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

With his defenses solved for the most part, he needed to address his speed. Right now, he was slowing Mark down whenever they had to go back and forth between the orcs and their base. He needed to solve it somehow, or at the very least, speed up just enough so that he wouldn’t be slowing them down so much. His first thought went to air. There was air resistance, right? “What if I made a teardrop shell of air around me?” After all, it was the most aerodynamic shape. Even more so than modern cars, well, old-world cars.

There was a problem though, Noah remembered that back then, people ran at pretty much the same speed even if they were in a closed-off room, running on a treadmill. This was because air resistance was negligible at the speeds that humans normally ran. So, Noah began to think of other ways. “Hmmm… Concentrated gusts of wind coming out of my hands and feet while I run maybe?” He thought. Noah imagined himself running with his hands extended behind him like how Naruto ran. “I would look so silly. But it’s worth a try…”

And so, he tried. He tried so hard in fact, that the first time he activated his skill [Concentrated Gust] on the back of his legs, feet, and out his outstretched arms, he had too much of a boost in speed and ended up running face first into the ground. His center of gravity, it turned out, was much too high. He wasn’t Naruto running enough. “Crap, do I really have to?” He thought as he pondered his new spell.

But, he remembered the dream and the whisper. He didn’t want what happened in that dream to happen in real life. Especially to the ones he loved. He imagined his friends and their families who were over on the other side of the world, dying to the demons. He couldn’t take it, no, he won’t. “Stronger, faster.” He repeated it over and over in his head as if to burn it onto his brain so that he would never forget it.

With renewed determination, Noah got into position, lower this time, and started running. He ran and ran until he was used to the lowered center of gravity and then, he activated his skill. Four jets of air came into being on his four limbs propelling him to speeds he didn’t think were possible for him yet. Then another issue occurred to him, “How do I stop?” He looked ahead of him and saw a tree “Crap.”

After rushing head-first into a few more trees, he finally figured out how to stop. He just had to stop the jets of air behind him and transfer them to his front to stop as fast as possible. But it was going to take some getting used to. So he practiced, and practiced until his feet were sore but it paid off. Hours later, he got the hang of it. He could now run relatively straight lines on relatively flat ground, and in the forest where the only thing he had to worry about were trees and their roots, that was good enough.

Finally done with the movement spell, he checked out his notifications and was surprised to see that it wasn’t just the spell acquisition that popped out.

He thought back to what he used the skill for. The air blades, air bullets, the hydrogen ball, and now his movement spell, all had one thing in common, they required precise control. As an Elementalist, he had his other elements to rely on for damage and defense. So to Noah, it was a no-brainer. He selected the last option, control. He closed his eyes, expecting a flood of information to come but, it didn’t. Confused, he tried out his air element spells and found that they were all easier to cast, much easier. In fact, he felt that he could try slowly changing direction while running with his spell on. “Let’s experiment more later with the movement spell. For now, I need more utility spells and probably one hard-hitting single-target spell for that warchief.”

And so, he got to work on his next spell. He thought of what he and Mark needed in that last fight, “An instant trap spell would have been nice, and a super long-range attack spell for the archers too.” The first thing he thought of for a trap spell was, to somehow recreate mud. But, there was an issue with mud. You couldn’t just mix water and random soil from random places and make it, no. To make mud, you needed clay, and clay could only generally be found at river banks or places where a river used to flow. “Guess it’s back to the drawing board on a crowd control spell.”

His next idea was, to somehow bury something or someone in earth. “Which is easy enough.” He thought as he tried it out on a tree.

Just like that, he got the spell. But that didn’t solve his crowd-control needs. With the [Earth Tomb] spell he could maybe stall the warriors and archers but probably not the chief. So he got to work again. But he wracked his brain for a full hour and still couldn’t think of anything feasible with his current mana pool. “Onto the single-target spell, I guess.”

For a heavy-hitter spell, Noah already had a few ideas. Mainly, a massive earth spear spell that blew up after penetrating skin. It was easy to make as he already had all the required ingredients. Just make a massive spear made of earth, hollow the shaft out, fill it with hydrogen and leave space for a small fire. There you have it, a massive exploding spear that would hopefully drive its tip in deeper after the explosion and maybe take a chunk of meat off the warchief.

Noah did a fist pump as he read the notification. “This will be my trump card. It should be strong considering that it costs over one hundred mana.” He thought as he pondered whether to try his new spell out on some trees. “Hmmm… Should I?” He looked at the trees and decided it would be useless. “The spear would probably just pass through anyway”

Noah looked around and realized that the sun had come up while he was experimenting. So, he headed for the apartment building so that he and Mark could hunt some orcs and he could test out his new spells.

A few minutes later, Noah arrived to see that Mark had already woken up and was eating some rabbit meat while surrounded by the piglets. “Oink?” One of the piglets came close to Noah as he arrived and oinked at him. “Hmmm… This one is pretty far from the rest of the group… Ahah! This is definitely Prancer!” He focused on the little striped piglet trying to figure out any defining characteristics but he just couldn’t see any.

“Finally back I see.” Mark looked at him like he was a teenager who was out too late and just got back home.

“Uhhh, yeah. Couldn’t really sleep so I did some spellcrafting.” Noah felt ridiculous. Why did he feel like he was being scolded by his mom?

Mark perked up when he heard that, dropped the angry mother act, and had a silly smile on his face. “More boom boom?”

Noah released a breath of relief and played along. “BIG spear, you throw, big orc go BOOM” he said while making wild hand gestures.

“Hell yeah!” Mark exclaimed as he laughed. “Let’s go kill those orcs! I can’t wait to show you what I can do!”

“Neither can I!” Noah was looking forward to finding out what a class that had better stat rewards could do. “But, let me eat something first” He then plopped down beside the roasting rabbit and dug in.

An hour later, they finally set out toward the orc encampment. This gave Noah an opportunity to show Mark his new movement spell. “You go run as fast as you can, I want to see the limits of my new spell.”

“Are you sure? I don’t really want to arrive there alone.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll catch up. I’ll even enhance you so that you can get out of trouble if it finds you.” Noah explained as he got into position. “Oh, and our target for today is eradicating the normal orcs at least or maybe fifty total just so we can hopefully get to that child faster. If we’re lucky maybe we’ll even kill the warchief with my new spell.”

Mark looked confusedly at Noah’s posture and asked “So, um, does your movement spell need you to Naruto run or something?”

“Unfortunately.” Noah smiled wryly

“That’s…” Mark started laughing and holding his belly “Thanks, I needed that.” But, he glanced at Noah’s serious face and realized something. “Wait, you're serious?”

“Unfortunately…” Noah’s wry smile got worse at hearing that.

“Well, that’s one way to travel, I’ll give you that.” Mark smiled as he successfully held in his laugh. “Okay, race you there then. [Essence of the Cheetah]”

“See you there. Wait what?”

Mark took off at his top speed which was already more than a hundred kilometers per hour. Noah on the other hand with his new movement spell and the teardrop shell of air around him, his top speed clocked in at around eighty kilometers per hour.

And just a few minutes later, Noah arrived near the encampment and turned on his radar for a second to find Mark. That was when he saw a green dot with a whole bunch of red dots following behind it. There were even two larger red dots among the smaller ones. “Good, he’s already started.” Noah conjured two fire bombs as he didn’t want to accidentally pepper Mark with shrapnel. He silently walked closer to the place that Mark was headed and waited for all of them to appear. A minute later he saw Mark running leisurely ahead of a bunch of orcs as if it didn’t bother him one bit.

“Mark! Bombs incoming!” Noah shouted as he threw the two bombs at the crowd of orcs. Mark then suddenly sped up even more and left the orcs to their demise. Like a scene from an action movie, he didn’t even look back as two fiery explosions happened behind him.

BOOM

BOOM

“Damn, I wish I could’ve done the cool walk away,” Noah exclaimed as he saw what Mark did all while he had a smug smile plastered across his face. “That smile makes me want to punch him so bad” he thought.

It was then that Noah saw two orc warriors walk out of the flames with red auras that cracks all over them emanating from their bodies.

Noah called out to his cousin “Look out!”

But Mark only stood in place and raised his arm to meet one of the orcs’ axe swings. Miraculously, his arm wasn’t chopped right through by the axe but actually withstood it. Noah couldn’t help but whistle at that. “Must be one of his new skills or spells, or maybe even both.” But, Noah saw an expression on Mark’s face that he didn’t expect to see, astonishment.

“Wtf?! Did you not expect that and tried it out just to be cool?!” He shouted in disbelief. “Looks like he’s getting cocky. Hehe”

Noah spent over a hundred mana and conjured his biggest spell yet.

"FIRE IN THE HOLE!” he yelled as he mentally threw the spear with all his might at the other orc warrior. The spear flew straight and true and pierced through the orc’s aura shield, into its chest cavity. It took three steps back, reeling from the impact, but, it wasn’t dead yet.

Noah just smiled and said “Explosion.” He then turned his back on the orc and Mark and did a fist pump.

Mark saw this and couldn’t help but roll his eyes. “Showoff.”