Chronicles of Ethan Complete Series: A LitRPG / GameLit Fantasy Adventure

by John L. Monk

  The old man’s voice took on a steely hardness. “When you find that note, you’ll quickly be … how should I say … in a position to leave the game.”

  “That’s it?”

  “There’s more, but I must be careful,” he said, scratching his chin. “First, the easy stuff. When you leave the game, you’ll wake up in a robot body, per the Everlife marketing material. Almost nobody has won, and the executives will quiz you mightily as to how you did it. Do not answer them. Be vague. Accept your prize, smile and wave, and leave their presence just as soon as you can. The quantum computer running Mythian is nearly opaque to them. All reporting, as Jaddow termed it, is done at what he calls info level. But if you break too many rules in making your escape, you’ll have revealed yourself. This is why he badgered you about following the rules. We don’t want an audit trail. Understand?”

  “Not in the slightest,” I said.

  “Just don’t break any rules,” he said. “Once you’re out, you’ll get a new account. I’ll contact you through the government’s global registry. Be sure to disable your spam filters and privacy protections, or I’ll never get through.”

  I started to nod, then had a thought. “How did you reach me the first time?”

  “Nothing fancy. I opened the connection and Melody used her old account. They never delete them.”

  Another realization: Cipher had just told me a bunch of things straight without being mysterious.

  “Hey! You’re still alive.”

  “Of course. That was just conversation,” Cipher said, pointing at the doors to the Hall of Heroes. “You still need to get in there. I’m going to help you. After that … we’ll see what happens.” He sucked in a breath and blew it out. “Here goes. You have two spells that will get you in. One is a diviner spell, the other diabolist. Don’t ask me their names!”

  During this short exchange, Cipher had visibly aged about twenty years. He still looked better than when I’d found him, though.

  In a quavering voice, he said, “You’ll want to back up a bit…”

  “Huh? Why, what’s wrong?”

  Overhead, the light from Mythian’s three moons faded suddenly as storm clouds gathered in the sky. Cipher’s face looked bleaker than I’d ever seen it. Fearing the worst, I got up and stepped away.

  Just in time.

  A lightning bolt streaked out of the sky and blasted the old man into one of the statues. My ears rang like a clarion, and the world spun around me, but otherwise I was unharmed.

  Cipher, however, was not.

  His once forbidding robes were now ripped and burned. His skin was charred black in places and melted in others. And though he’d always been thin to the point of gaunt, now he looked starved near to death.

  He wheezed in and out in a dry whistle through cracked lips. His nose was gone, and so were his ears. What hair he’d once had was burned away completely.

  Cipher’s voice projected in my mind:

  The ring … It has proved the difference. Thank you, Ethan. Now you and your companion must do your tasks. Find the sleeper, read the note, and leave this world. Only then can you save your wife!

  If I didn’t think he’d die, I would have shaken him.

  “What’s Rita have to do with this? Why is she even here?”

  I’ve done my part. Now do yours!

  With those parting words, Cipher faded from sight, and Ignis, the demon, returned once again to its yellow-orange color.

  Rita’s head poked from the tent as soon as Cipher was gone, her face slack from recent sleep.

  “Ethan … did you hear something?”

  “We had a visitor,” I said.

  “A visitor? Who?”

  “Have a seat and I’ll tell you.”

  Rita sat in the chair vacated by Cipher, and I related everything he’d told me.

  Calmly, I said, “Did you know we were coming here? To the Hall of Heroes? Was this all a big sham?”

  “What?” she said, a surprised look on her face. “No, I didn’t. And I don’t appreciate your tone.”

  I hated that I checked her truth orb, but felt relieved to see it shining golden.

  “Cipher said we both have something to do,” I said. “That we had to do our jobs. I know my part. But I thought you were just helping me. What are you supposed to do?”

  Rita started to shake her head, then stopped after a furtive upward glance.

  “I can’t tell you,” she said. “Yes, I have a task, and no I’m not telling you what. You’ll just have to trust me.”

  Once again, her orb was golden.

  “What the hell’s this about?” I said. “I thought I knew you!”

  Blinking back tears, she said, “Jaddow said Cipher had another plan. You were supposed to fight the dryad again. Only this time, Jaddow would help you.”

  “What else?” I said.

  “I argued with him. I yelled at him good. No way was I letting you fight that thing again. I must have been pretty convincing because he actually listened to me. He spoke to Cipher, then came back and said the plan was changed. Cipher was, um … moved by my arguments.” Rita wiped her eyes. “His exact words.”

  I shook my head. “But why would they want me to fight her again?”

  “There’s something else you should know,” Rita said quietly, avoiding the question. “Jaddow said Cipher’s bad news. He doesn’t give a damn about us or anyone else. We can’t trust him.”

  Jaddow had once described Cipher as manipulative. He’d said my “service” to him wouldn’t end after reuniting with Melody. At the time, my only concern was reaching her, so I’d disregarded his words.

  “You don’t trust him, but you’re here anyway,” I said. “Why?”

  “I’m here because I don’t trust him. I knew you wouldn’t listen if I said don’t help him. I mean, I get it … You love your wife. That’s wonderful.” She said this eyes closed, her tone coldly factual. “Would that I’d been so lucky in my own marriage, but the cards weren’t there.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “You’ve always been there for me. I shouldn’t have treated you like that—accusing you like that.”

  Rita shrugged and looked away.

  “I still don’t understand the secrets.” When her face grew stormy, I added, “I won’t press you. But, I mean … you will tell me eventually. Right?”

  She didn’t answer right away. Instead, she got up, went back to the tent, and crawled inside. From inside she said, “I’ll tell you when you’re ready.”

  I knew why she’d gone into the tent. Not to pack, or find something, or go back to sleep. She was hiding from me. She didn’t want me to see her truth orb.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Five minutes later, Rita came out acting for all the world as if nothing were amiss. And because we had work to do, I went along with it.

  “Cipher said one spell was divination,” I said, “and the other was diabolist.”

  “That’s a start,” she said. “I’d think divination would be the most obvious. Any idea which one?”

  “No, but there’s not that many.”

  Of my three classes, diviner had the fewest spells available. Nine, currently, and I rattled them off: “Reveal Weakness, Seek, Discern, Lurk, Find Water, Babel’s Revenge, Weather Report, Raul’s Lesser Vision, and Lesser Discovery.”

  “What’s Babel’s Revenge do?” she said.

  “Lets me understand languages.”

  Rita nodded. “Oh. Of course. How about, um … Lesser Discovery?”

  I could have slapped myself. “Of course! It lets me find Secret doors.”

  I cast the spell and felt the mana drain—50 points—but nothing lit up like the description said it would if a secret door were present.

  “What a piece of junk,” I said bitterly.

  “Well, how about Lesser Vision?”

  I shook my head. “That’s a weird one—lets me see the future, or so it claims. How’s that possible?”

  Rita laughed. “You
never paid attention in physics, did you?”

  “I’ve never taken a physics class in my life.”

  “Well, if you had, you’d remember the game runs on a quantum computer. Qubits exist as—”

  “Ones, zeroes, and both at the same time,” I said. “We learned that in elementary school.”

  “Did they tell you quantum computers are really, really fast? All the spell needs is to copy the game’s state—freeze it—then let the copy run while the real game waits. After that, the copy’s deleted, and the data from the test goes to the caster. Probably take a trillionth of a second. And actually, there’d be a bunch of copies after that—tests to see what you’d do with the knowledge. You know … to ensure the future you predicted really happened.”

  When she put it that way, I felt smaller than ever.

  “Remind me again what you did for a living?” I said.

  “Doctor. Of medicine. Cast the spell already.”

  As spells went, this was a strange one, and I’d been fearful of using it ever since reading the description. It used no mana at all. Instead, it used karma points. The description didn’t say how many, either.

  Spell name: Raul’s Lesser Vision

  Rank available: 20

  Mana cost: N/A

  Cooldown: 1 day

  Duration: N/A

  Description:

  Who can fully understand the complex nature of HE who is called RAUL?

  A simple question, yet one whose answer has cracked better minds than yours. For your sake, we shall change the subject, lest your tiny mind shatter so utterly, that all of Q4’s cycles, and all of its RAM, could never put you together again.

  One thing about Raul: he could see the future … Well, a little. More accurately, he could see likely futures. For example: if you throw a rock into a pond, is it likely to turn into a delicious cup of coffee that sings and smells like ham? Or is it more likely to cause a small splash and a tiny ripple? One would imagine the latter. The true answer, however, lies in the infinitely divisible spaces between quarks and leptons…

  Oh, beware, brave adventurer. For here there be dragons!

  Warning: this spell relies on an unspecified number of Karma points. Cast it too often and you’ll wish I’d explained to you the full enormity of Raul … (shiver).

  “You know,” Rita said, “I think that might be the dumbest spell description I’ve heard yet.”

  “The dumber they get, the more powerful.”

  Rita giggled. “How would you know? You’re too dumb to understand the complex nature of Raul without dying.”

  “Hardy-har.”

  The spell requirements were simple: the name of the spell and the future I wanted to see.

  “Should I ask how to get in?” I said.

  Rita shook her head. “It only tells the future. That’d be more like … you know, asking for advice.”

  I nodded. “Good call. How about this? Raul’s Lesser Vision—show me how I eventually get into the Hall of Heroes!”

  I traveled a rune-lit hallway with vaulted ceilings in a body suffused with fire and light. My path took me down countless flights of stairs and long hallways. Bas-reliefs of battle scenes decorated every wall not occupied by a door, of which there were thousands.

  Occasionally, I’d see translucent apparitions floating inches above the floor. They drifted slowly toward me baring clawed hands outstretched on long, skeletal arms. Though frightening to look at, I outpaced them easily.

  Left, right, down, and forward I traveled, often mere inches away from a ghostly collision at one of the numerous intersections.

  The doors were spaced evenly on both sides of every hallway. I wanted to open one for a look, but this wasn’t my body. Its focus was absolute: ever onward, never hesitating.

  After about fifteen minutes, I stopped in the middle of yet another long hallway and turned to a closed door on my right. I expected my body to reach out and open it. Instead, I stepped through it. On the other side, lying supine on a stone bier with eyes closed, was Rita. Surrounding her was a golden nimbus of light that dazzled the eyes.

  I started to scream, and the vision ended.

  “Ethan, stop!” Rita said, shaking me like a rag doll.

  I blinked in surprise and focused on her face. My throat was raw, and I felt drained.

  “Thank you,” I said hoarsely. “I was screaming?”

  “Like nothing I’ve ever heard before. Like the steam whistle on that train in Eureka. Remember?”

  I nodded. “What happened after I cast the spell?”

  “You were sitting for hours, staring into space and moaning. I worried you’d never snap out of it. Did the spell work? Did you see anything?”

  It hadn’t felt like hours. More like fifteen minutes.

  “I was in a screamer,” I said.

  Rita shook her head. “Sorry, what’s a screamer?”

  “A kind of demon. The first I ever summoned. Doesn’t take any gems, or blood, or fingers. All it does is scream. At the time, I thought it’d be useful for measuring attack ranges. You know, tell it to fly five hundred feet and stop. It doesn’t scream while it’s moving, only when it stops.”

  “What did the screamer do?” Rita said. “In the vision.”

  I chewed my lip, searching for the right words.

  “It sort of wandered … I guess. Actually, it was more purposeful than that. I … we were inside. Statues everywhere, long hallways. There were ghosts floating around, and they had claws. They didn’t move fast, but I think if one caught me, it’d make up for that slowness with a lot of damage. Maybe worse. Nothing surprises me in Mythian anymore.”

  I mentioned the doors—thousands of them, one after another—and how the screamer ignored all but one of them.

  “This door looked like every other door. I turned to it, passed through, and found myself in a sort of sepulcher—a kind of tomb.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “You were there,” I said. “Lying on a block of stone like you were asleep. That’s when I started screaming.”

  With a worried frown, she said, “Did it wake me up?”

  I tried to remember, but it was all so fuzzy.

  “If it lasted a few seconds more, I’d know. But the vision ended too quickly. I’m sorry.”

  Quietly, Rita swore.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  If we were ever to get inside, it was clear Rita would have to be the sleeper. I hated the idea. What if the vision was wrong? The spell description said it only showed likely futures. Which, to me, left a Mythian-sized amount of room for something to go wrong.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I said, wanting her to anyway and unable to hide it.

  “We’ve come too far to back out now,” she said. “You know that.”

  “Is this why you’re here? Is this the task Cipher mentioned?”

  Rita frowned in a way that said I was pushing it.

  “It’s not the thing I was told about,” she said. “But obviously I’m needed for this, too. Now stop asking.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Let’s just figure out how to do this,” she said. Her eyes glazed over. “I’ve never changed the default setting before, but … yeah, it moves.”

  Deep in our character sheet was a sleep timer with a default of eight hours. When the timer ended, we’d awaken.

  Without warning, Rita grabbed me in a fierce hug. When she pulled away, her eyes were red and puffy.

  “Just in case I don’t see you again,” she said, sniffling and rubbing her eyes.

  “Of course you will. I won’t stop trying to get you out. Forever, if that’s what it takes.”

  “Your wife needs you.”

  “She also needs you.”

  “Just her?” she said.

  I shook my head. “Me too. We both do.” The moment stretched uncomfortably. Feeling like I should do or say something, I added, “This should only take a little while. The screamer flies pretty quickly.”

  Rit
a nodded, then smiled in a show of bravery. “All right.”

  We chose a section of paving in the lee of the easternmost statues. There wasn’t any snow, but she swished her arms back and forth anyway, pantomiming a snow angel. I laughed and pretended at cheerfulness, but my heart was aching.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’m gonna set it.”

  Rita’s eyes unfocused, staring at nothing as she opened the clock settings.

  “There’s no toggle for infinite,” she said. “You have to set the default to custom, make it zero, and … Yep! I just got a warning saying not to do this.”

  “With lots of exclamations?”

  “Of course. Okay, setting it … and … done. I’m officially in danger of sleeping forever.”

  Thoughts of Melody and her similar fate in the Vale of Solace came to me unbidden.

  “Gonna close my eyes now,” Rita said tensely. “Okay … here goes. Don’t go messing with my body, you perv.”

  “I’d never—”

  “Jeez, I’m just kidding. Bye, Ethan.”

  “I’ll see you soon,” I said.

  Then I waited.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  “You asleep yet?” I whispered.

  “No,” she whispered back. “Shush.”

  Again, I waited, shushing like a champion shusher. Then, about twenty minutes later, Rita faded from sight.

  I gave it ten minutes. For all I knew, she had to float invisibly to her spot before materializing.

  “Ghanut!” I called in a tone of command that wasn’t necessary. “I need you!”

  The screaming fire demon appeared before me, and it was loud.

  “Stop screaming!” I screamed.

  The demon quieted and floated patiently. Unlike Ignis and various other demons, this one didn’t glare sullenly at me. It barely had a face at all. Just two shadowy indents for eyes.

  “All right,” I said. “Are you listening?”

  The demon started screaming again, and again I told it to shut up.

  “Don’t scream when I give you a command,” I said. “I’ll tell you when to scream. If you understand, float up and down once.”