The Skull Throne: A LitRPG novel (Kingdom of Heaven Book 1)

by J. A. Cipriano

  Despite those obvious stabs of reality, I often wished this was the world I lived in. I know this wasn’t real since they coded little inconsistencies into these games to stave off immersion sickness and addiction but the unreality of it is awesome in and of itself.

  I guess the life-like quality of that unreal, new world is what makes Elementalis Online one of the biggest NSAF (Neural Sensory And Function) MMORPGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) on the planet. You don’t get yourself millions of plugged-in players if you couldn’t knock their socks off, after all. Who wouldn’t be impressed by a vibrant world composed of shattered landmasses, each formed of a different element and held together by glowing oceans, every sensation beamed into your brain straight away?

  EO wasn’t the first of its kind, and it wouldn’t be the last, but a lot of people think it was the best. It was for me, at any rate, for two reasons. First, it gave me a chance to hit paydays that take care of a lot of problems offline, and second, it was the first game that let me feel my feet on the ground. Sure, I couldn’t feel the grey-skinned rocky toes of my chosen avatar, but I could feel the ground beneath them through the thick, metal boots I was wearing, and let me just say, it was fantastic.

  I blinked those errant thoughts out of the way and concentrated. It would be a big knock to my reputation if I was found day-dreaming when the rest of the group got there. The faintly transparent screen glowed a pale white, standing out from my brown-and-ash surroundings. I focused on the main stuff: gear, Gems, that sort of thing. The header kept my attention the most, in particular, the pulsing blue experience bar underneath:

  Shale, 39 Craggar Warlord

  598,000/600,000 Experience

  With the bounty quest from this particular rare MOB over, I’d finally hit 40. I had been lingering in the thirties for long enough. While I had made plenty of money from power-leveling twinks for a few months now, I’d wasted more than enough time on it. No, if this all worked out, I could get back to experiencing the game, and chase after bigger bounties

  The rest of the UI popped into life behind the status pane. My groupmates must be close now. For immersion's sake, the status indicators only popped up when your group was either zoning, you were in combat, or you purposefully brought them up. Red and green transparent arcs (Health Points (HP) and Elemental Power (EP) respectfully) came up around my center of vision, not too close to get in the way but close enough to be easily seen. Sure, you could try to rely on the simulated sensations of discomfort to gauge your HP before death and exhaustion to realize you were low on EP for using abilities, but anyone out of the newbie yards knew better. Sometimes a victory hinged on those last few HP and EP.

  Shale HP 3210/3210 EP 2420/2420

  Readying myself, I triple checked my gear, going from head to toe. The NSAF gear naturally utilized your basic frame to work your avatar around so Shale matched my own moderate height (if I could stand fully upright) and stocky frame. His skin was grey, though, flesh literally made of rock, with jagged angles instead of the smooth curves of flesh. My armor was a mismatched set of the best heavy plate armor I could put together, each piece picked for effectiveness with no thought to appearance. My boots were made of enchanted slate, my leggings were created from the shells of Gold Bugs (literally giant beetles infused with pure gold), and the rest was well-worn steel. Everything seemed in place.

  Clustered around my own arcs were smaller ones, each with a small icon denoting the Class and Role of the other members of our group. There were no names on the UI, though. There was no need for that as the NSAF link popped them right into my mind as I glanced at the display, as well as their guild names, if they had them.

  There were only three of us altogether and that pinged a warning in my brain. Even over leveled and geared as I was for this little romp, every scrap of information I knew about our target called for at least a full five-person group.

  Oh well, it wasn’t my show. I was being paid well one way or the other.

  Rich Kid’s status was on the left and his avatar’s name was Burndall. He must have thought the pun would be clever when playing an Ember Sorcerer but the name sounded stupid out-loud. Only level 20 (barely the level to take up the quest to slay our target) and guildless. I wondered if he was somebody’s second character being grinded up through the ranks quickly or an actual wealthy real lifer who was paying his way up. Either way, he was definitely geared out since his HP and EP readouts were way above normal, which was good since he’d be providing most of the DPS on this little adventure.

  Burndall HP 1020/1020 EP 2800/2800

  Our mystery third was what really caught my eye, er, brain. Kayla was a Nix Sorceress, yet she was listed as our Support. Supports were one of the lynchpin of a successful group, handling healing, bolstering abilities, and crowd control in battle. Sorcerers with their horrible C Grade Support Affinity usually made for bad Supports but then again, Nix were A Grade at Support so there was still hope.

  Still, my inner team player glowered at a normally DPS Class faking the roll. The only upside was that she was level 39 herself and, even better, a member of the Sisters of Artemis. This could wind up being easier than I first thought.

  Kayla HP 2010/2010 EP 3100/3100

  No more time for daydreaming as I could feel the incoming Teleport Spell before it hit. The blasted earth of the forest floor split open and a geyser of water spurted up, dancing and spiraling unnaturally into a rough oval. Fancy, someone cared enough about thematics to add a Water Modification to her Teleport Gem. It was a purely cosmetic touch, affecting the power of the spell not one bit, but I appreciated the bit of class it added to such a utilitarian ability.

  The fresh, clean water sizzled into steam as it dripped over the ground, another beautiful immersive touch, as the empty air in the watery portal burst into light. As the flash cleared, Burndall and Kayla stepped out of the flowing waters. The geyser subsided behind them and I could see that their appearances were as different from each other as they were from me.

  The kid (there was no way to know his age for sure, not with the Filter in place, but the idea had stuck in my brain since he was lower level) was really playing up the ‘badass edgelord’ look. Tall for an Ember and thin, almost to the point of being gangly, his dark red skin and blazing eyes were barely visible under the leather cloak and dark-red-almost-black robes. Though they were dyed, I recognized the cut and the sigils, some high-cost stuff there, but who knew what Gems he’d slotted in them? That’d be the real test, especially as he was sporting a Basalt Blade, nice but traditionally a weapon for Vanguards or Shadows, maybe even a Bladesaint, but not a backline caster.

  Still, I didn’t have a right to complain as I was playing one of the most maligned Classes in the game. Maybe he had an ingenious combination of Gems that worked for him, just like I had found a way that really worked for me.

  Sorry, I’ve gotten ahead of myself. The Gem System was the lifeblood of Elementalis, allowing anyone to pick up any Skill, Spell, or Passive ability with the right Gems and even modify those abilities. It was the real metagame, mixing Class and Racial Affinities with gear and Gems to come out with winning combinations, which was why I couldn’t judge the guy based on his gear alone.

  On that note, I took a second to slot a bit more Fire resistance. Craggar like me were a little weak against Fire normally and rare world bosses like this tended to be immune to Stuns. With a mental command, I swapped out my Shield Slam Skill Gem (S-Gems for short) for an Elemental Bastion and the linked Earth Opal Modification Gem (Mod) for a Fire Ruby.

  S-Gem removed! Skill 'Shield Slam' disabled.

  S-Gem slotted! Mod slotted! Skill 'Elemental Bastion' enabled with Fire Affinity modification.

  Still, the kid's low level made me glad for Kayla's presence. Unlike Burndall, she gave off the air of the cool, collected professional. She was also breathtakingly beautiful and that wasn’t as easy as you would think. Yeah, they try to make both the male and female avatars look as good as they
can but as I mentioned earlier, the nature of deep dives on NSAF gear meant that avatars couldn’t stray too far from the actual person playing. Basically, if you were the victim of a horrible accident and thus didn’t look so good, your avatar could only look so much better (a fact that I was all too aware of). On the other hand, a real knockout was, well, a REAL knockout.

  Pearlescent, pale skin complimented swirling blue hair that moved as if she was underwater. Short and slight, Kayla’s gear was top-notch Player vs. Player gear, earned in the Crucible of Elements, the center of the Team Arena bracket. Elegant blue robes slid into light armor, silver greaves, shoulder guards, and gauntlets, and because Crucible gear couldn’t be dyed, the colors helped identify the grade and thus skill level of opponents, and that blue-and-silver scheme meant Grade S. The best of the best, at least in her level bracket. That explained why she was in the Sisters of Artemis without being at level cap. She must have kept herself purposefully at her level to stay in the 29 to 39 bracket, maybe to stay with her team until they caught up with her or something like that.

  Burndall looked around eagerly, betraying the dark and mysterious look of his avatar.

  “Sweet! First time in this zone but looks like I’ve already been here!” He laughed at his not-so-subtle joke, an obvious play on his punish name, before catching sight of me. I was ninety percent certain he was, in fact, a teenager; EO did alter your voice for privacy reasons, but they couldn’t do anything to alter your manner of speaking. “Duckling,” the omnipresent Filter politely inserted instead of the curse he had intended to spit out, “I didn’t know you were a Warlord, dude. This is going to suck.”

  Ah, the Filter, a necessary evil to be sure. It pervaded the entire NSAF network, a constantly corrective AI that intercepted words that could be both offensive (such as swears or racial slurs) or could jeopardize the privacy of the user base. Identity theft led to brain-jacking, after all, the direct invasion of your brain through the neural interface … which meant no one in the game could talk about their real selves or their real lives. It did add to the immersion, though, and it kept us safe. Those were big pluses for all the inconvenience.

  I didn’t bristle. I was used to that kind of reaction, and like those before him, he’d soon be eating those words. As I gripped my Standard of Granholm, the long staff bearing the coat of arms of the Craggar capitol, holding it up straight so the blood-red banner could flap freely, I responded. “You needed a tank; there’s no one tankier in my level bracket. You have to know my reputation if you’re paying for this, right?”

  “With how few people you hired, Burndall, you should be glad you have a Warlord,” Kayla pointed out, producing an Orb of Soothing Waters in one hand. I didn’t see her hands or arms move. Another good-if-expected sign, she was using direct neural commands instead of gestures. “Don’t believe all the meta-guides you read. Even we use Warlords for new content or nasty fights.”

  I saluted the Sorceress gratefully while the kid let out a puff of flame through his teeth. “Fine, fine. I may be pretty new at this but even I’ve heard of the Sisters. Too bad I'll never get to join as a dude. I mean, you ladies are in the top ten raiding guilds, that's leet there.” Talk about some real One-and-Twenty slang there! “Sorry about that, Shale, didn’t mean to sound like a jerk.”

  “It’s fine,” I nodded. “I’ve gotten used to it.” As Kayla joined in on the nod, I smiled. “We can take Scorchtusk, I’m sure of it.”

  “You said you had the spawn point and the time he was last taken down,” she noted as she flashed me a return smile. “We’re at the spot but when is the big ugly going to show up?”

  Unlike Kayla or I, the Ember touched at buttons invisible to anyone but him. Yep, definitely a newbie. “Oh, we’ve got, like, ten minutes or so to prep up. Scorchie got whacked a little over six hours ago and he’s got a seven hour respawn, right?”

  Her eyes widened as her orb began to glow and a staff materialized in her other hand. “When exactly did he die?”

  I had the same sinking feeling. “Yeah, Burndall, Scorchtusk doesn’t have a seven hour respawn. It’s actually six hours and forty minutes.”

  The kid frowned, obviously upset at having bad information. “Banana,” he Filter-cursed. “Uh, he died … six hours and thirty-nine minutes ago.”

  A blistering hot flame erupted from behind me, followed immediately by a rush of scalding breath. That sinking feeling hit rock bottom as I spun, coming face-to-tusks to the biggest Ash Boar I had ever encountered in the Earthfire Forest.

  “Make that six hours and forty minutes,” I blurted out as I raised my massive shield to ward off the initial rush of the monstrous Elemental beast.

  For a giant slab of pre-cooked pork covered in patchy, wiry hair, Scorchie moved fast. As he charged across the clearing, he left an immense wall of flame in his wake, cutting our battlefield in half. Even at the speed of thought, I barely had time to activate Elemental Bastion before it hit. My stone shield burst with soothing blue light that washed over the three of us just as three sets of smoking tusks crashed into it.

  Boon 'Elemental Bastion: Fire' granted! +50% Fire Resistance, Total Resistance 40%!

  Scorchtusk's Ashen Charge hits (blocked)! 262 (-262 blocked) Physical and 127 (-85 resisted) Fire Damage taken! Health Points: 2821/3210

  I grit my teeth from the initial hit. That could have been worse but all Ash Boars got angrier and burned hotter over the fight. Still, it could be manageable if the fight ended quickly but that was in the others' hands. My job was to soak up the punishment and keep this beast's attention purely on me while everyone else blew him to pieces.

  That was definitely something I could do!

  As Scorchtusk reared back for some kind of stomp attack, an AoE (Area of Effect) Earth effect if I remembered right, Kayla was already in motion while Burndall was gesturing madly at his virtual controls.

  She cut wide to my right and flourished her orb. Soothing waters rained down on me and healed the worst of my wounds as I slammed my banner into the ground, planting it with a clap of thunder. The Defiant Display shoved the monster back a few feet and infuriated the heck out of the boar's AI, but didn't strike hard enough to throw Scorchie completely out of position. The kid, well, he had barely gotten his first few Spells up, and as he casted a self-buff that caused Fire Runes to slither up and down his sword, Scorchie's hooves shattered the cursed ground into a tornado of stone, glass, and smoldering embers.

  Scorchtusk is granted Boon 'Smoldering Rage'! +10% to all Damage and +10% Action Speed per stack!

  And there was Scorchie's big trick. If we didn't put him down quickly, he'd eat us alive. Thankfully, my heavy armor and rocky body kept me planted even as the boar’s shockwave made my teeth rattle.

  Unfortunately, the robed Ember was blown off his feet. As he crashed to the ground a few feet away, I was immediately thankful he hadn’t landed on any razor-sharp grass.

  Kayla was on her game, though, muttering something about slowcasts (EO slang for people using motion commands) under her breath as she pointed her staff at the big pig. I don't know if she was surprised or not when I managed to act again before her cast; most players were shocked by how many actions per tick I pulled off, but then again, most players didn’t have nearly the experience with a NSAF helmet I did.

  The infuriated boar was puffing up, lungs inflating with intent to blow out something painful and horrible, when I raised the slab of stone attached to my arm and activated my Walking Wall Gem.

  You activate Walking Wall! Boon 'Braced for Impact' granted! +75% Block Rate and resistance to Crowd Control Effects while channeling!

  Burndall got to his feet at near the same moment as Scorchie blew out and Kayla's second spell launched, unleashing a rushing wall of water that crashed down over the beast even as he puked up a gout of molten rock.

  While Kayla was well out of the way, Burndall was way less lucky. Though Embers were resistant to Earth and Fire attacks, he was still awfully fragile despite his twink
gear.

  Scorchtusk's Molten Belch hits (blocked)! 63 (-189 blocked/resisted) Earth Damage and 25 (-227 blocked/resisted) Fire Damage taken! Burndall is Behind the Wall and takes 0 Damage! Health: 2714/3210

  Fortunately, I took the whole thing for him. The Wall Skill created a cone of protection behind my shield, saving me from the worst of the damage and keeping the kid entirely safe. Better still, Kayla’s wave of ice-cold water extinguished what lava remained on the thing's snout and fur, causing Scorchtusk to howl in piggy agony. The water snuffed the worst of the boar's flames and left bluish rakes of frostbite in his flesh and shivering in his movements.

  Chalk up a point for the complexity of the enemy AI and the time the art team put in to showcase every nuance of that AI. Scorchtusk looked horribly angry now with steam and fresh rivulets of lava blowing out of his nose and mouth. He turned to prepare for a fresh charge, ignoring the Nix biting at his side for the moment. The frost still clung to him, though, partly counteracting the speed boost from his growing anger.

  "Come on, Burndall," I cried, keeping my shield high and braced. "I've got you covered!" This would drain my EP quickly, the cost for the Skill compounding every second, but it would buy the rest time to get this fight back on track.

  Most tanks wouldn't even bother with this Skill because it would reduce their DPS (Damage Per Second), but I was never much for damage output with my build anyway. That was other people’s job. Mine was simple. Don’t die, and make sure the boss hit me.

  As the cone expanded, Kayla switched position back to behind the Wall while firing off another spell. Clever girl. Most players wouldn’t know enough about my Class to get behind me without me telling them.

  Her spell went off right before Scorchie charged me. As I braced myself for the coming attack, a chill that was more comfort than shivers rushed over me and flowed over my shield arm causing the big slab of obsidian to ice over. I had half a second to be impressed by the sudden increase in defense when long, deadly-looking spikes of ice erupted from the surface of my shield. Clever Gem combination, linking a Shield Spell with a Thorns effect and the Water element!