(Book 1 Complete!) Side Quest [Isekai / LitRPG]

Logan took advantage of Silence's haughty display and leisurely stride to rack his memory, mentally retracing the chain of wight matchups. He was fairly confident each wight had two weaknesses, and Iron and and Feast were the only two whose strengths he hadn't seen firsthand. Silence hadn't engaged either of them or Famine, which might've been out of caution. But since Famine had already defeated Iron and Feast, it was unlikely he also held an advantage over Silence.

If Logan's theory was right, then Iron and Feast might have been the only two strong enough to take Silence down. Unfortunately, both were reduced to mushy puddles and piles of rust beside him.

Logan glanced at the ghostly manacles holding his wrists and ankles together. With a grunt, he rolled onto his side, lathering himself in the slimy residue of squished tomatoes, which made the manacles on his wrists resonate. He smirked. That boded well for his theory.

Flat on his belly, Logan wriggled over to Iron's greatsword and then rubbed the linkage between the cuffs as if he were trying to sever a rope against the blade. Sure enough, his bindings puffed away in an ethereal dispersion, and he lifted the iron greatsword with both hands, cutting through the bindings at his feet, as well.

The iron hilt was cold to his touch, and the tighter he gripped it, the more he feared it might permanently cling to his skin. Briefly, he thought of A Christmas Story. His father always cackled at the scene with the kid who licked the pole in the winter and then had to yank his tongue free. That seems like something you'd do, right kiddo? The memory made Logan frown, and the potential damage to his hands if he let go of the hilt made him shudder.

Yet Silence hesitated as he approached. "What are you doing?"

The wariness in Silence's voice boosted Logan's confidence. He couldn't let go of the sword. Not only was it frozen to his skin, but it was also the only tool available to give Silence pause.

Then something strange happened.

Logan's vision doubled. Everything grew blurry, except for the hole leading back to the torch slug lair. Previously, that section had appeared grayed out, which Logan chalked up to the poor lighting in this room. Now, the slug's red glow was vibrant as ever. A flurry of blinking, furious lights assaulted the corner of his eye as notifications went screwy.

Silence was on his back foot, so Logan took the moment to open the notifications, but everything was a messy sprawl of errors. He had no idea what was wrong with the interface.

As another oddity, while the greatsword remained heavy, it no longer chilled his skin. Logan tried to center his sight on Silence's fuzzy outline as he hoisted the sword upward, dragging the tip in the sludgy aftermath of spoiled melons, apples, and grapes.

His vision settled again, and the notifications vanished. The numbing freeze of the greatsword returned just as Logan charged Silence. The pain almost made him double over, but he pushed through the icy pain, unable to feel his forearms.

He heaved the greatsword with all his might. It rose in a sideways arc before it straightened out. The pommel rose to his ear, and he pushed on, determined to split Silence's ugly skull right down the center.

The blade rose higher, but before it crossed the halfway point where Logan could let gravity do the rest of the work, the sword's weight encumbered him. Fatigued as he was, Logan lacked the strength to land the blow.

Rather than descend on Silence's dome, the blade reversed. With a stroke of luck, Logan twisted the blade so the flat side landed on his shoulder. Had he not, the sharp edge would have severed his arm.

"Goddamn, that's heavy." Seriously, how had Iron swung this thing with one hand?

The wariness in Silence's eyes shifted. Within moments, his cautious back steps ceased as he broke into fitful laughter. "You worthless, miserable fool. How did I not see it? You have not even leveled yet!"

Silence rocked with laughter so hard that he doubled over and had to rest his hand on a solid surface right behind him just to stay upright. Then he shrieked.

That solid surface was the lip of Feast's open tomb. Logan kicked some of the slurry of rotten fruit and vegetable at his feet in a spray, similar to what he had done with Rain's water puddle against Iron. The putrefied peat struck Silence in the face, and he doubled over, tumbling with his rear end down into Feast's tomb. In his agony, he thrashed, his knobby knees catching at the front lip, his flabby underarms at the back.

"You imbecile!"

With a deep breath, Logan rushed once more. He couldn't feel his hands or his shoulder anymore for the numbness that pervaded them. But this was life or death, and Silence had not succumbed yet. The wight, while clearly weakened, was not fully incapacitated and had already started lifting himself out of the food-laden tomb.

"I will rip you limb from limb! I will silence your cries for all eternity!"

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Logan couldn't feel his shoulder, but he tried to bump it up anyway, pushing for any leverage possible to get the blade moving upward. It arced up, up, up, until it hit the halfway point, and then began falling down. Directly toward Silence.

Logan roared as the blade, covered in fruity sludge, sliced through Silence's forehead and right down the center of his nose. The weight of the blade pulled it down further, crunching through Silence's sternum.

Silence shrieked in an agonizing death rattle, and only when it ended did Logan release the sword and stumble backward. As he expected, all the flesh of his palms stuck to the sword's hilt. The bloody sight was gruesome, but numbness masked the pain.

"Pretty loud for someone named Silence, don't you think?" Logan's nerves finally got the best of him as a fit of giddy laughter overtook him.

When the cavern rumbled, Logan's moment ended. With dread, he checked to see if there might be another tomb unseen so far that might give rise to a new, stronger brother.

Instead, his vision doubled once more, revealing the vibrant red glow from the adjacent torch slug domain. But within seconds, collapsing rubble piled up in front of it and blotted the glow out.

"You have got to be kidding me." Logan bolted into a disoriented dash to a perimeter wall, but he had nowhere to go. Huge sections of the cavernous ceiling crashed down, shattering tombs and obliterating any remnants of the fallen Kalashi brothers.

A falling slab of ceiling crashed at Logan's feet, and he descended into inky darkness.

Logan woke with a splitting migraine. Above him, a beam of light drifted into a sloping chute from a massive hole. Half covered in rubble and debris, he lay in a tunnel that must have rested below the ceremonial chamber. The severed arm of Rain rested on his chest, one bloated finger dipping into his mouth. The metallic moisture was equally familiar and revolting.

"Eugh!" Logan blew a raspberry to get the soggy corpse skin out of his mouth. "That is SO uncalled for!"

Logan shoved the disembodied arm aside and rolled in the opposite direction. The sudden motion triggered a disruption in the loose scree, and it carried him an extra stretch of twenty or thirty feet lower. As rubble tumbled past, Logan shielded his head with his hands until the threat of further rock slides quelled.

The solitary beacon overhead was now just a pinpoint. Worse, a pitch black hole at his feet threatened to devour him.

He forced himself to stay calm. If he tried to climb back up this rubble-strewn slope, it might trigger another mini-avalanche and see him siphoned off into the abyss.

A screech echoed from the depths as a disturbed bat flew out, fluttering its wings past his face. He held still lest he disturb the unsteady surface he rested on.

The winged creature soared toward the pinprick light source, but just as it reached it, it shrieked and collapsed as if it had hit an invisible wall. The stunned cave creature's body loosed a precariously lodged stone, which tumbled toward Logan like a fateful slinky.

"Please no, please no, please no." The stone's trajectory led it directly to the center of Logan's forehead, where it struck and knocked him over the lip of whatever sinkhole lay beneath him.

Surprisingly, the ground was smoother than he would have expected. He tucked his hands and legs in as close as he could, sliding down and swooshing to the left and right. It was like being in a massive water slide, only without water, and with the occasional jagged stone shearing through his flannel pants and flesh.

Twists and turns sent him sliding up one side and then the other side. The winding course steadied out, but he still plummeted forward. A small, dim light raced up towards him from far below. He didn't dare extend his hands lest they get ripped apart by an unexpected stone outcropping.

Fifty feet, forty feet, thirty feet. Logan steeled himself and braced for the impact.

As he covered the descent's last stretch, he realized the gray light wasn't light at all, but a reflection shining on gray cave stone. When he hit it, though, it wasn't the flat impact he expected. Instead, it fluted upward, acting like a ramp.

He flew into the air as the tunnel gave way to brilliant sunlight that nearly blinded him. Dark foliage stretched beneath him, the canopy of some foreign forest, and the air was thick with stink.

Logan had survived falling down a massive sinkhole slide just to launch out of a mountainside where the waiting tangle of tree branches would tear him apart.

Yet the speed with which he rocketed from the tunnel still propelled him skyward. Upon seeing the canopy come to a hard line in the near distance, he held his breath. Did he dare to hope? Was that water? Yes, it was! He might make it just far enough to clear the land and cannonball himself into a lake rather than turn into a splattered Logan-smudge on some alien forest floor.

His flying parabola's arc descended.

Oh no…

He would not clear the treeline.

As the deadly canopy neared, he accepted his end. What a shame… it was so close to the promising water!

The leaves looked like wilted spinach. Whatever strange world he had arrived in, it sure knew how to take something perfectly normal and make it utterly revolting.

He hit the green treetops and then heard the sickening crack. However, it wasn't his bones that broke, but rotten branches that gave way without resistance.

Well, I'll just splat against the dirt and die that way.

Yet the canopies of the tree stretched far. It wasn't the earth below him, but the water after all. He was safe!

He plunged into the tepid water. Up became down, and sideways was who-knew-where. Mere moments passed before he caught the trail of bubbles. They had to be rising to the surface, so he followed them.

His sense of orientation returned as his head breached the surface. A slimy layer of algae clung to his hair as he saw the shattered branches of rotten wood, black and dead, and the wilted leaves floating on the surface with him. The stench was enough to make him gag.

Although he had escaped the mountain, he couldn't say for certain where he was. The fetid water carried him along a current and he didn't want to get swept away.

Besides, what else might live in this murky river? He couldn't see to the bottom, but the shore wasn't far away. He mustered the strength to swim freestyle toward the near shore.

Slime coated him, and every time his arm or leg broke the filmy surface, he felt dirtier than before.

Something sleek rubbed against his leg and Logan doubled his effort. Just as his hand slapped against the river's edge, he dug his fingers into the putrid, waterlogged soil and hauled himself up. He dragged himself two feet from the lip of the water and stared into its murky depths.

He balked when the massive tentacle rose. It faced him, like the hooked periscope of a submarine, then thrashed at his throat.