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

by Derek Alan Siddoway

  But screw that, this monster had killed my party member.

  “It ain’t over ’til it’s over,” I said to myself.

  I rose on shaky feet and stared my opponent down, calculating how I could get to Leesha or, at the very least, my axe. Clouds of misty breath poured out of the yeti’s nose with each labored breath, and it scowled at me. I scowled back, although I wasn’t feeling very brave or optimistic about my chances to meet Leesha. I imagined we painted quite a picture of man versus beast…or Urok versus beast — whatever.

  This wasn’t good. Even if I ran out of the chamber, there would be no reviving Leesha. In order to do that, I’d have to take her body with me out of the combat zone. There wasn’t room enough for me to get to Leesha with the yeti basically camping on her body.

  The tunnel at my back beckoned, promising a safe haven. Not only would it take me out of this frozen hell, but the yeti couldn’t fit into it. I couldn’t abandon Leesha that quickly, though. For one, I needed her to finish the boss off, and two…I forced myself not to think about our growing companionship. All that mattered was I couldn’t leave her.

  Wishing I had an actual taunting skill, I did the next best thing and tried to literally goad the creature into attacking me.

  “Hey, you big pile of dandruff!”

  The yeti turned its head sideways but in no way looked insulted or angered by me at all. I yelled in frustration. Leesha was dead, I had no weapon, and now I couldn’t even get the boss to attack me. I took a few steps closer and tried again.

  “Your hairy ass is the ugliest thing I’ve seen in this game — and I’ve fought cave ghouls!”

  The yeti snorted, still more concerned with its wounds than a single, weaponless Urok.

  “Listen, snowball, you stupid mother —”

  The rest of my threat was drowned out by a furious roar. I briefly wondered at the fact that this boss was enraged at being called “snowball” before the yeti started hurling icicles at me again. I dodged the first two, grateful for the fact we’d smashed up the ice and I had better footing. About the same time, I realized I was going to have to take the fight to ole Snowball if I ever wanted to get out of here.

  Gritting my teeth, I thought of Brandon lying in a hospital bed, hooked to beeping machines as his poor worn-out heart finally gave out. It kept me from thinking of what it would feel like to be beaten to a bloody pulp. And then I ran.

  The yeti was in fine form now, flinging chunks of ice in both hands, like an ambidextrous quarterback throwing Hail Marys. I pictured the distance between us like a football field. It was just like kickoff, and those flying icicles were opposing blockers.

  I dodged the first, almost losing my footing on the cracked ice. Was there a solid floor under the ice, or if I fell through, would I suffer an agonizing fall?

  No time to think about that. I juked right, this time keeping more of my momentum and missing the next explosion of ice shards by a few feet. I might not have been agile, and I certainly wouldn’t win any footraces, but muscle memory kept me just far enough out of harm’s way.

  Another length of jagged ice exploded to my left, then my right. Then a speedball throw came right down the middle. I fell hard, but only took a grazing hit that didn’t deal more than a few points of damage to me. I bounced back up, the result of thousands of up-downs over the course of my football career. Icicles shattered all around me, but I ignored them and focused on the yeti for the last couple of dozen yards.

  It might have had the arm strength of an entire locker room of quarterbacks, but its accuracy sucked and the yeti knew it. Howling in anger at its terrible aim, the boss pounded its fists into the ground in a flurry of raw power.

  And then it ran at me. The sight of my battle axe clattering to the ground due to the yeti’s tirade gave me new hope. New energy flooded my legs and I found another gear. And if history served, the yeti wasn’t always the most graceful at turning on a dime itself. If I could pass it, I could make it to my axe. I could make it to Leesha.

  I juked left. The yeti mirror my juke. When did this thing play football? Fortunately, when I juked right, it started to slip. Bingo. With one final jump, I slid onto the ice, toward Leesha’s body and toward my battle axe. The yeti roared in frustration as it fell and I slid past it. It took all my willpower not to flip it the bird as it collapsed onto the hard icy floor, its body gaining speed on the slippery ice, and with every second it slid farther and farther away.

  My timing had been perfect. I gracefully — or at least what I thought was gracefully — scooped up my battle axe and found myself standing over Leesha’s body. I reached into my Bag of Holding and pulled out a revive potion.

  I heard the boss scramble to its feet as I uncorked the bottle. Trying to ignore the stomping sounds of the beast lumbering toward us, I emptied the contents onto Leesha’s body and slid a few feet away. I turned to the yeti and waved my hands above my head, hoping to guide the monster away from her as she recovered.

  Leesha’s health bar inched upward, and her chest heaved. She was alive again.

  When I looked back over toward the yeti, I saw the goddamn thing in midair, leaping like a downhill skier at the Winter Olympics. It landed perfectly onto Leesha’s reviving body with a boom. The entire dungeon shook as it proceeded to slam its fists onto the corpse with a horrifyingly unnecessary amount of strength, as if each hit that landed past her death would make her that much more unrevivable.

  It was angry. I could tell. It clearly did not want her coming back to life. As each bowling-ball-sized fist landed on her corpse, the ice underneath cracked, and with one final double-fisted smash, a Leesha-sized crater formed in the ice.

  Clouds of misty breath poured out of the yeti’s nose with each labored breath, its fists covered in blood.

  I sat frozen. I had one last revive potion with me, but if I didn’t drag her body away from danger as she was reviving, there wasn’t any guarantee the yeti wouldn’t do the same thing.

  After emitting a low growl, the boss spun to face me, speckles of cooling blood matting its fur, and its intimidating figure towering over me.

  I tried to run, but an instant later, the icy cavern spun around as if I were on a merry-go-round doing Mach 1. My vision blurred, punctuated with black spots. Then everything came crashing into focus in a horrific crunch.

  The pain was impossible. The pain was excruciating. I heard throat-tearing screams and barely registered them as my own. The sweet, sweet embrace of unconsciousness gripped me, and the last thing I remembered was speeding through the air like a twisted, broken javelin.

  39

  The Bargain

  By some small mercy, I didn’t come back around until the broken bag of bones that was my body had healed itself. I opened my eyes, confused and unsure of where I was. My cheek was pressed against an icy floor, and everything came back in a terrifying rush.

  I gasped and sat up. I was lying in the mouth of the tunnel — probably where I’d landed after the yeti got done smashing me to mush. Across the room, the boss was trying to stick something to a low-hanging section of the ceiling. For a moment, I thought the stupid monster was trying to reattach an icicle. Then I realized it was Leesha’s body he was trying to hang. Some dev had watched The Empire Strikes Back too many times.

  Mind racing, I weighed my options. Now back to full health, I could attack again. But what would be the point in that? I didn’t stand a chance against the yeti. And as long as I couldn’t die, there was no bringing Leesha back to life and trying again. If I couldn’t grab her and take her out of the combat zone, she’d stay dead until revived or we both died. It almost seemed like the yeti knew this, because it refused to let me recover her body and drag her to safety, where she could respawn. I cursed the sick, twisted developers who had coded this monster and its oddly intelligent strategy.

  To make matters worse, the two of us were cut off from communicating. When a character died, all chats were cut off between dead and living party members. Even now, Lee
sha was sitting in the dark rest mode area or logged off, waiting for me to bring her back to life. She might have been watching the chamber in forced silent spectator mode, feeling as hopeless as I did.

  God Mode didn’t feel so great all of a sudden.

  Part of me wondered if I should just log off, log back in, and die so we could try this boss all over again. But then I’d be left without any edge to take on the millions of other gamers vying for the grand prize. Would that move be worth it?

  My mind flashed to Brandon. If we got him to log on, he could help free Leesha with my overpowered character from beta. Yes, there would be massive limitations to bringing in that character, but it could work, right?

  It was tempting, but I nixed that plan almost instantly. Like all immersive games, MythRune had the potential to aggravate heart problems. Given how bad things had gotten in recent months, it wasn’t a chance I was willing to take. If he croaked while trying to help us, it wouldn’t exactly be productive. Plus, if the token algorithm decided a beta character had helped too much in the fight, I felt pretty sure it would yank any potential token as a reward. We’d invested too much in this quest line to come up empty.

  I might not have been hanging from the ceiling like Leesha, but I was just as stuck.

  I felt a sudden pang of empathy for the prisoner hanging outside the church in the Frostfang village. That guy had been there for days. I could only imagine how boring it must be to be stuck like that.

  Wait a second. Maybe there was a way after all.

  “Absolutely not,” Tauren said. “That man blatantly trespassed and defiled our holy place. He should count himself fortunate that we did not kill him for plaguing the temple.”

  I’d hurried back to the Frostfang Clan as fast as I could, only to find the shaman to be more stubborn than anticipated. Before making the first visit to the temple, we’d decided to leave our mounts in the Jotun camp, a smart move that likely prevented poor, cold Frank from becoming a frozen dino steak for a frost bear. On the plus side, I didn’t have to worry about leaving Leesha’s horse outside the temple alone. Even though we were partied up, Beauty wouldn’t listen to my commands, even if it was in his own best interest to do so. The feature was kind of like an anti-theft device for mounts, as some of them took a ton of time or money to acquire. Grand Theft Horse was one area where the devs had abandoned realism in favor of player security.

  All that meant I’d had to trudge back through the snowdrifts on foot. And my heavy Urok body sank like a stone in a bond with each step. By the time I got an audience with Tauren, my patience was wearing thin.

  “You don’t know he plagued the temple,” I argued. “When you caught him, he was trying to put it back. Why would he steal it only to bring it back?”

  Tauren’s face remained a mask of ice, so I pushed a little harder.

  “I can’t defeat the yeti alone,” I said. “Unless you want to send a group of your warriors with me, he’s our best chance. And this way, you don’t endanger any of your people.”

  The shaman fell silent for a long moment, and I could tell I’d at least got the wheels turning. It took everything I had not to tap my feet while he mulled over his options.

  “Very well,” Tauren said at last. I exhaled in relief. I was already far enough up the creek without a paddle. “I will release the prisoner in your care. I must warn you, though — this will not win you any favor in the eyes of the clan.”

  He led me to the cage hanging out front. When Dart saw us, the corners of his lips turned up into a boyish grin. I imagined he’d had enough of that cage. Part of me wondered why he hadn’t convinced the Jotuns to execute him in order to be set free, but his patience would be to my benefit.

  “About time,” the redheaded man said as Tauren unlocked the cage. He jumped out, no worse for wear from being imprisoned in a cage for days. “I believe you’ve got my gear as well?”

  Tauren frowned, but motioned a warrior forward. The big Jotun guard thrust a burlap sack at Dart so hard he stumbled backward.

  His look still baffled me. His character was not only scrawny, but obnoxiously unassuming, even without the freckled baby-face. I remembered a picture I’d once seen of the old movie director Ron Howard way back in some TV show and wondered if Dart had based his character off of that. Either way, he was a long way from the picture of a gallant adventurer.

  “I only want to see this fire-hair’s face again if the temple is cleansed,” Tauren said. It was hard to imagine the friendly demeanor he’d previously shown us. “Am I clear?”

  “Crystal,” Dart said, donning his gear and ignoring the insult. He wore dark leather medium armor similar to Leesha’s and strapped what looked like either a really big knife or really small sword to his belt. The whole outfit might have been impressive, but he didn’t have a whiff of the roguish air he was going for. After adjusting his belt, he cracked his neck and gave me another wide smile. “Glad you finally came around.”

  Tauren looked from Dart to me, clearly unimpressed. I half expected him to change his mind and rearrest Dart. “I hope we will not regret this.” With that, he turned and went back into the lodge, not bothering to give us a second glance.

  Esteem decreased!

  The Jotun shaman doesn’t like it, but will honor your request to release his prisoner. As a result, your Esteem with the Frostfang Clan has decreased by 10.

  Relationships:

  Horuk Tribe: 155

  Lucas Sevenday Trading Company: 65

  Frostfang Clan: 40

  While my goal with this playthrough was to win a ton of cash, the gamer in me couldn’t help but cringe at the decreased Esteem. I turned to my newest companion, hoping I hadn’t made a mistake. “So where did you get the totem?”

  “I came across a bandit camp, and they had it on them.”

  “Blue Hand Raiders?” I asked.

  “Yes!” Dart’s eyes lit up. “You too?”

  I nodded. “We must be on a congruent quest line.”

  “Sounds right,” Dart said. “My log was still updating even though I was stuck in the camp. Honestly, I didn’t know if you guys would be back. I was about ready to call it quits.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t,” I said. A pause followed. “And…I’m sorry about earlier. My…friend…and I just like to play with the two of us. No offense, I hope.”

  Dart shrugged. “Hey, I’m out now. Don’t think I’m in any shape to complain. So what are we up against?”

  “So the guardian of the temple…is an enraged yeti,” I said. “It killed my partner and would have killed me too if I hadn’t left.”

  Dart’s eyes narrowed slightly at my explanation. Not in a malicious way, but you could see the gears turning in his head. “So you left your buddy there? Why not just die and respawn?”

  Crap. Without even realizing it, I’d almost spilled the beans first thing. To avoid the ordeal I was going through, most players would have let themselves be killed so they could respawn and try the boss again. It didn’t make sense for me to run back and look for help. It was a huge waste of time, if nothing else.

  I struggled to think of a good excuse; then I realized neither Leesha nor I had invested in Camp Creation, the skill that allowed us to change our respawn location.

  “Because if I did,” I said honestly, “we would have to start again where we started, which is way out on the Bloodbone Plains.”

  “Hm. Okay,” Dart said with an understanding nod.

  I let off an inward sigh of relief and berated myself for my lack of care. All of this would be for nothing if I blew my secret — the old saying that three can keep a secret if two of them are dead came to mind.

  I went to the party menu so we could officially party up. Upon seeing Dart’s stats, I let out a low whistle. “You’re level 8? What sort of skills do you have?”

  It was then I noticed that there were suddenly three Darts standing around me.

  “I can do a couple of neat party tricks,” all three redheads said in un
ison. Together, they smiled, raised their left hand, and snapped. An instant later, two of the copies vanished.

  An illusionist, then. I smiled as I thought of all the possibilities we could throw at the yeti. My smile vanished a second later when I realized the “Add Party Member” button was grayed out. For some reason, I couldn’t technically party up with the guy and said as much.

  “You said your other party member is dead back in the temple?” Dart asked. “Makes sense. We won’t be able to officially party up until she okays me.”

  I felt a pang of anxiety at this realization. If I really couldn’t trust this guy, not partying up with him could come back to bite me. It seemed like we both came to the same conclusion at once, and an awkward silence settled between us at the implications.

  “You’re not going to totally screw me over, right?” I said, forcing a laugh.

  Dart grinned and snapped his fingers. Two other Darts appeared again. “How many of us do you want to give our word?” they all said.

  The dude might have been awkward, but he had that funny, “dorky kid with a ventriloquist dummy” sort of charm about him.

  I nodded. “That’ll have to do. Just don’t change your mind when you see what we’re up against.”

  40

  Take Two

  My confidence in Dart’s skills increased as we made our way through the familiar path in the temple. The bad news was that, while Leesa and I had pretty much cleared ourselves an open path — an open path I’d only just recently gone through — the lower floors of the dungeon had repopulated with ice gremlins and Jotun corpses.

  “This is my fault,” Dart said, as if reading my mind. “I’m new to the temple and I’m not in your party, so I’m probably triggering it to put up new obstacles for me to go through.”