Hero's Journey: A LitRPG Adventure (Beta Tester Book 2)

by Rachel Ford

  Beyond the pool, a kind of pasture of golden grasses grew. Migli spotted it right away, and literally caught his breath. “Fields of gold. Perhaps this wizard is not so foul after all. Or perhaps this is some fashion of snare, to lure true hearts into peril.”

  Jack snorted. “True hearts? You mean, avaricious little dwarves.”

  “As I said: true hearts.”

  He smiled at that. “I didn’t realize they programmed a sense of humor into you, Migli. But I wouldn’t worry about it. I doubt it’s real gold. Just another weird color.”

  Migli had to find out for himself, though. He ran off the road, quite heedless of any potential pitfalls or ensnarement, and cast himself into the shimmering grass. He landed with a heavy thud, and came up sputtering, his great beard full of dirt and twigs and grass. “It’s nothing more than common grass, with some mad hue to it.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “This wizard must be evil. Who else would play such a trick?”

  They went on, passing brooks and a pond, and a great corral of horse-like creatures. A low barn stretched on one side of the corral. But past the barn, across a wooden bridge that spanned one of the threads of the river, and in the middle of a glade, surrounded by huge, stately flowering trees, sat a humble cottage. It was exactly the kind of place that someone who cooked children in pots or turned innocent woodsman into stone might live. It looked like every evil witch’s lair from every spooky story, all combined into one creepy, thatched roof building.

  Jack hesitated at the sight of it. “You know, maybe you were right, Migli.”

  “Magic folk: you never can trust them.”

  “You think there’s some other way? You know, that doesn’t involve – well, going inside that place?”

  They stood there for a long moment, just staring. Then Migli said, “Come, Sir Jack: let us get a closer look.”

  He nodded. “Good idea. Figure out if we really want to go in there.”

  They walked on, until they reached a decrepit wattle fence. Jack leaned his hands on it, and it groaned under his weight. The cottage looked a little less appealing up close. It was made of old stone and had a thatched roof that looked like it should have been rethatched fifty years ago. A fire burned behind one of the glazed glass windows, and smoke wafted up through the chimney.

  “He’s inside, I guess.”

  “Aye. Which means we’ll need to go inside, if we’re to speak with him.” Migli said it like the idea terrified him.

  Notably, the dwarf didn’t make any move toward the house. Neither did Jack. “Right.”

  Migli gestured toward the gate. “After you, Sir Knight.”

  “Oh no. Princes before wandering knights: the honor belongs to you.”

  The dwarf seemed not to have heard. He just stared at the gate expectantly. Jack scowled at him, then back at the house. He stared at the shutters – the ones that remained, hanging at odd angles. He stared at the door, with its faded paint and exposed lintel. He turned his gaze over the sad garden, with its blackened vines and shriveled plants, at the fruit withered on the vine and the flowers wilted in place. “I really think we should consider alternatives,” he said at last.

  “We must speak to Ieon,” Migli answered. “The keeper said so.”

  “Technically, he said we needed the seeing stone in Ieon’s tower.”

  “Ieon’s spire.”

  “Whatever. He didn’t say we needed to talk to Ieon himself. And – honestly, I think I’d rather not.”

  A noise like a harrumph sounded behind the pair, and they spun around to find themselves face-to-face with an old man in long robes. “I’m sure it would be no loss on Ieon’s part if you didn’t.”

  Jack chuckled nervously. “Let me guess: you’re Ieon.”

  “I am the same,” the old man said, scrutinizing him from under thick, bushy brows. If the expression in his blue eyes was anything to go by, the wizard didn’t find much to impress him. “And what manner of beings are you who have showed up to my door?”

  “I am Migli, a prince of the dwarven race, and this is my good friend and travel companion, Sir Jack, a man of stout heart.”

  “But little sense, I should think. A sensible man would not stand on a wizard’s doorstep and speak ill of him.”

  Jack flushed. “Look, uh, Mister Ieon, I’m really sorry about that. It wasn’t – well, it wasn’t what it sounded like.”

  The old man raised a bushy brow. “Wasn’t it?”

  “No. Not exactly. That is, I – well, I didn’t know you were there.”

  “Which says nothing of your intent.”

  “No, I guess not. But I…uh…only meant I haven’t had many dealings with men of, you know, magical persuasions.”

  The old man laughed, a more derisive sound than a mirthful one. “Not such a stout heart after all.”

  “We need your help, Wizard,” Migli said.

  Ieon sighed. “Don’t they all? But you must know that I’m out of the business of offering boons to passing vagrants.”

  “Truly, Wizard, we are not vagrants. Our business is of the utmost importance.”

  Jack nodded. “World-ending, Armageddon, destruction of all life as we know it kind of importance.”

  Ieon stared at him for a long, awkward moment. When he spoke, his tone seemed more resigned than anything else. “I’m sure it is. They always are. Well, you’d better come in and tell me your story over a cup of tea. I’m not going to stand in the sun for this.”

  Chapter Six

  Ieon led them to his door and stepped in front of them. Jack followed, but froze one step in, on the doorstep. He seemed to cross into another universe. He’d expected an interior that matched the ratty building he saw. At the very least, he expected the interior to fit the same dimensions.

  But this was a veritable palace, in both size and structure. They’d stepped into a vestibule that was bigger than the entire cottage, from the outside. Ieon’s footsteps rang out on polished marble floors. A hall stretched a football field’s length straight ahead of them with doors and rooms coming off it all the way.

  He was about to ask how this was possible when a force collided with him: Migli. The dwarf had apparently missed the fact that Jack stopped moving, because he plowed through the door and into the vestibule.

  He stayed upright, but Jack went sprawling forward. He landed with a force that drained ten hit points from his health meter. Migli didn’t seem to notice that either. “Stars and sun above. This is your home, Sir Wizard?”

  Ieon turned around and smiled, as if he too didn’t notice Jack’s prone form. “It is.”

  “It’s magnificent.”

  “It is, isn’t it? Rather a contrast to the exterior, wouldn’t you say?”

  Jack picked himself up and brushed himself off. He felt a little annoyed with both of them, and a bit silly too. Which probably fed into the hint of sharpness in his response. “It is nice. But why keep the outside looking like a dive? Surely, you can, I don’t know, paint the walls or weed your garden.”

  “Ah, that is entirely by design.”

  “You…want your place to look like a hovel?”

  Ieon nodded. “Exactly.” Then, he cast a pointed glance Jack’s way. “It tends to ward off the undesirables, so I can work in peace.”

  That didn’t help his annoyance, but he made no reply. Instead, he followed Ieon into a kind of sitting room. It was probably as big as Jack’s entire apartment, and furnished with gilded wooden pieces, and plump, comfortable chairs and sofas that would have cost as much as a small country’s entire GDP in real life. Bookshelves lined one wall, and a desk sat in a window alcove. A fireplace burned at the far end with more bookcases alongside it, and exotic potted plants dotted the walls exactly ten paces apart, in a neat, orderly fashion. Indeed, the room had been balanced to an almost manic degree, so that nothing was off center, and everything was perfectly symmetrical. The fireplace sat opposite the desk, and the bookcases matched each other perfectly – height,
size, width and so on. Even the books had been aligned to mimic each other, though they were on opposite sides of the room. Tall volumes sat across from tall volumes, dark leather bindings across from dark leather, light leather opposite light leather. Cloth bindings had been matched not only to materials but also to color: blues across from blues, reds from reds, and so on.

  Anal-retentive much? he thought. Aloud, though, he said, “So you probably know who Iaxiabor is, right?”

  Ieon held up a hand as he settled magisterially into a great, cushioned seat. “Tea first. Then we will talk.”

  Jack rolled his eyes. “Sure, that’s cool. Not like the fate of the world is on the line or anything.”

  The wizard ignored him and snapped his fingers. A tall man in dark trousers and a high, double-breasted waistcoat appeared out of thin air. “You called, sir?” he said, in crisp tones.

  “I did. Tea, please, Wilfred, for me and my…” He sighed, as if trying to find the right word. Then he settled on, “Visitors.”

  “At once, sir.” Wilfred busied himself with a tea tray. He used some kind of warming spell on the water and fiddled with the tea itself.

  Meanwhile, while the butler buttled, Jack tried again. “So Iaxiabor…you know, the demon lord who almost ended all life as we know it? He’s back again.”

  Ieon stared at him from behind steepled fingers. “Impossible. His soul is trapped.”

  “Yeah, in the dagger. I know.”

  “Which is hidden where no one will ever find it.”

  Jack sighed. “I got bad news for you, buddy. That ship sailed.”

  “Ship? I do not understand.”

  “What my friend means,” Migli intervened, “is that the dagger has already been located by Kalbidor, a minion of Iaxiabor. They are working as we speak to free their master from the blade, so that he may revisit the same doom on the world.”

  Ieon stared at the dwarf. “These are troubling tidings indeed.”

  “No sugar,” Jack sighed.

  “Where is the dagger now?”

  “That’s where we need your help. We need to use your seeing stone.”

  “My seeing stone?”

  He nodded. “To locate the dagger.”

  “The stone is in the spire.”

  “Great. So, we can use it?”

  “Yes. But it is many leagues from here.”

  Jack frowned. “You mean…your spire isn’t in your valley?”

  “Of course not. I built it in the mountains, where I can see far and wide from its pinnacle. I would not put it in lowlands.”

  “Of course not,” he groaned. He was playing a game where he could jump over his companion’s head, and scarf down a pound of raw meat without dying. But the game developers had been worried about realism when it came to where they should build a tower? “So how do we get there?”

  “In good time, my friend. Let us drink our tea, and you can tell me the full story of your adventures.”

  The view shifted outward, into another cutscene. Jack saw his character and Migli talking with the wizard. He saw the butler come and go with tea, and them drinking it. He saw the sun rise a little higher in the sky, and shadows start to creep in on the east. He felt his internal clock advance until mid-afternoon. Then the view fixed on Ieon’s face. Fierce chasms cut through his forehead, and a troubled look settled in his eyes.

  “Grave tidings indeed, young knight. For such a quest, you must ready yourself for the gravest trials of both mind and body. But know that one man alone cannot hope to best them.”

  Jack sighed internally. He’d heard all of this from Migli already, and the keeper before him. He knew what was coming: build an alliance. Men, dwarves, elves…blablabla.

  “Nor can the race of men, or of dwarves, or elves, or orcfolk, hope to win this on their own. You must form –”

  An alliance. I know.

  “An alliance of men and elves and dwarves, of orcfolk and dragonkind, of all things living, of the pure at heart and the sullied. You must –”

  The cutscene paused mid-sentence. Ieon sat there, mouth agape but wordless. An unfamiliar, feminine voice reached Jack. “Hey, Jack, can you hear me?”

  “Uh…yeah. What’s going on? Who is this?”

  “It’s me – Jordan.”

  “Oh. Is that your real voice?” He hadn’t actually heard her before, except through the Migli filter.

  She snorted. “Of course. You think I sound like a dwarf in real life?” Her voice dropped a few octaves, until she was speaking in deep, gravelly tones that sounded downright painful. “Hello Jack, it’s me, Jordan.”

  He laughed, and she laughed too – in her real voice, this time. “I don’t know, I think I prefer the Migli filter. He’s less of a smartass.”

  She snorted again. “You won’t. Not after I tell you what I’ve got to tell you.”

  That, of course, got his attention. “You have a way to get me out?”

  A man’s voice joined the line. It chuckled nervously, then said, “Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  “Mister Callaghan?”

  “Avery,” the voice reminded him. “Call me Avery. How are you doing, Jack?”

  Avery Callaghan was Marshfield Studio’s CEO, and, in Jack’s book, a legend among men. He’d led Marshfield Studio through some of its most groundbreaking development, and piloted the company through some truly dicey financial waters. “Very well, sir,” he said. Then, he considered his words. “Well, I mean, eager to be out of here. But otherwise, I think I’m okay.”

  “Good. Excellent. We’re really glad to hear that, Jack. And we want you out of there as soon as possible too. We’ve been working nonstop on it. And we have something. Nothing definite, but our guys in the server room found something that might help us.”

  Jack nodded. He didn’t actually nod, because the game had been paused, and his avatar was trapped in a cinematic anyway. But his brain signaled the right nerves and muscles.

  Jordan’s voice cut in now. “We’ve been going through the logs from some of our early testing, Jack. You know, with our first alpha testers. And one of the guys got stuck –”

  Avery interrupted with another nervous chuckle. “Well, I’m sure Jack doesn’t want to get bogged down in details. Especially ones that are protected by NDA’s. The salient point, Jack, is that we have some experience with this kind of situation in the past.”

  “That’s…good?” On the one hand, experience meant they might be able to get him out sooner. On the other, it called into question why they ever strapped him into this damned VR rig, if they knew there was a chance he might not be able to get out again.

  “Exactly. No guarantees, remember, Jack. This was a long time ago, during testing of a much earlier version of the framework. And we’ve put in a lot more fail safes since then, so it might not work. But…updating the driver for the cranial interface unit allowed a prior user to regain control of his own central nervous system.”

  “You mean…updating it while I’m plugged into it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Isn’t that…risky?”

  “It’s not without risk, but neither is staying in the machine for as long as you’ve been in there, Jack. I mean, we don’t want to wait until we’re dealing with muscle atrophy and bed sores and all that.”

  He felt a little sick to his stomach at the thought of his body lying there, falling apart on him. “Alright. Let’s do it.”

  A third voice said, “For the record, let it be noted that the test subject did consent to the upgrade.”

  “Tester,” Avery corrected.

  “Right,” the third voice said. Jack recognized it as Dr. Roberts, the attending physician who had strapped him into the VR unit in the first place. “The beta tester voluntarily consented to upgrade.”

  “Jack, just so you know, this may hurt,” Jordan warned. “The last guy said he was in a lot of pain.”

  Avery chuckled, in the same nervous way. “Oh, I wouldn’t put much stock in that. Mi
ster Daniels was nothing if not dramatic, Jordan.”

  Roberts, though, hemmed. “Eh, I wouldn’t be surprised if you experience acute discomfort. We’re going to be doing a software upgrade on something that’s literally plugged into your brain.”

  “How acute?” Jack wondered.

  Roberts hemmed again, murmuring to himself as if he was reading a file. “Well, I’ve never experienced it myself, but the last guy described it as – and I quote – ‘like having a poker driven through his eye socket straight into his brain and wiggled around.’”

  Jack shuddered. “A poker through the eye?”

  “And wiggled around,” Roberts confirmed.

  “Okay, maybe I want to rethink this.”

  Roberts sighed. “We have a potential retraction of patient consent. Please clarify, Mister Owens. We cannot proceed without clear consent.”

  “I’m thinking,” Jack said. “Give me a minute.”

  Roberts sighed again, and Avery spoke, “I know it’s scary, Jack. But that quote…well, Daniels was…not the same caliber as you. There’s a reason we hired you, and we let Daniels go.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, you’re a natural born gamer. You took to this interface in a way that only a natural can. Daniels didn’t. He had trouble integrating at all. His first week was nothing but him trying to last in the sim longer than a few minutes. He had pain – migraines, blackouts, the whole nine yards. He didn’t have your constitution. He was interested in the tech, but he wasn’t a gamer. He didn’t have the endurance to stay in one place for hours on end. He couldn’t cut it.”

  “Oh.”

  “You can. You’ve proved that already. You proved that before you stepped a foot into your first interview. Remember, we chose you over thousands of applicants, Jack. Just to get in these doors, you beat out thousands of people – never mind to get the job. We didn’t want casual; we didn’t want amateur. We wanted someone who knew their videogames.”