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

“Kingu,” I lied.

“Liar…” the demon grumbled in displeasure. “Behemoth, then? Never mind. I will find out when I taste your flesh. Everything that you know will pass to me… Still, though…” An already familiar squelching noise floated out of the gap. “The Sleepers have marked you! Your soul must not be as weak as it seems from here… Scyth!”

The demon of floor 666 had apparently eaten enough souls to become stronger, mightier. The two scaly arms of Abaddon, whose curse I had carried yesterday, shot out of the gate at the same time and covered the Aegis. It was like I was underground, in darkness. Heat emanated from the demon’s hands and they pulsed with a barely visible reddish light. Their monstrous black nails flashed metallically, pressing into the shield and raking across it.

Seriously? There was nothing I could do but stay there beneath the dome. Now there was no way I could escape!

“Hey, Abaddon! How about you pull your hands away? I’ll take my chance to fly away, and you’ll get yours to eat me!”

“The self-confidence of a dung beetle!” the demon laughed. His voice was dulled beneath the dome and the huge hands covering it. “Do you think the Aegis will protect you? Its invincibility is greatly exaggerated, mortal! By those for whom a moment in a thousand years is an eternity!”

“Sure…” I murmured. “And you don’t even exist! You’re just the product of the sick imagination of game designers!”

This demon was an idiot after all. What was he going to do, argue with the game mechanics?

Crack! I suddenly heard above my head. What the..?! A tiny break ran across the surface of the forcefield dome, then closed up again.

I read the shield’s description and swore.

Aegis

You are protected by an Aegis, a perfect shield that absorbs all but demonic damage. The Aegis does not expire, but the shield will disappear if you move beyond its edge!

Durability: 99.96%.

That part about the demonic damage had only just appeared! It definitely wasn’t there yesterday! Damn… I took a couple of deep breaths in and out, cleared my mind. It was time to start calculating.

The durability numbers had changed: 99.95%. It took five to six seconds to drop by one hundredth of a percent. That meant that Abaddon would take the Aegis down to below half health by the end of the day. But what then?

Wait! The demon, or rather his arms, were within strike range! The boss was at least level 666! I could level up Unarmed Combat!

Smack… My fist got stuck in the thick invisible jelly of the dome. The idea fell flat along with my excitement as soon as I tried to strike with Hammerfist. Apparently, the Aegis worked in both directions. I swore in disappointment, imagining the imba character I could have made if it had worked.

I’d have to return to my initial plan: increase my total spirit by leveling up Meditation. The shield would last a day, but tomorrow… There was nothing left to do but level up spirit and try to escape tomorrow.

I sat down in lotus pose, half-closed my eyes, listened to myself, took a deep breath in and out, then another, and another, until my inner sight saw the core and channels of my spirit.

The scratching claws, the waves of pulsating heat, the fiery shimmer emanating from those demonic hands… I felt like a captive on a prison shuttle with the alarm activated. Not the best environment to meditate in, but the sounds, light and temperature changed rhythmically, and I fell into a trance fairly quickly. The more time I spent in that condition, the less I noticed what was going on around me. My interface paled, then disappeared entirely. My heartbeat slowed even in my real body. At some point, I stopped feeling the heat, seeing the shimmer… it was as if my conscious mind dissolved.

For a fraction of a second, one of the demon’s hands disappeared, grabbing a screeching contestant as they fell, then came back to cover up the dome again. For an instant thought I saw fiery lava pouring from the poor soul’s body, but I didn’t get distracted and look closer.

That was the only thing that nearly interrupted my trance. The demon no longer spoke to me, and I didn’t object. And that’s how I spent the rest of the day, meditating and watching the flows of spirit along the broadening channels of my soul. The core within me also seemed to have grown. My trance was interrupted when a message popped up that I couldn’t ignore:

Contestant! The fourth day of the Demonic Games nears its end!

To avoid character death, it is recommended that you leave enemy territory.

Leaving Cursed Chasm in: 09:59… 09:58…

The first thing I checked was the condition of the Aegis, still pressed beneath the demon’s claws. The shield was holding, but its durability was only a little above 30% — lower than I’d hoped.

But the logs had a pleasant surprise for me. It looked like uninterrupted meditation had a compounding effect!

The last line of skill logs showed:

Meditation level increased: +1. Current level: 15.

By meditating, you now speed up your spirit restoration by 40%.

Spirit: +150. Total: 1,290.

Eleven seconds of Clarity! Another ten points of spirit and it would be twelve! Stay calm, Alex, stay calm… Thrill and excitement surged through me, demanding immediate action. I looked closer at the durability numbers for Aegis — now Abaddon was removing not 0.01%, but twice that. And that begged the question: would the demon continue to break the dome after I logged out? If so, then tomorrow, Scyth would die in the first few seconds.

I had just under ten minutes to solve this tortuous dilemma: to do nothing and