by James Hunter
Contents
Summary
James Hunter's Mailing List
ONE Every Eight Hours
TWO Counter Attack
THREE Upgrades
FOUR Amazons and Minotaurs
FIVE World War Amazon
SIX Golems, Imps, and Meathead Morons
SEVEN Earl Echo Douchebag
EIGHT Candles and Nightmares
NINE Cheat Code
TEN Deep Down Underground
ELEVEN The Land That Time Completely Ignored
TWELVE Dinomythics
THIRTEEN Gone, Gorgon, Gone
FOURTEEN The Enemy of my Enemy
FIFTEEN Bite Me
SIXTEEN Dive-bomb
SEVENTEEN A Game of Cat and Mouse
EIGHTEEN Temple Run
NINETEEN Don’t Bug Me
TWENTY Temple of Doom
TWENTY-ONE Centipede Stew
TWENTY-TWO Inside Job
TWENTY-THREE Loot and Levels
TWENTY-FOUR Wait For It …
TWENTY-FIVE Band on the Run
TWENTY-SIX Out of Time
TWENTY-SEVEN Go Time
TWENTY-EIGHT Time after Time
TWENTY-NINE Time Flies When You’re Having Fun
THIRTY Time to Die
THIRTY-ONE End Game
THIRTY-TWO Homeward Bound
Books, Mailing List, and Reviews
Other Works by James A. Hunter
Other Works by Aaron Crash
Books from Shadow Alley Press
About the Author
LitRPG on Facebook
GameLit on Facebook
Special Thanks
Copyright
Summary
A Marine turned Greek God. An army of beautiful Amazons. An infernal enemy out to burn the world down.
It’s been three weeks since Jacob Merely crash-landed on the mythical island of Lycastia, and the newly minted War God finally has things under control. He’s grown into his power, built his city, and earned the respect of his gorgeous, hard-charging Amazons.
He’s not in the clear yet, though. Hades still lives, and the mystical sigil holding him at bay is rapidly failing. Worse, a horde of new enemies is battering Lycastia’s gates daily, slowly grinding down Jacob’s forces. But Jacob has a plan to get the upper hand. He’s learned about a legendary weapon buried in a prehistoric world deep in the bowels of the island. A weapon with the power to kill even gods. If he can defeat the weapon’s primordial guardians and subdue an exiled Titan, he might just be able to save the world.
But that’s an awfully big if …
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ONE
Every Eight Hours
Sunshine gleamed off the white marble walls of Lycastia City, which contrasted sharply to the swath of verdant green jungle in the distance. The rocky peak of the nearby northern mountain pierced the sky, looming over the rest of Lycastia like a monstrous stone tyrant. Off on the western part of the crescent-shaped island, the azure waters of the Mediterranean Sea lapped at the white sand beaches. A slight breeze kicked up from the west, brushing across my cheeks, carrying the scent of salt and flowers to my nose.
Beneath those smells, however, was something rancid and sour. I ignored that, though, breathing deeply, enjoying the momentary lull. A perfect day on a paradise island.
And then?
Then, the gurgling screech of a dying werewolf jerked me rudely back into reality. Sure this was a perfect day—at least it would’ve been if not for the monstrous forms hurling themselves against Lycastia’s high walls and heavy, fortified gates. Bunch of assholes—ruining an otherwise peaceful afternoon.
Not that I’d expected anything different, not from that dickhead Earl Echo Earl.
I glanced down to the war-torn fields in front of Lycastia City’s southern gate, which were a mixture of churned mud, brutalized corpses, and trampled grasses slick with gore. Sweat, blood, and jungle wafted up to me, dispelling the magic of the ocean breeze. After all, there was nothing more sobering than the scent of arachnaswine and musky werewolf BO.
The mewling werewolf was almost directly below me, one of his legs missing below the knee, an Amazonian spear impaling him through the guts.
That was a bad way to go, but the godstone buried in my chest burned with dark joy.
An arrow carved through the air a heartbeat later, drilling into the wolf’s head, putting him down for keeps. Good.
I didn’t have time to focus on him, though. Nope. There were more monsters to deal with. Always more monsters. This was the ninth attack in three days—a new wave battering against us every eight hours, just like clockwork. My Amazons were tired, wounded, pushed to their limits. And yet, we knew if we survived this latest attack, we’d only have eight hours to prepare for the next one. But I couldn’t afford to worry about that right now. No, right now, I needed to be here, present, my will sharpened to a razor’s edge as I cut my enemies down.
A small army of spindly-legged arachnaswine swarmed down from the tree line, their mandibles clacking as they moved. They were nasty creatures, one part wild boar, one part Toyota-sized black widow. Each had a piglike face with poisonous tusks, dozens of beady black eyes, a bulbous body, and a host of multijointed legs covered with bristly hair. Gross to the max, though admittedly, the meat was pretty tasty when fried up right. Tasted like bacon.
My Amazons hurled javelins into the horde of fangs and legs from the ramparts, sending them squealing to their deaths, but not before they unleashed thick streams of gossamer webbing, which clung to the outer wall like impromptu rope ladders. The spider pigs died easily enough, but those webs remained, and the werewolves took full advantage of them. They charged, their bodies protected by thick chainmail, hook-bladed polearms clasped in claw-tipped hands. In an instant, they were on the walls, using the strands of webbing to scale our defenses.
“Oil,” I barked, the command carrying in the air, relayed down the line of warriors. In seconds, huge pots of boiling oil were hauled up to the edge of the retaining wall running along the rampart and unceremoniously upended on the creatures below. Werewolves hit the ground in a rain of bodies, shrieking in agony as the oil burned away hair and chewed through the vulnerable skin underneath.
But once more, a new threat emerged.
Snake-tailed nagas slithered into view, hauling creaky wagons full of heavy boulders. The nagas looked almost like men but weren’t. Not really. Sure, they had human faces and olive skin, but they didn’t walk, instead slipping through the high grass on fat snake tails covered in onyx-black scales, their eyes the slits of cobras. Each wore a leather jerkin, carried a short recurve bow—an arrow-studded quiver strapped to their back—and had a short sword riding at their hip.
In front of them, a cohort of shield-bearing werewolves stood guard.
Moving with practiced ease, the nagas broke into groups of two, one unloading the formidable stones from the crude wagons, the other using their serpentine appendages to hurl the boulders at my southern gate, trying to smash through the vulnerable wood. Each one landed like a wrecking ball—stone cracking, wood groaning. Dammit. I’d have to fix that. Once more the godstone burned hot and angry in my chest, urging me toward violence. I hated when people dicked with Lycastia City. It was my t
own, dammit, and nobody was gonna mess with it.
“Archers. Ballistae.” I pulled my War Blade from its sheath, thrusting it forward. “Engage. I want those nagas dead.” The thwack of bowstrings snapping filled the air as arrows arced—
Only to be intercepted by a swooping squadron of old crone harpies.
The arrows were deadly effective against the naga and werewolves, but the harpies had skin as thick as rhino hides. The arrows bounced harmlessly away as they darted in, slashing at me and my Amazons on the battlements. With an eight-foot wingspan, huge sharp talons, and the faces of haggard women—leathery from age—the harpies were damn deadly. We also had a lot of history, since they’d been the first monsters I’d fought on Lycastia. That was after my jet crashed through the barrier separating the mystical island from the rest of the world.
A dozen Stymphalian birds followed in hard on the heels of the harpies, hurling razor-edged bronze feathers at us. My Battle Wardens ducked under their shields almost as one. No reasons to screw around with those things, since they could sever an arm or leg with ease and were coated in white crap—literal shit—which was wickedly poisonous.
So far, our gate held, but only because of the formidable gatehouse which sat directly over the entryway. The gatehouse was a masterpiece of death and destruction, and more Metal than Metallica’s James Hetfield riding an iron dragon.
It had four heavy-duty, steam-powered ballistae—gigantic crossbows at each of the compass points—a trio of high-powered flamethrowers, and one Civil War era Gatling gun that could bring the thunder like no one’s business.
Best of all? The entire upper portion of the tower rotated using magic from the Thymos Crystals we gathered, so we could keep up a constant stream of fire while the Rune-Casters reloaded the siege weapons. And even if the invaders somehow managed to bypass the siege defenses and breach the outer gate itself, they’d need to trudge through a passageway that ran beneath the gatehouse, which dead-ended at yet another gate—a metal portcullis. And while they tried to break that gate down, my Amazons would dump oil and fire on them from the murder holes overhead. Brutal.
But if they took the gatehouse down … that would make it a thousand times easier to gain access to the city. So naturally, the boulder-hurling nagas had adjusted their aim to target the domineering structure. Huge boulders knocked off bricks, the tower shaking and swaying beneath my boots. And the werewolf cohort held the line with their shields, protecting the snake men from the arrows of my soldiers and our ballistae bolts.
Suddenly, I missed my generals, Myrina, Asteria, and Phoebe—having them around made life so much easier, but unfortunately, they were spread out all around the city.
Phoebe and Asteria were on the west side of the island, defending the sea gates from water-born centaurs that had emerged from the white-capped waves along with a pair of massive cyclopes dripping with seaweed. And Myrina was at the northern gate, bitch-slapping down a wave of land-based centaurs and a platoon of elite werewolves. I had no doubt they’d handle business like the fucking champions they were, but that meant I’d need to personally deal with the snake-men and their boulder barrage here at the southern gate.
A huge ballista bolt slashed through a new wave of werewolves climbing the webs, skewering them together. Another bolt crushed three arachnaswine scuttling forward in a mad rush. The entire gatehouse groaned and shifted clockwise, the next two ballistae raining death down while the Gatling gun engaged—clack-clack-clack—picking harpies from the sky. At the very top of the gatehouse, my archers with English longbows peppered the forces with a constant rain of feathered shafts.
Another boulder crashed into the base of the gatehouse, the whole structure shuddering from the blow.
Yep, time to put an end to that bullshit. Immediately.
Time to get my hands dirty, which meant using my god powers in this strange video game I found myself playing. The dying Ares hadn’t been able to give me his war god powers all at once, but we’d come up with a system where I could level up slowly. That way, the divine energies wouldn’t drive me insane. So now, I found myself in the real world, grinding out experience points, leveling up, building cities, creating people, and kicking ass as if I were in some awesome MMO.
With a hungry grin, I swung my legs over the edge of the gatehouse wall and dropped down into the thick of the fighting below. I landed like an asteroid, the ground cratering around me from my incredible weight. I’d gone from an average-looking guy of five eight and a buck seventy to a Greek god who stood over seven feet tall and weighed in at four hundred pounds, all of it muscle.
I crouched and snarled, my fingers tracing the ground as I raised the War Blade, electricity dancing across the surface of the sword. That was the sword’s Lightning Blade effect, which I’d unlocked at level six—just one of the many special abilities the sword had in its arsenal.
A werewolf wielding a curved scimitar lunged toward me, lips pulled back from jagged fangs. I shot forward, blade screaming through the air, and I hewed through the creature, cutting him clean in half. The amount of damage I was dishing out was sick. My muscles flexed under my armor, due in part to a ring on my finger. The Might of Hercules boosted my strength by a juicy five points. Between my own raw power, the ring, and the sword, the mangy wolf didn’t stand a chance. Blood and entrails slapped the gore-slickened ground.
A naga hissed and fired an arrow at me.
I leaned to the side and let the arrow slip by my ear. It struck a spider-pig that had leapt from the wall in a vain attempt to stab me in the back with its poisonous tusks.
I wheeled left, deflecting another five arrows off my bronze shield, then spun right and lopped off an encroaching arachnaswine’s legs, leaving the creature scuttling around on four limbs—all on the same side of its body. It went snout-first into the dirt. Hard to fight when you can’t stand. I twirled the blade in a vicious arc, cleaving its pig-headed skull.
The gem in my chest burned like magma, filling me with fierce pride, urging me on … to maim … to kill … to revel in the chaos and bloodshed. The godstone was the power of Ares—what remained of his divine essence—and holy shit did it love to fight. Because, duh, god of war.
With a roar, I charged the line of shield-bearing werewolves defending their snake-tailed, boulder-flinging buddies. I pulled up my combat interface and triggered my Fury ability with a thought. The skill came from my Path of War Skill Tree. It cost me twenty-five Essence Points, but I could afford it. As a level-twenty god of war with 109 Intelligence, I was creeping up on 400 Divine Essence Points—393 to be exact—and I could regenerate 173 points an hour.
Red power and white-knuckled adrenaline surged through me as Fury took hold like a pit bull.
My physical attack damage, health regeneration rate, and armor rating shot up in an instant, increasing 1% for every 1% of Health lost in battle. Rage filled every inch of my being as Werewolf swords slammed through my skin. I didn’t care. Those wounds healed as I pressed in, cutting through fur and meat. I chopped through shields, severed limbs, split skulls, and rejoiced in the battle.
A werewolf pikeman surged forward and sliced my leg with his spear. In retaliation, I cut off his arms before following up with the coup de grace—taking off his head with one clean swing. Finally, I’d broken through the front line and the nagas were before me. I whirled, dropped to a knee, and sliced through the tail of a snake man trying to entangle me.
Mission accomplished! But other enemies were closing in.
Sticky webbing caught my arm, but I was strong enough to pull the pig up close then smash it to pulp with my shield.
The horde of mutated myths had turned from attacking the wall to come after me, which made sense. After all, if they took me down, the game was over. The lives of my Amazons were tied to me and the godstone in my chest. If I died, they died, and Hades would rise from the rift inside the Temple of Hades on the southern tip of the island. From there? Well, he and his dark armies would take over the world.
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Ares—in his blood feud against the god of death—had sealed the rifts on two other islands, Themiscyreia and Chadesia. But on Lycastia, he’d screwed the pooch. Hard. The sigil on his statue in the temple at the center of Lycastia City was barely holding. When I’d taken down the titanic cyclops, Polyphemus Omega, during the Boss fight against Praxidike, the statue of Ares had been irrevocably damaged and the seal with it. Big problem. No easy solution. And only a matter of time before the sigil failed entirely.
A hundred enemies pressed toward me, surrounding me, and yeah, they thought they had me, but I was the god of war, and while I wasn’t Ares, I had some tricks up my sleeves.
Murky black clouds swirled in the heavens above, shadowing the blue skies until it felt like dusk instead of noon. The smell of ozone drifted down, and the unmistakable feel of electricity arrived with it. I’d already used my shockwave ability eight hours prior, but I still had Lightning Lance left in my arsenal.
I picked a beefy werewolf coming at me with a big battle-ax raised in his paws. I accessed my combat interface through my helm, just the same way I’d access a video game menu, and I chose Lightning Lance from my Path of Miracles Tree.
I reached out with my shield arm. Leather straps kept the shield fastened tight on my forearm even as I stretched out my fingers. White-hot power erupted from the godstone, filled my body, and coalesced around my left hand in a nimbus of white power. Fingers of blazing blue lightning swept out of my upraised palm and blasted into the charging furball. His chest was reduced to a smoking crater of metal and ruined flesh because Lightning Lance packed one helluva punch.
My Miracle Damage clocked in at 371, and Lightning Lance did twice that with each hit, plus an additional twenty-five points for a duration of ten seconds. Most of these fleabags had less than 500 Health, which meant instant death. Better yet, there was a fifty percent chance that the lightning would arc to nearby enemies. I got lucky. The initial werewolf I’d hit with the Lightning Lance had been reduced to knees and paws, but the electricity buzzed into three werewolves around him.