Aura Farming (Apocalypse LitRPG) [BOOK ONE COMPLETE]

John didn't stop running until he reached the bottom of the stairs. They'd turned around on themselves a few times, descending a surprisingly long way. That was the first sign something wasn't right. As he came down from his elated relief at ostensibly escaping death, he started to notice more.

Many Underground stations had little posters intermittently placed on the walls, showing various advertisements and political propaganda and charity campaigns and so on. After catching a hold of himself, he realised these were… nonsensical. It was like an AI impression of ads. The text was incomprehensible rubbish, not even English in some places. Sometimes it blurred together. The pictures were more subtly wrong, with human hands having too many fingers and faces falling into an uncanny effect. There was even an ad that showed Big Ben attached to the Tower of London just before he exited the corridor that led from the stair well to the main area of the station, where all the ticket gates divided the room, with a tunnel at the other end. Stairs led even further down.

Next, he found a timetable that showed what stations this one was connected to. It was probably the only poster he'd seen that was entirely comprehensible, but it only worsened his dread. None of the stations were real ones. They had that uncanny valley effect again, like when he used to play a football game back in the day that didn't have official licenses for the teams, so it used fake names that alluded to the real ones. The list had places like Tower Wharf, Welling Bridge, Knightpass, and so on. Stations that sounded like they could be real, but blatantly weren't if you were actually familiar with the city.

After that, he realised the air was too still, too quiet. That shouldn't have been unexpected, really, since it wasn't like the trains were still going to be running under these circumstances. So the absence of the displaced air whooshing through the tunnels or the lack of the clickety-clack of the trains going over the tracks wasn't notable.

He felt a bit more justified in being put off by the lack of any noise at all. Total silence. There should have been some kind of ambient sound down here, scheduled announcements and automated functions left behind by staff fleeing their posts in a panic. At this point, he wasn't really expecting it, though. He didn't know precisely what was going on here, but it was obvious something wasn't right.

The pièce de résistance was found hanging from the white-panelled ceiling a little further in. Contained in a red sign were words that matched the font and typesetting of any other Underground station John had visited, so accurately he didn't even register what the words said at first.

They read: Blizzard Line.

Next to that was the red Undeground logo with the blue bar bisecting it across the middle, and this time he had the wherewithal to realise it didn't actually read Underground.

No. It said Underworld.

The current station, incidentally, was Reaper's Gate.

Fucking hell, he thought. Lovely.

Thus, John's stomach was already well on its way to dropping when he arrived at the ticket counter, and what he saw there pushed it down the rest of the way.

It was filled with blood.

Way too much for one person to produce. That wasn't an expert estimation; John never would've been able to eyeball a bloody puddle and state definitely that it had to come from multiple people.

But when the space behind the glass appeared to have been flooded all the way to the roof with gore, he figured he didn't need to be a professional forensic scientist.

How the blood was staying in there despite the little holes in the glass for the worker and customer to speak through, he didn't know. He supposed it didn't matter. Magic.

Thunderous footsteps echoed from the stairwell behind him. It went on for a long time. He turned just as Jade, Lily, and Chester emerged from the corridor that led to the stairwell. They were red-faced and wild-eyed, puffing and panting from exertion, and they all looked at him.

"Underground stations aren't actually underground this far out of the city centre," John said. That shouldn't come across as weird, because it was factually correct, as far as he knew.

There was a beat of silence.

Jade broke it with a soft, "Fucking hell."

My thoughts exactly.

They stared at each other for a long time, no one knowing what to do. Eventually, they doubled back on themselves, tentatively moving to the bottom of the stairs and waiting, listening. There didn't sound like there was a horde of monsters chasing them, and there was nothing on John's Mana Sense.

Not at first, at least.

It started with one. A single blip on his magical radar, informing him there was a monster about three hundred metres above him—and that was alarming in its own right. For one thing, he didn't think Underground station actually went that far down. For another, he definitely hadn't descended that far.

But the first blip was followed by two, then half a dozen, and then more than he could count were pouring through the barrier that cut off his Mana Sense, and they were flowing down the stairs. He didn't need to say anything, the sound echoing down to them told the tale better than he ever could have.

Monsters. Snarling, barking, growling, roaring, screeching, and generally yearning for human blood.

Soul Vision told him they were all blues. With that many, it didn't matter.

"It never fucking ends," Chester said, and for once John had some sympathy for the whiny note in the man's voice.

"Run," he said, and then followed his own advice.

The others were hot on his heels as he charged back towards the station. He vaulted over the ticket gates, thankful both that they were the usual waist-high turnstiles rather than the revolving doors with bars that locked in place and that Ninja let him pull off the move with some modicum of finesse. He'd tried something like that once and fallen flat on his face.

When they reached the tunnel leading down, John couldn't help but pause, despite the rumbling sound of pursuit growing behind them. The others evidently felt the same.

To be fair to them, anyone without a death wish would surely hesitate to descend an escalator that went down so deep you couldn't even see the bottom. It didn't help that many of the lights were flickering. And the escalator itself wasn't working.

But there was no choice.

Instead of wasting time running down, John leaned on Ninja and his Agility stat to hop up on the escalator railing and slide down. In moments, he'd built up incredible speed, and he only kept accelerating.

+200 Aura

If I fall off now, it's really gonna fucking hurt, he thought. And I'll lose so much Aura I'll never recover.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Air howled past his face, stinging his eyes. His stomach swooped. He felt like his heart had gained wings and was going to fly up out of his throat. Heat started building beneath his backside, and he was sure only the thick cargo trousers he'd robbed earlier were keeping him from getting friction burns.

It felt like the tunnel went on forever. He was going so fast that the walls were blurring by.

Then he saw the end rapidly rushing towards him. The lights seemed to abruptly cut off down below, giving the impression that the tunnel plunged straight into the void.

John waited until the last moment, then activated Accelerate. He lashed out with Mana Blade and stabbed it into the metal divider between the two escalators. The air was filled with the sound of groaning metal, and he started to slow down. As Accelerate ended, he was still going pretty fast. Quicker than his best sprinting speed, at least.

When the railing he'd been surfing on finally ended, though, he didn't go flying off into an uncontrollable tumble that ended with broken limbs and bloodied noses. He even landed on his feet, though he didn't keep his balance for more than an instant. Ninja kicked in, letting him roll a few times to bleed off momentum. When he came to a stop, lying on his side, he was dizzy and more than a little bruised, but that was the extent of it. He lay there for a few heartbeats, just catching his breath.

A kind of childish wonder overtook him then. He leapt to his feet, looking back up the tunnel, where he couldn't even see the others, though he could hear the echo of their footfalls. He came so close to shouting "did you see that?" before he remembered where he was, the situation he was in, and, most importantly, who he was.

They would have seen it. Or most of it, at least. Maybe not the end, thankfully, judging by the fact he'd not been deducted any Aura for his harsh landing. The darkness had played to his favour, there.

But he at least had the social grace to understand it wouldn't have been "cool" to act all excited over essentially riding a really long slide. Especially not while there were dozens of monsters in pursuit.

John coughed into his fist, then rubbed the back of his head, waiting for his heart to descend to a more regular beat.

That was fucking sick, though, he thought, allowing himself a brief smile.

Then he composed himself and took a look around.

The tunnel had deposited him at the very end of a platform with one track on either side. It wasn't in total darkness, lit further along by a few flickering red lights at inconsistent intervals, with ominous shadows lurking in between. A broken tannoy system was spewing static.

John edged down the platform, wary. Mana Sense wasn't picking anything up ahead of him. He didn't trust it. It wasn't that he believed there was some stealth monster hiding itself from his perception. The place itself was obviously wrong. There had to be something to it, some kind of trick or trap.

The darkness swallowed him, making him feel like he was lost in the void, and the red light ahead of him was an island of safety. Even that, he didn't trust. It was a good thing he'd gotten some experience moving around in darkness due to Shadow Stream—when he wasn't inside the black smoke itself, it was as opaque to him as anyone else.

Only when he reached the first red light did he see the sign halfway down the platform. Hanging from an unseen roof were hazy yellow words formed from tiny lights, and John recognised it as one of the departure boards typical of the Underground, though it was too far to make out the information it conveyed properly. All he could see was the blurry nimbus around the words. Did it say 2 mins? 4 mins? 7 mins? It was impossible to tell. He only guessed at the 'mins' part because he was familiar with the Underground.

Whatever the case there, the implication didn't escape him: there were trains coming. What would happen when they arrived was anyone's guess. Probably nothing good.

He was almost at the second island of red light when the echoing footsteps of the other three emerged onto the platform. Chester's voice reached him a second later, "Hey, wait for us!"

"Obviously he's not going to wait," Jade snapped at him.

"Guys, not now," Lily said, her voice harder than John had heard it so far. She hadn't exactly seemed like a gentle soul to him, but her efforts to be patient with her two companions were commendable. He wondered how long she'd been playing that role.

They fell silent, and a glance over his shoulder showed they were stepping out from the safety of the tunnel's light, following after him. John winced as the monsters came back into his range. His slide down the tunnel had outpaced them, but now they were catching up once more.

He was going to have to go all the way to the end of the platform. Maybe the trains would arrive by then, and he'd see whether they were going to be empty and allow them on board, or deposit more monsters. Those seemed like the two obvious outcomes, and he was working under the assumption it was going to be the latter while hoping for the former.

A little further along, he finally got a better look at the departure board. It hung in the middle of the platform, showing four trains expected:

Marybone: due

Knightsgrave: 2min

Marybone: 5min

Knightsgrave: 7min

John eyed the first entry. Due. If it was following the theme of the real Underground, that meant the train probably wouldn't arrive for at least another few minutes. He kept going, picking up his pace. He really didn't want to have to jump down onto the track and run for it, but he feared that might be the case. More monsters were entering his range by the second.

Long seconds crawled by. John started jogging. The garbled noise of approaching monsters echoed from the tunnel far behind him. He reached a third light, kept going without stopping. Chester and Jade were shouting at each other behind him. Even if he'd wanted to know what they were saying, the echo and the monsters blended together and made it all incomprehensible. Past a fourth light. Then a fifth. Then a sixth.

Then came the familiar clack of an Underground train rolling over the tracks. He'd never bothered to find out why they made that noise, when subways in other cities he'd been to didn't. There was probably some nonsense about it being iconic so they didn't bother fixing it. That was a very English government thing to do.

Seconds later, more red lights emerged from around the bend up ahead. The whir of a train engine filled the station. Displaced air rushed past him in a soothing warm wind. The relief that filled him when the train came into view was indescribable, and the sheer shock he felt when he saw no monsters waiting on board as it rolled past almost tripped him over. Luckily, that occurred in one of the dark spots between two patches of red light.

When it came to a stop and opened its doors, he didn't get on right away. Instead, he kept running, aiming for the car right at the end. Underground trains weren't usually open between the cars, so there he'd be safe for a while, even if more monsters got on further down. Looking back, he saw the others had had the same thought.

The doors had only just opened when he reached the final car, and he wet straight in, immediately taking a seat to catch his breath. The trio followed a good ten seconds later, just as a distorted voice came over the tanoy. It was too garbled to understand. Chester collapsed onto the chairs across from John, laying down. Jade stayed by the doors, peering out across the platform. Lily stood in the centre of the carriage, hands on her head, eyes closed, taking long, measured breaths.

No one speak. John glared at the doors, willing them to close as he felt the monsters drawing nearer.

"We might need to get ready for a fight," Jade said.

Judging by what he was feeling through Mana Sense, plenty of monsters were jumping onto the train. Moving to the door and pulling up the blind, he found to his relief that there was the gap between the carriages, as expected. The monsters still might get through, but it would be harder for them. A much deadlier choke point to hold.

At the same time, monsters were barrelling along the platform. They were less than a hundred metres away. John drew a Soul Arrow and aimed it at the doorway, holding Accelerate at the ready.

Eighty metres. Seventy. Sixty. Fifty.

Every instinct in him knew without a shadow of a doubt that the train wasn't going to depart until at least a few monsters had made it onto their carriage, so it was quite the surprise when the doors hissed shut before any even got close. A second later, and there was a lurch as the train started to move out. Hundreds of monsters threw themselves at the doors and windows, but somehow they held. Maybe it was because the monsters were only blues.

The train pulled out of the station, the red lights blurring past, and then all outside the windows was darkness.

John breathed a sigh of relief, then lowered himself onto a seat. There were monsters on the train, but they were further up. None had even made it to the next carriage. From what he was sensing, they weren't even bashing their way through the doors. They were all oddly still.

Silence reigned for a time, but it was short lived. Jade was the one to depose it, asking in a too-steady voice, "Are we safe?"

John just nodded, still not trusting himself to speak unless he had to. A yes or no question didn't require talking.

"Right," Jade said quietly. She squeezed her eyes shut and flopped down onto a chair, right by Chester's head. Then, "So, seriously, who the fuck are you, mate?"

John blinked as he realised he hadn't even told them his name.

Oops, he thought, mortified at yet another social blunder.