PrimeVerse: Dose of Chaos: A GameLit / LitRPG Adventure

by R K Billiau

  “Anywhere I want,” I said, a proud smile on my face at his shocked expression. “I know, pretty cool. I’ll tell you about it after we slay some gromlins.” And with that, I started moving forward. We had used up precious time and the horde had moved a good bit ahead of us. Luckily, even though Cora was controlling them, it looked like her control was far from perfect as members of the horde occasionally peeled off to attack something, or each other.

  I got up as close as I could while remaining somewhat hidden, making sure to crouch and stay low and keeping my Camouflage on. I must have been doing something right because I unlocked a new skill. Sweet.

  You have learned the Sneak skill!

  Audeo – Your Sneak skill has increased to level 10

  I didn’t know why I hadn’t unlocked that skill yet, but was excited to have it as I felt more sneaky, especially when combined with Camouflage. Another few minutes went by and I was wondering when Ryan was going to start his distraction when a shout from Cora told me he already had. I looked through the horde to find her, an arrow sticking out of her as she screamed in rage.

  “Find who did this! Kill them!” she shouted as she moved to crouch behind a tree. The horde stopped their advance and several crowded around Cora, making an effective barrier as more started looking in all the trees.

  It was time to see what my new Chaos skill did. I brought out my two flunky cores and summoned one, activating Dose of Chaos and giving twenty as the amount to drain from my expendables. It took twenty Zeal, and a flunky appeared in my hand. This flunky wasn’t colored like when I add a spell effect to the summon, instead this flunky’s whole body was infused with bright white light, literally shining a spotlight on my hiding place. Joy.

  I heard Cora from behind the press of gromlin bodies. “Get him!” and a streak of black energy soared through the air towards me. I instinctively threw my flunky at the bolt of energy, covering my eyes with my arms. Which turned out to be a good idea because when my flunky was hit by the chaos bolt it exploded like a flash bang without the bang. Even through my closed eyes and arms over my face, I was partially blinded. I knew this because of the debuff that popped in my buff bar.

  I staggered, black spots in my eyes, and summoned another flunky, giving it another twenty energy to the Chaos skill that came from Spirit this time. I threw the flunky into where I thought the horde was, rolled behind a tree and summoned another flunky from my other core. Another drop in Spirit later, and I had a ghost flunky hovering above my hand. I spun and chucked him into the mess of staggering gromlins and tried to find where the first one went.

  I didn’t take long to find it, bouncing between gromlins like a furry little pinball. It didn’t seem to be doing any damage but was incredibly fast and every time it hit a gromlin, it knocked it on its ass. I laughed as my ghost flunky swooped in and through gromlins, distracting them and leaving them slowed.

  I cast Mana Orb giving it a Dose of Chaos and tried to compress it. It promptly exploded, taking ten percent of my life and turning me bright purple. Which again made me an easy target, and Cora cast another bolt of energy at me as I rolled out of the way. The bolt hit a tree beside me, drilling a perfectly round hole all the way through it. Thanks for taking one for the team, tree.

  A trio of gromlins was honing in on my position. I didn’t want to risk exploding myself again, so I picked up a small rock and decided to see how adding a Dose of Chaos to my Throwing Mastery skill would work. Twenty Stamina later, I decided I liked it. I had thrown the rock, catching the lead gromlin square in the face, and it was sent flying end over end until it crashed hard into a tree.

  By now the gromlins had taken down my bouncy flunky, and I watched as Cora blasted my ghost flunky, it exploding in a shower of sticky slime. “Who you gonna call!?” I yelled at her.

  “What?” she yelled back. It figured she wouldn’t even get that reference. She probably loved the 2016 remake. Ugh. I got a chaos bolt to the face for my snarkiness, but it didn’t do any damage to my HP. No, it just completely drained my Zeal bar instead.

  “Hey! I needed that!” I shouted and summoned two more flunkies, giving them both a Dose of Chaos. I took the twenty points of damage to my HP as the skill tried to get Zeal, and another twenty points came off my Mana. My first flunky came out silvery and metal, like that mutants from those movies about the merc with a mouth. It was heavy too. I couldn’t throw it so much as underhand toss it at the incoming gromlin.

  The gromlin caught the flunky in the chest and promptly fell over from the weight of it. The flunky didn’t seem to notice any problems and began biting and scratching the gromlin, its metal teeth and claws ripping into the thing like its flesh was merely a suggestion of something to stop it from being inside out.

  The gromlins friend tried to help, scratching and clawing at the metal flunky, but it was like fingernails on a chalkboard; painfully annoying but ultimately harmless. When the flunky was done digging for treasure through the gromlins body, it grabbed the other gromlin that was too stupid to realize what was happening. The flunky climbed the gromlin, its tiny claws puncturing and scratching through flesh, and the gromlin screamed, desperately trying to get the flunky off of it. Instead it died as the flunky casually dug in through the gromlins abdomen, pulling out bits of innards like treats from a pinata. Gross.

  I let my other flunky, which was normal looking, fly into the melee, wondering what it would do. It launched into attacking the closest gromlin, its tiny claws doing damage but not enough to stop a gromlin when it was snatched up and its head bitten off. That was a disappointment, or so I thought until I noticed the flunky body grow another head, and leap into an attack.

  Ryan seemed to be holding his own, dodging through the trees and generally avoiding damage as he took potshots here and there, his arrows inevitably finding their way home to soft flesh. I mentally congratulated him; this guy was a great shot.

  More gromlins were coming my way as Cora tightened her control over them and I lobbed Mana Orbs, causing some damage, but mostly slowing down their advance. I thought I was doing good until the gromlin that had been flanking me jumped out and latched onto my thigh with its sharp teeth. “Ow! Damnit!” I shouted as I pummeled the thing, finally sending it, and a chunk of my flesh, off of me. The gromlin slammed to the ground and swallowed the chunk of my leg it had torn out, licking its lips.

  I jumped back, the Bleed debuff icon unnecessary as my leg pumped gouts of blood. I gingerly put weight on my leg and found it able to hold me just fine. I glanced up to see the metal flunky being given a wide berth by the gromlins, but it was so slow it couldn’t catch any of them. I tried casting a Mana Orb and compressing it with a Dose of Chaos again. Thankfully it didn’t explode on me and I threw it at the advancing line of gromlins. It smacked one gromlin in the face and a nova of frost exploded out, turning the gromlin it had hit into ice, and causing an ice slick on the ground in a large radius around it. The gromlins running at me hit the slick, lost their footing and slid like hockey pucks, giving me a chance to run away again.

  This was guerilla warfare at its finest. I ran and dodged and hid behind trees while I threw out random balls of energy to distract and confuse my enemy. I wasn’t getting many kills for all of this, but the skill raises were nice, and most importantly, every minute here was an extra minute for Madison, Kai, and Graham to get the kids to safety.

  Every time a skill went up, the exclamation mark on my notification tab doubled in size then shrank back to normal. I’d have to check those later.

  I peeked behind a tree, catching my breath, my health low from the Dose of Chaos skill draining it when it couldn’t get another expendable. All of my expendable bars were low to nonexistent by this point. Thankfully, I still had about a third of my Mana left, and I was glad I had dumped so many of my points from leveling into it.

  I tried to find where Ryan was. I could see his dot on my mini-map, but he must have been hidden by the trees since I couldn’t find him. The gromlins showed up weirdl
y on my mini-map as well. They faded in and out, some of their dots bouncing wildly. It made it difficult to tell what was going on.

  I heard a scream that had to be Ryan and caught sight of him. He must have been trying to get from one spot to another but was flanked by two gromlins. They leapt onto him, one on each arm, biting and chewing. It was one thing to see a lifeless zombie eating a person. Their eyes never changed, never showed emotion. But these things radiated pleasure as they gnawed on Ryan.

  I shuddered and was about to run to help when a black bolt of energy struck him square in the chest, causing him to shrink. He shrank until he was half his normal size, his scream going from booming and loud to much quieter as his body shriveled, and the gromlins took full advantage, ripping him apart.

  “You bitch!” I shouted at Cora, livid.

  “You’re next!” Cora snarled at me as she turned the entirety of the hoard upon me. I ran out and snatched up my metal flunky, forgetting how heavy the dang thing was, and dismissed the other one. This would be my last stand and I spun like I was in a hammer throw, releasing the flunky in Cora’s direction. I had no idea if it landed near her or not, as I summoned another flunky, putting in fifty energy I had left into the Dose of Chaos skill, praying it would take the energy from my Mana and not try to take it from another source which would end up defaulting to my HP.

  The RNGod must have heard my prayer as the flunky I summoned grew in my hand. And grew and grew and grew. I had to quickly get my arm out from under the thing as the flunky grew bigger still, towering over me, nearly ten feet in height. It was the Donkey-King of flunkies and it laid waste to the gromlins, scattering them about with each swipe of its massive arm. It was so awesome!

  My pleasure was short lived, as Cora commanded the entirety of the gromlins to attack the over-sized fluffball, and they swarmed it like ants on a sugar cube. That had been the chance I was hoping for though, and while she concentrated on commanding the gromlins, I dashed my way over to her.

  “It’s over now Cora, you might as well give up. You think you’re powerful, think you’re a leader. But you just SUCK!” I shouted as I tried to imitate one of Kai’s cool leap kicks.

  Evidently my Martial Arts skill wasn’t high enough, and my kick was as ineffective as it was cool looking. I didn’t even hit Cora as she stepped out of the way and grabbed onto me.

  “I suck, huh?” she said as she grappled me and once again, we were dragged down to the ground together. I had to stop meeting her like this.

  Unfortunately, this time I lacked a convenient horde of zombies to kill us both with, and my expendables were so low I knew I wouldn’t survive. All I had wanted to do however was distract her and slow her down, and I hoped I had done at least that.

  I had her pinned, but no rocks to throw or Mana to use, so I punched her in the face. I won’t lie- it felt good.

  She grinned up at me, showing me a mouth full of sharp teeth tinged with blood from my well-placed fist.

  “You’re right, I do suck,” she said as she bit into my neck and ripped a chunk out of it, her mouth filling with my blood and draining my HP bar.

  Chapter 43

  “I see you took my unspoken advice,” the Adjudicator said.

  “Well, you spoke it pretty clearly,” I said as I stood in the room, grateful for a moment of respite.

  “Stay awhile, and listen,” it said.

  “I have to get back to Cora and her gromlin army,” I said, exasperated. “I mean, it’s an exercise in futility, but I have to do what I can to at least bide time.” It nodded and waved its hand, a comfy chair appearing behind me. Coming here was always nice. The setting was a bit gloomy, but the Adjudicator was always a good host.

  “Would you like a refreshment?” it asked. “I have something I must tell you.”

  “Fine,” I said, sitting in the chair, “but we can’t take too long.”

  With a wave of its hand, a table whooshed into place in front of me, with a plated cheeseburger on top of it. Not just any kind of cheeseburger, though. This thing was like the mother of all cheeseburgers. Two patties, three kinds of cheese, bacon, onion straws, and just a bit of green. Next to the cheeseburger were several different fries, steak fries, curly fries, shoestring fries and even onion rings. Lastly, there was a huge chocolate milkshake in one of those tall fancy glasses with a red and white striped straw. There was even a cherry on top.

  “For having bad social skills, you sure know how to make someone feel welcome,” I said as I dug into the food. It was amazing. Beyond amazing. The only milkshake I had ever had was one that came from a pouch, and it was no comparison. I paused in my eating to check my notifications, I had gained 40XP from that last fight and raised my Magic, Core Manipulation and Physique by one each, not a bad haul.

  “Yes, well,” the Adjudicator cleared its throat, “I wanted to tell you something that might be hard to hear, however I promised not to hide things from you.”

  I paused in my chewing. This did not bode well. “Wha ish it?” I asked, my mouth full.

  The Adjudicator crossed its arms. “The nature of the competition we archons are in... the more an archons power is used in the world, the more they advance.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Every time the power of Chaos, for example, is used, it gets the Archon of Chaos closer toward winning its year in control. This is made even more possible when there are so few archons active in the world.”

  “Uh... I thought you said that the contest won’t pick a winner until there are over a hundred vassals?”

  It nodded. “That is the case, however, with so few archons active, those few that are, may build a lead that will become unsurmountable.”

  “How, uh, how many archons are active right now?” I asked.

  “There are four archons with vassals in the world. Chaos, Water, Death and myself.”

  “Chaos and Death?! Those are like the worst ones,” I said.

  “Death is not one to worry overly much about. During his year death is merely permanent,” the Adjudicator said.

  I almost choked on my burger. “Permanent!? That’s the worst possible outcome! How could you possibly think that wouldn’t be something to worry about?!” My voice broke while I was screaming. It shook me; here I thought death, actual death, was off the table now forever, and I learned it could potentially be real again.

  The Adjudicator paused for a moment. “Ah, I see the problem. I meant to say that for the duration of the year that Death is in control, nothing will respawn. When Death’s year is over, everything will respawn once again.”

  Well, that was a little different. I breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay... yeah, I was worried there for a second,” I said.

  “Although, true death will be possible during that time. But only by choice,” it said.

  “So you can choose to die for good when the Archon of Death is in control?”

  “Yes,” it said. “The designers wanted there to be a way out if anyone felt like they needed it.”

  I put that thought away for the moment. It was interesting to see there was a true death option, but it wasn’t something I think I’d ever consider. “How would Chaos be worse?” I asked.

  “Imagine, for an entire year, never being sure of anything. Every law, every rule thrown out. It would most likely be detrimental to the sanity of you viators,” it frowned, “which would negatively affect many of us archons as well.”

  I gave that some thought, remembering what it was like being in the chaos node. “I could see why that would be bad news. So how do we prevent it? If the archon is already active with a vassal, how close are we to that happening?”

  “There is time yet,” the Adjudicator said, “there are far from the necessary one hundred vassals active to start the first year. However, Chaos has a foothold now. With a chaos node active in the world, its power can grow quickly.”

  “Can I change the node somehow?”

  “No, once a node has been claimed by a vassal, it bel
ongs to that archon until the time a new archon is declared the winner. Every new winner bring about a divesting of nodes, then they are shifted around the planet.” The Adjudicator shook its head sadly. “It is a shame that Chaos was able to claim a node so quickly. More archons must gain vassals to help balance the power of Chaos.”

  “Maybe I can help people become vassals?” I asked. “How do they do it?”

  “To be offered the chance to become a vassal someone must either discover a way to the archon’s sanctuary or perform a deed that is inherently related to that archon, which will allow the archon to reach out to them.”

  “Oh, like how I met the Archon of Death when I died so many times,” I said, “or how I found your sanctuary through the death maze.”

  “Exactly,” the Adjudicator nodded. I took a bite of the cooling cheeseburger, savoring the taste of it.

  “Let me understand though, if I use my new Chaos skill, I am helping the Archon of Chaos win, and the same goes for my Magic skills with Minuitt, or Audeo and you for that matter, correct?”

  “Correct,” it said.

  That gave everything in this world a new light. “There are one hundred archons? Whose portfolios cover one hundred different aspects of the world?”

  “Correct again,” it tapped its wrist where a watch would be, and I realized I had been feeling the pull of the light.

  I had a new plan now, though. Cora had to be stopped for sure, but more importantly, I had to do everything I could to prevent the Archon of Chaos from gaining a win.

  “I’m going to stop Chaos,” I told the Adjudicator, “and I’m going to claim a Mana node for you, and help others claim nodes too.”

  The Adjudicator smiled. “Ah, that is good to hear you say. Now I can give you these.” It made a shooing motion with its hand and a slew of system messages appeared.

  Legendary Quest – Find and Claim a Mana node for the Adjudicator. Reward – Class rarity increase, upgrade to Character Scan skill.