PrimeVerse: Dose of Chaos: A GameLit / LitRPG Adventure

by R K Billiau

  We played and frolicked in the water like kids for a good long time, ignoring the cold, and our aches and pains, and just having fun. We didn’t worry about zombies, or death traps, or gaining skills, or anything other than having a good time. We even got a small Morale Boost buff that lasted for several hours. Eventually we broke off our fun and decided to follow along the river through the forest. If nothing else, it would save us from Dehydration debuffs.

  It wasn’t much later when the forest cleared up, thinning out and eventually tapering off while the river continued to flow, now through a small grassy valley. We immediately noticed what was up ahead and stopped dead in our tracks, silent. I didn’t even have any snarky remarks, though my mouth did hang open like a fool, my eyes wide as saucers. The others may have looked the same, but I couldn’t tear my eyes off what was in front of us to check.

  Downstream, a few hundred yards away, was a collection of buildings. Maybe a dozen or so structures made of wood with thatched roofs. They were set back off the river a bit, and the whole thing was surrounded by a rudimentary wall, again made by a mixture of stone and wood. A small village.

  “How is that possible?” Kai asked in a raspy whisper, pointing towards the village.

  “That is something else,” I said. “There must be a bunch of people in there with some pretty good classes to be able to build something that big that fast.”

  Madison grinned. “Let’s go find out!” she said and started down the path. We approached a small wooden bridge that spanned the river and, surprisingly, was gated off. The river was small enough to swim across, so the locked gate wasn’t much of a hindrance unless you didn’t want to get wet. The lock was nothing more than an intricately tied knot. It took us a while to figure it out, and when we lifted the gate to move it, a hollow in the post was uncovered. It shot out a hollow wooden tube that made a loud whistling noise as it spiraled through the air.

  We watched it arc through the air and come plunking down in the field. “Uh, okay,” I said, “I guess that was the doorbell.”

  “Look!” Madison pointed towards the village at a well-built man with a sturdy looking spear and a sword strapped to his back running towards us. He wore the kind of thing I would expect in these types of games; a leather brigandine with a similar style of leg armor ending in thick boots. He was moving in a hurry, so we politely waited. This was their home after all, and I didn’t want to make any bad impressions right off the bat.

  Although it was a little rude when the first thing he did was move into a combat stance on the other side of the bridge, his sharp looking metal spear tip pointed directly at us.

  “All right now, who are you people?” he asked.

  Kai stepped forward, his shoulders squared and his jaw set. He reminded me of a dog whose hackles were up. “Hold on, friend. We mean no harm here. Why is your weapon out?” he asked.

  I tried to look as intimidating as Kai, but he pulled it off way better. Probably because he actually knew how to fight.

  The man gave a steely look towards Kai, then all of us, meeting our gazes individually. After a few silent seconds, he nodded and stood his spear up on the butt. It wasn’t put aside or anything, but at least we weren’t staring down its pointy length anymore.

  He had the same strong features that many of us had in our newly inhabited bodies, brown eyes, brown hair close cropped in a military style, and a lantern jaw. By the size of him, I would say he matched Kai for muscle, and he looked like he knew how to use the weapons he carried.

  “That village over there?” he gestured with the spear behind him, “it’s my job to protect it. Now you guys don’t look like much of a threat,” he eyed Kai and Hudson respectively, “but still, looks can be deceiving in this place. So, if you could tell me who you are, and what you want here, we can move forward. Potentially without any problems.” He stood up straight again, his stance one of practiced wariness.

  “Do you get a lot of visitors?” Madison asked. “This seems pretty remote.” He eyed her, unblinking and not answering her question. “Oh, right, sorry. I’m Madison, I’m a System Cleric and he’s right,” she shoved Kai out of the way, “when he says we mean you no harm. Really the opposite, I’ve been sent here by the devs to help people learn stuff about the game.” She stuck her hand out to shake his. He didn’t move.

  “Uh-huh,” he said, “well, you’re a bit late for that, don’t you think? This whole last year we’ve had to make do for ourselves.” He frowned at Madison’s proffered hand.

  “Wait a second,” I interjected. “Last year? The game hasn’t even been live more than a month, how have you been in here that long?” My brain was reeling. How had these people gotten in here? I mean, I had my suspicions, of course. It’s not like the outside world was very friendly. Ever since the Chinese-American war devastated both countries, turning them into unions of smaller states mostly ruled by the techno-elite, all kinds of shady stuff went down with the techies. If you thought the organ harvesting gangs of the early 2020s was bad, it was nothing compared to having your brain-space converted into cloud storage for guerrilla marketing campaigns. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to find that people had been funneled in here experimentally.

  The man rolled his eyes. “Look, I really don’t want to have to explain all this again. Just tell me your names and classes and what you want.”

  “Again?” Kai asked.

  “Yeah, some other guy in, like, an animal skin outfit was here a few days ago. I told him about everything that’s going on and it made me realize I don’t owe you strangers anything. YOU tell ME what I want to know, and if I think you’re being honest, then we can talk more.”

  Kai, Madison and I looked at each other, then back to him, and at each other again. “Okay,” I said, “I’m Hudson. I have a Treasure Hunter class, and I’m level 3. Well actually level 1 because I died a lot and have to earn back enough XP to well, you get it I’m sure.”

  The man nodded at me. “Treasure Hunter, huh? What’s that like?”

  I shrugged. “Well, basically I have skills to help me find more loot.” I didn’t want to tell him about my mini-map or archiving skills. It was probably best to keep some things to myself.

  “What about you?” the man asked, looking at Kai. “You don’t look like a support class.”

  Kai smiled. “No, I am a Martial Artist. It is a basic class. I am also level 3 knocked back to 1.”

  “All right then. That’s one bit down, now comes the next. What do you want,” the man pointed back towards the village again, “with us?”

  I opened my mouth to talk, but Madison cut me off. “We really only want to help. Well, I guess we could use some help as well.” She waved her hand up and down towards Kai and me. “As you can see, we aren’t really drowning in resources. We are hungry, tired, debuffed to hell and back, and would like to rest and spend some time in a place where we can just live.”

  “How did you find this place?” he asked.

  I raised my hand. “That was me, I have a skill that leads me to interesting things and it’s been pulling us all the way through the forest.”

  “Why didn’t you turn back? We’ve explored that forest and there’s nothing in it besides trees.”

  “We couldn’t go back,” Madison answered, “there’s nothing there for us anymore.”

  The man stared at her, his gaze softening after a bit. “Okay, I believe you. You certainly don’t look like you want to cause trouble.”

  “Just like that?” I asked, surprised.

  The man shrugged. “I’m pretty good at threat assessment, and you guys, except maybe for him,” he pointed at Kai, “don’t seem like much of a threat.” With a twirl his spear disappeared into his inventory and he held his hand out. “I’m Graham, me and all the people in the village are beta testers.”

  Chapter 3

  “Beta testers?” I repeated, confused.

  Graham nodded at me. “Yep. There are twelve of us here, from various walks of life- I was a polic
e officer, we have farmers and engineers, all sorts of different lives and careers. But we all had one thing in common: we were nearing the end of our lives. All of us accepted a chance to come to this ‘digital afterlife’ as they called it and we were deposited here. We’ve been here for over a year now, but the other fellow that came by told us the game only went live a few weeks ago, too.”

  “Okay…” I said, trying to wrap my brain around this new information. “So who is this other guy that came by here?” I wondered if we knew him.

  “Like I said before, he was dressed in total savage clothes, like a caveman or something. He said he came through the forest also, after escaping from being trapped by a horde of zombies. Would you happen to know anything about that?”

  I sighed. My guess had been right. Whoever this person was, they were clearly part of the Ascendants, our old tribe on the other side of the forest. “Yeah, back through there,” I waved at the forest behind us, “there was a tribe of people and a guy, he was crazy, but also kind of misunderstood…” Kai cleared his throat. “Oh, right, sorry,” I said and continued. “He could control the zombies our corpses make when we die. It-”

  “Wait, wait, wait. Go back a step. What do you mean our corpses make zombies?” Graham asked, interrupting me.

  “Have any of you died in this little village of yours?” I asked.

  “All of us at one point or another. This world has its dangers, as I’m sure you know.”

  “All too well,” Kai said. “But none of the corpses have turned into zombies?”

  Graham shook his head. “Did that happen to you?”

  I held up my wrist and showed Graham the creature cores on the band in my inventory slot. “It used to, until we got attunements with these cores.”

  Graham grabbed my arm and inspected them briefly. “We have a bunch of those from different things. We can’t figure out much use for them.”

  I nodded. “Does your class have an attunement?”

  “Yes, all of us are attuned to Earth, but we don’t know what benefit that is.”

  “Well it makes you a lot less tasty to everything!” Madison said.

  “Yeah,” I agreed, “without attunements all the animals go crazy and attack you on sight. Then when they kill you, your corpse raises as a zombie. And if you’re REALLY unlucky, there is someone who has a carryover skill that lets him control the zombies.”

  “Huh,” Graham said. “That certainly doesn’t sound fun. So if I could sum up really quick, you are fleeing from an angry necromancer and his army of undead, and you brought them here so they could attack the village?”

  “Ah. Not exactly,” Kai said. “We defeated the person who controls the undead, and the rest of the people we were with all have attunements now. There shouldn’t be anyone coming here.”

  “So then, why are YOU here? Why aren’t you back with your group of people?” he asked.

  I cleared my throat. “We... had a falling out. The tribe was seeking a little more than justice from the guy and we didn’t want any part of it.”

  “We’ve answered your questions, Graham, now can we go to the village?” Madison asked. “We would love to eat something and get rid of our debuffs. We would be happy to tell you and whoever else wants to know the whole story.”

  Graham shook his head. “Well, as to that. I’m sorry, but we actually can’t let you come into the village. I’ll tell you the same thing we told the other guy. We are closed to outsiders.”

  I threw my hands in the air. “Dude, do you SEE the state of us? We aren’t a threat! We just want some rest and possibly some community. We’re more than willing to help out, too. We aren’t looking to be freeloaders or anything.”

  “That’s fine, I understand. I’m not trying to be a bastard about this, but we simply can’t let anyone in... yet.”

  “What do you mean, yet?” Kai asked.

  “I get what’s going on here,” I said. “This guy may as well have a yellow exclamation mark above his head.”

  Graham paused a second, then laughed. “Yeah, I guess so. While some of us were exploring the forest, we ran across something... new... a few weeks back. Now that I think about it, it was probably about the same time as the game opened to the public. We had been through the forest hundreds of times for resources and never came across anything like it. It was a strange, massive tree, taller than the rest, the trunk wider than any tree I’d ever seen. On one side was a glowing doorway, like a portal or something. As soon as we came within sight of it, we got a quest. One that has to be completed before we can let new people into our village.”

  “O-kaaaay,” I said. “How long is that going to take? Can we help?”

  Graham’s face lit up with a huge grin. “Well now, I’m glad you asked!” I felt like he had played me somehow. It reminded me of Cora and her manipulation skill and I frowned. I concentrated for a moment and activated my Character Scan skill to sneak a peek at mister security guard guy.

  Name: Graham

  Race: Human

  Class: Sherriff

  Main Attribute Block: Body

  Highest Attribute: Agility

  Highest Skill: Criminology

  Personal Skill: Spear Mastery

  Secondary Skill: Toughness

  Carryover Skill: Criminology

  A Sheriff. I wondered if that was a basic or advanced class. That Criminology skill probably helped him with the whole “being able to tell you aren't a threat” thing.

  “Once we got the quest, monsters populated the forest between here and the tree. It had been empty before, but ever since there’s been these guardians there that we couldn’t get past.”

  “What is with this forest? We walked through it for days and didn’t see anything alive. How do you guys hunt? What do you eat?” Madison asked.

  “We have a hunter who goes out, but obviously not in the forest. These plains extend a ways beyond the village and he’s been able to find things there. Plus we have a small farm and some animal husbandry skills that allow us to raise livestock. We have a dairy cow, pigs, chickens, goats...”

  “Oh, goats!” Madison interrupted with glee. Graham side eyed her.

  “Anyway,” he said, “about the guardians- I’m pretty handy in a fight, but for reasons I won’t discuss, I was one of the only ones who could leave the village to try to get past them. The few times I’ve tried have been unsuccessful.” Graham dug the spear butt into the dirt.

  “So, you want us to figure out what this thing in the forest is?” Kai asked, as he folded his arms together over his chest.

  Graham nodded. “Exactly. We know there’s something out there that our mayor can claim for the village, and once that’s done, we can start accepting visitors.”

  “There is one large problem with your plan,” Kai said. “If what you say is true, and you have been here for over a year, I’m sure you vastly out level us. How are we supposed to defeat what you could not?”

  “Good point,” I added. “What level are you guys anyway?”

  “You’re right to be concerned with that, although I think you would be surprised at the answer,” Graham said. “I’m only level five, and the rest of us are around the same.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense!” Madison said. “Even in our short time here, we had all gotten to level 3 in just a few days. Why are you so low level?”

  Graham sighed. “You level by facing challenges that push you, right? Well out here we have out-leveled everything. The animals we hunt aren’t higher than level 3, with the occasional level 4 popping up. Our resource gatherers have maxed out their skills on the types of resources that are around this area, and our craftsmen have maxed out what they can level on crafting without better materials.”

  “Why haven’t you gone out and found more stuff to level on?” I asked.

  “We’ve been focusing on building the village. Our crafters may be maxed out on the materials they can use, but they are still able to craft what they know, and we decided to get every bui
lding we could and make the village grow as much as possible before branching out.” He shrugged. “We just didn’t feel the need.”

  “That still doesn’t explain why you don’t handle this thing in the forest yourselves, though,” I said. “You’re level 5, you guys should all be able to handle whatever it is if you work together.”

  “That might seem like the case,” Graham said, “but once again, for reasons I won’t discuss, it’s not something we can do. What we can do, however, is give others who want access to our village a quest.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Okay fine, you want us to go explore this mysterious tree-door thing and find out what’s inside so you can claim it for the village.” I waved at myself. “Even if we were higher levels, we are seriously debuffed from our travel, and honestly, I am sick of walking around barefoot and mostly naked.”

  “I agree,” Kai said. “We’re neither equipped nor in a good enough physical state to perform this task. Let us rest, and perhaps help us with clothes, then we can see about this quest.”

  “Don’t forget food!” Madison said. “We are literally starving, we have the debuffs to prove it. I’m sure by the looks of your village you have got to have something better than the burnt meat we had in our last residence and much better than the nothing we’ve been eating since we left.”

  I finger-gunned her while looking at Graham. “Food too.”

  Graham stood straight and thought for a few moments. “Hmm. Good point. Fortunately, we’ve been able to make a lot of different stuff. If we can get you some outfits, some food, all of that, will you agree to take on the quest?”

  “All that stuff is great, but we’re still suffering from lost levels,” I said.

  Madison coughed. “Some of us are suffering from lost levels, and even if we were at full strength, we would be lower level than you, who died easily to whatever these guardians are.”