The Demonic Games (Disgardium Book #7): LitRPG Series, Dan Sugralinov [the read aloud family TXT] 📗

a sofa, a chair, a shower room and a closet. The refrigerator brimmed with snacks and drinks. If I wanted to, I could live here without risking any contact with the other contestants. I would have happily done that, but billions were watching. I couldn’t show cowardice. Like Uncle Nick said, you have to look your problems in the eye, not hide from them.

Soon a Snowstorm engineer appeared and helped me into the capsule, almost identical to the one I got as a reward for hitting my first maximum Threat level, but it was the newest version: the Altera Vita II. Kerry tactfully left the room and I got undressed and climbed inside.

“Ready?” the engineer asked, and I gave him a thumbs-up. “The first immersion for each contestant can only be initiated externally.” He looked at his watch. “To avoid… Three! Two! One! Starting!”

Intragel filled the capsule instantly. It just sprayed in from everywhere, there was a click, and suddenly I was in an endless space filled with bright light. Others began to appear in black circles around me — in their Dis bodies, but with ordinary basic clothing with variations for class and gender.

“Greetings, contestants!” came a thunderous voice from above.

Guy Barron Octius appeared before us, at least eighteen feet tall so that everyone could see him. Waving his hand, he spoke in a relaxed manner:

“Alright, folks! You know the most important thing about the Games, and if you don’t, then it sucks to be you! You should have read the materials we handed out instead of partying all night.”

“Can’t I just sleep it off in the tavern?” an elf girl whined. I recognized her as Anna. She was even more beautiful here than in real life. “There’s a tavern somewhere, right?”

“Do as you wish,” Octius waved a hand amid laughter and complaining from the rest. “But I’m about to hold the traditional briefing before your first immersion into the Cursed Chasm. As you know, we change the mechanics a little each year, so that those who participated before don’t have an advantage over the rest. I don’t mean you, Joseph, although experience doesn’t seem to help you at all.”

The little gnome Meister bowed with a grin.

Octius unfolded a piece of parchment and read:

“The rules of the Demonic Games are unchanged. All begin anew, but they keep their skills and abilities, both from their class and those obtained through other means, with the exception of divine abilities, which are unavailable in the Cursed Chasm. However! With your skills there is one ‘but,’ which I will voice later.”

A bird’s-eye view of a village materialized beneath our feet. The camera suddenly dropped down and focused on a crow picking an eye from a corpse. My heart dropped into my heels from the suddenness of it. Many others reeled and some even fell to the floor.

Paying no attention to the contestants’ reactions, the gamesmaster continued:

“The Cursed Chasm is a place in the northern Commonwealth. Along with its neighboring territories, it is cut off from the rest of the world and from Disgardium. Put simply, it is stuck between Dis and the Underworld. There has been only one way to get there since the days when the fell hooves of demons corrupted the land! Highborn elves keep the demonic knowledge, and once a year, they can send the spirits of the worthiest players to the Cursed Chasm to determine who among them is the best! The one who will join the ranks of the Demon Fighters! The losers will forever lose a portion of their life force to the champion!”

I remembered the words I read in History of the Demonic Games — “Champions of the Demonic Games make the best tanks. Mogwai is the most memorable example.”

“The Games are not limited by time until Eynyon’s Gong strikes,” Octius continued. “And strike it will not until the final top 10% of surviving contestants has been determined! From that moment, the chance that Eynyon’s Gong will strike will increase significantly and will grow with each passing day.”

“I just hope I survive that long!” Meister the gnome whined dreamily.

“Yeah, getting into the top 10% would be awesome!” someone agreed with him. “And the bonuses…”

“There are two main changes!” Octius interrupted him, raising a finger. “The first: you start the Games with the Amnesia debuff. This is the very ‘but’ that I mentioned before. Everyone starts from absolute zero, with no skills whatsoever! Congratulations, you’ve forgotten them!”

A buzz spread among the contestants. Guy Barron chuckled, snapped his fingers and a Seal of Silence descended on us.

“I wasn’t the one who came up with it! Our marketers are always looking for ways to add some variety to the event, to make it even more fun for the audience. Last year, many complained that the Games were imbalanced; although all were made equal, the combat classes leveled up faster thanks to their skills, which made the game less interesting to watch. Yes, yes, I know. This isn’t what you prepared for… Surprise!” Octius screwed up his face, then smiled. “But there’s good news: your first loot is guaranteed to be a Memory Scroll, which will restore your lost skills. As usual, they will be locked for now.”

Thinking for a moment, he clicked his fingers again. The Seal of Silence lifted and Meister was the first to realize it:

“What if I can’t kill anyone? What if they kill me?”

“Then you will be considered to have touched the astral plane in the space between worlds, and thus returned your memory,” Octius chuckled. “Alright, that’s enough of that. The second innovation concerns the structure of the Pitfall. Though previously the level bosses defended the passageway to the lower tiers, now…” Octius spread his hands. “Our designers have reviewed that situation. And so, ground level is considered level zero. Starting there, the Pitfall is split into 666 levels. Each