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

“[DUEL]”

The spell forced the orc to turn its body midair, bringing its sword with it, saving Noah’s life. Its body was still heading for Noah though, but now that its aura sword was facing away from him, giving him a much-needed moment of respite, Noah had an idea. He hurriedly pumped half his remaining mana into the jets of air slowing his fall, briefly allowing him to defy gravity and evade what could have been a multiple broken bones scenario.

The orc continued on its trajectory away from them, giving Noah and Mark time to regroup and plan for when it came back. They looked at each other and said practically at the same time. “Pit?” They smiled evilly as Noah rushed to compact the dirt in front of them while still keeping a thin layer on top.

A moment later, obviously angry and with a fixed aura shield around it, the orc ran toward them, leaving deep craters with each step. But as it got closer, it slowed down and looked at the area where the pit was.

“It knows! Do it Mark!”

“[Duel]!”

But its aura shield just glowed and dimmed right after, making it angrier. It threw its sword away, opting to fight barehanded with a brighter than before red glow surrounding its body. The orc then sprung into action and leaped over the pit, heading straight for them. Mark moved to intercept it, triggering his shield’s enchantment while also recasting his various buffs.

Noah, on the other hand, drank the last of their mana potions and started pumping five hundred mana each into four identical spears.

“I need you to hold it in place as soon as possible!”

Mark didn’t reply, as he was only a few feet away from the orc. He raised his shield and met its charge with his own. The orc put its right shoulder forward and made contact with the shield. To his dismay, all his efforts didn’t manage to put a stop to the orc’s charge. He was pushed back a couple dozen feet when the orc grabbed his shield and threw it away. He cursed and, as a last-ditch attempt, hurriedly activated the enchantment on his sword, enlarging it and coating it in mana, and stabbed at the orc’s chest.

CRACK

It managed to cause cracks at the point of impact and went on to hit bone, which was unfortunately where it stopped. The orc’s eyes glazed over and was replaced with a red glow. Seeing this, Mark rushed to pull the sword out, but before he could, it punched him in the gut and knocked the wind right out of him, causing him to stagger back. Without giving him a chance to breathe, it rushed at him again and knocked him down.

It then got on top of him and began pummeling his head into the ground. Suddenly, a spear of mana pierced its chest where the sword that had shrunk was and still clung to its flesh. It had hit and fractured bone, causing a flood of pain to momentarily snap it out of its berserk state. In that brief moment of clarity, it tried to pull the spear out, but that only resulted in its aura growing dimmer. This plunged it deeper into its berserk state and raised its arms high into the air, but before it could bring them down on Mark, another spear arrived right behind the last one, hammering it in deeper.

It roared and threw caution to the wind, continuing to strike Mark into the ground, who, at this point, was already unconscious. But then another spear came and pushed the first spear all the way through its body, causing the aura around it to break into pieces like glass. The orc’s bashing slowed down to a crawl but still continued as Mark’s head, though still intact, was fully covered in blood.

With its aura now gone and unable to block magic, Noah conjured a thick earth spike and pushed the orc off of Mark. Then, for good measure, he aimed at its head and conjured an explosive bullet, penetrating its skull and blowing its brain to bits.

He hurriedly ran to Mark, kneeled down next to him and cast [Heal] and [Mend Wounds] repeatedly, flooding him with healing mana and visibly closing all his wounds. A moment later, Mark suddenly sat up and coughed up blood. “That was NOT fun.” He said.

Suddenly, before they could celebrate their win, a crushing pressure descended upon the area, forcing them to collapse to the ground. Then, a voice came from everywhere all at once.

“Hooo? Interesting, you actually managed to win against one of my champion candidates.” 

The disembodied voice chuckled. “I did say we would meet again soon, my little human friends. Hmmm.” The voice hummed in thought. “How would you both like to replace that piece of trash you defeated and become my champions?”

“And become an orc, fuck off! We ain’t buying what you’re selling” Noah shouted through gritted teeth.

“Yeah, fuck off!”

“HAHAHA. Humans are truly interesting. Even when you’re lying on the ground and at the mercy of your betters, you are still defiant.” The pressure suddenly increased, taking the air out of the two humans on the ground. “But defiance without power is nothing but pure bluster.” Vakgar intensified the pressure on Noah and Mark, wanting to crush them into paste. But before he could, he paused and screamed in agony.

“…FUCKING TROUBLESOME SYSTEM! I just wanted to teach these puny mortals some manners by killing them!” A cry of agony once again escaped the disembodied voice of Vakgar. “This is all because of you! I’ll show you what happens when you defy ME”

Mana from all around coalesced on the corpse of Onog the champion candidate. Then, it slowly got up and cracked its neck, ready to fight again.

“Fuck.”

“Crap.”

“This might be a good time to do something system!”

A tear in space materialized beside the undead Onog, and a bronze-colored floating pyramid with a crystal tip came out.

<Undead threat detected… Switching to holy-aspect mana…>

After its robotic voice said that, the crystal at its tip glowed and a golden laser beam shot out at Onog, vaporizing it before it could even do anything with its second life.

“You mortals and your system.” Vakgar snorted. “We’ll see how long you’ll be protected by this system of yours soon enough.”

After saying that, the pressure forcing Noah and Mark to lie down vanished and they could finally stand up again. They patted themselves off of the dirt that got on their clothes and looked at the sentinel.

“Ummm… Thanks mr. sentinel, sir?” Noah said

<Scanning… Earth-human front runners Noah Blake and Mark Miller detected… Contacting administrator 1038…>

“Testing, testing. Noah, do you hear me?” The tip of the pyramid started pulsing with every word from the unusually gentle voice.

“Uh… Yes?”

“Ah good. Listen up, as I don’t have much time. Those Old Gods are cooking something up and we don’t know what it is. Which is bad, REAL bad. So, you need to reach tier two before whatever they’re planning comes to fruition. We can’t afford to find a different owner for that artifact now. It already took a thousand years for that artifact to find you and with everything that’s been happening, we just don’t have the time. We need that artifact up and running ASAP, so no pressure! Crap, almost out of time. What else to say, hmmm. Oh yeah, don’t throw that artifact at some random invaders or beasts. It’s a support artifact, got it? You’re smart enough to figure it…”

The pyramid’s crystal tip went dim as the administrator was cut off mid-sentence. Noah stood there, still slack-jawed at what just happened. “What even was that?” He asked the air indignantly. Of course, there was no one to answer him except an equally confused Mark beside him.

Mark put his hand on his cousin’s shoulder and said. “Who knows man, this is obviously way above our pay grade. What I do know is that we need to get you to tier two FAST.”

“Yeah, I guess so. Still… wonder why he couldn’t just stay and explain everything since he’s an administrator. Aren’t they usually the people at the top of the system food chain in novels?”

Before Mark could reply, they were teleported out of the dungeon. They looked around and saw that it was already nighttime. Noah looked at the notifications in front of him and allocated the reward levels to his main class which brought him to level seventy-five. “Just twenty-five levels to go till tier two.” He thought.

“Let’s get back to camp. Lily is probably worried by now.” Mark said.

“Yeah, let’s go.”

---

A few minutes later, they arrived at their camp to the smell of meat cooking. They saw Lily surrounded by the now much bigger Emiri and the piglets in front of a magic stove that was almost perfect for her height, with matching pans and other tools for cooking. Seeing this, Noah couldn’t help but think that the circumstances were forcing her to grow up too fast. “Will a time come when she will get to be a kid again?” He sighed at the thought, already knowing the answer to that question.

Noah shook his head and put on a smile as they walked in to the camp zone marked by a thin light barrier. It was from the tier one camping gear they got from the shop which kept beasts of the same tier away. The moment they crossed the threshold, Lily turned her head toward them in alarm, but then relaxed as soon as she recognized them.

Lily excitedly ran up to them and asked expectantly. “How’d your delve go?”

Knowing that it was just her way of telling them to ask her instead, Noah played along and said. “Oh, you know, the usual. Killed some orcs, killed an orc champion and then some god interfered and resurrected the dead champion. Then a pyramid thing killed the undead champion, and we spoke to what was apparently a system admin. The usual apocalypse stuff, you know? How about you?”

Lily’s eyes went wide as she struggled to process what Noah said. “Wha?!” she exclaimed in confusion and tilted her head to the right.

“My delve went great! But don’t change the subject big brother! What pyramid and what system admin are you talking about?!”

“Let’s talk about that while we eat. I’m starving.” Mark said as he walked over to the magic stove.

“Right!” Lily said as she remembered that she was cooking.

They got together near the stove as Noah brought out a table and some chairs from his artifact. Mark then sliced up the fish that Lily had cooked already and served a piece each for them.

Noah cleared his throat and said. “So, as I was saying earlier, we talked to an admin, or more like, he spoke to us through that pyramid thing the system called a sentinel. It pretty much just told me to get to tier two fast because some bad stuff is going to happen.” He looked at his map and said. “We’ve mapped out the surrounding ten kilo… Wtf?” On his newly upgraded map, Noah saw that there was a moving green dot that was heading roughly in their direction, un-fogging the map as it went. It was being chased by a couple of blood red dots, which could only mean a human was being chased by invaders, since Talal and Aurora went the opposite direction from them.

Noah looked at Mark and said. “Drop the fish and let’s go on a rescue mission!”

Mark looked at the delectable fish on his plate and sighed. “Okay okay, let’s make this quick.”