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

their feet, and soon the noise was so loud that I wanted to cover my ears. I leaned down to Kerry:

“Maybe I’d better eat in my room?” I asked.

“Ignore them!” she shouted. “They can’t aggro on you, this is a peaceful zone!”

“They said the same about the Cursed Chasm…”

The people who came in after me joined in with the racket. I walked behind the droid, focusing on what it was putting on my tray. The noise behind me grew into a roaring thunder, as if the assistants, waiters and cooks had joined in. The tray-bearing droids started rattling with the noise.

“Done,” the robot informed me. “Please take a seat. I will follow you.”

Kerry and I headed for the only unoccupied table,

but we weren’t fast enough. A thin man with the game nickname Evilfort, standing by the entrance, rushed to the table first and sat at a seat. There were four free seats left.

The noise in the hall subsided. Everyone looked at me and waited to see what I would do.

“This table’s taken!” Evilfort said, his smile wide.

“You don’t even have any food,” I said, moving my plates from the tray onto the table.

“I said it’s taken!” he shouted, pointing behind me. A group of contestants advanced from the entrance. “The five of us are in the same clan! We’re the Readers! Champions of the team tournament for speed spellreading! Takes place in the Pirate Bay!”

“Yeah, this is our table,” JustGoofy the mage said. “Gingrin, Levius and Coover are over there. Move!”

“Leave it, let him sit,” Coover said as he approached. “Maybe he’ll tell us how to bring him down tomorrow.”

“The hell with that!” Levius argued. “Get gone, Sheppard!”

“Screw you guys!” Kerry flared up. “Let’s go, Alex!”

My helper exchanged whispers with some waiters and my food was taken to another table. A table with only one chair.

“What about you?” I asked in confusion.

“These dinners are for contestants only,” Kerry answered. “Don’t worry, I had a bite to eat. Go on, dig in!”

Feeling the pressure of angry eyes, I started wolfing down my dinner. The droid served me some roast meat and a heap of vegetables. There were technically several dishes on the table, but it was all vegetables, salad and meat. I ate with my head bowed over the table and no doubt in my mind that I was being discussed, and no doubt abused left and right. But I managed to hold back and not show any concern. And that was easily done, as if I had a skill to place a forcefield around me and cut myself off from the atmosphere of hate. The Nether taught me that.

Kerry went away somewhere, so I finished eating alone, then drank some cold fermented tea as I waited for the vote.

Finally, Guy Barron Octius appeared. Less dramatically than last time, but still with flair. The light in the hall went out and holographic candles lit up and started floating through the air. A massive holocube flashed into motion beneath the ceiling, projecting a perfect three-dimensional image to all angles of view.

“Good evening, contestants!” Octius greeted us. “The first day of the Demonic Games brought us many surprises. Let’s watch the most memorable moments alongside our viewers!”

My scenes weren’t the only ones to make the cut. The holocube showed Quetzal and Marcus’s raid easily taking down the first boss. I’d seen the corpse of Cerberus, the huge hellish three-headed dog, in person, but it was fun to see him in battle. The boss regenerated quickly, and at the end it summoned a pack of Hellhounds, nearly wiping the raid. But Quetzal showed the advantage of his Destroyer class, striking the earth with a fist and stunning the pack, then splitting the skull of the nearest hound. At the point of the strike, space twisted and broke and the distortion passed through in a chain to the other hounds.

“A deadly ability!” Octius spluttered in amazement.

I watched with great interest, studying my foes, demons and players alike.

The second boss, Devilment, looked like a stunted Diablo, like a high demon in miniature. Near the end of the battle he transformed, grew into an eighteen-foot monster and would have crushed the raid if it weren’t for the veterans from Modus and Travelers.

The tenth boss, Alpha Ryukitsu, fell ingloriously at the hands of Quetzal and Marcus — the champion and the finalist of the Adult Arena apparently had perks stronger than Junior Gladiator. I saw Tissa and Infect in their raid. Maybe they were taken in for their Junior Gladiator bonuses.

The titan destroyer, already bound in plate armor, didn’t bother moving in on level ten — he led his group straight down to the eleventh boss instead, Hellbunny. A little joke from the game designers: the tiny rabbit with its huge mouth and burning eyes sighted on dark knight Caville, jumped at him, sank its teethe into his throat and started ragging its prey like a bulldog. That enemy down, the bunny jumped at light priest Inchito, then de-throated a few more. Chaos descended: the rest of the raid tried to beat the rabbit off their allies, but missed the nimble boss, hitting their own and making the monster’s job easier as it worked its jaws through the raid. A sense of deja vu hit me.

Then things got even messier; Hellfish’s raid came along and attacked the Quetzal-Marcus raid from behind. Quetzal and his allies fell, and the second group finished off the bunny.

“It is clear that Hellfish, right hand of Horvac from the Travelers, has taken a firm grasp on leadership,” Guy Barron said. “Incredibly, although he was the only member of his clan there, he still took the lead of a group formed mainly from Modus! Remember, Modus are the Travelers’ fiercest foes! But back to Quetzal and Marcus’s group…”

After returning from the graveyard, Quetzal’s