Aura Farming (Apocalypse LitRPG) [BOOK ONE COMPLETE]

The air lashed at his face as John tucked his wings close to his body and let gravity seize him. The world below rushed up to meet him, and, despite everything, his stomach did flips at the sight. There was just no way for a human being to become accustomed to falling from great heights, no matter how many times you did it.

He put it out of his mind, eyes narrowing on the enemies below him. He spread his wings at the last moment to arrest his fall and redirected his momentum so he soared over the heads of the rushing monsters. The ground whizzed past, maybe twenty metres below him, close enough that he could make out individual blades of grass in the overgrown field.

Alissa was running flat out, her system-granted strength letting her run at an Olympic sprinter's speed while carrying two children in her arms, and fuck knows how long she'd been keeping that pace up.

There were maybe two monsters in pursuit, a pack of humanoid werewolf-esque things with fur that seemed closer to barbed wire than anything animalistic, eyes glowing acid green. There was an odd wrinkle to their skin, too, like it had been haphazardly wrapped around them rather than grown. The most important part was their digitigrade legs that let them eat up disturbing amounts of ground with every bound.

Swooping in, he activated Aurora Blade. It felt like it'd been a while since he'd whipped it out, though it hadn't even been a full day since the battle in the supermarket portal; he wanted to see if any of his newly upgraded Skills would lead to improvement in swordplay, and he didn't want to cause too much of a ruckus with his flashier moves, besides. The name of the game here was to get in, rescue his comrades, and get out.

The blade extended from his right arm in a cascade of capture aurora, trailing flecks of frost. He landed just ahead of the onrushing horde, then lashed out at the lead monster. His blade caught it across the throat mid-stride, before it could even react, and the thing's momentum did the rest of the work. Its head separated from its body in a spray of black ichor, the ice from his blade freezing the resulting stump with a burst of mist. The body took another two steps before its legs got the memo that it was dead, then collapsed in a heap.

+600 Aura

The others noticed him now, their attention snapping toward the new threat like compass needles finding north. Good. That was what he wanted. Anything looking at him wasn't looking at Alissa and the kids.

Another monster lunged at him with a snarl that rattled his chest. John brought his blade up in a rising slash that caught the creature under the jaw and bisected its face, frost cascading across the wound. He twisted his body to the side, and it stumbled past him. Gravity Snare pulsed through the Spell's amalgamated effects, and suddenly the wolf weighed approximately the same as a small car. It crashed to the ground with a wet thud, unable to rise under its own suddenly catastrophic mass.

John found himself smirking despite the situation. Archmage meant his already versatile Combined Spells were now even more so; with just a mental tweak, he could alter the Spell to mix up the effects of Mana Blade, Ice Grasp, Dominate, Phantom Hand, and Gravity Snare. Best thing was it was a Skill, so didn't take up one of his crucial three slots.

Flash Step carried him past a cluster of three monsters before they could react, and his blade swept out in a wide arc, severing limbs and opening throats, this time with the Ice Grasp aspect boosted, freezing them into lupine ice sculptures in an instant. His next kill relied on Phantom Hand, making him feel like the area around his cut was in his hand; when he squeezed, the werewolf's upper half burst like a grape.

As he was moving to attack another enemy, the birds finally joined the party.

The crow came first, as it always seemed to, the ever-willing vanguard of its avian alliance. It appeared overhead and dropped like a black meteor onto one of the monsters, and John got a front-row seat to watch those obsidian talons punch through the monster's skull like it was made of wet cardboard.

The crow didn't linger. It beat its wings once, tremendous force propelling it back into the air, and slashed those wings forward as it rose. Blades black as the firmament sliced out from its feathers and scythed through four more enemies. One lost its arm at the shoulder. Another collapsed with its legs shorn clean off. A third simply came apart in the middle, bisected diagonally from shoulder to hip.

The dove's contribution was less immediately violent but no less effective. It circled overhead, and its feathers began to glow with a light so bright John had to squint even through his shades. The crystalline plumage scattered that radiance across the field in prismatic sprays, and every monster that light touched stumbled, disoriented and blind. One actually fell to its knees, clawing at its eyes with a pitiful keening sound that would have been sad if John gave a single fuck about its suffering.

Polly came in from the left, the red and green parrot diving with its beak already open. The air around its maw distorted, heat rippling outward, and then a lance of pure crimson light erupted from between its jaws. The laser caught one of the blinded monsters centre mass and burned straight through, leaving a smoking hole the size of John's fist. The monster toppled over.

"Fuck you!" Polly screeched as it wheeled around for another pass, and John couldn't help the grim smile that tugged at his lips.

Zazu was the last to engage, the blue and yellow parrot hanging back for a heartbeat before making its move. When it did, ghostly after-images peeled away from its body like layers of an onion, each one a translucent copy that flickered with pale fire. The phantoms swarmed forward, incorporeal talons raking across the remaining monsters. Wherever they touched, flames erupted.

"Cockjuggling thundercunt!" Zazu announced in Ryan Reynolds' voice, and John filed away the mental note that he really needed to figure out where the hell that parrot had heard that line. It had been nagging at him for ages.

Then, to John's shock, another combatant joined the fray. It took him a moment to recognise what the fuck the giant cartoonish lips making kissy noises as they flapped through the air were: it was Alissa's Caustic Kiss, a move she'd gained back during their run through the bus depot portal world.

Looking over his shoulder, he saw the red-haired woman blowing kisses one after the other with exaggerated movements like she was acting in a pantomime, complete with an audible "mwah" sound effect that made John wince on her behalf. Her lipstick-mark projectiles fluttered through the air like demented butterflies. Where they landed on monsters, the flesh beneath began to sizzle and melt, eating through skin and bone at incredible speed.

The disgust on Alissa's face was stark. Her nose was wrinkled, her eyes squeezed almost shut, and her whole body language screamed that she wanted to be literally anywhere else doing literally anything else.

His heart rate spiked when he couldn't see the children anywhere around her, only for movement above to catch his attention: Jade was up there, the children balanced on each hip. Both sandy blond, they'd at least managed to find some new clothes, both kitted out in dark pyjamas, neither covered in grime and gore any longer.

And yet, the children still stared back down at him with those blank, haunted expressions, utterly without emotion. Empty eyes in faces too small to contain the weight of everything they'd seen.

Jade met John's eyes for a brief moment, and he saw his own discomfort reflected there. Seeing kids like this was a special kind of awful that made the regular monster-killing seem almost clean by comparison. No one with even a shred of empathy would want to see those kinds of expressions on the faces of children.

Then Jade's wings were beating again, harder now, straining against the added weight. She rose into the air with visible effort, carrying the kids out of the danger zone. The duo didn't even react to the fact that they were flying. They just hung there, boneless and silent.

John entered the fray again, and, in what felt like no time, the field was silent once more. The entire engagement, from John's initial dive to the last monster falling, couldn't have lasted more than thirty seconds.

His blade dissipated, the aurora fading back into the mana that had formed it, and he took a moment to catch his breath. The birds settled around him, crow on a fence post, dove on a nearby half-destroyed hay bail, the parrots perching on his shoulders as usual.

Alissa stood there, surveying the field of corpses as they began their dissolving proces. Her lips were a thin line, and her hands were clenched at her sides. She was wearing a parka coat that had seen better days, basketball shorts that clashed horrifically with the coat, and beneath it all, that absurd skintight bodysuit that her system forced on her. The coat and shorts were clearly an attempt at modesty, at claiming some scrap of dignity in a situation designed to strip it away.

John found himself judging her for it, which made him feel like a prick, but he couldn't quite stop the thought process. She was fighting her system, trying to find some middle ground between what it demanded and what she could tolerate. And yeah, he got it—having to act sexy to survive sounded like a nightmare he wouldn't wish on anyone—but at the same time…

Look at what I've put myself through, he thought, remembering every cringeworthy quip, every pose, every moment of forced arrogance that made his skin crawl. I committed. I sold out. Because that's what survival looks like in this fucked-up world.

But he didn't say any of that. He knew it would make him sound like an even bigger prick than his Aura system already forced him to be, and besides, it wasn't like Alissa had asked for his opinion on her coping mechanisms.

"Please," Alissa said, turning to face him. Her accent was thick, stress making her words clip together. "Please tell me the last few days in Watford were worth this bullshit."

John met her gaze. "We're not done yet."

+400 Aura

Her shoulders slumped. "Of course we're not."

The flight back to the farmhouse was quiet, each of them lost in their own thoughts. John had Alissa riding on his back—she'd initially refused, citing the indignity of the situation, but had ultimately accepted when the alternative was revealed to be another long run—and her weight was negligible with his enhanced Strength. The birds flew in formation around them, ever-vigilant.

From this height, the countryside looked almost peaceful. Green fields stretched to the horizon, broken up by patches of woodland and the occasional farmhouse or barn. If you pretended the sky wasn't on fire, and didn't look too closely at the finer details on the ground, you could almost imagine the world was still normal.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

The farmhouse came into view after about ten minutes of flight. They caught up to Jade long before that, since her enchanted hoodie's wings couldn't match the enhancement his Spell got from his Level 9 Strength.

As they descended, Sam emerged from the farmhouse. The Asian man in his white martial artist's robes looked haggard, exhaustion written in every line of his face, but he was standing, which was better than the last time John had seen him. He'd somehow managed to clean his robes, too.

When the children saw Sam, there was an immediate change in their demeanour. The little girl's head lifted slightly, her dead-eyed stare focusing on Sam's face. The boy's hands, which had been hanging limp at his sides, clenched into small fists.

Then the two of them scrambled towards him in eerie synch. They crossed the distance between themselves and Sam with desperate speed and threw themselves at him, wrapping their small arms around his waist. The little girl's face pressed into his stomach, and the boy clung to his side, and for the first time since John had known of their existence, they made sounds that weren't just quiet breathing.

They were crying. There was nothing dramatic to it, no sobs or wails or the kinds of distress you'd expect to hear from a pair of children who'd found themselves overcome with emotion. Just small, stuttering breaths, the girl whining softly while the boy hiccuped just within hearing range.

Sam, for his part, looked like he'd been punched in the chest. His hands hovered in the air for a moment, uncertain, before slowly coming down to rest on the children's heads. Then he was crouching, dropping to their level, his arms going around them both.

"I know," Sam murmured, his soft voice somehow carrying across the yard. His face twisted, looking even more wretched than the children's. "I know. I'm here. You're safe. I promise."

John looked away, feeling like he was intruding on something private. He caught the eye of Doug, who had emerged from the farmhouse behind Sam, and the old man jerked his head toward the door in a clear message: Give them space.

The group filtered inside without a word, leaving Sam and the children to their reunion in the yard. The living room they gathered in had comfortable-looking sofas arranged around a brick fireplace, family photos still hanging on the walls, a carpet that had seen better days but was clean enough.

John's Sanguine Clone was still standing at the window, and he dismissed it as he approached. He had the awkward feeling everyone was watching him as it dispersed into a red cloud and floated back towards him, where it seeped into his skin. The red bar in the corner of his vision immediately filled to about 75%.

Alissa and Doug peeled off immediately, moving to a corner of the room where they could have a quiet conversation. John could see the tension in both of them—these two had been comrades before meeting John's group, had faced horrors together, and now they were… he wasn't really sure. The relationship between them wasn't clear to him, really, and he wasn't convinced he'd have been able to dredge up any accurate analysis even if it were.

Jade and Chester gravitated to the opposite side of the room, their heads close together as they fell into a whispered discussion. Chester's body language was animated, his hands moving as he spoke, and Jade was listening closely, head bowed.

Which left John with Lily.

The American girl had claimed one of the sofas, perching on the edge of the cushion. Her crossbow rested across her lap, and her hands were fidgeting with the string, plucking at it absently. She looked pale, drawn, her eyes a little too wide and a little too unfocused.

John knew that look. He'd seen it in the mirror often enough, though his particular brand of dysfunction leaned more toward anxiety spirals than whatever Lily was going through.

He'd also seen, through his Sanguine Clone, that she was… not doing great. Probably should say something, he thought. She just killed a person. That fucks you up.

He settled for the basics.

"You okay?" he asked, staying standing because sitting felt like it would be presumptuous. Like he was settling in for a long conversation when maybe she didn't want that.

Lily's laugh was bitter. "Am I okay? That's a good question." She plucked the bowstring harder, producing a small twang. "No. No, I don't think I am."

John waited. He'd learned from painful experience that sometimes people just needed space to talk, and jumping in with platitudes or advice just made things worse.

"I keep thinking about my family," Lily said after a moment. Her accent was stronger than usual, each word dripping with a drawl that spoke of hot summers and swamp water. "My father, specifically. My uncles. My older brother. My grandfather. They killed a man once, you know. Shot him over a borrowed generator that came back broken."

She was still looking at her crossbow, entranced by it.

"And afterward, they laughed. They stood there in the swamp mud with a dead man at their feet, and they laughed like it was the funniest goddamn thing they'd ever seen."

Her hands stilled on the bowstring.

"I told myself I was better than them. That I'd never become the kind of person who could look at killing someone and find it amusing. That I had a soul, and they didn't."

She finally looked up, meeting John's eyes.

"I didn't laugh," she said. "When I put a crossbow bolt through that bastard's eye, at least I didn't fuckin' laugh. I didn't feel triumphant or satisfied. I just felt sick. I've felt sick nonstop since it happened."

Tears were forming at the corners of her eyes, threatening to spill over.

"So yeah. I'm better than them. I didn't laugh. But I still pulled the trigger. I still looked down the sights of a weapon, lined up a shot on a human being, and killed him. Just like they did. And I keep trying to tell myself it was different, that he deserved it, that it was necessary, but it doesn't change the fundamental fact that I did the one thing I swore I'd never do."

The tears were falling now, tracking through the grime on her face.

"And the worst part?" Lily laughed again, high and slightly hysterical. "The worst part is, I know I need to get over it. I need to grow stronger. I need to get past these hang-ups because if I don't, I'm going to die. I keep thinking back to that stickbug boss you killed. I saw what it could do. And I know, I fucking know, that I would've been completely fucked against something like that if you weren't there. So I need to toughen up. I need to become the kind of person who can make those shots without hesitation."

+1000 Aura

Okay, she really wasn't praising me there, John thought, hoping nothing showed on his face.

Lily wiped roughly at her face with the back of her hand. "Every time I look down these sights, I'm right back there in the swamps with good ol' Daddy teaching me to shoot, feeling his hand on my shoulder and his breath on my neck as he tells me to breathe steady and squeeze slow. I'm nine years old again, and he's making me shoot squirrels and deer and teaching me that taking a life is just another skill to master, and I feel so proud of myself when he picks me up and spins me around and hugs me."

Lily stared at him, then, and John realised this was the moment where he was supposed to fill the silence, by all social conventions. She'd just bared her heart to him, and now he had to take action.

He stood there, hands hanging uselessly at his sides, while Lily looked at him with eyes full of pain and desperate hope. Social anxiety was a demon whispering all the ways he could fuck this up. Say the wrong thing. Make it worse, somehow.

Come on, he told himself. Doug does this all the time. Comforting people. Just... do what he does.

He'd seen the old man do it a dozen times at this point. The hand on the shoulder. It always seemed to solidify him as a steady presence that brought calm reassurance.

Sitting down beside her, John reached out, placed his hand on Lily's shoulder, and, with the most sincere expression he could muster, gave it a gentle squeeze.

Her reaction was immediate and horribly alarming. Lily's face crumpled, and then she was sobbing, actual chest-heaving sobs that shook her whole body. Before John could even process what was happening, she'd buried her face in his chest, her arms coming up to clutch at his shirt.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck, his brain supplied helpfully, a litany of panic that drowned out any useful thoughts. What do I do what do I do what do I do?

His arms were still hanging in the air, hovering awkwardly while a girl cried into his chest. Should he hug her? Pat her back? Say "there there" like people did in movies? Would that be condescending? Would she think he was being patronising? Was this appropriate? Were there rules about this kind of thing?

His anxiety was having a field day, painting scenarios where this somehow went horribly wrong, where he said or did something that made everything worse, where he somehow found himself in the middle of a circle of angry, disappointed people judging him for being such a loser weirdo.

And then an idea came to him: if he was going to do anything, he might as well commit to it and farm some points in the process. After all, if she knew he was just doing it to be cool and gain Aura, then any awkwardness on his part would be written off as him playing the role, right? It was the perfect cover for his social incompetence.

Cool guys comfort their friends with inspiring speeches, he thought. Cool guys are there for their team. Cool guys believe in the power of friendship and inner strength and all that shōnen anime bullshit.

John put his arms around Lily and pulled her into a proper hug. He spent a moment racking his brain for his best idea of what some gigachad action move protagonist would say here, then, in his best attempt at a smooth, confident voice that somehow didn't crack under the pressure, he said:

"You're not your father, Lily. You're not your family. The fact that you're worried about becoming like them proves you're not. They laughed because they felt nothing. You feel everything. That's what makes you better than them. That's what makes you stronger than them."

+200 Aura

Oh thank fuck. It was a notably low amount of Aura, but it meant he wasn't being uncool, at the very least.

"The path forward isn't about becoming harder or colder," he continued, warming to the theme now that he knew it was working. "It's about holding onto that part of you that still cares, that still feels, even when everything else is trying to crush it. Your compassion isn't a weakness. It's the thing that will keep you human when this fucked-up world tries to turn you into a monster. You have to believe in yourself, and believe in your friends that believe in you."

+400 Aura

Better!

Before John could think of how to continue, he noticed that Lily's sobbing had changed character. She was shaking differently now, her shoulders hitching in a way he wasn't sure how to interpret, but he hoped he was right…

Lily pulled back just enough to look up at him, her face red and blotchy and streaked with tears, and she was smiling, her chest still shaking with quiet giggles. There was a bit of hysterical note to it, but he'd take that over hysterical crying. The sight eased the tension that had been building in him.

"That was so fucking cheesy," she managed between laughs.

John grimaced.

"No, no, it worked, it was good," Lily hurried to continue, still laughing as fresh tears started falling, though these seemed less anguished. "It was terrible and exactly what I needed to hear, even though it sounded like you were reading from a self-help book."

She put her arms around him then, returning the hug properly, and John had exactly zero idea how to handle that development. His brain short-circuited.

This is fine, he told himself, even though it very much was not fine. Just... stay still. Don't make it weird. This is normal friend behaviour. People hug. This is a thing that happens.

They sat there for a long while, locked in what was probably the most awkward hug in the history of human interaction from John's perspective, though Lily seemed perfectly content.

"Thank you," Lily whispered eventually, her voice muffled against his chest.

"You're welcome," John managed, and was proud of himself for keeping his voice relatively steady.