of a tree. That would never have worked for Benedict. Instead, his soul was a collection of interlocked ritual circles that he’d built to form an overall structure that amounted to more than the sum of its parts.

Those circles spun in time with the one before him, as the apertures of his mind – also rings of glyphs – flooded him with ethera. Meanwhile, his core, which took the form of a black portal that led to nowhere he could discern, drank it all before spitting out tightly controlled bands of energy that soon joined the streams feeding into his cast ritual.

His spell was, unfortunately, no quick endeavor. It also didn’t escape notice, as Benedict found when he felt a dagger ram into his back. It sliced neatly through his flesh, shattering his ribs and liquifying his liver.

But that wasn’t the worst of it.

After all, his attacker was a demi-god. Indeed, he’d been targeted by Vaedren himself. The Assassin King. A man who, according to Zek, was famous for his lethality even before he’d taken his place as a member of the Luminarch Synod.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

That Benedict wasn’t immediately killed was the result of a single ability.