Viridian Gate Online: Nomad Soul: A litRPG Adventure (The Illusionist Book 1)

by D. J. Bodden

  After the baths, Halius gave me a simple off-white tunic like I’d seen most of the enlisted men wear. I offered to pay for it, but he raised his hands to stop me. “I’ll just get another one from supply. It’s Enyo’s day tomorrow, so no training, and where we’re going, you’re going to want to fit in.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “A Legion bar.”

  THE SIGH FROM THE LIPS of a goddess crossed the Bleak Sea, following the seasonal air currents, altering them subtly. It gathered the cool night air like a lady bundling herself in a cloak and made landfall south of Wyrdtide, where it found the warm, humid exhalation of the great West Viridian forests, and from there, swirling and tumbling but ever moving east, it rose.

  NINETEEN

  I’D PICTURED A SEEDY, low-roofed affair with cheap, replaceable furniture and sawdust on the floor, but being a legionary was apparently a decent way to make a living, and the Lion’s Tail turned out to be a proper inn with a noisy, crowded main room and two floors of guest rooms above. Halius found us a corner table, and the four young soldiers occupying it almost fell over themselves to get out of his way.

  I hadn’t thought about it until then, but Halius had been on good terms with the prefect. I wondered what his rank was.

  In any case, we sat. I got the first round, and he got the second and third. We talked, and then we half shouted because the room was packed to the point off-duty legionaries were standing in groups of three or four between the tables and more kept coming in. A female Accipiter sang a credible acoustic version of “Prayer in C” by Lilly Wood, accompanied by a Wode with a lute and a Risi striking a talking drum with a curved stick. Her voice was smoky and dark, and the drinks had me at just the right level of buzz to enjoy the room.

  People laughed, clinked glasses, and played dice or cards at the tables, cheering loudest when someone almost got knocked out of the game but clawed their way back through skill, luck, or the goodwill of a fellow soldier. Smoke curled up from a dozen cigars and made a hazy layer against the ceiling. I started to pick out the patterns—the jokes, the shit talking, the constant dick or cup-size measuring, and the big open stances.

  “You need to go carouse, Alan,” Sandra said.

  I blinked and noticed Halius was looking at me. “What’s up?” I asked him.

  He stuck his lip out and took a swig of beer, then he leaned in so he could speak without being overheard. “You’re new to this, aren’t you?”

  “To what?”

  “Whatever it is you do, it’s not soldiering. There’s something bent about you, like a scholar or a thief. You’re always measuring the angles.” He sniffed. “Prefect told me to get you drunk and let you mix with the troops off duty, learn how to blend in, but I don’t think you know where to start.”

  I chuckled. He wasn’t wrong. “Any suggestions?”

  “Shit, man. Just go out there and have fun. You trained with ’em, bathed with ’em, you’re dressed like ’em, nothing stopping you but yourself.”

  Ever get that feeling like the right words are caught in your throat, or like that first step across the dance floor is going to kill you? That was me. I’d charged an assassin and stabbed a Risi with the spear I’d ripped from his calf. I’d talked people out of their money, and run until I thought I would break. I could read that room like a textbook, analyze the body language, hierarchies, and leverage points all day, but when it came down to acting on it I just couldn’t dive in. I was just like my class quest—stalled, and I didn’t know how to get going again.

  As soon as I finished the thought, a notification popped up.

  <<<>>>

  Quest Update: Smoke and Mirrors

  You’ve been offered the chance to learn Charm. If you accept, you will spend (1) proficiency point on the skill, and who knows where that will lead? If you fail the quest, you will lose both the ability to use the skill and the proficiency point you spent.

  Quest Class: Rare, Class-Based

  Quest Difficulty: Hard

  Success 1: Swindled a Swindler

  Success 2: ???????

  Success 3: ???????

  Failure: Fail to complete any of the objectives.

  Reward: Class Change; 6,000 XP

  <<<>>>

  “You’re kidding,” I said.

  Halius raised an eyebrow. “Nope. It’s really that simple.”

  He couldn’t see the quest, but he might as well have. I laughed. Horace had given me the answer again. Through desire, we shape the world. Another 100 XP hit my character sheet, bringing me up within 20 points of leveling up. I relaxed. This was just a puzzle to be solved. Come on, V.G.O. Hit me with your best shot.

  <<<>>>

  Quest Update: Smoke and Mirrors

  Get someone to do something they wouldn’t normally do within 12 hours.

  <<<>>>

  Skill: Charm

  Some people have the “X” factor. Charm lets you fake it. People within range will like you more than they should, charge less, and pay better.

  Skill Type/Level: Aura/Initiate

  Cost: 100 Spirit (Concentration)

  Range: 5 yards

  Cast Time: Instant

  Cooldown: None

  Effect 1: purchase and sale prices improved by 5%.

  Effect 2: 1% increased chance of passing an illusion check (stacks) every 10 seconds.

  <<<>>>

  I read the quest update and the description a couple times, just to be sure. The spell would be an ongoing cost to my Spirit pool but it didn’t seem all that complicated. Based on the last quest and the time limit, though, I guessed there would be more to it than getting Halius to dance on a table or talking a tavern wench into bed.

  Still, I knew the drill. If the AIs were doing their jobs right, I didn’t so much need to figure anything out as use the skills I’d been given and be the best version of myself I could imagine. I was kinda looking forward to it.

  “You all right, Alan?” Halius asked.

  “Yeah, I think I am.” For a second, I wondered if there was a set of gestures or an incantation to perform, but then it was like something I’d always known. Charm works from the inside out. It’s like a light switch in your soul. I turned mine on.

  My max Spirit dropped by 100 to maintain the spell.

  Halius’s face twitched, like he’d just done the smallest double take in the world. I smiled and drained my beer. “I’m going to mingle.”

  Halius smiled back. “You do that.”

  I stood up, took one look at the crowd, and dove in.

  Having Charm up and running is a bit like being slightly high. I know that sounds strange since I’d already had three pints of strong beer after a long day, but it didn’t make me magically attractive or turn every eye in the room to me, it just greased the wheels. I flowed through the crowd, smiling at people, laughing at jokes, shaking hands with strangers and slapping shoulders I didn’t know the owners of. I felt connected to everyone. I pressed keys without thinking and for the first time I was really part of the music, like a prodigy playing the piano for the first time.

  I found myself in front of a card game and sat down on a whim. “Deal me in!” I said.

  The players looked at me with casual disinterest. One of them, a Risi with his black hair tied back into a ponytail, said, “Squad leaders’ game, kid, and we don’t know you. Scram.”

  Charm tied up 100 Spirit as long as I had it active, so I couldn’t use Suggestion, at least not until I leveled up.

  I grinned. “Ten men to a squad, right?” I put ten silvers on the table. “I’ve never played before.”

  The Risi grinned and swapped silver for chips. “I guess you just got promoted.”

  The guys and gal I was playing with told scandalous stories from somewhere called Wyrdtide, and complained about the food in Harrowick. Jag, the Risi, bitched about the low ceilings in Stone Reach. A decanus called Ferox and Agatha, the only centurion in the group, took turns telling a gut-clenching story about how they’d hire
d a male Svartalfar prostitute and smuggled him back into the camp in a duffel bag.

  The Accipiter knocked out a freaking outstanding version of “Poison” by Zero Venture, with a Svartalfar on a didjeridoo backing the Risi with the drum for the dubstep elements. I wondered how the game was getting access to outside music, and if we were paying for the copyrights, but that was a worry for real-world Alan, because V.G.O. Alan was having fun.

  The game was a fast-paced combination of “War” and collectible card games like Magic and Gwent. It used a standard deck of fifty-four cards with four suits—Accipiter, Svartalfar, Dokkalfar, and Hvitalfar, in this case. Each suit had thirteen cards with faces so beautifully illustrated I sometimes lost track of the game staring at them. Even the numbered cards had different characters, names, and classes, and they could interact in sometimes surprising ways.

  For example, the Dokkalfar 10 was called a huntress, and while she could be taken out by a jack of any suit, she could assassinate a queen at any time in a hand as long as he or she was played on top, as if by surprise. There were apparently decks for each of the races, and a deck drawn, painted, or etched by a skilled artist or Enchanter was a coveted possession across all of Eldgard. Agatha was very proud of hers.

  The jokers were modeled after the Overminds, or the “gods” as the NPCs called them. Listening to them try to explain the rules was almost as entertaining as the game itself. It was called Gentleman’s War.

  I lost all my money. They bled me chip by chip, bought drinks with my silver, and let me win if I was losing too fast. They told more stories about fights, battles, brothels, and churches. One moment they were arguing over details or competing to see who could tell the most outrageous lie. The next, they’d listen quietly as one of them recounted a lost love, a fallen friend, or a near-death experience. It was shockingly intimate. I fed in some small stories about my time with Pops in Empuriabrava, bosses I’d worked for, or about my mother raising me in Philadelphia at the beginning of the millennium. I changed some things around to suit my backstory in V.G.O., but they listened to my small stories with the same respect I gave their adventures.

  “That was my last chip,” I said, folding for the last time.

  “Good game, Alan,” Jag said.

  “Good game.” I stood. “Thanks for letting me play.”

  “You’re welcome,” Agatha said. “You’re a good egg. We play every week.”

  “Usually for coppers,” Ferox added with a grin.

  They didn’t offer to pay me back, mind you, but they’d been pretty cool about me crashing their party, and since I hadn’t gotten a quest notification, I guessed they were just nice people. I gave them a small wave and turned to find myself face-to-face with Thalia, who was carrying two beers.

  “Hey,” she said, six inches away. Her eyes were the color of amber, and she smelled like honeysuckle. I kid you not. It managed to be subtle and cut through the smoke and spilled booze at the same time. She was wearing tan leather pants and an Imperial-issue off-white tunic, like me, except with a cut collar so it hung off her left shoulder and cinched at the waist with a silver sash. I was too drunk and happy to hide that I’d looked her over. She raised an eyebrow.

  Real Alan would have choked. V.G.O. Alan on Charm rolled a natural 20 for the save. “Hey. I told you I’d be back for that talk.”

  She smirked. “Is that what’s happening?”

  “Depends. Is one of those drinks for me?”

  “I’m undecided. I came here with a friend, but he’s a poor conversationalist.”

  “I have a corner table,” I said, hoping Halius hadn’t bailed on me while I was playing cards.

  Thalia pushed a beer stein into my hands. “Lead on.”

  JEFF SAT BACK IN HIS chair, covered his microphone with his hand, and said, “I can’t believe that worked.”

  “I can,” Sandra said.

  I LED THALIA BACK TO the table and was relieved to see Halius still nursing a beer.

  Halius grinned. “Run out of—” He froze mid-sentence as he caught sight of Thalia and almost knocked his chair over getting to his feet. “Veteran,” he said with the utmost respect.

  “At ease, Halius,” Thalia said. “You were always too formal.”

  “I was a brand-new legionary, and you were a—”

  “Girl who came here for a good time among friends. You’re making me feel old in front of my date, Halius, and for the record, you’re still acting like a brand-new legionary.”

  Halius blushed. “Sorry.”

  Thalia smiled. “It’s good to see you, Halius. Get us another chair?”

  Halius laughed and rubbed the back of his head. “I was actually going to leave as soon as I knew Alan was getting on. He seems to have found good company. By your leave, Veteran?” He said the last bit with a smirk.

  “Dismissed, Legionary,” Thalia said, waving her mug. “Stop by the Terrace sometime, it’s been too long.”

  “I will,” Halius said. He scooted around the table, shot me the same look any red-blooded man would give his wingman if his wingman brought Thalia back from the bar, and patted me on the shoulder before making his way to the door. Thalia and I took our seats—she took the corner, facing the room, and I sat with my back to the wall and the entrance to my right.

  “When did you enlist?” she asked.

  “I didn’t! Halius was just showing me some moves as a favor, and I got my clothes dirty, so he loaned me a shirt.” After how coy Halius had been about Titus and the people who worked for him, I didn’t think it wise to go ahead and blab about my meeting the general.

  “Just like that?”

  “Well, no. Some thieves tried to mug me earlier today, and the Legion took them down, but I helped a little.”

  “A real hero, then,” she said with a smirk.

  “Definitely. But bad enough at it they offered to teach me. Is Halius important?”

  “Not yet, but he will be. He’s an optio in the First.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  She sighed and looked at me like I was a cute but rather helpless puppy. “He’s good enough to work for someone important. You really aren’t in the Legion, are you?”

  “And you’re not just a bar owner.”

  Thalia shrugged, taking a long pull of her beer. “I’m also a bar owner. Do you not like my bar?”

  “I love the view,” I said, looking right at her. “Where does the name come from, anyway?”

  “Thalia?” she said with a crooked grin.

  “Lot’s Terrace.”

  “Mmm,” she said, finishing her beer when I was halfway done with mine. “Buy me a drink first, and then I’ll tell you.”

  ALL OVER THE CITY, watchmen who’d survived the attack on the precinct, along with retired legionaries and concerned citizens, armed themselves with sticks, clubs, and kitchen knives before taking to the streets. They targeted foreigners, for the most part, and Wodes in particular. Alcohol was involved.

  Often, the result was just a beating, some broken furniture, and the irreparable loss of a sense of safety and community that had been fostered over a decade. In other cases, Imperials with a taste for violence stumbled across actual criminals or foreigners who wouldn’t be pushed, and the streets were stained with blood.

  A few enterprising people on both sides used the clamor to settle old scores and blame it on racial hatreds that had only been children’s jokes a day before.

  Enyo watched it all from the marble terrace where the Traveler had first landed in Eldgard. She could feel the echo of the disruption spreading out like a ripple all around her. Most of the violence was fueled by bigotry and fear, the persecution of the few by the many, and these were paltry offerings. But there was genuine worship out there as well.

  A Hvitalfar Sword-Singer carved a bloody tune through the mob outside his house until a thrown brick caught him in the temple. His family escaped unharmed.

  A fifty-year-old former tribune who’d served with the auxiliaries s
tood against a group of almost twenty armed men, using an awning pole for a weapon and a basket for a shield. He killed two, beat three more unconscious, and routed the rest. He suffered a concussion and three broken ribs. His neighbors, a young Accipiter couple from Ankara, decided to name their unborn child after him.

  Glory. She could taste it in the air. There was nothing like it. Neither food, nor sex, nor drugs could come close, and she’d tried them all. Reports flowed into the palace, where the Griffin of New Viridia watched from his balcony, gripping the railing with white knuckles, daring the assassin’s bolt.

  Enyo shuddered with pleasure. Here and there, in vibrant oranges and reds, the city burned.

  THE PORTAL TORE THE air above the dais in the One Temple, and Sophia stepped through.

  Or fell through. Sathis watched in horror as his goddess dropped to her hands and knees on the marble, onyx hitting stone with a crack. Divine sweat fell from her forehead to the floor. “Sathis!” she said hoarsely.

  “Blessed Maiden?”

  “You must stop her!”

  Sathis furrowed his brow. “Enyo, my lady? I am only—”

  “Thalia!” Sophia hissed. “You must stop her, Sathis! She is the spark. She will be the end of us.”

  Sathis lowered his face in shame. Tears burned in his eyes. “I have been deposed, Blessed One. How can I—”

  “Sathis,” Sophia said softly, touching his face with a hand made of warm stone. She raised his head until he was looking straight into her emerald eyes. “Are you not my faithful servant?”

  “I am, my lady,” Sathis said, gathering the dregs of his faith.

  “You must stop her, Sathis. Only you can gather my children. Only you.”

  Tears streamed down his face. He’d waited his whole life to hear those words.

  Sophia shrieked. She jerked her hand back, wrapping her hands around her abdomen like she’d been stabbed. Sathis darted forward on instinct and dared to try and help her to her feet.

  The statue jerked one last time and went still, emerald eyes faded to jade. Instead of a goddess, he saw a woman sitting on her heels, bent double, mouth open, lifeless and on the dais once more.