The Sixth Rune: A Fantasy LitRPG Adventure (Divine Apostasy Book 6), page 1
The Sixth Rune
Divine Apostasy Book 6
A. F. Kay
The Sixth Rune, Divine Apostasy Book 6 by A. F. Kay
afkauthor.com
Copyright © 2022 by A. F. Kay
All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law or in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews or articles. For permission requests, contact the publisher at blackpyramidpress.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Published by Black Pyramid Press, LLC
blackpyramidpress.com
Book Cover by Magnetra's Design
Editing by tctunstall@comcast.net
Created with Vellum
Contents
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Epilogue
Appendix
Glossary
Acknowledgments
Special Thanks
Author’s Note
LitRPG Links
LitRPG Group
Dedication
For Mom,
my first fan.
I owe you everything.
Love you.
Prologue
[Author’s Note - Summaries of books 1 through 5 along with a glossary of people, places, and things can be found at afkauthor.com. In addition, the glossary can be found at the end of this book.]
Shelly entered the corona of the blue giant and increased her diameter to a modest three thousand miles, boosting her energy absorption. The helium burning in the star’s center gave it a slightly sour taste, but it replenished her Core the same as the sweeter hydrogen.
The spatial thickness required to anchor the new wyrmhole lay nearby, and it would be inefficient to search for another, better flavored star. Shelly calculated this wyrmhole’s exit would mark the halfway point to their destination, and it had only taken her six months to reach it. Satisfaction coursed through her like the burning plasma flowing around her. Even among her kind, few could match her ability to fold space.
Just like the previous star Harvests, Shelly felt the energy-dense Celestial exit her shell and accelerate downward into the star. The tiny creature radiated pleasure. Shelly shared this same joy and slowly rolled as she dived deeper.
Shelly hadn’t expected to return to the great sea so soon. Now that her golden-eyed soul companion had learned to quiet his mind and body, communication had become easier. His request, clarified by the bookwyrm, had shocked Shelly—and excited her. Not only the chance to swim the darkness again, but to do it with purpose.
Thousands of years, a blink in her existence, had passed since the Axiom had turned this Universe into a desert. With the easily available Spirit gone, the souls here became hard to hear, the notes distant. Faced with such silence, her family and friends had departed for other Universes. She could feel them still, the layers of dimensional space not enough to overcome the quantum entanglement of their souls.
But for reasons Shelly could not explain, this Universe had pulled on her like a gravity well. She had traveled alone from galaxy to galaxy, swimming through nebula, surfing event horizons, and bathing in exploding stars. She missed the sound of soul notes, but the vast silence had a beauty of its own.
Seventeen years ago, an echo of an echo reached Shelly. The faintest vibration, only detectable because of the oppressive silence. A sound she had never heard before, and she immediately plotted a course to bring her closer.
Shelly found the source three months later, nestled in an Ancient Wyrm’s lair. A wyrm Shelly recognized. This close, the faint vibrations had turned into a symphony of notes unlike anything she had experienced. It soothed a sorrow she didn’t know existed.
For the first time in millennia, Shelly felt joy.
Seventeen years passed in a single heartbeat. And the creature responsible for such beauty, a young human, left the wyrm lair. Shelly followed, the new location another place she recognized. If the silence in this Universe had a center, it resided on this planet.
To Shelly’s surprise, the boy shifted Realms, leaving the Material for the Spirit Realm. Curious, Shelly peeked into the probable near futures and was shocked at how difficult the strands had become to see.
Something significant was happening here, causing the Universe to exert its will, and setting the Resonance Offset to zero. But Shelly had glimpsed enough to place herself in the boy’s path.
Shelly had never experienced such bliss. The sound, so close, almost overwhelmed her senses. She shuddered in anticipation for the day the boy could organize these soul notes into a true melody.
Traveling with the boy was another, who Shelly quickly recognized as responsible for the Resonance Offset. This blue-eyed companion warped the strands of probability and stood at the bottom of an enormous Spiritual gravity well, pulling the world and its deities into his orbit.
Silence shrouded this blue-eyed friend so completely that it felt like an open wound in Shelly’s mind. She wondered if the boy had a soul at all. It made her uncomfortable, but she soon realized this profound stillness acted like an amplifier for the soul music of her companion, which made the silence bearable.
Deep inside the dungeon Shelly had created in her body, she sensed the collapse of the level forty-four boss her golden-eyed companion and his friends had battled. She constructed a level forty-five so they could continue to fight, making it twenty percent easier since the Celestial had left their group to swim in the star.
Shelly enjoyed creating essence creatures for her passengers to fight. It gave her something to do and increased her occupants’ skills and experience, making them stronger. The last time she had done such things, the Axiom and his disciples had traveled with her.
As Shelly Harvested the star, she contemplated the similarities between that period and now. Had the time spent in the distant past with that Axiom somehow entangled her in a path that led to the rescue of yet another Axiom? Had her reluctance to leave this Universe somehow been planned or foreseen?
Shelly knew such thoughts were pointless. She had spent thousands of years contemplating the relationship between Resonance Offsets and fate. She still didn’t have an answer.
Shelly turned, rolling through the arcing plasma, spinning to the melody of her soul companion.
None of it mattered, because the path Shelly had taken, guided or not, destined or by choice, led to this moment, and she had never been happier.
Chapter 1
Ruwen sat cross-legged on the floor of his shed, wearing the red Overseer armor he’d left Legion’s Fifth Vault in. Gate runes covered the walls, but he couldn’t get any of them to work. Outside this cube he’d created lay immense darkness, empty and cold.
Fresh Air and Glow provided oxygen to breathe and light to see, although Ruwen’s Diamond body didn’t need either. His body had survived this harsh environment, which was fortunate since he had run out of ideas on how to get home.
Ruwen closed his eyes and thought of his friends. When he’d walked through the portal in Legion’s Fifth Vault, it had cleared the door of gate runes. Rami had assured him she could draw new gate runes fast enough for Sift, Hamma, Lylan, and her brother to all escape. He hoped they’d made it, and he already missed them.
How far had Ruwen traveled that all the gate runes surrounding him had failed? The destinations he’d drawn led to locations in the Material and Infernal Realms, but every single one remained dormant.
“Uru, help me,” Ruwen whispered, just to hear something in this complete stillness.
Saying Uru’s name made Ruwen’s skin prickle. He realized he hadn’t tried every gate rune sequence he knew. In fact, this sequence might actually work. It had saved him from the Spirit Realm after all.
Ruwen pulled what remained of the portal chalk from his glove. The small amount left concerned him because he had no idea how to get more.
Ruwen had learned on his Ascension Day that the Void Band’s description read, The view inside is worth dying for. Bliz had told Ruwen the description was a lie without providing any details. Eventually, Ruwen learned Bliz’s curiosity, and maybe too much alcohol, had overcome the Crew Chief’s common sense, and he’d stuck his head inside the Void Band to look, killing himself in the process.
Bliz’s reward for dying were the five gate runes to Uru’s Divine Realm, and Ruwen had learned them while doing the quest A View to Die For.
Ruwen’s hand trembled, and he dropped into the third meditation for a few seconds to calm himself. His hand now steady, he found one of the few spaces left to draw a gate rune portal door. Carefully he drew the five gate runes that had opened a portal and allowed him and his friends to escape from the Spirit Realm.
Ruwen placed the portal chalk back into his glove and let out the breath he’d held.
Hope filled Ruwen and he stepped forward confidently. This would surely work.
Ruwen bounced off the shed wall.
Desperate, Ruwen tried again, shoving his almost twenty-two billion Spirit at the gate runes, praying it might power the door and allow him to go home. But the Spirit remained in his Core, unable to fuel the door, and the portal remained closed.
Despair crept into Ruwen’s thoughts, and after a few seconds, he crushed it with a mental fist. The gate runes hadn’t worked, but that didn’t mean he’d failed.
Ruwen had wanted privacy for months, and now he’d found it. Once he’d accomplished everything he wanted to do, he’d let himself get properly depressed, but for now, with no other ideas on how to get home, he decided not to waste any more time.
Four items topped the list of things he wanted to accomplish. One, he needed to explore the Architect Role and understand what it contained and how to use it. Two centered on essence recipes for spells. He’d experimented with creating them in the Spirit Realm and wished to expand his spell list. Perfecting his Bamboo and Viper Steps came in third, while reaching peak Diamond came last.
Ruwen’s Diamond Fortification reminded him of something else that needed addressing: finding a way into his soul. Uru had locked away his soul during his Ascendancy, but maybe the oppressive silence here would help him detect a fracture in the soul’s prison.
The soul searching and Step training didn’t require Mana or Spirit, but everything else did.
When Ruwen had crushed New Eiru’s Elders into bloody puddles using the Architect Role’s gravitational power, he’d learned it consumed all his Mana before tapping his Spirit, and Fortifying his body to peak Diamond would probably require a ton of Spirit.
Creating spells with essence would consume Ruwen’s essence reservoirs, but that shouldn’t be a problem, since all twelve had filled to around sixty percent when he’d absorbed that chaos storm over Stone Harbor in the Spirit Realm.
Ruwen thought about the twelve different kinds of essence, and the fact that Mana consisted of a perfect proportion of each one. He wondered if it might be possible to refill his Mana reservoir using essence.
But that didn’t help with the Architect Role. After it burned through Ruwen’s Mana, it would tap his Spirit. He still had almost twenty-two billion Spirit, but he honestly didn’t know if that was a lot or not. His experience with the Architect Role’s gravity manipulation had proved he had little idea about costs or consequences.
The logic led Ruwen to a clear conclusion. He could practice his Steps and experiment with essence recipes, but until he found a way to replenish his Spirit, he should avoid the Architect Role and body Fortification.
Ruwen knew no one could come for him. He figured if he couldn’t reach his friends or familiar places, they couldn’t reach him either. That meant the first step to getting himself home depended on figuring out exactly where he had ended up, and that required the Architect Role and Spirit.
Ruwen decided to discuss the options with Overlord and triggered Last Breath, entering the mental construct for the first time since Overlord had gained his own existence.
When Ruwen had first created his mental construct, a place he used to protect his mind, it had taken the shape of a small island in the middle of an endless sea. When Rami had chosen the path of Bookwyrm, her Codex of Evolution had boosted his mental abilities, and that had turned his small island into a mountain.
At the library in Malth, Rami had triggered a level seventy-five Literary Aneurysm trap. If Ruwen hadn’t pulled the trap’s damage to himself, she would have certainly died. He hadn’t remained unscathed, though.
The billions of letters, each a tiny razor, had sheared Overlord from Ruwen’s mind, giving the construct its own existence. Ruwen and Overlord had battled against the trap’s tsunami and survived. When Ruwen’s mind had calmed enough that the peak of his mental mountain had reappeared, he’d left Overlord to his own devices.
