by Ivan Kal
GUILD MASTER
TOWER OF POWER I
BY IVAN KAL
A LitRPG adventure
Copyright © 2018 by Ivan Kal
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
CHAPTER ONE
Morgan Newton looked around in confusion, not really understanding what had happened. One moment he was crossing the street on his way to class at the community college, and the next thing he remembered was being here, wherever here was. Looking around, he noticed that he appeared to be in some kind of a cave, or a tunnel of sorts. The walls around him were gray and made out of a smoky, mist-like substance. He reached out with his hand to touch one of the walls and his fingers sank into it just a bit before encountering a solid wall. The mist curled around his hand and he jerked it away, feeling a coldness that cut to the bone. Morgan looked around again. Behind him there was only darkness, and somehow he could tell that the darkness was a wall, one that he couldn’t pass through. In front of him, however, stretched a tunnel, and out in the distance he could see a bright light.
Morgan covered his face with his hands and shook his head as he remembered what had happened. He had been on his way to class, hurrying along and thinking about the raid he had scheduled with his guild in the MMORPG The Braves that very night. The Guild was attempting its seventh run against the latest expansion’s last raid boss, hoping to finally take him down after almost three months of trying. They were a semi-hardcore guild, but a core of the guild was a group of pretty intense players set on getting every boss before the next raid came out. He had been running the strategy they devised for the boss through his head all week. It was probably why he had been so absent minded, and why he hadn’t seen the red pickup truck until it was too late.
“Crap, I’m dead, aren’t I? My guild mates are going to kill me,” Morgan said out loud, and immediately chuckled at his own expense. It wasn’t like he could be any deader, but it did tell a lot about him that the first thing that popped into his head as he realized that he was dead was concern for his guild. The Braves had been a large part of his life; all of his friends played it, and he spent almost all of his free time on the computer playing it as well.
Tanya. He suddenly remembered the hot brunette from his world history class and that he had made plans with her for tomorrow evening. God damn it, Morgan cursed inwardly. The two of them weren’t precisely dating but they were getting there. Plenty a man had tried to get sweet Tanya to call them their boyfriend, and he was fairly certain that he would be one of the few to have that privilege. I bet that Hank will jump in before my body even gets cold. He shook his head. The two of them had been vying for her attentions for the better part of the semester. And seeing as he hated that jackass, Morgan had been really looking forward to rubbing his victory in Hank’s face. It was ironic in a way that he had ended up dead because he had been too consumed with a video game just as he was about to get somewhere with a girl. Not that he hadn’t had any girlfriends before, but Tanya… Well, it didn’t matter now anyway. His mom had always told him that he should stop staring in that damned monitor so much.
“Fuck me sideways,” he breathed out. It figured that he should die on the day of his twenty-second birthday.
“Sorry, I don’t do requests.”
Morgan jumped at the unexpected voice. A small and completely undignified squeak escaped his mouth as he turned around and looked straight into a man leaning on the wall, mist curling away from him, as if it was afraid to touch him. The man chuckled at Morgan’s response.
“Who the fuck are you?” Morgan asked, trying to gather his wits. He wouldn’t admit it out loud, but if he hadn’t been dead already, he just might’ve had a heart attack from that.
The man tsked. “That isn’t really a nice way to speak to strangers, now is it? I’m sure that you were raised better than that—but considering the circumstances, I will let it slide. ”
Morgan gulped nervously, which in itself was completely bonkers. I am dead. How in the hell can I still do that? As the man spoke, Morgan had a chance to take a look at him. The man was of an average height, average looks, short hair, with light skin which was perhaps just a bit tanned, but it was hard to tell in this light. He wore strange clothes, unlike anything he had ever seen before; it kind of looked like he was wearing a wetsuit with a long, dark coat over it.
The man clapped his hands and pushed off the wall. “Now, I don’t have a lot of time, so we should really get this started. First, you are dead.”
“Yeah, I kinda figured that one out already, Sherlock.” Morgan cringed inwardly as he realized what he had said. He could’ve kicked himself for being so stupid. God, I really can’t keep my mouth shut sometimes.
“Har, har, har. A wiseass. Of course you had to be a wiseass.” The man rolled his eyes and stepped closer. Morgan fought the instinct to take a step back and instead stayed his ground, trying to project the image of calm confidence as his sensei always told him to do if he ever got cornered with no way out. Not that Morgan thought that it was going to do him any good; one look into the man’s eyes told him that he knew everything there was to know about Morgan. There was a weight behind that gaze, an eternity.
“Where are we?” Morgan asked.
“Think of this as a place between life and death,” the man told him.
“Wait, if I am in between, can I go back?” Morgan asked hurriedly.
“Not a chance. Well… Okay, that isn’t really true. It is possible for a soul to go back, but not for you.” The man shrugged, almost as if he was saying sorry.
“What do you mean not possible for me?” Morgan took a step back. This guy is going to eat my soul f
or sure. Morgan tried to look around to find a way to escape, but the only path available to him was toward the light, and he wasn’t just yet prepared to go there.
“Oh, don’t be such a wimp. I’m not the reason you can’t go back to your old life. That is your fault. You lack the knowledge and power.”
“Well, I’ve never heard any credible story of someone coming back to life. Forgive me for not going out of my way to learn how to raise myself from the dead,” Morgan said—and then a thought came to his mind. “Wait, who are you? Are you God?” Morgan asked in a whisper.
The man tilted his head, seemingly amused. “Sure, from your point of view I might as well be God.”
One look at that grin and another thought occurred to Morgan. “Oh my god, you are the devil, aren’t you? I knew that I shouldn’t have stolen that piece of bubblegum when I was kid, but Marcus kept pressuring me. Please, it’s not my fault! He made me do it!” Morgan said as he took a step back, his eyes opened wide.
The man rolled his eyes. “I’m not the devil! Seriously, man, get a hold of yourself.”
Morgan straightened his posture and tried to compose himself by straightening his clothes. “Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool… So you are God, then? Or an angel or something?” Morgan asked, relieved—he really didn’t want to go to hell. He knew that he would just hate the heat.
“If you mean to ask if am I the God… Well then, the answer is no. I don’t really know for certain if a god really exists. What I do know is that if you go over there toward the light, you will find out. I guess that I am technically a god, little g, but not really… It’s complicated. Also for the purpose of this meeting, you may call me Oxylus,” the man said with a grin.
Morgan blinked at that. Little g? Then he frowned at the name and the way the man said it. “Is that name supposed to be some kind of a reference or an inside joke?” Morgan asked. “Because if it is, I have no idea what it means.”
The man closed his eyes and covered his face. “Calm, calm… What do they teach these kids in schools these days…” The man muttered in his hands. Then he finally took a deep breath and looked at Morgan in a way that someone might look at a child. “It doesn’t matter. I just liked the name.”
Morgan narrowed his eyes. There was a glimmer of something in Oxylus’ eyes, but he had no idea what it meant. “Whatever you say, Oxy.”
Oxy narrowed his eyes at Morgan but then took another deep breath. Morgan felt something, and then glanced down the tunnel at the bright light. There was something there—something pulling him forward. It was almost as if he could hear a song somewhere in his head, promising things that he couldn’t really understand, as if they were just at the edge of his understanding.
Then he turned to Oxy as another thought occurred to him. “Wait, are you some kind of a ghost, a ferryman or something like that? Here to take me to the afterlife?” Morgan asked, turning back from the light.
Oxy grinned at him. “Nope, I’m not a ghost, seeing as I am not dead, unlike you. And I am not here to ferry you to the afterlife. If you want to see what is beyond, all you have to do is walk into the light. I am here to make you an offer before you decide to go through or the light pulls you in.”
Morgan glanced at the light nervously. “What kind of an offer?”
“A new life,” Oxy said with a glimmer in his eyes.
“You can bring me back from the dead?” Morgan asked, surprised, and then immediately felt fearful. He had played enough games to know all about zombies and other crap, and he did not plan on selling his soul or binding himself to some strange dude in a diving suit.
“Yup, I can give you a new life. And before you ask, I mean new life. I am not going to send you back to your little world and your old life.”
“Why not?” Morgan asked, just a bit crushed. Already he had started thinking about all the things he would change in his life if he got to go back.
“Because I gain nothing from you continuing your life on Earth. And let’s face it, you weren’t doing much with your life anyway.”
For a moment Morgan prepared to deny Oxy’s words, but he stopped himself. The strange god-but-not-god man in a wet suit was right. Morgan hadn’t really done much with his life. He had already repeated a year at college, and would probably drop out by the end of the year. Or rather would have dropped out, had I not died instead.
“What are you offering, then? And just so you know, I ain’t selling my soul to you, and this better not be some Sauron type of shit where you seduce me and then corrupt my soul!” Morgan told him in what he thought was a resolute tone of voice.
The man chuckled. “You have nothing to worry about. I don’t want your soul, nor do I want to corrupt and dominate it. All that I am offering is a new life on a new world, a new reality.”
“Uh… Say what again?”
“I want to give you a chance to start a new life on another world.”
Morgan blinked; that did sound appealing. Especially since he was, like, totally dead, and like totally not about to go into a strange singing light. No way in hell or heaven am I stepping through that shit.
“Why me?” Morgan asked dumbly, as he tried to figure out the answer to the same question. It wasn’t like Morgan was anything special; well, maybe to his grandma, who always said that he was her special little boy, but he was fairly certain that her opinion didn’t matter much to the not-God-dude.
“Okay, it’s simple really,” Oxylus explained. “I would take you—or rather your soul here,” he said, gesturing at Morgan, “and then I would give you a new body and send you to another realm, my realm. You see, when I was younger I’ve really liked video games similar to what you’ve been playing while you had still been alive. Then, when I had a need to do some experiments, I made a universe from scratch as my playground. A universe that follows the rules similar to those of those kind of games. I would transport you and you can live out your life there. Once you die you will get back here to your tunnel and, well, you can go through there if you like, see what’s on the other side.”
Morgan blinked slowly as Oxy’s words seeped into his brain. “You are telling me that you, a dude that says he is technically a god, played video games?” he asked incredulously.
“Of course I did. What? Gods can’t play video games?”
“No, no, I just didn’t expect it is all. Right on!” Morgan extended his hand for a fist-bump. Oxy just stared at him with a blank expression on his face. Right. For a moment, Morgan wondered if he was imagining all of this, if he was perhaps dreaming—or maybe I’m in a coma. But he knew that he wasn’t. He didn’t know how he knew, but there was something inside of him that told him with no uncertainty that he was no longer living. He was dead, and he was supposed to walk toward the light, and staying where he was would result in him disappearing into nothingness. He pulled his hand back and returned the man’s gaze.
“So what do you say?” Oxy asked.
“I feel like there is a lot that you are not telling me,” Morgan said slowly. Something about the man in front of him frightened Morgan unlike anyone else ever had. More even than that one time when a spider fell on his keyboard and walked over his hand and Morgan screamed like a little girl. Morgan shuddered as he remembered—frickin’ spiders, man.
“Well, of course I’m not telling you everything. I’m older than some universes. There is a lot that I know.”
Morgan swallowed audibly. He couldn’t really wrap his mind around anything being that old. Then again, the dude might just be lying to me, he thought to himself. He opened his mouth to speak, but Oxy spoke first.
“Look, I really have no time to explain everything to you. You are dead, and you can go toward the light and the afterlife—if it exists. I am not planning on going to check. Or you can accept my offer and get to live again, it’s as simple as that.”
Morgan was certain that it wasn’t as simple as that, but he also knew that he really didn’t want to walk into the light. He hadn’t been very religious befor
e he died, a great shame to his mother, but he really didn’t want to go through and then see that all the stuff she’d been telling him was the truth. With my luck I would end up in hell; I’m pretty sure that stealing is a sin. Frickin’ Marcus and his dumb bubblegum. He would much rather extend his stay in the land of the living, thank you very much. It wasn’t really a choice for him.
“All right, I’ll give you my answer if you answer two questions. First, what do you get out of this? And second, why me? I seriously doubt that you give this offer to everyone that dies.”
Oxylus sighed impatiently and then nodded to himself. “Fine. I said that I am running an experiment—what I get from this is information that helps my research, and that is as much as I am willing to say. As to why you…well, I am trying something new. Until now I’ve been making this offer to people I believed were more suited to my needs, warriors, soldiers, and the like. Those, I thought, could give me what I wanted, but the results I’ve been getting aren’t all that impressive. Now I am trying something else, and I am extending the offers to people like you as well. I am offering a new life, and if you gain enough strength and if you reach the end of the Tower of Power, I shall grant you a great reward.”
“People like me?” Morgan asked, confused, and then he understood. “You mean gamers?”
“Yes, and hopefully this won’t be a waste of my time. Now, what is your answer?” Oxylus asked.
Morgan mulled it through one last time, even though he knew what he was going to say. A chance to live again, and in a world where everything would be like in his games? That wasn’t a choice at all. “This reward you offer, can you bring me back to Earth?”
Oxy rolled his eyes. “I can’t think of any reason why you would want to go back there, but sure, if that is what you want.”
“Then I agree.” Morgan nodded, spit on his hand and put it out for a handshake.
Oxy just stared at Morgan’s extended hand without reaching out, then looked Morgan in the eyes and blinked at him as if he were insane.
