by Eric Ugland
Oddly, it didn’t work.
I felt an intrusion into my head. Not like the spike of a spider matriarch, but instead, more of a psychic link. I didn’t know for sure what a psychic link would feel like, but if I had to guess, it’d feel like this. Like there was someone else rooting around in my head.
“What did you do to me?” the voice was odd, like the combined voices of a lot of people I knew, talking all at once. But without any reverberations or echoes. Nothing but the sound in my head.
I turned and saw that the mountain had grown. I don’t know if the thing was sitting up straight or what, but it was, well, taller. Bigger. Larger loops of tentacle or coils of body or whatever it was made out of, had appeared somehow. And if I twisted my mind just right, I could discern a face of sorts, thousands of feet up at the very top.
“You had, uh, something of a parasite problem,” I said. “I cleaned it up for you.“
My convivial statement was met with a vast and yawning silence.
“You’re welcome,” I said.
“For an insignificant speck of life,” the voice countered, “you are immensely annoying.”
“For something pretending to be a god, you’re really ugly.”
There was the loud noise of something huge moving through air. A tentacle slammed into the ground next to me so hard that it shook me not just off my feet, but made me fly up nearly ten feet. I hit the ground hard and with my arm at a weird angle. My elbow went the other way, and I bit down a scream.
I felt an immense pressure around my midsection, and I looked down to see a tentacle wrapping itself around me. It was the same non-color brown as everything else in the world. It was like being in a taupe hell.
As the thing got its grip on me, I started rising in the air.
“You have power,” it said into my head, “An impressive amount. I will enjoy eating you. Using your energy to get me into your world where I will feast once again.”
“Is that what you do?” I asked through clenched teeth, trying to keep coherent and conscious, despite the almost overwhelming pain. “Eat?”
“Is that not what you do? Eat?”
“I protect. I create. You just seem to destroy.”
“Do you care what the ant thinks of you?”
“I do — I like ants.”
“Your lies are amusing. Look into my eyes and tell me your lies again.”
I was thousands of feet in the air, and suddenly staring at an eye. An eye so big I barely was a speck in the pupil. Looking into it was like seeing into a galaxy, like seeing an entire new world on the other side of its glassy surface. I felt my brain struggling to make sense of what I experienced.
“Think, though. You are but an insignificant mote of life. And yet, by feeding me at this critical juncture, you will have a place in the history of the multiverse. You will bring destruction to your home.”
Then I think it started laughing.
Sound came out of the god-beast, a horrible noise that buffeted me in painful waves.
I had to do something. I had to stop this. And I realized one key factor of our interaction so far — he hadn’t killed me. He could have easily, but he hadn’t. And the first weird priest parasite hadn’t been willing to kill Usthol, — he wanted Usthol to go into the other world to be food for the god there. If I had to hazard a guess, and I did, it seemed like the god-beast needed me alive. That was the only way he was going to be able to drain my life essence. Or energy or whatever.
Simple, then.
I needed to die.
I tried to bring up my character sheet, but nothing happened. Just the feeling of an error message.
But I still knew how to do it. I could still feel some of the magic inside me, that ball of power right in my center. I had one fantastic spell to throw at this guy. The most pointlessly wonderful stupid spell that was the perfect encapsulation of what I was capable of.
“Have fun with the side-effects, numbnuts,” I said.
I cast ManaBomb, and the damn spell sucked every last drop of mana I had.
Then, my body exploded as the mana forced a way out.
The tentacle holding me also exploded, and it released my goopy remains. Somehow, I was still conscious enough to watch my collected insides spray out over everything, before I started falling. It was probably just my head left. But it was falling.
“What have you done?” the thing roared into my head. It also roared in the real world, and the sound waves were physical, straight up pushing my falling head in a whole new direction.
It’s possible the god-beast tried to grab at me, but if it did, it missed.
Instead, I fell.
“I have awoken,” the voice said into my head. “I know your world is lush and ripe and ready to be devoured. I will come for those you have created, Montana of Coggeshall. You have only postponed the inevitable.”
I closed my eyes on the way down, really glad that I wasn’t bringing about the destruction of my second home world. And feeling pretty okay about having seen multiple different universes. That was probably a first for a random dude from suburban Michigan. I felt like I’d done all right in the end. I maybe wished I’d had more time in Vuldranni. And more time with the girl. But if wishes were fishes, we’d all cast our nets, right? Something like that?
Then I hit the ground, and everything went black.
Chapter Sixty-Three
A great banner popped up in front of me.
Waaah-waaah. You have died.
Kicked the bucket. Shuffled off the ol’ mortal coil. You have been weighed and measured and found wanting. But, good news! You have at least one respawn left. Maybe you’ve got more. Who knows?
Would you like to respawn?
YES/NO
Well look at that. I was given the option to respawn. And I wanted to. After all that shit, I wanted to rip into Vuldranni, to live life there most grand. And yet, what if my respawn sent me back into the dead world? And even if I did respawn in Vuldranni, I would pop into existence on the other end of the Empire, right near what was probably still a war-zone.
But it was either take the chance of dead world or other side of the Empire, or remain dead.
And remaining dead seemed lame.
I selected “Yes.”
Chapter Sixty-Four
I entered my new world falling, and not knowing which world it was.
But the fall was short — maybe six feet — with a soft landing. I almost disappeared into deep snow.
I thought about my health levels, and then I saw my three little bars. Well, my red health bar and my blue mana bar. The spot where there had been a green stamina bar was just a little slash now.
“Vuldranni,” I said, breathing a deep sigh of relief.
I jumped up out of the deep snow, to see only white all around me. I was in the middle of a blizzard. On the other side of the Empire from my home.
“Fuck.”
Ready for Book 8?
ME TOO!
But the next book out will be the third book in the Bad Guys:
Skull and Thrones
BUT WAIT! Montana’s adventures are FAR from over. He’ll be back on April 2 in:
Eastbound and Town
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Author’s Note
Whew. This was a rough one. Switching gears between the Bad Guys and the Good Guys is tough. Writing Montana is just so much freewheeling bull-in-a-china-shop fun. He’s just a great big hammer looking at a world made of nails, but I’d gotten into the mindset of the Bad Guys which is more refined. Less fighty-punchy and more sneaky-stabby. Also fun, just a different writing style.
But man, was it good to get back into Montana’s world. And to flesh it out a bit more. I get excited thinking about being able to share more of the world with y’all. About what else is in the Coggeshall valley. That’s what book eight will have a lot of, exploration of the valley, building up of the town, and Montana finally getting his h
ead into the real mechanics of the game and starting to play it for real.
Speaking of real, life in the real world is going so fantastically well. I honestly cannot thank all y’all readers enough for enjoying these books enough to tell other people about them. Because of y’all, I’m living my dream. Thank you. Bottom of my heart, thank you. It’s about to be winter here, my favorite time of year, ready for some snow and some hot beverages. Nothing better than reading a book next to a fire in a snowstorm. Except, maybe, being an expert dwarf-chair wielder.
Anyway, I’ve got some other series to set in this same world, but let me know what y’all would like to read. Monster hunters? Town builders? Wizards? Dragons? If you want to talk, I’m around in my discord all the time. Come stay awhile, and listen. :)
About the Author
Eric Ugland ran away from Seattle to join the circus. And then he came to his senses, and moved to Manhattan. Now he's a novelist in Oregon, trapped by trees and snow and bears. Mostly bears. SO MANY BEARS!
The Good Guys is a continuing LitRPG series I’m writing in the world of iNcarn8. Join my reader group and be the first to know when new books come out.
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Contents
Also by Eric Ugland
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
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Ready for Book 8?
Author’s Note
About the Author
