Quest for Vengeance

by Benjamin Douglas

  Contents

  QUEST FOR VENGEANCE (HERO ONLINE: BOOK I)

  PREFACE: WHY LITRPG?

  BENJAMIN DOUGLAS, AUTHOR

  HERO ONLINE

  CHAPTER 1: EVERYTHING BEFORE

  CHAPTER 2: BAD DROP

  CHAPTER 3: TACO TUESDAY

  CHAPTER 4: CAMPED

  CHAPTER 5: INTERLUDE: JOHN THE BARD

  CHAPTER 6: HARD LABOR

  CHAPTER 7: GOBLIN FODDER

  CHAPTER 8: WHERE TIME STANDS STILL

  CHAPTER 9: BAG IT, BAG IT UP

  CHAPTER 10: INTERLUDE: THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT

  CHAPTER 11: ALL ABOUT THE CRAFT

  CHAPTER 12: DUNGEON DIVING

  CHAPTER 13: BLOOD AND GUTS

  CHAPTER 14: AND FIRE

  EPILOGUE: FOR VENGEANCE

  BOOK 2: QUEST FOR POWER

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  GIDEON/CHIPDIP'S STATS

  HERO ONLINE

  BOOK I

  QUEST FOR VENGEANCE

  Benjamin Douglas

  Copyright 2019 Benjamin Douglas, all rights reserved. No portion of this work may be duplicated or distributed without the author’s permission.

  All persons in this work are fictional and are not meant to represent other persons, real or fictional.

  PREFACE:

  WHY LITRPG?

  _________________

  The short answer might be: why not?

  Alright. So if you haven’t been playing fanboy to the denizens of indie authordom the same way I have been for the past few years, let me explain what the genre is, to begin with. Imagine your favorite role-playing game (RPG), with all the interesting characters, skilltrees, quests, world-building, and game mechanics. With me so far? Now imagine a massive multi-player online RPG (MMORPG). You all know the big one that comes to mind for most of us. Features orcs, trolls, elves, humans. You’re still with me, right? Now add a dose of virtual reality (VR), preferabbly full-immersion VR (FIVR), and you have what we call a VRMMORPG. Or, if you’re a purist, maybe it’s a FIVRMMORPG, but that’s really a mouthful, isn’t it?

  Now, last step. Take that gaming experience, and now pretend you’re reading a novel that details every part of it. The quests, the dungeons, the bosses, yeah, sure, but also the stats, the leveling up, the crafting, the PvP and PvE and anything else that might come into play. And that’s LitRPG.

  I discovered the genre through a thread on KBoards a couple of years ago when it started making a splash in the indie market. I voraciously tore through English translations of some of the early Russian LitRPGs. Then I watched Sword Art Online. And the rest is history. I’m a fan for life.

  I’ve borrowed tropes and motifs liberally from some of the LitRPGs I’ve encountered in writing this book. I don’t mind a bit if it seems derivitive in form, so long as the enjoyment you take in reading it makes for a unique experience. I’ve always held that philosophy that all art is derivitive anyway, and I think a little intentional emulation, when done well, can be very appealing. If any fellow authors recognize tropes with a tradition in the genre, I hope they will be flattered rather than annoyed, and indulge my homage.

  If you’re looking for more good LitRPG stories to read, there are loads. You might check out the community at Royal Road. Or look around on Facebook—there are a handful of groups now. If you hop onto Amazon and just search “LitRPG,” you’ll find a lot of books now, and you can usually follow the reviews or number of reviews to something interesting. But my top-three favorite LitRPG novels/series authors are:

  Ascend Online by Luke Chmilenko

  Afterlife Online by Domino Finn

  Euphoria Online by Phil Tucker

  I can recommend the above three with no hesitation for their excellent storytelling, smooth prose, exciting game adventures, and overall enjoyable reading experiences. Check them out!

  HERO ONLINE is my very first attempt to write LitRPG. And I could really use your help. If you like what you read, man, I would really appreciate an honest review on Amazon, Goodreads, or wherever you talk books. It would help a lot.

  I wish to provide a fair trigger warning that this story contains scenes of graphic violence, life-and-death stakes, and a fair amount of cursing. If “adult language” bothers you, this book may not be well-suited to your expectations. My characters find themselves in very difficult situations, and I gave them free rein to express themselves as they felt necessary given those difficulties.

  Thanks to Aleron Kong for his informal permission to use the trademarked term LitRPG in my series’ subtitle.

  Thanks to my wife for putting up with and supporting me in this crazy endeavor—I mean it!

  And thanks to you. Thank you so much for reading!

  Ben

  About the Author:

  Benjamin Douglas writes action/adventure science fiction and speculative fiction with a quick pace, memorable characters, and twisting plots to keep you reading into the wee hours. Opt in to receive his monthly/bimonthly newsletter and get an exclusive free short story, "The Trials of Io," a prequel to his ongoing Starship Fairfax series. You can find and follow Benjamin at the following locations:

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  http://eepurl.com/cQnop9

  Twitter:

  https://twitter.com/cantankerousben

  Goodreads:

  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16901962.Benjamin_Douglas

  Blog:

  http://benjamindouglasbooks.wordpress.com

  Email:

  Benjamindouglasbooks@gmail.com

  HERO ONLINE

  BOOK I

  QUEST FOR VENGEANCE

  Benjamin Douglas

  CHAPTER 1:

  EVERYTHING BEFORE

  _________________

  You know those gaming console displays they used to have in the electronics section of your nearby superstore? You know, the kind with the console locked up behind plexiglass and the remote sticking out, attached by some weird inflexible arm, so that you could walk up to it and demo a game for five minutes? And you know those kids that made a bee-line for that display as soon as they would walk through the door, and then just camp out playing for free for like an hour at a time?

  Yeah. That used to be me.

  Like clockwork, man. A couple times a week I’d be in there, hands all over that controller, mashing buttons. Sometimes I’d go with friends. Sometimes with my kid sister, Angie. Sometimes alone. It was my jam.

  So I guess what I’m saying is that it should come as no surprise that, some thirty years later, my middle-age crisis was to spring a few thousand for the next-gen next-gen, bleeding edge gaming experience of our lifetimes, even though I hadn’t really been a gamer in decades. Some guys pick up a sports car, some, a mistress. But me? I picked up a ridiculously expensive playcard with a hundred hours of gametime in Hero Online, with Janus Corp.’s state-of-the-art neurofacing headgear to match. And just what was I, a forty-something ex-college professor with no cultivated hobbies, hardly any family, and no real friends to speak of, going to do with that card and headgear?

  Escape.

  Don’t get me wrong, I’d had an easy enough life, I guess. All my complaints sound like first-world problems compared to real drama. I wasn’t hungry, or lacking shelter or clothes. But I was lonely. I was depressed. I’d come to hate my job, though now I’d have given just about anything to have it back (don’t even get me started on the decline of the liberal arts education in America in the mid-twenty-first century. I could go on for hours). I guess I had friends, sure, if you counted friendly colleagues… but no one really close, no one I could just visit out of the blue without going through an elaborate ritual of calls and missed calls and plans and canceled and rescheduled plans first. And
family was almost all gone now. It was just me and Angie left.

  That’s why I did this weird, sentimental thing. I bought her a playcard and headgear, too. I wanted it to be like some sort of virtual family reunion, I guess. Some kind of message, me to her, that I still cared, that in some part of me we were still the same brother and sister we had been when we were kids, just meeting up at the superstore and playing a video game to pass the time.

  Nevermind that we hadn’t actually spoken in a couple of years. Just weird stuff, you know? Family drifting apart. People leave town to go where there’s education, then where there’s work, and before you know it, boom, the parents are dead—the only thing that really linked you together—and suddenly you’re not seeing each other at Christmas anymore. A few years pass, and it’s like, do you even know this person you once shared a home with?

  It bothered me. And like I said, mid-life crisis. A great excuse for frivolous purchases. So I’d ordered us each a starter pack, had hers delivered with a gift note, something awkward about calling me when she got it, looking forward to meeting her online. The call that followed wasn’t much less awkward, and I could tell she felt guilty too, as if it was her fault we hadn’t been a family lately. Which of course only made me feel worse. I’m the big brother, you know? I’m the one that’s supposed to keep us together, supposed to be the leader, right?

  Long story short, I was a middle-aged, middle-class, over-educated and under-achieving dude who was going to meet my baby sister online in this apparently epic VRMMORPG that afternoon, just a week after the game had launched.

  I snapped out of my funk, shaking my head, and reached for my coffee. The guy on TV was saying something about a group of hackers who had started a malicious player-vs.-player guild in Hero Online, and even I, for all my time away from playing anything, laughed quietly at how ridiculous he sounded, stumbling over the acronyms and gobbledygook terminology. Come on, man, I thought. Guild. It’s not that odd of a concept; there’s no need to say the word as if it’s in air-quotes.

  Whatever. I sipped again, rolling the lukewarm coffee around in my mouth. I wasn’t too concerned about hackers, PVPs, or generally poorly behaved players. I figured I’d slip into the game and stay under the radar, not really do anything to attract any unwanted attention. I had no aspirations of becoming a grand heroic figure, or founding a guild, or questing night and day. Honestly? I just wanted a second shot. That’s what intrigued me most. The fountain of youth in our lifetime, folks.

  That, and to patch things up with Angie.

  I shut off the TV and stood, stretching. Something popped. That happened a lot more this decade than it had the last. At least I wouldn’t have to deal with my aging joints in the game, I thought. Speaking of which, the time we’d set for our first mutual login was fast approaching. I ambled down the hall to the bedroom, powered up the routing device, and lay on the bed, taking the headgear in my hands. It was heavier than I’d expected. I thought it would be some sort of ultra-light sleek plastic thing that just housed a few nano-tech chips, but apparently the hardware needs were a little heavier than I’d thought. The thing put genuine weight on my face when I pulled it on.

  I made a mental shrug and reached over to flip the switch that would jack me in. One deep breath first—here goes nothing—and flip.

  “Welcome to Hero Online,” a warm, feminine voice said. Weird. The headset didn’t look like it came with headphones. Was the neuroface software already linked up and running? I tried lifting my hands to the headset, but my hands came up translucent, dim outlines over a swirling, entropic light that grew by the moment.

  Whoa!

  I jerked back and found that I was standing. Talk about disorienting. I glanced down and saw that my entire body was made of the glowing, growing, pulsing light. And slowly, I was beginning to illuminate the space around me.

  Darkness stretched on in all directions. I stood on a floor of glass, with no walls or ceiling in sight.

  “Angie…?” I tentatively called. The sales rep had assured me he’d put a note on our cards to have them linked to the same spawn-point, or first drop, as he had called it.

  “My name is Sophia,” the disembodied voice said. It rang out across the empty space, full and resonant, but warm and soft, as if amplified.

  Sophia. “That means wisdom, right?” I thought aloud.

  “That’s right,” she replied. “I have been named according to my function. I provide information for all first-time players before your first drop. Ask me anything, Gideon.”

  I frowned. “How do you know my name?”

  “Gideon is the name registered to this account. But you can choose another name for gameplay if you like. Would you like to do that now?”

  I shook my head. “No, Gideon will do.” Why not? No point confusing myself. “So ok, Sophia. Is this like, a training module, or what?”

  “In a way.” A distant gray began creeping up behind me. I turned and say a horizon. Finally, some dimensions! The light quickly grew into a brilliant but cold sunrise. The glass below my feet rippled away, and I seemed to hover a few inches above a fresh, powdery snow. All around me, a gentle hilly landscape took shape, brilliantly white in every direction. “Training as is conventionally understood happens organically in Hero Online. I am not here to run you through practice exercises or quests. Rather, I am here to help you decide who you will be.”

  “Ah, I see. Character building!” Sweet. I hadn’t played many old MMORPGs, but enough to know this was one of the coolest parts.

  A flat, smooth, white platform emerged from the snow below and rose to meet my feet. In front of me, the air began to shimmer, then coalesced into a mirror. I reached out to touch it and my translucent fingertips disturbed its surface like that of water, sending ripples out to the edges.

  “Before you is a blank canvas,” Sophia said. She wasn’t wrong. My body’s reflection was decidedly humanoid, but otherwise devoid of any defining characteristics. “What do you want to see?”

  I hemmed and hawed a moment. “Show me myself.”

  I sensed a question hanging in the air.

  “Can you show me myself as I appear in reality?”

  “I can show you the self that you perceive in the Earth realm,” she said. I made the mental equivalent of raising an eyebrow at her correction. The mirror rippled again, and before me I saw the real me—wrinkles, gray stubble, gentle beer-belly and all. I sighed.

  “I suppose I should look like myself so Angie isn’t confused.”

  “Who is Angie?”

  “My sister. You know, the account linked to mine—the shared spawn point, er, drop. You see that, right?”

  “I can preserve your current face and alter other details if you like.”

  She hadn’t answered my question, which would have given me pause, but… fountain of youth. “You mean I can still look like me, but ditch the dad-bod?”

  “Dad-bod?”

  I shook my head. “Ok, let’s try this. Keep my face, but give me the body of a warrior.”

  “Do you have a racial preference?”

  A bevy of lights flickered in the air to either side of the mirror. They settled into shimmering, floating screens, each displaying a warrior build in a given race. I saw orc, human, elf, dwarf, a merman—

  “Whoa! I can be a merman?”

  “Of course.”

  I heard a dull roar from far overhead, like the sound of a fleet of airliners. Then, in an instant, an entire ocean—I kid you not, an ocean—fell on top of me, engulfing me in its inky depths. One moment, the freshly fallen snow reflecting a gray sunrise. The next, some legit Noah’s-ark-level flooding on my head.

  I opened my mouth to scream, and water pressed in, filling every cavity, rushing through my body. There wasn’t time to so much as think, let alone hold my breath. The force of the deluge pressed me down, then scooped me up, sending me rushing on a current through hundreds of meters. I blinked, the pressure painful against my eyes. Glowing things sped past—or
rather, I sped past them, I suppose—and more than once I felt the soft body of some deep-sea animal squash against me. Finally, the water resistance slowed me down, until I was eventually gliding almost peacefully. Or it would have been peaceful, that is, if my lungs hadn’t been violently convulsing the entire time.

  That’s when I gave up and tried to breathe. It didn’t even occur to me that this was just a game, that I would be fine IRL. No. This was real. I was going to die. I was in full-on panic mode, and I didn’t have any fight left in me. I needed air.

  Or I thought I did.

  Turns out, water was just fine. I willed myself to breathe, and felt the water swirl around in little eddies as tiny gills popped open along the length of my neck, drawing the water in and out. I blinked again, surprised.

  What the…?

  “Hey,” I said, my voice a strange sort of gurgle. The last remaining air bubbles passed from my body, and when I spoke again, the sound was full and clear beneath the waves. “What’s going on?” I spun in a circle, feeling my lower half twist to propel me.

  My tail.

  “Um… Sophia?”

  “Yes, Gideon?” Her voice remained calm, warm, reassuring.

  “Am I… breathing water?”

  “Yes, naturally. You are now in demo-mode for the merman avatar. Is it to your liking?”

  I thought about having just been tossed through the depths of the sea itself. It was the most radical thing I’d ever experienced, far more jarring to my senses than any pain or pleasure I could ever remember in real life. And it had really, really sucked.

  “Erm… no, I don’t think so. Thanks all the same.” I just couldn’t imagine spending all my game-time swimming around down here. And anyway, it seemed an unlikely candidate for successfully dropping in with Angie.