God Mode: A LitRPG Adventure (Mythrune Online Book 1)

by Derek Alan Siddoway

  The mini-boss smacked into the solid wall where Leesha had been a moment before. This time, however, I swung my battle axe with all of my might into the middle of his now-unprotected back. Carried by my momentum, the head of the axe cleaved all the way through the weremammoth and struck the wall behind him, leaving my hands ringing.

  Critical Hit!

  The mini-boss’s torso split from his hips and slid to the ground with a meaty thunk. Weak spot indeed. The remains were surprisingly non-graphic, just a couple of bloody openings that looked like raw steak. As the dust of the half-collapsed chamber settled around us, both Leesha and I stood in silence at the abrupt end to the conflict.

  “Holy shit,” I breathed.

  “You sliced him in half!” Leesha said, her tone caught between surprise and confusion between the death of the mini-boss and the destruction of the chamber. “Man, the Jotuns are going to be so pissed when they see what you did to their temple.”

  I was too shocked to mention that she’d had an equal hand in the destruction.

  “Holy. Shit.”

  “That was savage! You weren’t kidding when you said that was his weak spot,” Leesha said, slapping me on the shoulder. “And looky there, Z!” She pointed to four loose orbs that had spilled out of the body and now rested on the blood-soaked marble.

  The respective icons floated around in each respective orbs indicating: Attack, Health, Speed, and Agility.

  “So which ones do you want?” I asked, already trying to figure out how best to incorporate two of the orbs into my tank abilities.

  “None.”

  My head whipped over to Leesha, who only gave me a crooked smile in return. “None?”

  “Don’t get the wrong idea.” Leesha held up her hands as if telling me to calm down. “This isn’t just some altruistic thing here. It kills me to give away good loot, but that fight made it all too clear. You’re the key to us winning this thing, and as cool as it is that you can’t die, you don’t do much good as a tank if you’re just a getting tossed around like a piece of meat. If we want to win — which I do — we’re going to have to start power-leveling you.”

  “But what about you?” I asked, suddenly uncertain of our strategy in the face of her confidence.

  “Hey, thanks to all the work I did before I met you, I’m already close to level six. And you’re the prize racehorse here, remember?”

  I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to take being compared to a horse as a compliment, but I let it slide. “You’re sure?”

  Leesha rolled her eyes. “You said it yourself. Your Speed and Agility are utter garbage. That thing was slow, and it still hit you how many times? You need all the help you can get.”

  “Okay,” I said, finally conceding. Ignoring the blood, I scooped up the orbs in my hands and crushed them.

  Level up! Congratulations, you have acquired enough Attribute Orbs to reach level 5! You have received one Unassigned Skill Point that may be used in any Pursuit you have already unlocked!

  Character Stats

  Name: Zane

  Title: None

  Race: Urok, male

  Level: 5

  Total Attribute Points: 26

  Attribute Points to next level: 4

  Health: 7 (140/140 Hit Points)

  Attack: 5

  Defense: 6

  Speed: 3

  Agility: 2

  Intelligence: 2

  Luck: 1

  “Oh-ho!” Leesha said.

  “What?” I said, swiping away my menu.

  Leesha had been apparently digging through the spoils dropped by the creature and came across something she liked. “You gotta have this thing.”

  After I confirmed the prompt asking about splitting up the spoils, she tossed a specific item in my direction.

  Torc of the Mammoth

  Description: A bronze torc shaped like mammoth tusks — let’s hope your biceps are big enough to sport this bad boy.

  Effect: Increases health by 30.

  Quality: Good (Can be improved by a journeyman jeweler)

  The increase of 30 HP was nothing to sneeze at, and given the need to focus on tanking my character, it made sense to send it my way.

  “Thanks,” I said, equipping it immediately. The torc fit nicely on my arm and brought my HP from 140 to 170 — a jump of over twenty percent.

  There was one thing that sucked, though.

  “I just noticed that I didn’t get any Skill Points during that fight,” I said. “Did you?”

  Leesha shook her head. “That’s probably just the way it is with some boss fights. I know some other games don’t actually give any experience at all.”

  “I’ll just be grateful that it dropped as many orbs as it did,” I said, counting my blessings.

  Unfortunately, the only other loot the mini-boss had was 100 RuneCoins — a decent sum but a far cry from the item and Attribute Orbs I’d received.

  “I assume you’re good with me taking it all?” Leesha asked. “Consider it payment for those Attribute Orbs and the item drop.”

  I nodded. Those orbs and the torc were worth far more than a hundred coins.

  Once we were done looting the weremammoth, we turned our attention to the altar. Although we had to climb over a few rubble piles to get to it, the altar itself was still unburied. We each took out a totem — including the one we’d found and the one from the prisoner in the cage — and placed them in the empty slots.

  Chk-chk!

  The ground started to shake, enough to fling us stumbling from the altar. I looked up at the high ceilings, especially worried now that the weremammoth had toppled nearly half of the supports. I hoped the chamber still had the structural integrity to hold up the floors of the temple that were above us. When the rumbling came to a stop several seconds later, a tunnel appeared in the center of what had previously been a solid wall opposite the chamber’s entrance.

  “Oh, great,” I said.

  “Mother of —”

  On cue, a bloodcurdling roar echoed through the tunnel, cutting off Leesha’s cussing and sending chills down my Urok spine.

  Then I heard a familiar chime.

  Quest Updated: Frosty Relations

  You have returned the totems to their rightful place within the Temple of Hoarfrost…and apparently awakened something even worse in the process. Nice going, genius. Go back to the Jotun shaman and decide if you’re going to give him the good news or the bad news first.

  Objective: Return to the Jotun shaman and hope you haven’t made things worse.

  “Well,” Leesha said as if she were remarking on the weather, “bet you these hundred coins we just made things worse.”

  35

  The Arcane

  It was well after dark by the time we returned to the Frostfang Clan and asked the guards for entrance into the shaman’s lodge. The prisoner sitting in the cage was still there when we arrived, but I judged by his glazed-over eyes that he’d logged out. I couldn’t help but wonder if he would be back at all. While MythRune could be pretty ruthless at times, sitting in a cage for days on end in the hopes that someone would come and rescue you didn’t fit the definition of “fun” for most people.

  “Hey, Tauren,” Leesha said as the guards escorted us inside.

  The shaman was seated with his back to the altar, eyes closed in a meditative state. He didn’t so much as blink when Leesha called out to him.

  “That’s Tauren-ska to you, young lady.”

  Several moments later, the shaman opened his eyes and folded his hands in front of him. In spite of his initial saltiness, he smiled at us. “I can already feel the change in the air. It appears you have succeeded in your objective to return the totems to their rightful place, but the danger has not yet passed.”

  “You think?” Leesha said. “What else are you hiding in there? When we replaced the totem, it was like we woke King Kong up from a nap.”

  Technically, half of the entire chamber had also collapsed, but I was glad Leesha d
idn’t mention that.

  “That is indeed troubling,” Tauren said, “but before we get too far into how we fix that problem, we may want to wrap up some unfinished business.” He waved his hand and I heard the familiar chime signaling a finished quest.

  Quest Complete: Frosty Relations

  You have notified the shaman that the totems are restored…but all is definitely not well in the temple.

  Rewards:

  - +50 Esteem with the Frostfang Clan

  - (1) Unassigned Attribute Orb

  - (1) Arcane Orb (Element unknown)

  I crushed the orb in my hand and assigned the point to Defense. Whatever was still lurking in that tunnel promised to pack an even bigger punch than the weremammoth. It went without saying that I needed all the help I could get.

  “You have more to do before you see this quest finished,” the shaman continued. “To help you along the way, I have bestowed a rare Arcane Orb upon each of you. Using this orb, you may choose a branch of the arcane in which to specialize.”

  Now we were talking. This Arcane Orb would unlock one of the subcategories of magic, or, as MythRune called it, arcana. It represented another Pursuit Sphere, but in reality, each elemental branch of arcana — light, dark, fire, earth, water, and wind, for example — had their own individual lines of specialization you had to choose from. The fact that we were being given the choice was amazing. From what I understood, no one even knew how many types of arcana there actually were in the game.

  But I wasn’t a completionist, and I needed something to serve me right away. The way things were going, it seemed like we’d be spending at least a little bit more time in the snow. A bit of fire would do us good in an ice temple. Plus, what better magic to pair with a big ole tank?

  “What are you going with?” I asked Leesha.

  “Do you even have to ask? Arcane Darkness.” She then glanced over at me. “Let me guess. Fire. You’re doing fire.”

  I shrugged.

  She shook her head and smiled. “So predictable. Boys.”

  Ignoring her, I thought my choice, and the orb before me filled with a blazing interior fire. A glance over at Leesha showed a swirling, ominous black murk inside her orb.

  Arcane Pursuits Have Been Unlocked! Congratulations! You have unlocked the Arcane Fire Pursuit Sphere. Open your Pursuit Menu for more information.

  Arcane Fire: Wielders of flame arcana are able to use fire as both a weapon and a shield, protecting themselves from harm while bringing their enemies to bear with incinerating blazes.

  +1 Unassigned Arcane Fire Skill Point

  I was dying to dig into my new toy box of skills, but at the moment, Tauren sat patiently waiting for us to finish so he could proceed with the next part of the quest instructions.

  “Your knowledge of the Arcane will be key to completing your cleanse of the Hoarfrost Temple. You say you heard a roar, yes?”

  “That’s right,” I said, nodding.

  Tauren rose and selected a thick book bound with wooly rhino hide from the altar. With a sly smile, he held the tome up at Leesha and blew, enveloping her head in a cloud of dust. While I snickered and Leesha cursed, swatting the dust away from her head, the shaman flipped through the yellowed pages.

  Eventually he found what he was looking for and held up the book to us, long nails pointing to an illustration. The page showed a particularly fearsome yeti, at least twice the size of the weremammoth. Muscles bulged beneath his long, light blue fur, and fangs like daggers filled his mouth. A sickening feeling settled into my stomach.

  “This is the Temple Protector.”

  “Oh, good!” Leesha said. “So that’s the protector. So we’re good, then. He’s on our side…right?”

  Tauren gave Leesha a long exasperated look. “This beast only obeyed us thanks to the use of those totems you restored. Unfortunately, as you know, those totems went missing for weeks. While they may be back in place, I suspect the Temple Protector has been corrupted by the evil that invaded the temple before you were able to cleanse it.”

  Quest: Yeti-gain

  The Frostfang shaman has tasked you with destroying the Temple Protector, an ancient beast that has been corrupted by the unchecked magics that roamed free while the totems were missing from the Hoarfrost Temple.

  Objective: Destroy the Temple Protector.

  I had a hard time believing that the Jotuns had ever been able to control that thing, given that it lived in the deepest depths of the temple behind a wall. Part of me wondered if Tauren was an opportunist and saw a chance to take care of his yeti problem once and for all. But who was I, an intrepid adventurer, to judge? There was a boss to be slain, damn the odds. And the promise of pain. Oh, the pain.

  Leesha and I accepted the quest. It went without saying that we both really hoped this was token-worthy.

  Tauren smiled upon our acceptance. “I will imbue you with a gift to aid in your journey.” He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and — “YAAAAAAAAAH!”

  “Oh, please not again.” Leesha flinched and shut her eyes.

  “YAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!” Tauren’s hands were out in front of us, as if he were imparting energy to us. And then he stopped, took another breath and — “YAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!”

  “I feel like that was longer than last time,” Leesha said, rubbing her temples.

  You have received the Gift of the Frostfangs: 20% immunity to cold/ice damage for the next 24 hours.

  As we walked to the exit of the lodge, I checked the in-game clock. It was now 12:45, meaning we’d been up more than eighteen hours and were soon due for a nap before we headed back out.

  “Maybe we should have waited to get that ‘gift’ until after we rested,” I said.

  Leesha sighed. “So we’re going to have to sit through that again? I’d almost prefer to get mauled to death by the yeti.”

  “Try actually feeling the pain,” I said. “It might change your mind.”

  We stepped outside the church, only to find Dart staring at us from within the confines of the cage. Unlike a few minutes ago, he was definitely present and logged in.

  “So you did it, huh?” he said with a condescending clap. “You realize you only completed the quest because I had the other totem, right?”

  “Shut it,” Leesha said. “Don’t make me fill the cage with my arrows. I just spent good money on a new batch, and I don’t want to waste them.”

  Dart held up his hands defensively. “Hey, there’s no reason to get violent. Just let me out of here and we’ll call it square. I’ll even give you guys a hand to finish the quest line. I know you’re not done, or I would have received some sort of notification on my end.”

  I hesitated, glancing over at Leesha, who simply shook her head. She was right. I had to keep thinking about the bigger picture.

  “I know you can use the help,” he called out. “If you change your mind, you know where to find me.”

  36

  Rest Mode

  B: Huge news, dude.

  Z: how about ‘hello, it’s nice to see you, and I had a great time reading the mountains of messages you sent when I was sleeping’?

  B: Sure, all that. Whatever.

  Z: I mean, when your brother goes through all the trouble of making sure you’re okay

  B: Dude, it’s the boards! They’re blowing up!

  Z: you can at least pretend to be grateful

  Z: Wait, what?

  B: Yeah, that caught your attention, didn’t it?

  B: Huge reveal. You can *steal* tokens from other players

  Z: -_- no shit. that’s what happened to us in the cave

  B: No, I mean actually *steal* from other players’ inventories.

  Z: What? Like tap into their inventory or something?

  B: Exactly

  Z: Great. So even if i get one and can’t die, someone can steal it from me?

  B: That’s right.

  Z: Awesome. And it just so happened that I teamed up with a thief.

  B: Do you trust h
er?

  Z: …I think I’m starting to. that’s the part that scares me. I don’t know if I should drop my guard.

  B: Anyway, people are complaining that the game devs knew about this but stayed silent

  Z: like a bug that they knew about but ignored?

  B: or something they intentionally put into the game to stir up conflict.

  B: Good news is that it means you have a chance. If you can find someone with a token, maybe you can find a way to steal it.

  Z: Bad news?

  B: what makes you think there’s bad news?

  Z: there’s *always* bad news.

  B: yeah, of course theire is

  B: there*

  B: The obvious one is that once you get a token, you’re not safe until you get into Mythgard

  B: So you can’t just grab it and call it safe. You have to grab it and keep it.

  Z: Oh, is that all?

  Z: A part of me is kinda happy about all this. It feels like we have a fighting chance.

  B: Along with everyone else.

  Z: way to kill the mood, captain buzzkill.

  B: But how are *you* doing?

  Z: about to head into the heart of the hoarfrost temple to confront a terrifying yeti monster, you?

  B: you know. Dealing with heart palpitations and all that.

  Z: you always gotta one-up me, don’t you?

  B: It’s what I do.

  Z: Seriously, though, are you doing okay?

  B: I’m FINE! If there was actually a problem I’d tell you.

  Z: If there was actually a problem, you’d tell Unc to keep me in here while you die in some hospital

  B: oh, you know me so well.

  B: the nurse in the ER says hi, by the way.

  Z: not funny

  37