Delvers LLC- Surviving Ludus
Page 1
Contents
Title
Copyright
Also by Blaise Corvin
Dedication
Foreword
Engineering Ludus
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Author Note
Beyond The Village Borders
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Author Note
Enemy Mine
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Author Note
Friends and Enemies
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Author Note
Just Another Life on Ludus
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Author Note
Missing in Action
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Author Note
A Guiding Hand
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Author Note
Book End
Editor's Note
Delvers LLC: Surviving Ludus
Artifice Universe Collection, Book One
Part of the Delvers LLC storyline
Presented by Blaise Corvin
Surviving Ludus
Copyright ©2019 by Adom Publishing
All rights reserved.
No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Also by Blaise Corvin
*Note: Some titles are scheduled for launch in 2019 or 2020
Artifice Universe
Delvers LLC
1. Welcome to Ludus
2. Obligations Incurred
3. Adventure Capital
Nora Hazard
1. Mitigating Risk
2. Competitive Advantage
3. Accounts Payable
Delvers LLC (Cont.)
4. Golden Handcuffs
5. Hostile Takeover
VeilVerse
Asgard Awakening
1. Asgard Awakening
2. Asgard Awakening 2
Yggdrasil Universe
Secret of the Old Ones
1. Luck Stat Strategy
2. Airship Privateers
Written with Outspan Foster
Anthem of Infinity
1. First Song Book One
2. First Song Book Two
This one is for the readers. Without them, none of this would have been possible.
Foreword
From Blaise Corvin:
Hello readers! This book is classified as GameLit or RPG GameLit.
You might be curious what RPG GameLit actually is. GameLit, the larger genre umbrella, is any fiction with game mechanics or that takes place in a game. RPG GameLit is a subgenre where stories include some sort of linear progression for characters that is significant to the plot of the story. These types of stories have been extremely popular in Russia and other countries where they are called LitRPG. They’re just now making an impact in the West!
RPG GameLit is usually a funky mix of Fantasy and Sci Fi. The settings can vary, but what most GameLit novels have in common is a world that most gamers can immediately relate to.
***
This collection was a lot of fun to put together, and was partially a fan-driven effort. Fans of Delvers LLC let it be known that they wanted to write stories set on Ludus, so the Ludus Anthology Project was born!
The time frame for this project began with a post and poll created in July 2019 in the BC fan group on Facebook. Then the official announcement for the project, and instructions on how to submit were posted in August. You can see the link for the original announcement on the blaise-corvin website under, “Blogs.”
Of the six authors other than Blaise Corvin who contributed to this collection, four have never had work published on Amazon before. Since this is their debut to publishing, we are excited and honored to have had a part in sharing their work with the world!
Some of these authors are sure to go on and create great things, so be sure to follow them! Each story in this anthology ends with words from the author, and a link to follow them (if they supplied one).
***
My contribution to this book was writing my own story, compiling all the other stories, and doing a developmental edit of each before turning the whole thing over to copy editor. Editing was done to enhance story flow in some cases, keep world building consistent, and things of this nature. Each author’s unique voice was not tampered with.
Since I have touched and modified every story in this book, every story can be considered at least grey-area canon for the Artifice Universe! Of course, Missing in Action is 100% canon and some of the characters introduced in this story will show up in future Delvers LLC books!
***
This collection features stories that cover time periods from 1944, to the events at the end of Delvers LLC 3, Adventure Capital. It is not necessary to have read the Delvers LLC or Nora Hazard series to enjoy this book. However, if anyone is interested in finding them, the titles are:
Delvers LLC
-Welcome to Ludus
-Obligations Incurred
-Adventure Capital
-Golden Handcuffs (coming 2020)
-Hostile Takeover (coming 2020)
Nora Hazard
-Mitigating Risk
-Competitive Advantage
-Accounts Payable
Again, the story in this collection by Blaise Corvin, Missing in Action, will directly impact Delvers LLC 4, Golden Handcuffs.
***
I really had a lot of fun putting this book together! If you’d like to visit my website, the URL is http://blaise-corvin.com/
I also have an editor’s note in the back of the book with a whole mess of links.
If you’d like to connect with me on Patreon, the link is http://www.patreon.com/BlaiseCorvin.
My reader group on FB is at http://www.facebook.com/groups/BlaiseCorvinBooks/.
I hope you enjoy your trip to Ludus!
Engineering Ludus - Introduction
Engineering Ludus
By Austin Eberle
A wide variety of people have been transported to Ludus over the last thousand years. Will an engineering student have any advantage? Is it possible to thrive on Ludus through using brains, not brawn?
Engineering Ludus, Chapter One
“What in the hell just happened?” I muttered, shaking my head. Then I registered the trees around me and had to shake it again. Nope, still there. I’d expected to be in a forest, but these were not the ponderosa pines of the Colorado Rockies.
Actually, come to think of it, hadn’t I just been on the side of one of those mountains? I distinctly remembered the long drive, longer hike out of the valley, and setting up my little tent and sleeping bag before I went on a hike. When I looked at my hands, I could see the little gas
h where a tree branch had scratched me; it hadn’t even scabbed over yet. Which means there is no way I could have lost my mind and driven to… Vermont? Somewhere on the eastern seaboard, maybe?
I slapped my cheeks. Come on, Riggs, think. Just retrace your steps, and then start looking for clues. I turned around, and could clearly see where I’d stumbled in the loamy soil, but before that, nothing. There wasn’t a scuff or broken twig in sight. Okay, this is on a whole new level of weird. Alien abduction, maybe?
“Hey you grey-skinned dumbasses, the people who actually want to be probed are about five hundred miles to the south!” I shouted the last at the treetops, but they seemed indifferent to my rising hysteria. I clamped down on it hard.
Panic was always the enemy of survival, from a plane crash, to a calculus test, to appearing in some random-ass forest without a sign of how you got there. Everything was a problem to be solved, and if there’s one thing I had learned in my two years studying engineering, it was how to solve problems.
First things first, take stock of my supplies. I unshouldered my aluminum-framed hiking pack, grateful it was still right where it belonged, and started an inventory. The two liters of water in my hydration bladder along with a little filter meant I wouldn’t be dying of thirst anytime soon. Some trail snacks and a couple freeze-dried emergency rations would feed me for a day or two as well.
So basic necessities are taken care of. Good.
I had an extra pair of socks because wet feet sucked, a poncho because wet clothes sucked, and a box of waterproof matches because being cold and wet without a fire sucked. A hundred feet of paracord since that was useful stuff. I never left camp without a decent first aid kit. No illusions about being able to remove my own appendix with it, or any other serious medical emergencies, but the kit had all the basics plus some trauma gear, an inflatable cast, and even an emergency tourniquet. A small titanium entrenching tool was the only other item of note from my pack, purchased as much for its lightweight construction as its durability.
I was wearing a pair of worn hiking boots, cargo pants, tan-colored long-sleeved shirt, and a Broncos cap with some cheap sunglasses to keep the glare off. It was a good thing wherever I was now had about the same climate as the Rockies in late summer because I would have been unprepared for the Arctic or the Sahara. A quick search of my pockets brought out my old clasp knife and a curse. “Damn.” Any chance of calling for help or even pulling up a map was gone because my idiot self had left my cell phone back in the tent. Oh, and I noticed a spot of rust on my knife. Just my luck.
Through an effort of will, I pushed myself away from feeling sorry for myself, back to focusing on the problem. Step one, done. Got enough to survive, not enough for Swiss Family Riggs, but still fortunate. Next step, figure out or find someone to explain to me where the fuck I am and how I got here. Step three, get to civilization. Step four, find out what happened, and if anyone is responsible, punch them in the face. I liked the sound of step four, I liked it a lot. Anyone who would abduct a random college student from the middle of nowhere and stick them in another middle of nowhere without so much as a word was all kinds of messed up. This was the kind of messed up that definitely deserved a good decking in my book.
Back on track, my goal of finding people meant finding a road or a town or trailhead. There wasn’t any sign of the trail I had been walking down a few minutes before, so I didn’t have the faintest idea of where to start heading. Well, I could always make a random guess, but in this case there was a better way to get my bearings.
I was a decent climber and the trees here had plenty of solid branches, so it only took a minute to reach the top and scan around. The view was simultaneously beautiful and terrifying. The beauty was in part because I had never seen so much unspoiled wilderness in my life, but the same lack of a single sign of humanity shook me to my core. There wasn’t even a dirt road to show that I wasn’t the sole inhabitant of this world, but at least I could see there wasn’t a gas giant floating above my head, so I wasn’t on the forest moon of Endor. I wasn’t sure how I would have taken it had I looked up and there were two suns or a ring or a moon-sized battlestation, fully operational or not.
Something in the distance caught my eye. Maybe two or three miles off, there was a meandering path of trees that had a slightly different look—a bit greener, a little taller. There was definitely something in that direction, hopefully a road, but I would have settled for a nice river. Everyone said that when in doubt, you should follow water to civilization, after all. Without any better option I dropped back to the forest floor to collect my pack. I made sure the straps were snug and everything was comfortable, because I figured I was in for a long haul, then gave the place a once-over. No sense leaving anything useful behind. With everything squared away, I took a deep breath and set off for the unknown.
As far as forest hikes went, it was actually pretty nice except for having no earthly idea where I was. But the trees were old and tall enough to have choked out the worst of the undergrowth, and the soil was soft without being wet enough to stick. I might have made better time if I hadn’t stopped to check out anything that caught my eye. When you’re searching for the smallest sign of civilization, every weird tree looks like a telephone pole and some lumpy rocks somehow become the spitting image of a waving hiker. Inevitably all my side trips got me was disappointment, but they didn’t cost anything, either. I just sighed, checked the shadows to get my bearings, and set off again.
Two things gradually dawned on me as I wandered through the woods. First, there was absolutely no sign anyone else had ever been here. No hewn tree stumps or old campfires or shoe prints on the animal paths, not even a beer can. There were places in North America like this, but damn few. Could I be in the Canadian wilderness?
Gradually, something occurred to me that I found deeply chilling. I noticed the shadows were actually getting shorter. This meant it was midmorning, but I’d left camp in the early afternoon. Either a day had gone by in an eye blink or I was a good chunk of a hemisphere to the west of Colorado, which didn’t seem likely since this forest had a distinct lack of ocean in it.
Alien abduction was starting to seem more and more likely to me, or maybe the Rapture. It was always possible the Mayans might have forgotten to carry the four in their calendar, too, but I still had no answers for my situation, only that the questions were bigger.
Off to the left, I saw another odd lump about a hundred yards away. It was probably nothing, but might be anything. With nowhere better to be I veered in that direction. Mentally I bet on a bush since it was way too lumpy to be another rock. As usual, my subconscious took the bet, it’s kind of dumb that way.
I had gotten most of the way there before I realized we were both wrong, I mean I was wrong. My sanity was a bit loosey-goosey at this point, but I still didn’t have any real split personalities. As the moment, my inner monologue didn’t matter anyway, because the “bush” had just stood up on four legs and was turning to face me. And, holy shit, what a face.
The thing looked like the bastard love-child of a mole and a gorilla, but there was definitely some bat somewhere in the family tree because damn, those were some crazy ears. It stared at me through beady eyes over a hairless pink snout and lifted its lips to growl. One look at those teeth and I knew it was about as vegan as I was. Since bacon is synonymous with joy in my mind, and this creature likely felt something similar, it was likely looking at me as a potential meal.
Slowly, very slowly, I unbuckled my pack and set it by my side. My hand had just gripped the shaft of my e-tool when the creature’s growl turned into a full-fledged snarl and it started sprinting my direction. I yanked my little shovel out of its straps as I grabbed the backpack in my other hand and hurled it into the face of the oncoming…mole-ape-bat? Even my full ruck didn’t have enough mass behind it to hurt the thing, but it did make it falter long enough for me to sidestep and lay into it with the flat of my shovel.
As the blade connected, a corner of
my brain idly wondered if this animal was endangered and the local equivalent to park rangers were about to spring out from behind the trees. Would they arrest me for injuring the last remaining female Long Eared Fuzzy-Wuzzy, or whatever this thing was? In the detachment of the moment, I realized the creature was female.
As it turned out, I shouldn’t have been assuming I’d even done her serious damage, because Fuzzy was apparently made of tough stuff. A hit that would have sent a grown man gasping for breath only made her angry. She twisted, fast, and hit me with a glancing backhand that sent me stumbling backwards like I had been hit with a baseball bat. I hadn’t been hit with any claws, thankfully, but I was pretty sure my shoulder would be purple for a week.
The whole time, Fuzzy was putting out a warbling cry that promised a quick and painful disembowelment as soon as I got in range of those teeth or claws again. I really didn’t want to face her head-on when she could spill my guts from further away than my puny little e-tool could reach. What I really needed was a spear—even a whittled branch—to keep Fuzzy away or poke her from a distance. Given a minute of warning I could have made one, but I had seconds before the next charge. I had to think of something, anything. My brain needed to come up with a tactic to slay a monster and keep my hide intact, but the only thing I could keep thinking about was how much getting eaten alive would hurt.
The inevitable charge came, and I used all my half-remembered junior green belt skills to roll to the right, dodging a hair’s breadth below those terrifying claws. Adrenaline and desperation brought me up just in time to get in another lucky hit with my weapon. This time I swung edge-first, and even though the angle wasn’t great, I could see I did real damage. My strike left a good three-inch gash on Fuzzy’s rear haunch and her battle cry took on a higher pitch. Somehow, I even managed to jump back fast enough to avoid being disemboweled.