Warden (Nova Online #1) — A LitRPG Series

by Alex Knight

  So dexterity was linked to speed and critical hits. He had already seen the power of critical hits against the raged, so clearly stacking dexterity for DPS was another valid option.

  Power warden or enhanced warden? There were arguments for both, and despite the fifteen unassigned stat points waiting to be used, Kaiden just wasn’t sure. He didn’t feel he had enough information to make the best decision. He was saved from having to choose just then, however, by a flash of light from Titus.

  When the light faded, the big man rose from the table with a smile and flicked his shield on. It had grown. A lot. Stretching all the way from his shoulders to his shin, Kaiden couldn’t deny that the new shield was an impressive sight.

  An ally has chosen their class!

  Ensign Titus has chosen the shield warden class.

  Becoming a shield warden shows a true commitment to defending those weaker than yourself. Your shield is permanently expanded in size to make absorbing enemy attacks, and covering a fellow warden or ally, easier. Absorption capacity increased by 25%

  Titus lowered himself into a fighting stance and locked his shield in place in front of him. Virtually all his body was protected behind it, and combined with the hammer in his other hand, he struck an imposing figure.

  “This, I could get used to,” he said with a smile.

  “Shield warden looks good on you,” Kaiden agreed. “I kind of want to get into our next fight already.”

  “First, you’ll need to assign your stats,” Zelda said, continuing Titus’ lesson. “If you're going to be our party’s tank, you'll need to be able to take a lot of hits. Increasing endurance increases your hit points, so that’s helpful. You already said you don’t want to focus on damage dealing, so I’d recommend a min-max strategy focusing on endurance."

  Titus frowned. “Which in English means...?”

  “Put all your points into endurance,” Zelda said.

  “Could’ve just said that,” Titus grumbled.

  Zelda then turned to Kaiden.

  “So, have you made a decision? What spec are you taking?”

  “I’m going to wait and surprise you. Figure it’ll be more fun that way.”

  “What you mean is, you haven’t decided yet,” Zelda said, astute as ever.

  “I’ll figure it out. Just let me sleep on it.”

  Zelda crossed her arms.

  “As long as you make a decision at some point. Preferably before the captain sends us off on whatever mission she has planned tomorrow.”

  “Sounds good,” Kaiden said with a smile, his mind no more made up than it’d been before.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Kaiden was thankful the bulk of his days were spent in Nova Online. Unfortunately, they were forced to log out every day to join the general populace for dinner. For Kaiden, that meant Manson.

  The sneering maniac hadn’t tried anything just yet, but he’d been watching, waiting. Ready for a moment in which Titus was gone.

  Kaiden met Titus in the morning as soon as the cells were unlocked. The other prisoners ignored him, but Manson seemed to have made a game out of the whole ordeal. He almost looked to be enjoying himself.

  It had only been a couple of days, but sooner or later, Kaiden knew Manson would find his opportunity. All the more reason to redouble his focus on the investigation and earn his freedom.

  “Kai.” Zelda’s voice called to him, distant at first. “Kai. You in there?”

  He snapped away from the bad dream that was the prison and back to the reality of Nova.

  “I said we’re here. You coming in, or what?”

  Zelda stood in a doorway a few steps behind him. They were on the Anakoni.

  “Oh, the armory. Right.” He must have walked right past it, too lost in thoughts of the prison to stop. He shook himself from his daze and followed her in.

  The room was smaller than Kaiden had expected, and far cleaner. When he’d heard ‘armory,’ he’d imagined something, well...dirtier, for starters. The room was pristine, and even though suits of armor hung from ceiling hooks in various state of disassembly and racks of tools adorned the walls, everything seemed perfectly organized.

  “Ah, you must be the new ensigns I’ve been hearing about!” A man in a mechanic’s uniform stood behind a sparkling-clean workbench, a smile plastered across his face. “I wondered when you’d show up. Figured it wouldn’t be too long, the beating you've all been taking.”

  Marlo (NPC)

  Civilian Armorer

  Faction: Warden Corps

  Level: 10

  An NPC has heard of us? That has to be something he says to every player, right? Make them feel special?

  “I’m sorry,” Kaiden said, frowning. “You’ve heard of us?”

  “‘Course I have!” He crossed his arms and snorted. “Everyone’s talking about the ensigns who survived the Mochinki, then imploded that horde of berserkers along with it.”

  “To be fair, Lieutenant Sola did most of the imploding.”

  “Ah, nonsense. You should stick with the other version of the story. More interesting, that one is.”

  Either this is very realistic dialogue, or NextGen has some powerful AI running their NPCs. In fact, now he thought about it, he’d read somewhere that they definitely did.

  “So, you here to chat all day, or do you want your armor repaired?” Marlo leaned forward on his workbench and tapped his fingers expectantly.

  “Yes, please.” Zelda must’ve unequipped her armor because one moment she was wearing it, then the next it was in her outstretched hand. Without her armor she wore only the basic warden uniform. About as utilitarian and un-stylish an outfit as one could find, and yet...

  Kaiden felt his cheeks grow hot as he noticed her athletic frame. Good thing characters in Nova couldn’t blush. Or could they? Kaiden turned away as a spontaneous coughing fit overtook him.

  Zelda placed her armor on the workbench.

  “Here you are. It’s looking pretty rough. Durability down to eighteen out of a hundred.”

  Marlo raised some multi-headed tool. It looked like a screwdriver, hammer, drill, and welding torch had all been thrown into a blender. He touched one of the many heads of the tool to Zelda’s armor as she began to speak.

  “So how long will it take you to fix–”

  “Done.”

  She frowned.

  “Done?”

  He nodded.

  “Done.”

  Her mouth fell open and Kaiden felt his own do the same.

  “Did you even do anything to it?”

  “Durability one hundred out of one hundred. It’s good as new.”

  Zelda took her armor back and examined it with a scrutinizing gaze.

  “You’re not lying.” She shrugged and the armor popped back onto her body.

  “Oh, and the system cleared you for stimpack usage, so I filled up your stimulant chamber as well. You’ve two fresh stimpacks ready to go.”

  “Nice!” Zelda grinned. “What did Sergeant Dawson say about these? Twenty-five percent healing on use, with a two-minute cooldown? That could come in handy.”

  Marlo nodded, then gave them a stern look.

  “Just make sure you only use stimpacks that have been stored in a stimulant chamber. You can’t just go using any ol' stim, you know. They have to be kept at near-freezing temperatures, otherwise they go bad. Use a stimpack what’s gone bad and you’ll take twenty-five percent damage instead.”

  “That would be bad,” Titus said with a small frown.

  “Bad’s putting it mildly. Odds are it’d kill you. But if you did survive, well, we’d just throw you in a medpod over there.” He nodded to a series of pods – similar to the VR pods in real life – in the corner. “Fix you right up, that will. We used them on those noobs you brought in, took that nasty raged debuff right off them.”

  Armory, stimpak depot, medbay. Is there anything this room doesn’t do?

  “Alright, then.” Marlo clapped. “I see two sets of damaged ar
mor in here what need fixing. Let’s get to it, huh?”

  Titus handed his over first.

  As Marlo touched his multi-tool to it, a voice crackled through the comms.

  “Ensigns, you there?”

  Lieutenant Ellenton.

  “I hear you,” Kaiden said.

  His armor gone, Titus frowned, unable to hear the lieutenant.

  “Yeah, I’m gonna need you back at the shuttle. Command’s breathing down my neck about some errand we have to go run. Some big hullabaloo down on Nassau. Waste of time if you ask me, but this came direct from the captain.”

  “Be right there,” Kaiden said. By the time he’d finished speaking, Titus had his armor reequipped.

  “Going to have to make this quick, Marlo. We’ve just been given our next mission.”

  He flipped his tool into the air, then caught it and smiled.

  “Quick is the only speed I work at.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “You know, most planets’ seedy underbellies have the decency to stay hidden in the shadows and back alleys. Not here.” Lieutenant Ellenton initiated the Borrelly’s auto-landing sequence and spun the pilot’s seat around to face them. “Welcome to the festering wound of a rock they call Nassau.”

  “Doesn’t look that bad to me,” Titus said, peering through the windshield.

  “That,” Lieutenant Ellenton said, nodding to the landscape out of the windshield, “is the sulfur wastes. Boyd City is behind us.” She flipped a switch and the rear loading ramp whirred to life and began descending.

  “Oh, don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice enough place. As long as you don’t get off the ship. Speaking of…” She gestured to the ramp, now fully lowered and inviting them to the world beyond. “That’s your cue.”

  Kaiden looked at the ramp, then at Titus and Zelda, then back to the lieutenant.

  “You still haven’t briefed us on our mission?”

  “Oh, right.” She shook her head. “So this is gonna be a basic tax run. In-game credits, as you know, have an exchange value with real-world currencies. The Party taxes all in-game transactions, just like real-world transactions. As such, it’s in their best interest to make sure things are safe enough for those transactions to happen. So, the Party sends us to provide security for bigger trade deals.” She waved her hand tiredly. “Blah, blah, blah. Basically, you go to the location I’ve marked on your minimaps, stand there, look imposing, and let the merchants haggle out their deal. Oh – and, you know, if anything goes bad, take care of it.” With that, she waved them off the shuttle.

  Quest: Provide security for the trade deal between Hyperion Mercantile and the Vega Trading Alliance

  Expected difficulty: Novice

  Reward: +800 EXP, +1 faction prestige

  Kaiden read through the quest specifics as he descended the ramp out of the shuttle.

  Novice difficulty again, huh? That’s inspiring. How many surprise berserkers can we expect to show up and ruin this party?

  Location discovered: Boyd City, Planet of Nassau

  Faction Alignment: Government of Nassau, Coalition of the Greater Spiral Arm

  The ‘location discovered’ message distracted Kaiden from his thoughts and brought his attention to the scene around them. As he stared, the loading ramp retracted and the Borrelly blasted off, near bowling them over again.

  “Make sure nothing exciting happens down there, you three.” Lieutenant Ellenton’s voice came over the comms. “I’ll keep an eye on things from above.”

  Kaiden heard her words, but barely processed them. He was too distracted by the view.

  It rose like a mountain before them. Towering into the dirty orange sky, the city was a massive, sprawling mess of skyscrapers, smokestacks, and skyscrapers that doubled as smokestacks.

  To call it unattractive would be an insult to the word. Boyd City was as beautiful as a shattered slab of concrete, rebar rising from inside like the ribs of some long-dead industrial golem. Metal, stone, and rust seemed to be the preferred building materials, complemented everywhere with a generous share of ash. All in all, the city appeared nothing more than a mountain of manufacturing districts piled on top of each other, up and up, and belching thick, black smoke into the atmosphere.

  The lieutenant had set them down on a landing pad on one of the city’s outer districts, at ground level. The majority of the smog-filled towers and ash-coated streets were still ahead of them.

  Kaiden looked down to his minimap. Their path led them directly into the thick of it.

  “Boyd City, here we come.”

  A “tax run,” as the lieutenant had called it, hadn’t sounded particularly fun. By some measure of impossibility, it turned out to be even more boring than Kaiden had dared to imagine.

  “The terms of the contract shall be amended to reflect that any shipments from the Vega Trading Alliance will be received at trading station 0138, located in the Greater Spiral Arm at the aforementioned coordinates.” The representative from Hyperion had a monotonous drone so dull that Kaiden could only assume it’d been practiced and perfected.

  “Unacceptable,” the representative from the Vega Trading Alliance said, preparing a return volley of lifeless droning. “The additional fuel our ships would require to travel the increased distance to trading station 0138 would render the profits from each shipment negligible. I propose the terms of the contract remain unaltered. Hyperion will take delivery of all shipments at trading station 0137.”

  The two had been conducting a form of verbal combat back and forth for the last hour or so. From what Kaiden could tell, the argument was less about convincing the opponent of your position, and more about boring them to death until they conceded, or lost the will to live. Whichever came first.

  The meeting destination hadn’t been particularly far from where the lieutenant had dropped them off, and even now she was hovering somewhere in the ash clouds above, monitoring the surroundings for signs of trouble. Or so she said. Kaiden could’ve sworn he’d heard snores through his comms half an hour ago. Ellenton clearly wasn’t worried.

  Apparently, the Warden Corps often attended deals such as these. Many trade guilds had their headquarters in ‘starting zone’ systems like the Greater Spiral Arm as it allowed them to conduct business in a low-risk environment without worrying about god-like high level players.

  Trade deals were frequent in this system, although this was supposed to be quite a major one. That was why the Warden Corps were primarily located in starting zones. It enabled close proximity to their two main functions: facilitating trade and assisting low-level players.

  “Zelda, Titus, you two still awake?” Kaiden asked, glancing toward the pair.

  “Present,” Zelda whispered as she adjusted how she’d been standing, shifting her weight to the other foot.

  “Wishing I wasn’t here,” Titus said a moment later and crossed his arms.

  “Think they’ll finish any time soon?”

  “In this situation, I think the ‘soonest’ we can hope for would be sometime next week,” Zelda said with a yawn.

  The meeting had been arranged on a vacant landing platform a little way inside Boyd City. A table and two chairs had been set in the middle of the platform – currently occupied by the representatives from the respective guilds – while the north and south edges were occupied by each representative’s retinue. Though ‘retinue’ seemed too gentle a word for the heavily armed and armored soldiers each had brought.

  Kaiden had led Zelda and Titus to the east side of the platform, along the edge, approximately midway between the two groups of soldiers. He didn’t like the idea of being in the middle of the two groups if things went south, but if they were here to provide security, the soldiers looked to be the most likely threat. Thankfully, they appeared about as bored as everyone else.

  That was, until a laser bolt cut through the head of Hyperion’s representative. He slumped forward onto the table, dead. The sound of a single shot echoed from the nearest skyscraper.<
br />
  That’s not good.

  For a moment, silence.

  The Hyperion soldiers stared at their slain kinsman, then slowly, slowly, raised their heads to the Vega representative.

  The man frowned.

  “Obviously, negotiations will have to resume at a later–”

  A volley of lasers from the Hyperion soldiers cut him off. Then it was all-out war.

  The Vega soldiers returned fire, while those with melee weapons charged across the platform. The two sides met in a resounding clash of noise as offensive and defensive abilities were all unleashed at once. Explosions, blasts of light and AOE shockwave attacks rocked the platform.

  Kaiden barely had time to flick his shield on and duck behind it before splash damage from a half-dozen attacks flared close by him. Combat text filled the side of his screen.

  “What do we do?” Titus yelled through the comms, stepping in front of Kaiden and Zelda and putting his newly enlarged shield to good use.

  “I...uh…” Kaiden stumbled to come up with any sort of plan. Everywhere he looked, it was chaos. He could hardly see for all the particle bloom effects from special attacks, not to mention the countless lasers ricocheting every which way.

  Achievement Unlocked!

  Warmonger - 100 EXP gained!

  Your actions, or lack thereof, have kicked off a guild war! Congratulations!

  Zelda took up position beside Titus, hammer barrel forward. She aimed at one target, a Hyperion soldier, then switched to another in a Vega uniform, then lowered her weapon.

  “Who do we target? We can’t subdue them all.”

  “We can’t stop this.” Kaiden stared at the mess of fighting. So far, no one was attacking them, but if one side – or both – decided to, there wouldn’t be much they could do.

  “My scanners picked up the shot. It came from that skyscraper that’s under construction.” Lieutenant Ellenton’s voice came through the comms, and then the Borrelly burst through the clouds above. “Let these thugs fight it out. Command will want the assassin more. Get in.”