Dream Stream Reality: Publisher's Pack Books 1-2: (A LitRPG Adventure)

by Derrick Burke

  D: A new section per account to the bank system has been opened and is available from now till the forced server shutdown at 10:00 a.m. This section has 20 slots available. All items in this section of the bank will be available to you upon visiting a bank in the new game. Choose wisely.

  E: DSR2 will be available for login at 00:00 tomorrow, the 17th of October, 2030. The in-game timer of DSR2 may also not coincide with what you are used to out of game.

  F: All Beta testers will be allowed to play either in their own homes, or in the nearest DSR Corporation headquarters with free accommodation. They will also be given a stipend of $20,000 US per month for a year, regardless how long the Beta test goes for, as long as they are regularly playing. This is so they can devote their time to the Beta test appropriately. The first login won’t be allowed to be done in the headquarters; however, every subsequent login may be done, as you will be registered as Beta testers. The details of funding will be available to you after you have logged in for the first time.

  Congratulations to all Beta testers! Enjoy your game!

  Server shutdown in: 3 hours, 45 minutes, 12 seconds.

  I just stare at the clock ticking down. I pretend not to register the blinking icon of my inventory down in the bottom right of my vision. I don’t want to think what that could be. What it probably is. The gasps, exclamations and excited chatter I can hear in the room don’t register either.

  Ever so slowly I close the Administration notice, and I feel like I am about to throw up butterflies as I open my inventory.

  Damn.

  An icon in my inventory blinks at me with a chest-like outline and the letters BC engraved in gold on the front. How the hell did I manage to be picked out of all the billions of players currently logged in? I think I’m going to pass out. My head is getting all dizzy and stuff.

  “Woah there, buddy!” Ifalna grabs hold of my shoulders and plonks me down on a bar stool as she casts Cleanse on me and then herself. The effects from the alcohol disappear, and some of the dizziness goes away as well. However, I’m still in a state of shock and don’t really register what she’s doing. “You okay there, Sybaal? Nope? Well, they don’t call me a healer for nothin’.”

  My head rocks back to the side and I see stars as Ifalna open-hand slaps me silly. It does, however, break the shock, and my brain starts ticking over again as I sit up straighter.

  “Thanks, I needed that something chronic.” I give my head a bit of a shake before opening up my friends list, selecting my four best buddies, and sending them out a party invite. I ping my location on the mini map then set a destination marker to my room upstairs as I start walking there myself.

  As I’m walking, I mentally type in party chat.

  Sybaal: My room, 2 minutes, the teacup is chipped.

  Ifalna is following me with a slight frown on her face, and I keep an eye on the mini map to make sure the others are moving. Thankfully they are. The teacup is chipped means that stealthed enemies are near and overhearing our plans or they are ready to strike, so make haste to the destination naturally without tipping them off.

  I head up the stairs, and before I get to my door, I restrict all access to my room except for current party members. Opening my door, I usher Ifalna inside before it closes itself afterwards. I access my room functions and buy a round dining table with five comfortable chairs before sitting in the one furthest from the door. I motion for Ifalna to take a seat, and she does so without comment.

  The door opens and admits Dosan and Ezekial before shutting behind them. I gesture to the seats and they sit down quietly. Ezekial has a smug look on his face while Dosan’s eyes are a bit wide, but they keep their silence. Ifalna casts Cleanse on them both without a word.

  I glance at my display clock and see that it’s been five minutes already. I look at the mini map and see that Kazzrak has finally made it to my door. It finally opens and my eye twitches as Kazzrak stumbles into the room, his hand holding the door open before belching for a good half a minute. Taking a couple of steps forward, his eyes roll up into his head and he promptly collapses backwards onto the floorboards.

  The door tries to close itself a couple of times. Each time it smacks harder and harder into Kazzrak’s head before finally hitting him with enough force to slide him away from the doorway. The door slams shut with what I would call indignity if it weren’t just a simple door. Weird.

  Ifalna rolls her eyes and casts something on Kazzrak, which creates a few small motes of light. The others are snickering at our downed comrade, and I sigh belatedly.

  Kazzrak groans and does a rolling flop onto his stomach before slowly getting up and holding his head. “Who smacked me noggin with a sledgehammer? Oh, it hurts. I think I’m going to hurl.”

  “You can’t hurl in-game, dufus,” Ifalna says with an unimpressed look. “What took you so long anyways?”

  Kazzrak sits down in the last empty chair and lays his bearded face on the tabletop before mumbling, “After the Admin boyos sent that message and the shock wore off the lot of them, the place went nuts. People were stripping to their jocks on the spot and sprinting in a drunken horde to the exits. My guess is they are trying to get to the bank quick smart.

  “My love of the pint glass might have got the better of me. The horde might have tripped me, and I might have accidentally fallen face first into the large pair of jugs I was dancing with. A couple of times.” He raises his head a little with a lopsided grin. “She didn’t pay me much mind though, before jiggling away to the bank. Then it took me forever to actually find the stairs, let alone get up them. Why don’t we have escalators in this game? Ugh.”

  We all burst out laughing, and Dosan slaps him on the back a couple of times before saying, “Did you at least get a friend request?”

  “I think he was a bit busy at the time, methinks,” Ifalna smirks, waggling her eyebrows.

  “Alright, alright, let’s get down to business. Ifalna, can you please Cleanse Kazzrak properly and not just with a Minor Heal?” I look pointedly at Ifalna.

  Kazzrak lifts his head up and looks at Ifalna with exasperation. “You were having a Cleanse party downstairs, but you used Minor Heal on me? Dick move, bro.”

  Ifalna sighs as she casts Full Heal on Kazzrak, making him glow slightly before fading. Full Heal replenishes all HP and Cleanses all ailments at the same time, but is heavy on the mana usage.

  “Ahhhhh, nothin’ like a good bender and then having the after-effects taken away, leaving me feelin’ fine and dandy.” Kazzrak leans back in his chair so it sits on two legs, with his hands resting behind his head.

  Without another word I open my inventory, select the Beta Chest and plunk it down in the middle of the table, unopened with a specific glyph on the top of it.

  The reactions are immediate.

  Kazzrak lets out a yelp of surprise and then a groan as his chair loses balance and his head smacks the floor again.

  Dosan shouts for the heavens and jumps up, knocking his chair over.

  Ezekial gasps, clutches his chest and promptly faints.

  Ifalna just sits there nodding her head and repeatedly casting Full Heal on herself. She then shakes her head slightly and starts casting it on everyone else.

  “I know how you feel, trust me, I went through it downstairs,” I say to them, placing my hands on the table and standing up. “You guys have had my back both in-game and in the real world.”

  Kazzrak is just standing up and Ezekial is pulling himself back into a seated position as I open the chest.

  “I’d like to show my appreciation and would love you all to keep hunting for epic loot with me. What say you?” I gently take out all five coins, laying the gold Party Leader one in front of me before placing each of the Silver Party Member ones in front of my friends, looking each one in the eye as I do so.

  The atmosphere in the room gets increasingly thick as they all look at each other before finally nodding.

  Kazzrak picks up his coin, raising it in front of him, a
nd pronounces, “To good hunting, and may the loot always be plentiful!”

  The others pick up their coins and hold them out before them, shouting, “Hear, hear!”

  I smile with a little tear in my eye, I mean dust. There’s dust in my eye as I blink a few times and try to flush the dust away.

  A System Administrator message appears before me:

  Greetings Beta testers!

  Congratulations! You and your party have all earned the title ‘Friends with Benefits’.

  Title effect: +2% to all experience gained per player in party with the title ‘Friends with Benefits’. Max of +10% experience.

  This is a unique title for Beta testers as long as the Beta test is active.

  “Holy shit! Are you guys getting this?” I exclaim, my eyes wide.

  “Yep, looks like it,” Dosan replies. “Looks like we are waaay ahead of the curve and we haven’t even logged in yet. An extra ten percent XP is epic. I mean, it’s almost like we will be cheating it’s that good.”

  “I think we should keep our mouths closed on this one. Just saying,” Ifalna remarks quietly. “I don’t think a lot of people will like the fact that we are beta testers and they aren’t, let alone also getting a ten percent XP boost. Some people might go overboard.”

  We all sober up at that thought and sit back down at the table.

  Ezekial nods his head at Ifalna. “She has a point. But I have another. How are we going to go about telling our bosses that we will be skipping out for a year? They aren’t going to like that, I can assure you.”

  Kazzrak shrugs his shoulders. “Well, the way I see it, I’m getting paid $240,000 to beta test this game to the best of my ability, and that’s just what I’m going to do. If I don’t find work within the DSR Corp after the beta is finished, then I can always do security somewhere else if our club won’t have us back. I think the same goes for you too, Ezekial. With your management skills, I’m positive you will be able to find a job with them afterwards.”

  Ezekial sighs. “Well, guess we’ll just have to claim our month of annual leave saved up for the camping trip so we can quit tomorrow.”

  Dosan nods his head. “I kind of feel bad, but they have plenty of staff; they’ll be fine.”

  “Alright. So, we all go get our shit sorted tomorrow, and then we will meet up at mine for a BBQ so we can all log in together,” I say, looking at each in turn, but with my next comment I look at Kazzrak. “We need to be clear headed, so only a couple of drinks, copy?”

  Kazzrak just looks innocent and wide eyed and points at himself. “What? What did I do? Alrighteo! Let’s go!”

  Ifalna speaks up before everyone has a chance to get up. “So, I think we should all decide what class we want to play in the new version. Especially since we will be forced to pick two classes. I’m wondering if they will allow any class to be chosen regardless of the other.”

  We all look at each other for a moment, weighing what we think the others are thinking and our options for ourselves.

  “Let it be known, I plan on keeping cleric as one of, or my main class. Can’t have one of you little yuppies trying to do the uberness of healing when you won’t even know what spell does what. The other class will probably be DPS,” Ifalna says brightly. DPS is short for damage per second and means a class that will do high damage.

  Kazzrak nods at Ifalna. “I’ll be yer tank. Can’t let ol’ squishy Dosan do it ’cause he’s more likely to stab himself with a sword, let alone swing one. My other class will be a melee DPS of some sort.”

  Dosan gives Kazzrak a glare before saying, “I’ll still summon the shit outta my minions and make them fill in any gaps there are, depending on the fight. I wonder what creatures they have in the grimoires this time around. The other class will most likely be a spell-based DPS to coincide with the summoner class.”

  We all look at Ezekial at the same time, and he holds his hands up in front of him in a placating gesture. “Okay, okay. I’ll still be your thief. Definitely don’t want to be picked off by some dumb-ass trap I can’t detect if I’m not a thief. I’m not sure what other class I will play, probably one that compliments the race I will choose.”

  Then they all look at me and I nod sagely before grinning. “It’s getting hot in here, so take off all your—yeah, I’ll be the off-tank or some sort of melee DPS. I might see if I can work it so I can have a magic class as well. I always did want to play a caster in DSR but never was able to change class without restarting my character, and like hell I was going to do that.”

  “Alrighty then, folks, last one to the bank has to pay the winner one hundred gold in the new version!” Dosan says before upending the table, which happens to smack into Kazzrak’s face, and dashing out the door.

  “That little prick! Get back here!” Kazzrak dashes off after him, and before the door shuts, I can hear him shouting, “You’d better run, pipsqueak! If get my hands on you, you’re going to be feeling the world’s nastiest wedgie!”

  The rest of us look at each other before scrambling over the upturned table and out the door after them. I reach into my inventory and pull out a Potion of Greater Swiftness, chugging it down in one go before shoving the empty vial back in my inventory. Waste not, want not and, mmm, the cherry flavour still tastes good.

  My speed increased by 20%, I quickly pull ahead of the other two on the way down the stairs and use Sprint to get to the door of our guild hall pub. Slamming my way through the doors, I use Sprint again in the direction of the bank. Buildings of renaissance style line the cobbled road that my feet are flapping their way down. This is a pretty big city, but thankfully we are pretty close to the bank.

  I slap my hand to my forehead as I realise I’m an idiot. Reaching into my inventory again, I pull out a specific item called Whistle of the Saber and quickly blow on it before throwing it out in front of me. The whistle explodes and a spotted, white sabretooth tiger stretches lithely before bounding next to me so I can jump up onto its back.

  Now astride my mount, we make haste for the bank much faster than the others. But when I look back, I see that Ezekial is on his raptor mount and Ifalna is on her massive horned buffalo. They just happen to be neck and neck right behind me.

  Thankfully all our endgame mounts move at equal speeds, so I may not come first, seeing as how I haven’t seen Dosan or Kazzrak, but at least I won’t come last. I turn around the last corner and then have to stop on a dime due to the long snaking queues that are coming from the bank’s doorways and out onto the roads surrounding it. NPC city guards are herding people into lines and yelling at people to get in a line or they don’t get in at all. Right in front of me are Kazzrak and Dosan; the former is first in line and grinning from ear to red-bearded ear.

  “That is one long-ass line,” I state, dismissing my mount and standing behind Dosan.

  I watch Ezekial and Ifalna barrel around the corner and slam into each other on the wall of the building next to us. Other players in the line point and laugh at them before going back to talking amongst themselves and slowly shuffling forward.

  “Aaaand Ezekial and Ifalna both tie for last place! Ah, fifty gold each from the two of you to be placed in my hands in the new game,” Kazzrak says smugly, a pleased-as-punch look on his face. “Cheers, boys!”

  There is some sort of commotion at the front of the bank, and I crane my neck to see over the crowd. Some of the NPC guards just tossed a player out the doors and he nosedived onto the pavement.

  The bank manager makes his way outside onto the steps and takes a deep breath before screaming in anger with a livid expression and spittle flying, “The next player who abuses one of my staff for telling them that their allotted time is up, I will personally send the recording of such behaviour to the authorities and express my full intent to have them banned from the city! You all now have sixty seconds to conclude your business in my bank! Good! Day!”

  Basically, anyone who peeps wrong at the staff will find themselves banned from the game. Eek.


  The manager gives everyone the stink eye before turning back around and stomping back into the bank. I wouldn’t want to be the guy sitting at the bottom of the stairs, rubbing his nose, with tears streaming silently down his cheeks. Poor fella, must have hurt his face on the way down. Every man and his dog are giving that guy a murderous stare. Sixty seconds to choose what gear we want to put into the slots for DSR2? Damn, I may not be able to find my shit in that time considering how large my bank allotment is. Urgh, what a pain in the ass.

  Well, seeing as how this is obviously going to take forever and I have nearly 100,000 gold in my account, I may as well do some impromptu shopping. I open the player Auction House using the interface.

  I already have all the gear I would want for a melee class, so I’m looking for gear with the highest possible stats and abilities for caster gear. The best gear will obviously be soul bound on pickup from bosses in the larger raids, but there isn’t a chance in hell I can get those. So the bind-on-equip ones that are dropped from those raids will have to do.

  Okay, let’s see what turns up in the search when I set the parameters. Item rarity: Legendary; Item class: Spell Caster; Item level: Max.

  Only four items show up, and after a cursory glance at each, I hit buy. The prices are still a bucketload cheaper due to players thinking that they wouldn’t be able to take their gear with them, so for all four items, it only costs me 30,000 gold. These would have sold for at least 100,000 gold each before the announcement of DSR2.

  I shrug and then check the same listing with Epic rarity. There are dozens, so I sort them from the most expensive to the least. I browse over a few of them before selecting the ones I feel have the best abilities and stats, buying another four items for a whopping 1,000 gold. Cheap as chips, really.