Magitech maidens a litrp.., p.1
Magitech Maidens: A LitRPG Space Fantasy, page 1
part #5 of Sword of Asteria Series
MAGITECH MAIDENS
A LitRPG Space Fantasy
Sword of Asteria
Book 5
EDDIE R. HICKS
Magitech Maidens
Sword of Asteria Book 5
By Eddie R. Hicks
Copyright © 2024 Eddie R. Hicks
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
This novel contains scenes of graphic violence, explicit language, and sexuality and is intended for mature readers.
Cover Art by: Caterina Kalymniou
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Contents
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
Epilogue
Final Stats
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Prologue
Eilxisys and her hunters’ footsteps were softer than the rustle of tree leaves above. Their prey would never hear them coming—a violent prey that had slain many druids. That made their prey a predator, she realized. The druids of Ellyllon thought that the predators, the unafflicted druid hunters and their magitech weapons, were no longer an issue. The unafflicted were not to kill the afflicted druids and harvest their bodies for soul crystals as per the new peace brokered.
If Eilxisys’s hunters left the current situation unchecked, more innocent druids would end up as soul crystals. What those unafflicted druids would do with the crystals remained to be seen. The Paladin and his harem vanquished the fae imperials responsible for manipulating the unafflicted druids ages ago.
She and her party had to deal with this now because Eilxisys, like many druids, had succumbed to the affliction, allowing its mysterious power to give them incredible magical abilities. Eilxisys and the druids at the World Tree embraced the changes being made to their world rather than fearing it. And it made hunting easy. For example, Eilxisys was now a level 41 Ranger using a level 20 Spell Lancer subclass. Her subclass’s Elemental Attunement ability transformed her weapon into a blazing bow with a knocked arrow, almost red like her long ginger hair. Her burning bow doubled as a torchlight that guided the hunters through the woodlands shrouded in darkness.
There was a second light beside her. Rylisa was a member of her hunting party. Like Eilxisys, Rylisa used Spell Lancer as her subclass. The Spell Lancer subclass had turned Rylisa into a Battle Cleric and brightened her scepter with light elemental energy, illuminating the nighttime forest.
“There,” Connla, a young hunter, said, finger pointed toward the darkness. “Is that another body?”
Eilxisys ordered the party to slow down and approached Connla. She gazed at what he pointed at—a dead druid, the blood-drenched corpse torn limb from limb. Eilxisys could not tell if the druid was male or female.
“Rylisa,” Eilxisys said, taking two steps backward, her white wolf headdress blowing in the eerie wind. “If you will.”
“One moment.”
Rylisa clasped her light elemental-imbued scepter tightly. She glowed with celestial radiance, illuminating the nearby tree trunks as she performed the Cleric spell Resurrection, shining a divine beam of light from above onto the lifeless body.
The fallen druid’s eyes opened. The mangled corpse came back together, piece by piece. It turned out the deceased was male. They sat up with life again while Rylisa repeatedly cast Starlight Recovery on them. A splash of blue and green light further sealed the man’s wounds and forced the blood that had stained their suit of plated armor to fade. By the time their HP had risen to full, the man appeared as if he had never been torn to pieces to start with.
“Thank you,” the man said, turning to the team of hunters. He faced Rylisa for a lengthy time, eyes narrowed. “Rylisa? Oi, my demise was a big deal, eh?”
Eilxisys approached him. “Who were the individuals that attacked you?”
“I do not know, lass.” He shrugged.
“Call me Eilxisys.”
“Aye. Well, the name’s Brine. And it was a single assailant, and they walloped me good.”
Eilxisys studied Brine closer until his level and rank appeared above him.
Brine (Berserker) | LVL: 37 | Rank: A
She lifted a ginger eyebrow. “One person dispatched you?”
“Aye.”
“With your rank and level?”
He grinned. “Aye, lass, er, I mean, Eilxisys.”
“Well, if it was one of the unafflicted using a magitech weapon, it is possible,” Rylisa said.
“Except they work in groups most of the time,” Eilxisys said. “Someone acting as a lone wolf does not seem like standard practice.”
Rylisa stood by her side, her chin resting in her hand, the wind rustling her black feathered headdress, mirroring the way Eilxisys’s white-wolf headdress swayed. “Then again, someone still using those cursed weapons and hunting fellow druids does not sound normal either. The violence between afflicted and unafflicted is over and has been for months—”
“Did you hear that?”
The bushes ahead had rustled, and it was not the wind that did it. It sounded like someone was lurking around them. And it seemed as if Eilxisys, Brine, and her party suspected the same. Everyone stopped talking. They drew their bows, lances, scepters, and axes before fixing their sights on the suspecting bushes.
“Indeed,” Rylisa said, imbuing her scepter with light elemental energy.
Eilxisys took the lead, her fire elemental-imbued bow lighting the path. She nocked a new arrow that appeared from a swirl of astral energy, and it erupted with rippling flames.
“Our target must be near,” Aibhne, a member of her party, whispered.
“Everyone, stand ready,” Eilxisys whispered to the group.
Eilxisys tiptoed forward and crossed past the bushes while raising her bow. Her ears guided her to the source of the sounds, and her 241 agility guided her bow to the left, its flaming light shining on the pale face of a man raising his hands. His information appeared next.
Star-human (Gunner) | LVL: 38 | Rank: C
Though she did not need that display to tell her that. The man’s clothing was a clear giveaway. He wore an outfit and boots that one could only produce in the machina-powered factories of the star-dweller worlds and carried one of those strange objects they spoke into to talk with their comrades. A communicator, they had called them? She could not remember.
“Whoa, easy there!” the star-dweller yelled in fear. “Didn’t mean to trespass!”
Brine and Eilxisys’s party members, Connla, Aibhne, Eogan, and Rylisa joined her to the left and right, lowering their weapons when Eilxisys did.
“Star-dwellers,” Eogan grunted.
There w ere several star-dwellers in a clearing farther up the path. Eilxisys led her party toward the star-dwellers handling various cube-shaped containers, likely full of supplies they sought to deliver.
“Do you think it is them?” Eilxisys whispered to Brine. “Did the star-dwellers do this to you?”
Before Brine could reply, a star-fae stood in Eilxisys’s path, hands on her hips. The star-fae was an older woman with graying, blood-red hair tied into a bun, and wings that had long lost their glittering luster. She had piercing blue eyes, unimpressed that Eilxisys’s hunters had neared the star-dwellers uninvited.
Eilxisys viewed her class and rank.
Star-fae (Medic) | LVL: 37 | Rank: B
She looks familiar, Eilxisys thought. Almost like that star-fae Rachael who was quite fond of the Star Paladin. A relative, perhaps?
“Do what?” the star-fae asked. She overheard Eilxisys. “The only thing we did was resurrect one of our dead.”
“You have dead among your group?” Eilxisys said.
“Something high-level attacked someone from my crew and one-shotted them,” the star-fae said.
“We have been hunting this fiend that struck your partner.” Eilxisys glared at the star-dwellers around. “Where are you headed?”
“Back to our starship . . . provided we don’t get jumped.”
“Would you like us to escort your party there?” Eilxisys offered. “With our two groups combined, we might stand a better chance for survival.”
“Sure, come along.” The star-fae spun around and gestured to a dirt path to the right. “Should be down here . . . Miss?”
“My name is Eilxisys. You?”
“Chelsea,” the star-fae replied. “Chelsea Leighton of the Phoenix.”
Eilxisys ordered her hunters to form a defense circle around Brine and the traveling star-dwellers, escorting them through the nighttime forest and down the dirt path Chelsea pointed out. As they traversed the darkness, Eilxisys noted that a handful of the people traveling with Chelsea’s star-dweller party wore leather or fur garbs and headdresses. A closer inspection revealed that they were land-druids of various levels and classes.
She found it quite peculiar.
“Are these men and women part of your crew?” Eilxisys said, pointing at the druids who were with the star-dwellers.
“Eh?” Chelsea glanced back and shook her head. “No, not the druids. They paid for passage off this world.”
“Oh?”
One of the traveling druids chimed in suddenly. “Yes, these star-dwellers were offering a power-leveling service in an excellent place to gain experience points quickly.”
“And powerful loot,” another added.
“Where is such a place?” Rylisa asked. “Leveling Cleric, plus two different subclasses, Spell Lancer and Ranger is time-consuming.”
Eilxisys concurred. “Having to keep a subclass leveled is tiring in general . . .”
“You can’t find it here,” Chelsea said. “It’s in another world. Only my starship can bring you there.”
She faced Chelsea. “What world is this?”
“An uninhabited place we call Arcadia.” Chelsea’s lips formed a cunning smirk. “You should come along with us. Arcadia is ripe for building a brand-new society.”
“Come with you to an uninhabited world?”
“Yeah.”
“There is no such thing!” Rylisa said, cutting in. Her outburst drew all glares to her. “All worlds have some form of civilization living on them, according to . . .”
Chelsea folded her arms. “According to whom?”
Rylisa held a left fist to her chest, eyes facing the ground. “The . . . Paladin. He told me so.”
Chelsea’s smirk turned to a frown. “He’s wrong.” She spun away from Rylisa, fists clenched tight, and walked faster. “And you shouldn’t trust him.”
Rylisa gasped and looked at Chelsea, moving ahead. “Do not trust the Star Paladin?”
“He’s a bad influence . . .” Chelsea replied, refusing to make eye contact with anyone.
The group continued, this time with Eilxisys and Rylisa keeping pace with Chelsea, walking to her left and right respectively.
“The Paladin did not seem like a bad person to me,” Rylisa said.
“Indeed,” Eilxisys added. “I liked him. He did so much for our people. My only regret was that we did not trust him at first. Maybe he would have paid me a visit more often had we done so.”
Eilxisys had fond memories of doing battle alongside the Star Paladin too. She sighed. Eilxisys and the World Tree druids were first hostile toward him. She regretted that. The imperials had manipulated them into believing that the Paladin was a threat.
“We’re almost here,” Chelsea said, breaking her brief silence. She looked at Rylisa. “Will you be joining us? You could level your two subclasses in no time if you came.”
Rylisa twisted her lips. “Well . . .”
“As tempting as your offer is, we have work to do,” Eilxisys said. “There is still the fiend at large that attacked your crew member and dozens of our hunters.”
“Your loss.” Chelsea shrugged and marched toward the clearing, where a glint of Ellyllon’s twin moonlight shone down. “If we meet again, let me know. I’d love to take you to Arcadia.”
The large group, consisting of Eilxisys hunters, Chelsea’s star-dwellers, Brine, and traveling druids, arrived in the clearing. There was a starship that had landed in the middle of the grass field, where Chelsea’s team wandered toward its opened side entrance. The rest of the druids traveling with the star-dwellers followed with their belongings in sacks over their shoulders.
Yvolinda was among them. Eilxisys recognized Yvolinda’s dear headdress as she strode toward the starship. Eilxisys hurried over to Yvolinda and gently grabbed her elbow, pulling her toward her.
“Hey, you are Synaria’s cousin, Yvolinda, right?”
Yvolinda stopped to face Eilxisys with a surprised expression. “Eilxisys . . . coming with us to Arcadia?”
“No, we still have work to do. I presume you are seeking this power leveling service Chelsea is offering?”
“Aye,” Yvolinda said, nodding. “I do not plan to stay long though, just want to see what all the fuss is about.”
Yvolinda vanished inside the starship along with the many traveling druids. She would inquire more about Yvolinda’s odd decision later. Eilxisys’s hunters still had their prey to find. She instructed her hunting party to leave the makeshift camp the star-dwellers made and resume their search through the woodlands, weapons drawn and eyes on alert.
Connla’s HP fell to zero on the Party screen. He was under attack.
“Asteria’s cunt!” Eilxisys lifted her bow forward. “Everyone, on guard now!”
“The star-dwellers are definitely not responsible for this!” Rylisa said.
“No . . . Something else is, and it is close,” Eogan said.
“You two,” Eilxisys said, gesturing toward Eogan and Aibhne, “escort Rylisa to Connla’s corpse.”
Eogan and Aibhne did so, and they disappeared into the thicket of the woods, leaving Eilxisys alone in the darkness, her flaming bow and nocked arrow the only light source. That changed when she canceled the effect of Elemental Attunement. She suspected that her billowing bow might give her position away to the predator at large.
