EverRealm: A LitRPG Novel (Level Dead Book 1)

by Jake Bible

  “Margaret, what are you doing?” the Creator snapped. “You are not allowed to take sides. This is a game that is to be played out only by the last living member of the family.”

  “Is that so, Harold?” Bubby asked. “Show me in the rules where it says that?”

  “You know it was more of an informal agreement than an official rule,” the Creator said. “That was the only way we could all agree that the following generations would be allowed to live on forever into eternity within the game’s framework.”

  “Forever and eternity mean the same thing,” I said.

  “Steve!” Sandra hissed in my ear. “Not now!”

  “The fool is right,” Bubby said.

  “Fool?” I replied.

  “Hush!” everyone said.

  “All you’ve ever been is words, words, words,” Bubby said. “Even after this game stopped being about the modules and became an open platform for players to have grand adventures and quests. Rules and words, rules and words. Harold loves his rules and words.”

  “The rules are what bind the game together and keep it from busting apart,” the Creator said.

  “Do you have even the foggiest what is happening in the real world, Harold?” Bubby said. “I do. I use the portals to check all the time. It’s a zombie nightmare out there! That is why these fine youngins decided it would be better to live inside here. And, I for one, vote that we let them do just that.”

  The Creator started to respond, but Bubby got up close to him and snapped her fingers in his face.

  “Shut up, Harold, I’m still talking,” she said. “As well-intentioned as these folks were, including my lovely grandson, do you think they were the only survivors of the real world that had this idea? No.”

  “Told ya,” Holo said. “Boom. Minds blown.”

  “There are others,” Bubby continued. “Plenty of others. Some of them got to one of this party’s friends and corrupted him, forced him to come to EverRealm and taint it with the undead menace.”

  “Oh, snap,” I said. “Jeremy turned on us.”

  “Not such a fool after all,” Bubby said, turning to give me a wink. “The one called Jeremy will be here soon and his mission is to take this Jewel of Rising so he may conquer EverRealm for the ones he works for. If we allow that to happen, then all will be lost. For this Domain as well as for the others.”

  “You know of the other Domains, Bubby?” Ming asked.

  “Paulie Boy, who do you think gave you the idea for the Center and the creation of other Domains?” Bubby replied. “A suggestion here, a clue there, a stray bit of code in an old file, and off you went. If I didn’t nudge you to build the other Domains, then all would ride on the survival of this game and this game alone. That would just be stupid.”

  She pointed at the Jewel of Rising.

  “Do you know what this truly represents?” she asked.

  No one answered until Sandra picked herself up off my back, smoothed out her ragged dress, and said, “That’s the game’s CPU, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, lovely dear,” Bubby said. “This is the game’s CPU. It runs it all. You always have been my favorite.”

  “But, Bubby, if that represents the game’s CPU, then the other Domains are in great peril because I based their code on EverRealm’s central processing,” Ming said. “The Domains are as tied to that CPU as this one is.”

  “Yes, Paulie Boy, I am fearfully aware of that blunder,” Bubby said. “I gave you some hints on how to create the Domains without doing that, but you have always been a lazy boy and constantly looking for the shortcut. How did that work out for you, child?”

  “Not so well,” Ming said under his breath.

  “Not so well,” Bubby echoed. “In the end, it has created more work than it has saved. And speaking of saving.” She picked up the Jewel of Rising and held it out to Sandra. “I now trust you with this, sweet dear. You must take it to each of your Domains and make a copy. Once all of the Domains have their own CPUs, then the entire quantum matrix will stabilize and no matter what evil ideas other survivors of the real world have, the framework cannot be destroyed.”

  “Me?” Sandra asked. The mousy voice was back. “I can’t…Bubby…I can’t do it.”

  “You can, but I understand your fear,” Bubby said. “That is why you have friends to help.” She winked at me again. “Perhaps more than a friend, eh? Hubba hubba.”

  I may have blushed. Hard not to when you realize maybe some old lady has been watching you get it on with your woman.

  Footsteps came from the passageway and Bubby’s eyes focused beyond us.

  “And here they are,” Bubby said. “Hello, Jeremy. Hello, Trish.”

  She tossed the Jewel at Sandra who bobbled it slightly, but managed to hang on, then grabbed onto the Creator’s robes and the two of them blinked out of sight, leaving us standing there with an undead Jeremy and undead Trish glaring at Sandra and the Jewel of Rising.

  “Let’s do this!” Holo yelled and launched himself at Trish.

  Thirty-Eight

  Trish was in full Sorceress mode, undead granted, but still powerful as ever. She fired a wall of energy at Holo and sent the dog flying against the chamber wall. Kip and Sandra went for her, Kip throwing his orbs while Sandra leapt and spun a roundhouse kick at Trish’s head. Coz did Coz and snuck into the shadows.

  That left me to face Jeremy on my own. Seemed fitting since that’s how the whole damn game started.

  My Dark Blade was flaming like Hell itself as I charged Jeremy. He barely got a spell up in time to block my attack. I actually forced the guy to stumble back a couple steps before he regrouped and came for me.

  A sword of his own, one made of pure ice, appeared in his hand and he swung for my head. How original. Ice to fight fire.

  I countered the swing and the two blades hissed and sizzled upon contact. I stepped forward and drove his sword down, but he managed to slide it up and out of my defense so he could launch another attack at my head. He was very big on attacking my head. All about it.

  I ducked and stabbed the end of the Dark Blade into his gut. It slid through and he cackled with laughter. Then he cried out as his midsection caught fire. He pulled himself back, letting the flaming sword withdraw naturally, and placed his blade against the wound to seal it.

  “Nice trick,” I said. “Someone teach you that in undead traitor school?”

  He didn’t reply, only held his blade down to his side as he began to circle me. I turned to match him, the Dark Blade held firmly between us. Level ups or not, I wasn’t even close to matched against his skill as a player. Add in that he couldn’t die and there wasn’t much for him to fear.

  Wait a second. If he couldn’t die, then why was I fighting him? What the hell good was I going to do? Odds are I’d just get myself killed. The son of an undead bitch had figured out a cheat and was using it to its full advantage.

  The only way Jeremy could be killed was if I…

  “Sandra!” I yelled, dodging a casual swipe of Jeremy’s blade. He knew I knew I couldn’t kill him here and was only toying with me. “We have to go!”

  “What?” Sandra yelled back as she ducked under a bolt of energy that Trish shot at her head. “We can’t!”

  “Yes, we can!” I yelled and spun about to double check that I was right. I was. “This way!”

  She hesitated and Trish used that opportunity to get in a good hit. Sandra went flying against the wall and slid down to the floor in a heap. She struggled to get up and I risked turning my back on Jeremy so I could rush over to her.

  “No!” Holo shouted then yelped as he blocked a swipe from Jeremy’s sword.

  “Holo!” I cried, but I couldn’t get to my friend. I had to get Sandra up and moving to the pedestal. She held the Jewel of Rising. She held the CPU. I needed to get her out of this Domain.

  And back to the Center.

  I lifted her onto her feet and helped her hobble to the pedestal where the Jewel had sat before Bubby had tossed it to
Sandra.

  “You have it?” I asked.

  “In this pouch,” Sandra said.

  “Good,” I said. “Kip!”

  “Yeah!”

  “You got Trish?”

  “Yeah!”

  “Good!” I said and took Sandra’s hand in mine.

  I pressed both of our hands to the pedestal and we were gone just as Ming yelled, “Where are you going?”

  Then we were back in the Center.

  Not that the Center was any safer. I knew we were going to be in for a fight as soon as we appeared. When we’d left, the place had been overrun with undead and they were still there. Lucky for us, with no prey to chase, they were only shambling around the room aimlessly, completely unprepared for two people to pop back into existence in front of them.

  I let go of Sandra’s hand and our survivor instincts kicked in. Technically, it wasn’t the real world, but it wasn’t EverRealm either. We were back in the clothes we’d left in, and instead of a flaming sword in my hand, I had a fire axe again.

  Oh, but holy shit, it wasn’t the same fire axe. This one was actually fire. Or the head of it was. Just like the Dark Blade. Hey, I had a Dark Axe!

  I started swinging and taking off undead heads.

  Sandra was by my side, her combat knives in both hands, and was doing that beautiful stab, shove, stab, shove, stab thing she did. Seeing her go to work in her simple clothes again was probably ten times more sexy than she’d been back in EverRealm. It was so real and it turned me on.

  “Focus!” Sandra shouted as I watched her a second too long.

  One of the undead leapt for me, fingers gnawed to the bone outstretched and going for my eyes. I brought the fire axe up underhanded and caught it in the chest, but its momentum took it right into me and we went down in a pile of flailing limbs. I managed to get the handle of the axe up under its chin to keep it from biting my face off, but the thing was a wild animal and was thrashing so hard that I couldn’t get leverage to kick it off me.

  Then a knife point came out of its forehead and it went still.

  “Thanks!” I shouted as I shoved it away, and Sandra returned to fighting for herself instead of saving me.

  I made it to one knee before I had to swing the fire axe in almost every direction at once to keep the undead back. There were a lot of the bastards. They had just kept coming through until Henry’s immersion tank fried out. I was looking at close to twenty.

  Then from the shadows came a dual-machete-wielding mad man. He hacked and slashed and stabbed his way through the horde, taking out half of them before reaching me and giving me a smirk.

  “You think I’d let you have all the fun back here?” Coz asked as he stabbed another undead asshole through the face. “No way, dude.”

  “Good,” I said. “Because we’ll need the help.”

  “What for?” Coz asked, killing two more of the undead. “We’ll have the Center cleared in no time at this rate.”

  “It’s not these I’m worried about,” I said. There was a shimmer in the air, and Jeremy arrived through the Domain portal to EverRealm. “It’s him.”

  The thing was, Jeremy’s clothes hadn’t turned back to his normal clothes. He was still dressed EverRealm style all the way. That was troubling. I had hoped I could lure him back to the Center because it was as close to the real world as it got. Then maybe different rules would apply and he wouldn’t be immortal.

  “Shit,” Coz said. “He’s still messed up.”

  “Not for long!” Sandra cried as she took a running leap and launched herself off the back of the gore-covered couch.

  She must have flown five feet into the air, both of her knives aimed down at Jeremy’s head, before she collided with him, sending both of them skidding across the Center’s floor and into a tidy pile of undead bodies.

  Jeremy twisted under her and hissed in her face, ready to bite her nose off, but she buried a knife into each side of his head and he froze in mid-chomp. His body shuddered under hers a couple times then went still in that way we all knew by heart.

  “You okay?” I asked her.

  “Ugh,” Sandra said as she stood up and wiped her blades off on her shirt. “What? Yeah. I’m fine. That wasn’t the Jeremy I knew. I’m good. Really.”

  That’s when she seemed to notice what she was wearing. It’s what we always saw her in every time she’d appear in the Center, but she looked at herself like she was seeing the clothes for the first time.

  “Goddamn, I need a new wardrobe,” she said and looked up, giving me the best smile ever. “We should go shopping. I bet Technopolis has all kinds of cool clothes.”

  I could only smile back and nod. The thought of her wearing some cyberpunk outfit had me tongue-tied.

  “This got awkward fast for me,” Coz said. “Maybe we should go back and check on the others now that we have this sorted out?”

  “Good idea,” I said. “You know how to activate the portal back to EverRealm?”

  Coz opened his mouth then closed it. He shook his head.

  “Sandra? You have to know how, right?” I asked.

  “No, Steve, I don’t,” Sandra said. “Trish and Kip do. Or did.”

  “Well…shit,” I said. “That sucks.”

  We looked at the gory couch, shrugged, and walked over to plop down and wait. That’s all we could do.

  Thirty-Nine

  We waited for hours before the portal opened and Kip, Holo, and a still-fighting Trish, came tumbling into the Center.

  “Took you long enough!” Coz said and jumped off the couch to help.

  Trish kicked Kip in the nuts and scrambled to get free. She stood up and thrust her hands out, hissing and groaning at us. Nothing happened, of course, because she didn’t have Sorceress powers in the Center.

  Holo started to laugh, but it was a pained sound. He had a nasty-looking gash on his right flank and I hoped it wasn’t from Trish’s teeth.

  “Can we do anything for her?” Coz asked, circling around Trish, forcing her to focus on him and not on us. “Guys? Maybe since she was turned in EverRealm it will wear off here?”

  “Doesn’t work like that, Coz,” Sandra said sadly. “Her being has turned. No matter what Domain she goes to, she’ll be undead. We have to end her suffering here.”

  “Fuck,” Coz snapped. “Fuckety fuck.”

  Trish lunged at him, swiping at his face with her nails, but Coz only swatted her hand away with the flat of one of his machetes. She hissed and groaned then went into a crouch like some undead do when cornered. Her head whipped back and forth for a minute, trying to watch all of us at the same time, then she decided on her attack and sprinted at Holo.

  Kip caught her around the knees in a double-armed hug and she fell flat on her face. Sandra was right behind, stabbing her in the base of the skull with a combat knife. Trish instantly went still.

  I dragged her body next to Jeremy’s and we stood there and looked down at our former friends.

  “Henry and Laura,” I said, and started digging through the piles of undead until I found their bodies. I dragged each of them over and laid them out next to Trish and Jeremy. “There we go.”

  “We should say something,” Sandra said.

  “Shouldn’t we wait for Ming?” I said.

  “Probably right,” Coz said.

  Back to the couch we went. Hours went by and I dozed for some of it. When I came fully awake, Ming still wasn’t there.

  “Was he hurt when you left?” I asked Holo.

  “No,” Holo said, licking his wound.

  He hadn’t become undead so, it wasn’t a mortal wound. That was nice. It did still look like it hurt, though.

  “What is taking so long?” Coz snapped and started pacing the room.

  Maybe two more hours went by before the portal to EverRealm opened back up.

  “Ming!” we all called.

  But Ming didn’t appear. The portal was open, but no Ming.

  “Hey,” Ming’s voice echoed from the portal.
“Can you hear me alright?”

  “Yes,” Sandra replied. “Ming? Why aren’t you coming through?”

  “Yes, well, it appears there is an issue with that,” Ming said. “I have been talking with Bubby, and because we started the module of Saga of the Lich King, someone needed to finish the module. I am that someone.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked. “So you finish the game and come back here, what’s the big deal?”

  “The big deal, as you say, is that I am now officially the Lich King,” Ming said.

  “Still not seeing the problem,” I said.

  Kip put a hand to his face and shook his head.

  “Oh, snap,” Holo said.

  “Oh, snap, indeed,” Ming said. “I cannot return right away. Being the Lich King means I now have power over all that are undead in EverRealm. And, as it would so happen, there are quite a few undead left, not to mention a rogue Ghost of the Beast. If I do not use my powers and either force them to my will or outright destroy them, then they will overrun EverRealm and all will be lost in this Domain no matter what Sandra is able to do with the CPU.”

  “That’d suck,” Coz said.

  “Yes, quite,” Ming replied.

  “How long will it take?” Sandra asked.

  “It could be as simple as a few weeks or possibly, depending on how far the issue has spread, it might take years,” Ming said. “But, that gives all of you time to secure the other Domains. I have been assured by Bubby that she is doing everything she can on her end to strengthen the quantum matrix that binds all together. Isn’t that nice of her?”

  “Very nice, Ming,” Sandra said. “She’s a lovely woman.”

  “Yes, she is,” Ming said. “So, with that all said, I am afraid I will have to bid you a fond farewell. If you need me, or need to come to EverRealm, either Kip or Holo can accompany you. I would ask them to teach you how to open the portal, but perhaps it would be best if we limited accessibility, don’t you think?”

  “Good idea, Ming,” Sandra said. “Better safe than sorry.”

  “So very true,” Ming said. “So very true…” He cleared his throat. “Farewell, then, fellow adventurers!”