PrimeVerse: Dose of Chaos: A GameLit / LitRPG Adventure

by R K Billiau

  I turned to run and made it a few steps before a powerful gust of wind, filled with rocks and pointy things, collided into me, flipping me over and over and slamming me into a tree.

  Critical hit! Genius Loci blasts you with tornado strike for 143 damage!

  The Pain debuff flared, jumping straight to sixty percent, then joined by the Dazed debuff and my world turned into a spinning mess of agony. I was lucid enough to wonder why I was still in the air, when I looked down and saw it was because I had been impaled on a large branch.

  Skewered above the ground, I turned my head just enough to see the stick protruding from my back and caught a glimpse of the massive stone fist flying towards me. I was too far gone to even flinch, and in an instant all my debuffs disappeared and I entered into the sweet blackness of death.

  Chapter 10

  The blackness melted away and I found myself in the Adjudicators temple, in one of its waiting rooms outside the main room. The small space had stone walls and a stone floor and was well furnished with two comfortable seats and a round table in between them. Everything seemed to be made of the finest materials. It was a little over the top, really; marble and gold and furs. There was even a huge globe, though the land masses were definitely not those of Earth’s, and it was opened horizontally to display a rack of various alcohol and glasses. I moved to the globe minibar and pulled up a bottle, sniffing its contents.

  I had no idea what constituted good or bad alcohol. On Earth, I had mostly only ever had BEER™ and BOOZE™. It placated the masses and was cheap. Occasionally I was able to get some good stuff from the places I scavenged, but if I ever came back with the smell of alcohol on me, I could suffer a loss in work creds at the minimum. Unbroken bottles would fetch a decent price anyway, so I mostly never drank it.

  This liquid was brown and caramelly, with a potent scent that burned my nostrils. I shrugged and poured myself a glass, swirling the liquid within it before giving it a sniff, then a taste. The flavor exploded on my taste buds and made my mouth feel warm. I swallowed and felt a light burn as it moved down my throat. The vapors burned into my lungs and I coughed. It left a hint of itself in my mouth and I smiled. This stuff was good, whatever it was.

  I took another sip with my eyes closed, savoring it and feeling quite fancy, trying to determine the different flavors and notes when a voice behind me broke the silence, startling me. I sprayed the liquid out of my mouth and nose, the light burning taking on a whole new painful form as it cleaned out my sinuses and the Pain debuff faded in and out for a few seconds. That was embarrassing.

  “Hello First Prime,” the voice said in a low, sultry feminine tone. I coughed and spluttered and spun around, not expecting anyone else in this place.

  Standing before me was an incredibly attractive woman who looked to be in her mid-thirties, with silver hair that moved fluidly, reflecting all the light in her room and cascading off her shoulders like a waterfall. Her skin was a sky blue and her lightly glowing blue eyes were framed by a pair of round spectacles that perfectly accentuated her face. She wore a classic yet masterfully tailored power suit of stark white with a blouse nearly as black as the death tunnel and studded with small twinkling dots of light like miniature stars. It exuded conservative boldness, and she wore it like it was more natural than her own skin.

  “Were you talking to me?” I asked, my voice cracking a bit at the end as I cleared the remainder of the alcohol out of my throat. In reply, she simply arched an eyebrow. “Ah yeah, I guess so. First Prime, right, I forgot about that. Sorry. Who... uh... who are you? I thought I would be seeing the Adjudicator here.”

  She smirked and her eyes narrowed as she spied the barred door to the main chamber of the temple. “The Adjudicator is busy at the moment, so I thought I would take a minute to get to know you.”

  “Okaaaay...” I said with my typical inability to be a normal human when talking with women. “You didn’t actually answer my question though, who are you? And why do you want to get to know me?”

  She moved toward me, not walking or gliding or floating; she simply was in the place where she stood one moment, and the next was right in front of me, barely an arm’s length away. I jumped back a little and she chuckled but held out her hand in the traditional way someone does when they expect a handshake. “I am Minuitt, the Archon of Magic. Pleasure to meet you.”

  Out of habit, I took her hand to shake it, and my world imploded. Everything went black, then was replaced with a vision of a universe exploding into existence. All the forces of power took form, not only in their esoteric sense of natural existence, but the living avatars of them all. Each figure sprang into existence yet was shrouded in darkness as if I had yet to unlock them, except for three: The Adjudicator, the Archon of Death, and Minuitt herself.

  My vision focused on her, zooming in closer and closer toward her eyes, until rotating around as if I was seeing through them. I saw the whole of the universe in another way; overlaid with energy. A wellspring of potentiality only waiting to be touched and utilized by sentient beings. I saw the energy naturally collect into lines of power flowing through the universe like arteries. The power pooled around individual worlds, and those had their own veins of power as the living energy flowed through everything. There were small pinpricks on the world where the energy collected, like nodes of actuality yearning to be tapped into.

  Congratulations! You have increased your Superconscious attribute!

  The vision abruptly ended, and I was back in the antechamber, standing in front of Minuitt. I staggered from the sudden entry back into my own senses and her firm grip on my hand kept me up.

  “Steady now,” she said. “Sorry about that. Your time here is limited and I didn’t want to have to go through a round of explanation. You see now who I am and what power I represent.”

  I stepped away from her and sat down heavily into the closest chair and slammed down a swallow of my delicious burning alcohol. “Well, as far as explanations go, that was a doozy. What did you want with me, and why did that raise my Superconscious?”

  She smiled a predatory smile, her teeth shining brightly, and took the seat next to me. She sat on the edge, leaning uncomfortably close to me with one knee folded across the other.

  “Your Supersconscious went up because that is the attribute most attuned to magic and I am the Archon of Magic. Tell me,” she purred, “what exactly do you know about the archons?”

  “Not a whole lot really,” I said, “the Adjudicator has been pretty tight-lipped about everything.”

  She grunted and rolled her eyes. “It would be,” she said. “Well, I’m not going to take the heat for giving you too much information, but I can share a bit with you. Has the Adjudicator told you about our... competition?”

  I set my lips into a firm line. “No, it hasn’t. I asked if there was some kind of war of the gods, though, and he-”

  “It,” she corrected.

  “It,” I repeated, “told me there wasn’t anything like that. Was it lying to me?” I felt the heat rising to my face as anger started to creep up. Or maybe it was the alcohol.

  “No, no,” she said, “not lying. There is no ‘war’. There is, however, a competition. All of us archons are in a contest against each other and you have given the Adjudicator, one of the lowest, a huge leap in standing.”

  My eyes widened in confusion, “Uh... why? What did I do?”

  “You became the first vassal! The first of the viators to swear fealty to an archon, and it was the Adjudicator!” She broke out in sincere laughter as if it was some great irony. “Oh, the irony!” she said. I wasn’t laughing and just sat there mildly confused and a little irritated at this being making sport of my death-friend.

  She stopped laughing when she saw my face. “I’m sorry, you don’t understand. Let me put it this way; since our creation, archons have all had something to do, something to govern. Aspects of our portfolios that need tending, if you will. All of us, that is, except for the Adjudicator. Its purpose co
uld only be realized when you viators showed up. It was often considered the lowest of all of us, the weakest and most useless. It never had any standing in our rankings, as it could not perform its duties for which it was created.

  “Then you viators started showing up, and its power began to increase as it dispensed classes. Finally, you, Hudson, made your way to it and accepted an offer of vassalhood, propelling the Adjudicator up the ranks. Then you pissed off the Archon of Death by not being able to accept its vassalhood deal, and you forced it to give up its prime power, the first prime power, which gave the Adjudicator even more standing!” She rose in volume as she spoke, her gesticulations becoming larger and wilder.

  “Great. So, I guess that’s good for the Adjudicator then, yes?” I asked.

  “Oh yes, very good,” she said, her voice calm once again.

  “That still doesn’t tell me why you wanted to talk to me,” I said. “I’m not looking to switch sides or whatever it is you think you can get from me. The Adjudicator has been good to me and-”

  “That’s not what I want,” she said and held up her hand to cut me off. “The Adjudicator and I have an understanding. Not all the archons look down on him. What I want is something that can help both the Adjudicator and myself, and of course, you.”

  “Ah, okay, so uh...what,” I cleared my throat, “what do you want with me?” I was more than a little concerned. Beautiful women were trouble enough, I could only imagine the trouble a beautiful god-like woman would cause me.

  “You have been tasked by the Adjudicator to encourage viators to experiment in new things, learn new skills, and bring about as many possible class changes for him to enact as you can. Each one of these giving him points, as it were, in our competition. I would ask the same, but with the caveat that you guide people into the ways of magic. Each new magic user gains me points as well, while still fulfilling the Adjudicators task.”

  All this talk of a great cosmic game annoyed me. I should have known better than to think the Adjudicator was telling me the truth, and while I guess it wasn’t technically lying, it had obfuscated things. Either that or I just didn’t ask enough questions. There were endless stories of gods using people as playthings in the great game of life, and it seemed the devs took that to heart when they devised the archon system. We were literal game pieces to them.

  “Why the hell should I help you?” I spat at her. She raised her hands placatingly at me.

  “Look, there are other archons who are not so benevolent as the Adjudicator. And since a vassalhood has been accepted already they have been given the green light to seek those who would become vassals to them, to spread discord and chaos and destruction. I don’t want that; it flies against much of what I was created for. Neither does the Adjudicator, even though it will follow the rules to the point of its own destruction. My power, the power of magic, can even the field. It can give viators the ability to resist the chaos and destruction.”

  It was my turn to raise an eyebrow.

  “Uhm, don’t wizards want to solve every problem with a fireball? That’s pretty chaotic and destructive, I’d say.”

  She smiled her wolfish smile again. “Yes, magic can be used that way, but it can also be used to build and create, to bring order as much as chaos. It will be the tool you need to defend yourselves against-” She cut herself off this time, pausing to think. “I can’t go into that yet.”

  “Fine, whatever,” I said. “Magic is cool and you want people to use it, I understand that. So what do I get out of it?”

  “I can offer you a boon. Not until you have some magic of your own, but once you do, I can grant you power.” She lifted her hand, palm up, and a ball of flame puffed to life over it. The flame froze in place and turned to ice, then melted into water that she poured into her other hand, then shifted again into blue electricity that danced across her fingers, then dissipated.

  I was duly impressed but wasn’t going to be bought by a few tricks. “No, that’s not good enough.”

  She crossed her arms and looked at me. She seemed annoyed that I wasn’t bowing to her whims. “What do you want?”

  “I’m not doing all of this alone, I have companions that are out there bleeding and dying alongside me. I couldn’t do it without them. Grant them each a boon as well.”

  “I can do that. But with the caveat that they must also teach others the ways of magic, or else I will strip them of my power,” she said.

  I thought of Kai and Madison. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.”

  “Done then,” she said and brought out a clipboard with a pen attached. “Sign here,” she said and handed it to me. The clipboard held a contract, and typically I’d skip reading and just sign it like skipping a EULA but felt like reading anything from a god-like being was probably a good idea. To my delight it was in plain language, a simple formal agreement stating I would do the things we talked about, and so would she. I gave it my John Hancock and handed it back to her.

  “Do you all use contracts like that?” I asked.

  “No, I just like to have everything laid out clearly,” she said as she waved a hand at me and my inventory popped open with a copy of the contract in it. “You should finish your drink; you have little time left.”

  I realized then I could already feel the pull of the light on me, beckoning me back into the realm of the living. “How can I get magic?” I asked as the pull became stronger.

  “Oh, don’t you worry about that,” she said and smiled. “I’m confident you’ll stumble upon it soon.”

  The last image I had was of her with that wolfish smile. “This is really going to help me get higher on the leaderboards,” she said, giddy, as I was pulled out of the room and deep into the light.

  Chapter 11

  The light pulled me into an ever-moving whiteness, like staring at an old school screensaver, when the box popped up asking me where I wanted to respawn. I had an overhead view of the mostly covered in fog-of-war world, with a few splotches of color indicating places I had been. I saw all the wilderness spawn points I had discovered before and homed in on the one where Madison and the rest were due to spawn. I toyed with the idea of respawning a little way off and sneaking up on the group to scare them, but realized I had no idea how long their respawn timers were, and I knew for a fact Kai wouldn’t have skipped his to lose XP.

  I picked the respawn point and the world zoomed around me, the white fading out and swirling into the colors of the forest, like an out-of-focus lens adjusting and coming into focus. I popped out alone. My reincarnation had reset my death counter so my respawn time was shorter than the others. I took a few moments to go over the skill increases I had gained from the fight with the tutelar and the Genius Loci.

  I had increased Throwing Mastery by four points. Four whole points. That was it. I was so frustrated with my skill selection. My class skills had a high cap, but they were all non-combat skills. Even my Personal and Secondary skills were unrelated to combat, leaving Throwing Mastery as the only combat skill I could get above ten. I felt like I was wasting potential skill increases by not having combat related skills in my Secondary or Personal slots. On the other hand, I had been using cores a lot to help as well.

  That made me wonder about what Minuitt had told me. A bit of magic sure would be helpful. Being able to toss out a fireball would certainly increase my combat viability, plus it would look pretty cool. I wondered what magic felt like, anyway. I would have to give some serious thought about her request.

  With a sigh, I looked through my huge list of unassigned skills and selected my next most important combat ability- Sucker Punch- and dragged it to the Secondary skill slot to replace Camouflage.

  Warning! Once you replace a Secondary skill you must wait 7 days before you can replace it again, do you wish to continue? YES/NO

  I selected YES and the skills switched places. I knew I should have thought about optimization more while I was reincarnating, but changing my emphasis from exploration to
combat kind of felt like giving up. Besides, the fact that all my combat skills were lame. I couldn’t wait to get back to a safe zone so Kai could teach me Martial Arts.

  I looked over my skills again and frowned. I selected Core Manipulation and drug it to the Personal skill slot, dropping it in to replace Archiving.

  Warning! Once you replace a Personal skill you must wait 30 days before you can replace it again, do you wish to continue? YES/NO

  I hesitated, but selected YES with a wince. This one really hurt. Archiving was one of my favorite skills, and I hated not being able to raise it for a while. At least none of the changes were permanent. They would just take time and I could change back. Time was something this world had an abundance of.

  Core Manipulation was pretty cool anyway, and I was excited to see what it was like at higher levels. Now I could raise Sucker Punch to 20 and Core Manipulation to 30, and hopefully would be able to make good use of them.

  I popped on Hunch and took stock of where it was leading me. It caught me a little off guard; if my sense of direction was right, it led directly towards the cozy forest bed of the boss that had just killed us. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t checked it again; had the skill been leading me to the portal in the forest the entire time?

  I was about to close my skill window when my eyes lingered on the Driven skill and I smacked my palm against my face. I hadn’t even had Driven up during the whole time we had been fighting. Ugh. I had to get better about utilizing all my skills; I had a feeling it could make or break you in this world. I couldn’t remember the specifics, so I looked at it again.

  Driven - When following a Hunch, activate to gain a boost to an attribute group of your choice. May only be used when actively pursuing a Hunch. Drains Zeal at a rate of X (level of Driven/4 Minimum 1) per minute of use. Gain +X (level of Driven) to attribute group while active.