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

“GO.”

Noah and Mark immediately took off. Mark, with his over one hundred points in strength, took the lead as he moved at speeds that would put the Usain Bolt to shame. And Noah moving at a much humbler speed clad in his stone plate armor, several stone explosive bullets hovering around him, ready to launch at enemies when they got in range. A moment later, they did, and all the bullets came down on the dark elves, reaping their lives one bullet to one elf at a time.

Noah looked over at Mark and saw that he had already taken down at least twenty dark elves because of his faster movement and a weird glow emanating from his new sword. “Probably the skill that made so confident on the bet.” He thought as he resumed the swift dispatching of the dark elves. With his high intelligence helping him process more information than normal, he moved as fast as possible while evading arrows left and right with well-placed bursts of air that pushed his body out of their way.

He looked over again at Mark and saw that he was still killing at a faster rate than him. “Crap, I’m losing to his sheer superiority in speed. It's not helping that these elves aren't clumping up enough for me to hit them with my bombs.” Then he saw it, a beautiful group of at least twenty dark elves all running away from him. He immediately conjured two fire bombs and mentally threw them at the elves. “Turning your back on an enemy while in battle is truly the dumbest thing you can do.” But, as he was mentally gloating at the folly of his enemies, an arrow came out of nowhere and pierced his stone armor, digging itself half an inch into his stomach. “Crap, forgot about mana shield.”

Noah immediately activated mana shield spell and looked at the source of the arrow. It was a dark elf in much better clothing and armor than the rest of them. Noah then used [Analyze] on him.

“No wonder it pierced through my armor. It’s only two levels below me. Guess it’s time to bring out the big guns.” Noah rushed to conjure an explosive spear while dodging another arrow coming from the dark elf. The moment it was ready, he launched the spear at the elf with all his mental might, which, with his high intelligence, was a lot of might.

The elf didn’t expect the spear to fly at it so fast and it hurriedly summoned a dark glow similar to the one with the orcs, but this time, it was denser. It managed to evade just in time for the spear to not pierce its chest but, Noah saw this and just as the elf got out of the way he detonated the spear and watched as stone shrapnel ripped the dark elf to shreds, not even giving it a chance. “Crap, that took longer than expected.”

He looked over at Mark again and saw that he was almost done with his half of the elves. “Well, there goes the bet and a couple of mana stones worth of beer. Damn.” Resigned to his fate for the next week, Noah half-heartedly shot the remaining elves with his explosive bullets.

A while later, Mark ran up to him as he put down the last of the dark elves in his area with a big toothy grin on his face. He sighed and said, “Yeah yeah, you got me. You won this one.”

Mark’s grin widened upon hearing that. “Hehe. Looks like levels aren’t everything, mister level thirty.”

“I seriously want to punch your face right now,” Noah hissed and looked away from his cousin’s face. Holding himself back as best he could.

Noah looked at the notification and couldn’t help but say. “Well, that was easy. That was barely an hour.”

“Yeah, I guess low-tier ones are pretty much too easy for us,” Mark replied.

“Wait, you mean this was a low-tier one dungeon? Are there mid-tier ones and high-tier ones out there?” Noah asked.

“Yup, you can tell by their levels. Dungeon tiers and well, a lot of other things are divided into three, low, mid and high tier.”

“Good to know, I guess. Need to level up my [Analyze] skill more, would’ve been great to know what tier this was before going in.”

“True.”

And just as Mark said that, Talal landed beside them and transformed into his human form. “Well, that was certainly quite the upset. Good job Mark! I see you’ve gained some formidable skills.”

Mark just blushed and wanted to say something, but a countdown suddenly appeared in his vision and it ended just as abruptly as it appeared. When they opened their eyes, they were outside and the sun still hadn’t set. They looked around and the space distortion was nowhere to be seen.

“Guess the dungeons close after we clear them, huh,” Mark noted.

Noah looked at the sky and said. “You guys want to go find another dungeon? It shouldn’t be hard with my radar and Talal flying us around. I’m still itching for a proper fight.”

“Or we could go to the lightning element dungeon that I went to before.” Talal then looked at Noah, “Can you cast that stone armor spell of yours on others?”

“I should be able to, not sure if it would be viable with your roc form though.”

“No worries, my human form will be enough for that dungeon. It’s only a mid-tier one so we probably won’t encounter any problems.” Talal said as he did a few exercises with his body. “Okay, we should be good to go.”

Noah and Mark looked at each other and nodded. “Let’s do this”

Talal then transformed into his roc form and told the humans to hop on as they zipped through the sky at breakneck speeds.

After screaming his lungs out for the first few minutes of flight, Mark finally calmed down enough to scream something else. “HEY, WE SHOULD CHECK OUT HOW MANY LEVELS WE GOT FROM THAT DUNGEON.” He screamed at Noah.

Noah, while holding onto Talal’s feathers, checked his notifications and found that he’d gained one level in both of his classes, giving him twenty-four stat points to distribute. Which, of course, he put all of it into intelligence, as his regeneration was decent for now. Mark, on the other hand was the big winner of their first dungeon as he got four levels. Giving him forty stat points, of which he put twenty into dexterity as he felt that his body was starting to feel a little sluggish in comparison to his maximum speed, then he put ten each went to strength and constitution.

As they finished distributing their stat points, they arrived at their destination. Instead of the pitch-black space distortion of the previous dungeon, they saw a spherical dark cloud with arcs of lightning dancing around its surface.

“Okay, let me brief you guys on what’s inside.” Talal, now in his human form, had a serious look on his face. “This is a two-stage dungeon. Stage one is a fairly basic, kill all the guards type deal. Stage two however, is different. The mission there is still to kill the six lightning gnomes but, we need to kill them all at the same time, otherwise the ritual that they are doing will collapse and take us along with it. Good news is that if we’re fast enough, there’s a portal we can use to escape. Bad news is that only I, in my roc form, is fast enough. So that’s not an option. Here’s the plan, Noah makes a pit deep enough that the gnomes can’t get out.” He then pointed at Mark and himself and said. “While we distract them so that they don’t see the pit forming. Then it’s just a simple lure and bomb them to hell from there. Any questions?”

Noah and Mark looked at each other and smiled. “No sir!”

“Let’s do this then!”

With that, they entered the cloud of lightning together.

When they came to, they were under a cloudy sky with lightning striking all around them. Noah immediately cast [Stone Armor] on all of them and conjured a few explosive bullets at the same time, willing them to float around him.

Noah looked around and found their target. It was a gathering of large stones, not unlike stone henge, but on a much smaller scale. And surrounding it were fifty guards whose levels ranged from thirty-three all the way up to fifty-five.

"Don't let their levels intimidate you. They are all casters and with the stone armor surrounding our bodies, we should be impervious to most of their attacks.” Talal reassured them as he sensed a hint of fear escape them.

Noah let out a breath as he calmed himself down. He looked at his cousin and noticed that he was doing the same. “Let’s fucking do this thing.”

“Hell to the YEAH!” Mark replied.

With that, they took off. Mark activated all his buffs and his skill that he used to beat Noah in their bet. “[Nature’s Bestowal]” He mumbled under his breath as his sword glowed a brown glow, taking on the properties of earth to counter the lightning. With all buffs now active, Mark shot off at speeds almost forty percent faster than his normal top speed.

Seeing Mark and his buffs with [Enhance] added on top of them made him green with envy. “Note to self, more speed.” He thought as he pumped more mana into his movement spell, but was still found wanting. “It’ll have to do for now.” As he neared the gnome guards, lightning struck around him and even some on his stone armor but, none went through. The second he got close enough that he was sure to hit his targets, he launched all the bullets floating around him at the guards. He was surprised to see that they caused more damage than he was expecting. But one bullet was not enough to kill any of them, even the lower-level ones. So he went with the old rule when killing enemies, always double tap.

Sometimes though, a double tap was not enough to guarantee a kill as the gnomes were much higher level than him. So he triple tapped. Which worked for most of them, except the ones over level fifty. He didn’t bother evading as he completely trusted in his earth armor and that the gnomes only knew lightning element attacks. Besides, who can evade lightning?

Suddenly, as he was facing off against a level fifty gnome, a shadow holding a dagger rose up behind it and slit its throat. “Damn that’s creepy.” He though as he saw Talal shift in and out of the shadows, reaping the lives of the gnome guards. A few minutes of fighting later, they got the stage clear notification.

“Everybody clear on the plan?” Talal asked.

Noah and Mark said at the same time. “Crystal”