Rise of the Crimson Order: A Crematoria Online LitRPG Novel

by Matthew J. Barbeler

  "No idea. Last supper, however long ago that was," I said.

  "I'm so hungry."

  The chops were massive and cut thick. When I did flip them, I seasoned the other side with salt and pepper. The boar chops were almost done, even though they'd only been in the pan a couple of minutes. Cooking in this game didn't take as long as it did in the real world. That was handy to know.

  "Oh, uh, how are we going to eat these?" I asked.

  "Just take the pan off the fire and leave it to cool down for a little while. I'm no stranger to eating with my hands," Ellie said.

  "I'm such a city boy. I spent pretty much all my time in the five boroughs, but most of it in Manhattan. Born and raised. Did you go camping in the country a lot?"

  Ellie sighed.

  "I know, I know, no real-world talk." I put the hot pan down on the stone ground next to me, then held up my hands defensively in front of myself. "Sorry."

  "No, that's not what I was getting at." Ellie picked up a handful of soil and sprinkled it over the fire, laughing humorlessly while she did it. "I'm sure we've passed each other on the street before. We're almost the same age, and I live in Manhattan too."

  My eyes widened.

  "Get that look off your face. This doesn't mean that I'm going to go split a pizza with you when we get out of here. It's just weird that you and I grew up in the same place, but we're total strangers. We've got all of these things in common, but before this, we never even knew the other existed."

  "Yeah. That's just sonder, isn't it?"

  "Sonder?" Ellie asked.

  "That's what you call it when you realize that every other person you pass on the street has a life as complex, messy and complicated as you."

  Ellie considered that for a moment. "You know, of all the people to get stuck in this stupid game with, I think I got pretty lucky getting stuck with you."

  The blood flushed into my cheeks so fast I thought I might have caught on fire.

  The color drained from her face almost as quickly as it had flooded mine.

  "Oh, God! I didn't mean it like that," she said, putting her hands up defensively. "I just meant that you could have been a creep, but you're not, and I'm grateful for that. You're a good guy. There are so few of those left."

  I laughed. I couldn't help myself. "Well, this is awkward."

  "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make it awkward."

  "You don't need to apologize. Seriously." I took a breath. I needed to navigate this conversation carefully. "I feel the same way. I'm glad we ended up getting stuck together in this fight. You're smart, you kick ass, and you don't let anything stand in your way. For what it's worth, if you do ever want to split a pizza, you let me know. Doesn't have to be as anything more than friends."

  "We're friends now?" Ellie asked with a sly smile.

  "What else would you call it? I feel like I know you better than I know some of my actual real-world friends," I said. "But you've told me barely anything about yourself."

  The slyness went out of her smile. "I feel like I know you pretty well now, too. We could have been friends in the real world, I think."

  "Just friends?" I asked. Butterflies beat a staccato hurricane in my stomach.

  It was Ellie's time to laugh, but there was no humor in it. "That's a can of worms that I'm not interested in opening right now."

  "Sorry," I said.

  "Don't be. It's just the way things are. In another life, well, you never know, but it's stupid to wonder."

  I jabbed at the dying embers with the end of a piece of splintered wood. "What about in this life?"

  I didn't dare lift my eyes from the sparks that flew from the disturbed coals.

  "What do you mean?" she asked.

  "They kept calling this an alternate reality game. Isn't that just another way of saying alternate life? We have real lives in the real world, right? But they're separate from this life. What if, in here, we were something more than just friends?"

  Ellie was quiet for a time, and I didn't want to look up at her. I didn't know what I would see there, so I kept my eyes forward. Silence can be interpreted in so many ways, and I was terrified of what hers might mean.

  "Lucas," she said. Her reluctant tone said all I needed to know, but she continued explaining. "I'm married."

  "Oh," I said. I didn't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't that.

  "The reason I need to get out of this game as quickly as I can is that I have a daughter, a husband, and responsibilities. If I had known what would have happened if I logged into this game for the first time, I would never have done it. I don't have a perfect life, but my little girl is my world. When I didn't show up at her day-care Mom's house a few days back, everyone would have gone into a panic. By now my husband has found the Crematoria Chamber, and he'd know how much it cost, and he'd know how stupid I was for doing this. I can just hear his voice already. That flat, bullshit tone of disappointment, using my full name as a rebuke. 'Eleanor,' he'll say, then he'll click his tongue, then the lecture will come, and I'll spend the rest of my life apologizing."

  Ellie held her face in her gauntleted hands. "I'm so selfish. I'm a bad Mom."

  "I'm sure that's not true," I said.

  Ellie dropped her hands. Her red-rimmed eyes were welling with tears. "Don't." The tone of her voice hit harder than the Blood-gorged Boar did. "Don't act like you know me. All you've seen is the Ellie that I chose to be in this stupid game. This isn't real. This isn't me. Don't pretend that it is."

  "I'm sorry," I said, and I was. My cheeks burned with embarrassment. "You couldn't have known what was going to happen."

  "That's true, but this will just be another one of Eleanor's fuck-ups. Another mess for him to clean up. Another excuse for him to climb up on horseback, wearing his sanctimonious shining armor, coming in to save the day."

  Ellie took a breath. Her eyes flicked from side to side, as though she was considering saying more. She closed her eyes, then shook her head.

  "Anyway, can we cool the real-life talk for a bit?" she asked. "If I think about any of that, I won't be able to focus. I don't want to make any stupid mistakes and end up dead. Just pretend that I am Sergeant Ellie Rooker of the Eldin Judiciary, and that's all. Please."

  "Of course. I'll be Lucas Hutchins, Junior Investigator at Langdon Specialist Investigations. We'll find John Byrne, and we'll bring him home."

  "Oh, looks like the steaks are cool enough to eat," Ellie said, deftly changing the subject, and I welcomed the change. Though I couldn't quite keep my mind from dwelling on the possibilities.

  I focused on the boar steaks, and an information panel floated next to them.

  Pan-fried Boar Chop

  25% increased non-combat health regeneration for 2 hours

  10% increased combat health regeneration for 2 hours

  +2 Strength

  +2 Endurance

  When consumed, this meaty morsel infuses you with the strength of the boar, increasing health regeneration, strength and endurance!

  Well, hot damn.

  "Check out the bonuses we get when we eat this," I said, offering the skillet to Ellie. I let her choose which boar chop she wanted first.

  "Ha!" Ellie said as she picked up the steak in her armored hand. "That is going to come in handy. I guess we'd better hang on to any raw meat we find, yeah? If we can use it to make food that is going to give us buffs like this, it might just give us the edge that we need. But you're going to have to cook. I'm so bad at cooking I could burn water."

  I laughed. "I'm sure you're not that bad."

  Ellie raised an eyebrow. "I dare you to try my cooking sometime. You'll see."

  "On second thoughts, maybe not." I laughed. "I wonder if the meat expires. Do you think our inventory is temperature controlled?"

  Ellie shrugged. "Might be something to test out once we get out of here."

  "Yeah," I agreed. "Once we get out of here."

  Ellie ate, and I thought. I'd been thinking about it before I fel
l asleep in the Trash Palace, and now that I knew Ellie had a family outside the game, I knew exactly what I had to do.

  "Hey, so about that, you know that Celestial Offering I'm going to get once I finish this quest?" I asked. "If I finish this quest."

  "Yeah, you don't need to remind me," Ellie said with an edge in her voice. I knew she was still resentful that I had a way out and she didn't, but now I understood why.

  "It's not Fatewoven. So I can give it to whoever I want, you know? You've been with me ever since the sewers, and you've got more of a reason to get out of this game than I do. So, once we finish this, the Celestial Offering is yours."

  Ellie blinked, chewed a mouthful of boar chop and quickly swallowed. "Are you serious? Don't fuck with me about this."

  "Deadly serious. You need to get back to your little girl more than I need to get back to my empty apartment. She's more important, and if I stay here long enough, I know that I'll get another Celestial Offering. When we finish this, this first offering is yours. I promise you."

  Ellie surged forward and threw her arms around me. "Thank you," she whispered, and the feeling of her skin on mine sent an unbidden thrill through me.

  She didn't pull away, and after a few torturous seconds she still held me tight, so I took a chance. I put my hands around her waist.

  She stiffened, then relaxed into me. She pulled back, and I expected her to pull away from the embrace completely, but she didn't. She stopped an inch away from my face, and we both leaned in at the same time. Our foreheads and noses met.

  "Thank you," she whispered again.

  Her eyes were closed, but mine were not. She tilted her chin forward, and our lips brushed together tentatively. Fleetingly.

  "You don't have to-" I said, but she shut me up.

  We kissed, and for the sweetest and briefest of moments the rest of reality faded away.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Before the Barracks

  A sense of impending doom started to press in around me as we continued further into the Sanguinaria Outskirts, but my spirit could not be dampened. Ellie and I had kissed. We hadn't talked about it, and there was no promise of anything more, but it had happened, and I couldn't keep the smile off my face.

  The Crimson Queen was getting ready to launch an attack on Dregswyk and Eldin. She was capturing the populace and turning them into parasite-infested initiates. How many did she have in her army already? How many more would join her ranks before we managed to get back to the surface and alert King Malidar and his were-rat guard, or Emperor Erodwulf and his imperial troops?

  Too many.

  Every day that passed was another day their armies grew.

  We stumbled across an open area as we headed in the only direction we could. The cavern opened up. The ceiling rose high into the darkness. Luminous fungus lit up the ceiling somewhere far, far above us. It was all clustered in one illuminated strip, and for a second, I thought I was looking up into the ribbon of the Milky Way Galaxy like I had done as a kid many years ago.

  I hadn't looked up at our galaxy for years. It was impossible to do any more unless you went somewhere so remote that the light pollution from the rest of the other 9 billion humans that shared the planet couldn't get in the way. Somewhere unspoiled like outback Australia or the New Zealand Sounds. These luminous fungi felt like the closest that I was going to get.

  Ellie put her hand up in front of me, motioning for me to stop. She didn't speak as she crouched down, so I quietly hunkered down next to her. When she did speak, it was in a whisper.

  "I see another group of Crimson Order goons," she said.

  She was leaning in close to me, and I couldn't help but notice how beautiful her eyes looked when they reflected the twinkling lights from the subterranean fungus.

  "Can you see how many there are?" Ellie asked.

  I used my Ring of Farsight to get a better view. "Four, from the looks of it. But that's not our biggest problem."

  "Please tell me you see an exit," Ellie asked.

  "No, there's something even worse up ahead. There's a chasm that opens into a black pit, and on the other side is a drawbridge. On the other side is some kind of building. A barracks, from the looks of it. That must be where all of the initiates are coming from."

  "They'll be taking orders from someone in there, right? We've just been fighting the trainees. Imagine what a Crimson Order General is going to look like."

  I shuddered. "I don't want to."

  There was a large marching square in front of the barracks. The closed drawbridge on the other side of the abyss between the marching square and the barracks appeared to be unattended. There was no-one in the square doing drills. The whole place felt eerily quiet.

  The squad of Crimson Order initiates had disappeared from view. They would be patrolling around here somewhere, so we'd have to be careful.

  To the left of the barracks, there was a pathway at the edge of the cavern. It was carved into the rock wall, too perfect to be natural. Wide, and well-traveled. Torches were set outside the entrance.

  The only thing between us and the barracks was the empty square and the closed drawbridge. Fires burned on the watchtowers of the barracks, but I couldn't see anyone standing watch. The Sanguinari didn't seem to be worried about anyone attacking them. Locked away in another realm which was accessible only by their own blood magic, why would they expect an attack?

  The hair stood up on the back of my neck as I felt something behind us. I felt the presence of the squad of Crimson Initiates before I saw them, which was probably thanks to my high Perception score.

  I spun around as I stood, and Ellie did the same.

  This group was made up of the same composition of the other squads. Three non-tattooed warriors accompanied by an Inkbound Initiate wrapped in flowing robes. This one had a different set of tattoos than the shock-powered initiate from earlier. The air seemed to shimmer around her as she locked eyes with us.

  "You don't belong here," she said, raising her palms towards us.

  "We're just trying to get home!" I shouted back.

  "That's a pity. The Crimson Queen could use warriors like you," the Inkbound Initiate said with a grin.

  The air began to whip around the tattooed warrior as she gave the signal for the rest of her squad to attack.

  "The Crimson Order will be burned to ashes!" Ellie shouted, triggering her Courageous Shout ability, which gave us a damage and attack speed buff.

  Ellie threw her hammer at the closest of the rampaging initiates. The hammer flew in a downward trajectory, right towards the Initiate's feet. It slammed into one of their ankles, which gave out with the sharp crack of splintering bone. The initiate fell as Ellie's hammer flew back through the air towards her. The initiate tried to stand, but the broken ankle gave out under his weight.

  I reloaded my flintlock pistol as the Crimson Initiates closed the gap between us. One initiate summoned their parasite. It whipped out towards me, aiming right for the neck. I'd learned from previous encounters, though. I wouldn't be making the same mistake again. I dodged to the side, triggering an increase in my Dodge skill, but the initiate kept coming.

  I cast Expose Weakness as I raised the flintlock pistol and pulled the trigger. The damage bonus my ability bestowed upon me caused the slug to travel through the Initiate's cheek and exited their skull behind the eye. Bits of bone and brain matter exploded from the side of their head like a firecracker. The initiate stumbled, then fell. The smell of freshly burnt flesh washed over me as the parasite writhed in frustration. Its host was dead, and it would soon follow.

  Ellie performed a coup de grace on the hobbled Crimson Initiate, then struck out with her shield at the next one without breaking her stride. The look of grim determination on her face bolstered my resolve.

  A sudden strong wind blew me off my feet, causing me to tumble. The uneven passage floor was not kind. Every sharp edge and blunt rock left its mark as I was pushed backwards. I came to a stop, then scrambled back
to my feet. I holstered my pistol and drew my Acid-etched Sword. The Inkbound Initiate had her hands outstretched towards me. The loose ends of her wrappings whipped back and forth as the wind rose again.

  Ellie's hammer came flying at the Inkbound Initiate, who must have seen it coming. The tattooed initiate raised her palms towards the hammer and unleashed a burst of wind. I thought Ellie's hammer would fly true, but to my surprise, Paragon's Might was blown off course.

  Damn it!

  If it affected Ellie's hammer like that, the Inkbound Initiate would be able to blow my flintlock pistol's bullets away like mosquitoes. Any shots I fired wouldn't be a threat.

  Ellie and I would need to work together to take this tattooed initiate down, and I needed to keep her busy. I kept one eye on the Inkbound Initiate and one on Ellie's struggle with the final Crimson Initiate. The last non-tattooed initiate wielded a hammer too, but it didn't seem like he could throw it like Ellie could.

  Ellie and the last Crimson Initiate faced off as I strafed around the Inkbound Initiate. I cast Expose Weakness as I dodged her attacks. The skin on her arms seemed to be getting windburned, as though she had been out walking in gale-force winds.

  A mighty gust of wind buffeted me backwards. Ellie must have killed the third and last Crimson Initiate, because a message appeared at the bottom of my view as I scrambled back to my feet.

  Crimson Initiate defeated! You have gained 75 experience points!

  Level up! You have reached Level 10!

  [Achievement: Reach Level 10 - 10 points]

  You have unlocked Precision Strike!

  Holy crapola. Level 10! Finally. A brand-new ability, and my very first achievement! I didn't need to look at the description to know what this new ability would let me do.

  With Expose Weakness already cast, my Concentration Meter had already taken a hit. At one active target, Expose Weakness cost 25% of my available Concentration Points in upkeep. I activated my new Precision Strike ability and an error message appeared.

  Precision Strike can only be used within valid weapon range of your current target.