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Succubus 8 (Riddles And Revenge): A LitRPG Series




  SUCCUBUS 8

  Riddles And Revenge

  A.J. Markam

  A LITRPG Series

  Mailing List

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  Copyright © 2021 by A.J. Markam

  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.

  Also by AJ Markam

  As Edward Lang

  Monster Girls 1

  Monster Girls 2

  Monster Girl Mountain

  As Rob Nolan

  Time Mage

  Time Mage 2

  Iron Mage

  Iron Mage 2

  As AJ Markam

  Ex-Superheroes 3

  (Kindle and Audiobook)

  Succubus

  (Kindle and audiobook)

  Succubus 2: Hell To Pay

  (Kindle and audiobook)

  Succubus 3:

  The Good, The Bad, And The Crazy Stupid Hot

  (Kindle and audiobook)

  Succubus 4:

  Gnome Place Like Home

  (Kindle and audiobook)

  Succubus 5:

  Hardcore Dungeon Core

  (Kindle and audiobook)

  Succubus 6:

  Devil In The Deep Blue Sea

  (Kindle and audiobook)

  Succubus 7:

  Fairy Tale

  (Kindle and audiobook)

  Succubus Christmas Special

  (Short story and audiobook)

  Ex-Superheroes 1

  (Kindle and Audiobook)

  Ex-Superheroes 2

  (Kindle and Audiobook)

  Contents

  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

  Also by AJ Markam

  Mailing List

  1

  A lot can change in a day.

  And there can be lots of unintended consequences of even the best-intended actions.

  After Alaria, Stig, Meera, and I took out the mob bosses Varkus and Peenocchio, I figured that the city of Exardus would enter an age of peace and tranquility.

  Not quite.

  When the United States took out Saddam Hussein in Iraq, everybody thought it was game over.

  Nobody realized that as bad as Saddam was, maybe he was the lid on the pot keeping a lot worse shit from boiling over.

  Soon as he was gone, all the Shiite Muslims who had suffered decades under oppressive Sunni rule began killing their neighbors in revenge.

  The Sunnis who had worked for Saddam were purged from their government jobs… and immediately picked up weapons to kill both Shiites and American soldiers.

  And an influx of Al Qaeda terrorists flowed into Iraq to attack the US military, turning the entire country into hell.

  Even after they’d dealt with Al Qaeda, once the US military left, the power vacuum opened the region up for ISIS to terrorize it.

  Sometimes you need a bigger asshole to keep a bunch of smaller assholes in check.

  It seems that was the case with Varkus and Peenocchio.

  All the thugs who had worked for them – well, the ones who had survived the war I had instigated between the two factions – were adrift and on their own, and they started a wave of burglary and armed robbery.

  Exardus’s police forces were basically non-existent. They’d relied on Varkus and Peenocchio to keep the peace and were quickly overwhelmed by a couple hundred warriors, hunters, rogues, and mages terrorizing the population.

  Emboldened by the mobsters’ success, the dregs from the Underneath – the literal underworld of thieves, assassins, and feral demons who drank and partied in the sewers of Exardus – poured out into the streets and joined the pillage.

  Unfortunately, I’d started all of it by taking out Varkus and Peenocchio.

  So I figured it was my responsibility to restore order.

  2

  “You see anybody?” I shouted as I soared through the air on my magic carpet, a hundred feet above the gleaming white streets of Exardus.

  I’d had to buy a new magic carpet after my old one got cleaved in two by a murderous blue fairy with a wand made out of cardboard and a drinking straw.

  Long story.

  Alaria flew off to my right about 60 feet away. “Nothing over here!”

  “Nothing here, either,” Meera called out 60 feet to my left. The early-morning sunshine glinted off the steel armor covering her head to foot – even her angel wings.

  I sighed in frustration. I’d just gotten back the cursed sapphire that had rendered me impotent for weeks and had finally started having boners again. By all rights, I should have been continuing the marathon sex session Alaria, Meera, and I had started 12 hours before.

  But when I woke up at dawn the next morning, glanced out the big bay window of the bedroom, and saw the dozens of fires burning throughout the city, I had to investigate.

  I called down to the front desk of Meera’s luxury apartment building for information, and they informed me of the situation: gangsters had rampaged throughout the city all night, pillaging house after house. Demons were running wild and killing innocent townsfolk in their homes.

  “But don’t worry, sir,” the elf on duty assured me over the crystal ball intercom system. “We have a team of Orcish warriors and Elvish mages standing by to defend the building.”

  Once I’d found out that we were to blame for all the chaos, I was stricken with guilt.

  Alaria wasn’t.

  “Not our problem,” she’d said as she reached for my junk.

  “We caused it!” I protested as I swatted her hand away.

  “Yes,” Meera said quite seriously, “and we must set it right.”

  When you need backup on a moral argument, it’s always good to have an angel on your side.

  Even if she was sort of a fallen angel.

  Who liked BDSM.

  And threesomes.

  And getting fucked in the ass.

  Details.

  “We need to take them out,” I agreed. “Otherwise they’ll turn Exardus into a hellhole.”

  “Have fun,” Alaria announced as she headed for the kitchen, her tail twirling sensuously over her exquisitely beautiful, red, bare ass.

  “You’re not going to help?!” Meera exclaimed.

  “Nope.”

  The problem was, the majority of the thugs were Level 80
or thereabouts.

  I was Level 40.

  They weren’t just double my power levels – they were four to five times more powerful.

  Goddamn logarithmic scales.

  Even with Meera’s assistance, it would be a struggle to take on more than one or two at a time.

  So the only way we could handle them was as a group.

  I needed Alaria’s help, no matter how disinterested she was in cleaning up the mess we’d made.

  So I needed an equally good bribe.

  I gritted my teeth and said, “For every thug you take out, I’ll let you stick a finger in my ass for one minute.”

  Alaria immediately froze.

  It was a new sexual boundary we’d played with during my time being cursed and unable to get an erection. Though not my thing, Alaria loved it.

  She looked over her shoulder with a sly smile.

  “One inch from my tail,” she counter-offered. “If I kill six gangsters, that’s six inches – ”

  “NO,” I snapped. “Fingers only.”

  She sighed. “Fine.”

  Fingers in my ass during sex…

  All for the greater good.

  Her tail in my ass?

  There were limits.

  “Can we at least fuck before we go out and involve ourselves needlessly in other people’s problems?” Alaria asked.

  That was one concession I was willing to make.

  “Alright.”

  She brightened immediately. “Can I get a couple of those fingerings on credit?”

  “…fine.”

  She did more than a couple, though.

  But she was in a much better mood after she’d had her morning orgasms.

  3

  After a quick breakfast, we dropped by the Underneath to pick up Stig, whom I had sent out for an all-night bender while Alaria, Meera, and I enjoyed ourselves back at the apartment.I was shocked at how cleared-out the Underneath was. The only lowlifes around were the ones passed out on the ground or tending their shops.

  We found Stig at one of the swankier drinking joints, face-down on the bar and surrounded by dozens of empty shot glasses and beer steins.

  “Yo, Stig, time to go,” I said, sitting him upright and patting his cheeks.

  “Bosshh,” he slurred, and looked confused. “Ish time to go already?”

  “Yup,” I said, putting him on my shoulder like I was about to burp a baby.

  “I drank ten gold ALREADY?!” he asked in bleary stupefaction.

  “Uhhhh… yeah,” I lied.

  I didn’t see any sign of the money on the bar near him, so I just assumed someone had ripped him off while he’d been passed out.

  Or maybe he’d been drinking top-shelf shit the entire time.

  I’d set him up with enough money to go on a bender for days because, well, I’d been expecting to be fucking for days.

  My marathon session had been cut short, so I didn’t see why his shouldn’t be.

  “O-kaaaay…” he murmured in resignation.

  Five minutes later I was flying above the city with a drunk imp in my lap and an angel and a succubus flying in formation on either side of me.

  “Do we care if they’re Varkus’s or Peenocchio’s men?” Alaria called out.

  “No – why?”

  “Well, you can tell by their armor, that’s all.”

  It was true. As written by my douchebag coworker Chad, Peenocchio had been a flaming gay stereotype – so all of his henchmen’s armor was fabulous. Varkus’s guys wore old, dented, battle-scarred stuff.

  “Makes ‘em easier to finger,” Alaria said, then did a double-take like she’d just realized the double entendre. “Like you.”

  “HEY!” I yelled angrily.

  “In da butt,” Stig piped up drunkenly from my lap.

  “YOU shut UP,” I scolded him. Then I turned back to my succubus. “And YOU don’t use stuff from the bedroom against me!”

  “Against you or to you?” she said with a giggle.

  “I’m warning you – ”

  “Okay, okay,” she said with a laugh.

  “You can do it to me…” Meera said plaintively, like she didn’t want to be left out of the fingering.

  “Oh, I will, Bird-slut,” Alaria said, using her now-affectionate nickname for the angel.

  “Thank you, Hell-whore,” Meera said with an only slightly ironic tone.

  “Gross,” Stig muttered.

  “Keep your eyes on the ground, people,” I ordered, “and your minds out of the gutter.”

  “That’s no fun,” Alaria teased.

  Meera pointed. “There’s one!”

  Down in an alley, a lone warrior was coming out of a burning building. Judging from his fancy green armor, he’d been one of Peenochio’s men.

  “He’s coming out the back door!” Alaria shouted, then added with an impish grin, “Whereas I like to go in the back door.”

  “In da butt,” Stig clarified once more.

  “HIT HIM!” I yelled before either of them could say anything else.

  Alaria immediately strafed the warrior with fireballs –

  I Soul-Sucked him with black lightning –

  And Meera dove down into the alleyway and delivered the coup-de-grace with a stroke of her flaming sword.

  The warrior collapsed on the ground, dead.

  “Wow, he went down hard!” Alaria crowed, then smiled sweetly at me. “Speaking of going down, honey, if I double up my tail and stick it between my legs, would you – ”

  “NO!” I yelled.

  “In da mouth,” Stig said helpfully.

  “SHUT UP! BOTH OF YOU!’

  Suddenly an arrow flew past me through the air – thwip!

  I got a quick glimpse of a scruffy-looking elf with a bow. One of Varkus’s men.

  “Hunter!” I yelled at Alaria and Meera. “Take cover!”

  There’s an excellent reason military strategy says to take the high ground whenever possible – and why air superiority has been the most crucial aspect of warfare over the last 100 years.

  The women and I zipped over the buildings, out of the Hunter’s line of fire.

  Then I came out silently on the other side of him (one of the perks of a flying carpet is stealth) and Soul-Sucked him from behind.

  As soon as he tried to turn around and hit me, I just ducked back over the top of the building.

  Then Alaria hit him with a fireball from the other side.

  We each kept attacking from opposite sides until he didn’t know which way to turn –

  Which distracted him from Meera flying straight down and spiking her sword through the top of his skull.

  Skewered like a shish-kabob, he collapsed on the ground.

  “Way to double-team him, honey!” Alaria whooped. “Hey – first time you’ve double-teamed a guy with me!”

  “ALARIA – ”

  “Da mouth and da butt,” Stig said.

  “Watch out!” Meera screamed as she withdrew her sword from the corpse.

  Suddenly a bunch of thugs stepped out from different doorways. Judging by the mix of shiny and rusted armor, it seemed Varkus’s and Peenocchio’s men were teaming up to wreak havoc.

  So it was no longer a gang war – it was all-out war.

  The alleyway was lousy with thugs: two hunters, a mage, and a warrior.

  The warrior didn’t bother me. It was the fuckers with the ranged powers.

  They didn’t go after me, though.

  They went after Meera, who was still on the ground with them.

  One hunter shot her with an arrow. Thwip!

  The other hunter unloaded a blunderbuss on her right. BOOM!

  And the mage blasted her with a blue bolt of crackling light.

  Meera crumpled onto the ground, unable to fly, her hit points perilously low.

  Unlike other NPCs, she couldn’t be killed permanently because she wore a Collar of Gorbolik, a warlock artifact which bound her to me and allowed me to resurrect her.


  But still –

  “Save Meera!” I shouted at Alaria as I cast Self-Sacrifice and poured some of my own Health into Meera. We needed her if we wanted to prevail over the higher-level fighters. “If she goes down, we all go down!”

  “That’s what I’m talkin’ about!” Alaria said cheerfully as she went into a dive.

  “Bag of dicks,” Stig offered drunkenly.

  I had no idea where he’d gotten that one. Probably hanging out unsupervised in the Underneath.

  I ignored both Stig and Alaria – because I had an idea.

  Instead of fleeing, I flew the magic carpet straight for the thugs –

  But I held Stig out in front of me like a teddy bear and squeezed.

  A quick digression.

  My dad once had a friend who owned three Dachshunds – you know, wiener dogs. Dachshunds have a problem that arises from their distinctive breeding: their bodies are so long that sometimes their backbones press in on their spinal cords and paralyze them.

  That happened to the man’s dog, Dutch. The poor little guy’s spine collapsed, and he could no longer use or control his lower half. His legs just didn’t work.

  But his owners came up with an ingenious solution: they modified an old roller skate and strapped it to his lower half. Now Dutch could scoot around with his wheels holding up his backside, he was completely mobile, and he seemed just as happy as always.