A World in the Palm of my Hands: A LitRPG Apocalypse

“Crap.”

Noah looked around them and cursed. He activated his [Analyze] skill and cursed some more.

 

 

 

Noah raised an eyebrow at the system as he received the mission. “Wonder why it didn’t give me that mission before the fight…” He looked to Mark and their eyes met and he nodded. “Looks like he got the mission, too.” He then looked at the others and noticed that they were just looking around them, scared shitless.

Looking at the rewards puzzled him, though. It was the first time that he saw a rarity beside the tier for a weapon, aside from his artifact, of course. “Maybe the shop only has the most basic equipment of each tier?” He thought, but then remembered that they were surrounded so he shook his head and focused.

There were thirteen royal guards and one massive queen around them. Five spiders were on the smaller side, the size of large dogs, and radiated thick earth attuned mana, while the rest of them were just a bit larger than cows with massive fangs and legs that looked like spears. And of course, who could forget the minivan sized queen? Venom dripped from its fangs and onto the ground, where it released a hiss on contact.

“Guess I found the culprits behind the earth magic.” He thought as he eyed the smaller mages and at the same time, cast ice armor on all of them. “Would have preferred stone armor, but that’s definitely a bad idea with those mages around.”

He turned his head to Mark and said. “Take out the smaller ones first. They’re earth mages of some kind and will be a bit troublesome if left unattended.”

“Got it.” He replied as he activated [Root Walk] and rushed to meet the closest mage head on. But before he could get within a meter of it, one guard moved fast despite its massive size and stopped him.

The guard stabbed at him with its two front legs, which he evaded fairly easily. He was caught off guard though, when he was hit by a fireball that was thankfully stopped by the ice armor. “Shit, they’re not just earth mages!” He shouted in a bit of a panic as steam surrounded him.

Noah looked at the spider mages again and discovered that they were now surrounded by fire mana, which quickly switched back to earth mana as they attempted to take control of the surrounding earth. Noah wouldn’t let them, of course. So he activated [Parallel Thinking] and dedicated half his mind to stopping them and the other half to conjuring several explosive spears pointed at the mages.

“I need to finish this fast. This skill takes a huge toll on my mind.” He thought.

He figured that with how the guards reacted to Mark, they’d definitely end up getting in the way of his spears.

“Get ready to take out those mages!” He shouted as he threw the spears at them all at the same time.

And just as he predicted, the guards used their bodies as shields for the mages and got in the way of the spears. Noah snapped his fingers just when the spears pierced the guards and blew them into smithereens.

Mark saw this and immediately disengaged from the guard, then rushed forward to kill the mages. But he was blocked again, this time by two guards, one in front and one behind him. He quickly pushed one back with his shield and thrust his sword into the mouth of the one in front of him.

While the guards kept Mark busy, the queen screeched and the spider mages scurried to her side. She glowed with mana and a poison mist materialized around her body that quickly expanded to encompass her and the mages.

Noah felt the control of the spider mages on the surrounding earth weaken as he sensed that three of them switched to poison mana. He got a bad feeling and fully concentrated on manipulating the earth. He put up a wall between them and the queen just in time to block multiple flaming poison arrows.

“Mama!”

Suddenly, a scream sounded from behind him. He looked back and saw that one guard had snuck up behind them and had stabbed Emeri in the abdomen with one of its legs. Rage overcame Noah as he used half his mind and conjured an explosive spear, which he immediately threw at the guard. Without so much as a struggle, the sneaky guard died.

Noah and Lily hurriedly ran to Emeri’s side and used their respective healing spells. The deep wound on her abdomen closed and mended at a rate visible to the naked eye. Her breathing stabilized after a few casts, and Noah finally turned to look at Mark.

He was busy blocking the repeated poison and fire arrows being shot at them. One look at his shield and ice armor and Noah could see how high the damage of the projectiles was, no doubt all because of the tier two queen’s attacks.

Noah started gathering his mana and cast a wide area gust of wind in a bid to blow the poison mist away. But the moment the wind touched the mist, it dispersed. It was as if the mist was a solid object that the wind couldn’t penetrate. He looked at his mana and noted that he only had a third left. Gritting his teeth, he raised his staff and activated the embedded spell [Magic Missile] for the first time.

He activated the spell repeatedly to try to buy time for his mana to regenerate, but because it was just a common rarity staff and only had a hundred mana, it could only handle around twenty casts. The only reason that it was considered a tier two item after all was because it added one level each to two different talents.

Once the twenty casts of the spell were spent though, Noah had only recovered a bit over three hundred mana. “Thankfully, it did help me confirm something.” He thought as he eyed the poison mist. It had now shrunk by a few centimeters. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

“My shield can’t take much more of this!” Mark shouted as he kept on blocking the projectiles being shot in their direction.

“Hold on! I’ll test out a few spells first!” Noah replied.

So, he did. He cast basic bullet spells of every element that he had access to. Fire, water, earth, air, ice, stone and even lightning, which surprisingly just danced around inside the cloud of poison. Out of everything, though, fire had the biggest effect, but it still left much to be desired.

This gave him an idea. He’d been wanting to try it out ever since he thought of it, but never really had the time. They’d been busy delving dungeons, traveling, and all the while, he kept on working on mana etching, which was still a work in progress.

“It’ll probably be a while until I can get that flying car up and running.” He sighed, then shook his head. “Focus.”

He looked at the poison mist that was now gathering a massive amount of mana. “Looks like the queen is up to something.” So, he hurriedly conjured a ball of stone and heated it up. Hotter and hotter until it melted. He manipulated his mana to keep the shape of a ball, though, and he got a notification.

 

He did a fist pump and immediately sent the lava ball towards the poison mist. As it made contact, it released a hiss and the mist visibly condensed around the ball, trying to snuff it out. And it did, in exchange for a few more centimeters of mist.

Noah saw the success of one lava ball, so he cast the spell again above the mist, but this time, with a few hundred mana pumped into it. Once he was done, he dropped the massive ball of molten rock on to the mist and smiled. “I love magic.”

While he was distractedly looking in awe at his creation, the poison mist coalesced into a spear and the spiders immediately scattered.

“Of course, they’re not just going to stand there and wait for a fucking ball of lava to drop on them! Fucking stupid!”

The poison spear launched in his direction as he rushed to put earthen walls between it and them. Mark ran behind one of the walls and enlarged his shield, ready to cast his spell [Parry].

Unfortunately, with the maximum power of a tier two lifeform behind it, the spear was too strong to parry and pierced through the shield and passed through Mark’s stomach. It continued on and skewered Noah even as he futilely raised his arms in defense.

“Shit.”

“Big brother!” Lily ran to his side and was about to try to pull the poison spear out, but Noah stopped her.

“Don’t! You’ll get poisoned! Don’t worry about me, I’ll live.” He said through gritted teeth. “Focus on defense and killing the mages while they’re focused on Mark.”

He turned his head in Mark’s direction and stared, wide eyed, as he kneeled on the ground glowing repeatedly in a green light as he cast his healing spell over and over. Noah couldn’t afford to worry about his cousin, though, as he felt a pulse come from the spear. The poison was entering his body. He hissed from the pain and wished that there was a pain resistance skill of some sort, but he could only wish. Lucky for him, though, the regeneration stat also affected his body and not just his mana.

PULSE

The poison continued to spread from his abdomen as he cast [Heal] on himself.

PULSE

His veins turned visibly purple at the area where flesh made contact with the spear. He cast [Heal] again.

PULSE

He soon realized that healing himself wouldn’t solve their problem. The spiders were still alive, after all.

He looked at Mark again and saw that he just got up, the hole in his body closed. “Thank goodness. He can take care of the mages, so I need to focus on something to kill that fucking queen.”

Noah glared at the queen and conjured an explosive spear with eighty percent of his remaining mana, not to mention all his hate for spiders. He then sent it to hover beside Mark before he closed his eyes and focused on healing himself.

Mark looked at the exploding spear floating beside him and held it in his hand, discarding the now beat up shield with a massive hole in its center. He turned his head towards the queen and raised his arm in a throwing position, aiming at its mouth. Activating [Root Walk] again at full power, he pretty much teleported a few meters from the queen and launched the spear with all his might.

The queen sensed the danger and immediately tried to get out of the way, but it was too late, the human too close. The spear broke her fangs apart, lodging deep into its sternum. It panicked and tried to use its front legs to pull the spear out. When that didn’t work, it desperately bit into the spear with fangs that dripped with venom, hoping to dissolve it.

BOOM

All it got for its efforts was an explosion in its mouth, not of flavor, but of stone shrapnel and violent fire that blew it to bits. Its back legs twitched one final time before it grew still.

Mark sighed in relief when he saw that and looked around to see where the remaining spiders were, only to see them lobbing spells at an earthen enclosure, no doubt put up by Noah. He tried to activate his movement spell again, but found that he’d used up most of his mana and stamina.

“Guess I’ll be running then.”