Chronicles of Ethan Complete Series: A LitRPG / GameLit Fantasy Adventure

by John L. Monk

  “VIRTUE PENALTY: -.01 (Profanity).”

  “What the hell?” I said.

  “VIRTUE PENALTY: -.01 (Profanity).”

  “Shit,” I said breathlessly, staring at the words and holding my ears.

  “VIRTUE PENALTY: -.01 (Profanity).”

  “Shit!” I screamed and fell on my ass.

  “VIRTUE PENALTY: -.01 (Profanity).”

  I managed to shut up, and nothing happened. The world was free of invasive voices, and I was perfectly happy with that.

  “Wow,” the woman said. “What are you, a saint or something? You honestly think profanity is bad? You wouldn’t get penalized if you didn’t. I can cuss all day and nothing happens.”

  To prove the point, she let loose a blistering string of filth.

  “Sorry, I’m not following,” I said.

  “You lost some virtue, right? Said virtue penalty and a number?”

  I nodded.

  “You should probably toggle the sound off. Why it defaults that way, no one knows. And you can turn off virtue tracking altogether if you want. It’s more of a role-playing stat, anyway.”

  I stared at the beautiful murderer and said, “I’m sorry. Still not getting it.”

  “Didn’t you go to the orientation?”

  Regrettably, I’d skipped the orientation.

  “I did my own research,” I said. “Now look, if you’re not going to kill me again, I need to reach that city over there.”

  I got up and started walking. She fell in beside me.

  “So this research of yours,” she said. “Did it tell you how to access your character sheet?”

  I stopped and stared stupidly at her. “I thought it was something they’d give me when I got to Heroes’ Landing.”

  Her eyes widened in wonder. “You’ve gotta be the … absolute … stupidest person I’ve ever met on this road. Didn’t you wonder why everyone kept saying, It’s all up here? Because it is, you dolt!”

  In addition to being pretty, as well as a killer and a thief, the woman was sort of a busybody. She was also right: I had been stupid. Clearly my own research hadn’t scratched the surface.

  “So what do I do? Do they have orientations in the city?”

  “No,” she said. “But you can read the game manual. It hasn’t been updated in over a thousand years, though.”

  I smiled politely. “Well, I’m sure that—”

  “No, seriously,” she said, and her face took on a glazed expression. “One thousand … four hundred and … twenty-seven years. To be precise. If you’d gone to the orientation, you’d know about the time dilation. They didn’t talk about it in those forums you visited? Did you only look at the cool weapons and flying mounts and stuff? The skin frame prize?”

  “Could you just tell me what time dilation is?” I said tiredly. “And the character sheet thing? And anything else you can think of?”

  “We’re running on the world’s fastest computer, right?”

  I suddenly realized where she was going with this.

  “Ah, the clock speed,” I said. “Q4 runs at a billion-trillion cycles a second. A day in the world would be a hundred quadrillion years here.”

  The woman nodded. “They clock it down quite a bit. More like a year there is a hundred here. They do it so people can come to the game, win the skin frame, then get home for their grandkids’ graduations. Truth is, Everlife does it to rule out easy communication with the outside. Hard to have a conversation if we gotta wait ten hours between messages.”

  Thinking of Cipher, I said, “But it still happens, right? Outside communication?”

  “No,” she said, “it doesn’t. People say they were gonna add it, but the politicians worried we’d get rights and vote against them. They gave us just enough time dilation to monitor events in the game, and that’s it. Doesn’t bother me. I don’t like anyone out there anyway … and not a whole lot of people in here, come to think of it.”

  Either this woman was lying or she was simply mistaken. Cipher had communicated with me twice now.

  But had he? Really?

  My new reality rocked as the full implication of her words settled in. That son of a bitch … If he couldn’t communicate out, then it was all an elaborate lie. A hoax to trick me into … but wait, no. He’d spoken to me in the middle there, during the transference. Surely no one could hack into the middle of such a procedure. Even if he could, rather than encourage me to continue doing what I was already doing—and had no way of stopping—more likely he would have taunted me. A little nya-nya-nya to rub it in. Otherwise, what was the point?

  Whoever this woman was, she might have been right about the no-contact rule in the broadest sense. But it clearly didn’t apply to Cipher.

  I held out my hand. “If we’re going to travel together, my name’s Ethan. Ethan Crane.”

  “Magda,” she said, shaking it reluctantly. “Just Magda. Quit staring at my lips.”

  I nodded politely and looked away.

  Chapter Six

  With Magda’s help, I learned several important things very quickly. My character sheet was lurking in my mind at all times, just out of sight. Unlike my old smart lenses, which responded to tones, blinks, clicks, and nods, I could bring it up simply by thinking about it.

  Player Name: Ethan Crane

  Player Level: 0

  Next level: 0/1050

  Species: Human

  Age: 25

  Classes: No class

  Health Points: 10

  Current Health: 10

  Health Regeneration: 10/hour

  Armor: 1/1

  Avoidance: .01%

  Gold: 0

  Unused Class Points: 0

  Unused Skill Points: 0

  Unused Stat Points: 0

  Class Points: 0

  Stat Points: 0

  Lives: Infinite

  MAJOR ATTRIBUTES: Strength: 1, Agility: 1, Vitality: 1, Intelligence: 1, Comeliness: 1

  RESISTANCES: Poison: 1, Fire: 1, Cold: 1, Acid: 1, Magic: 1, Mind Control: 1, Pain: 1

  PERKS (None)

  ACTIVE EFFECTS (None)

  WEAPON SKILLS: Melee: 1, Ranged: 1, Hand-to-hand: 1

  CLASS ABILITIES (None)

  …

  The “sheet” had a lot more than that: Residences, Minor Attributes, Locations Found, Minions, Mounts, Alliances, Guilds, Maps, Status Log, Combat Log…

  I looked at some of the minor attributes and stopped at Languages.

  “Hero?” I said. “That’s actually my language?”

  Magda laughed. “That’s what you are now: a hero. Bye-bye English and French, hello one-size-fits-all. It’s better this way, trust me.”

  That made no sense. You had to do something to be a hero. It wasn’t like being Japanese or Greek. But, then, the game was called Heroes of Mythian. Everything was probably hero this and hero that.

  I thought carefully through a grammatical sentence, focusing on every word…

  “I feel like I’m speaking English,” I said. “This is me saying English words. See?”

  Magda said, “And this is me speaking Russian. You understand it as English, and I understand it as Russian.”

  Perfect universal translation had been around a long time, but here they’d managed to integrate it with our minds. The Everlife engineers had really outdone themselves.

  “It’s all up here, huh?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Anyway, when we get to town, go to the inn across from the gates. Walk in and ask for a room.”

  “But you took my money!”

  Magda shook her head impatiently. “They have to let you in, you big baby. Any inn with a blue candle in the window has to. They’re all basically the same instance. If you’d gone to the orientation, you’d know this. Do you even know how to access the game manual? There’s a tab on your character sheet, third page.”

  Something about all this made me want to scream. Being murdered twice, having my personality destroyed and reconstructed by sadists … And now
there was a character sheet stuck in my head! With the worst stats ever, apparently. How the hell was I supposed reach my wife with a 1 in everything? They couldn’t be real numbers, because a 1 in intelligence seemed pretty dumb. I didn’t feel dumb…

  Ah, but if you’re a moron, how would you know?

  Cipher said I needed to be level 25 before his friend would meet me. After that, I assumed we’d go to Ward 2. But how long would that take? I’d rarely played games in life, but I understood the concept: kill stuff, get powerful, kill harder stuff, get more powerful.

  I glanced at Magda. Her eyes were glazed over and her mouth worked slowly as if reading.

  “How long have you been here?” I said.

  “One second,” she said before turning to me. “I was short of gold, okay? Easy money. You should try it when you gain a few levels. Everyone does it.”

  I shook my head. “Not here. I mean Mythian. Surely not a thousand years.”

  Magda laughed. “More like a hundred and twenty, game time. Came here with my worthless husband, but the dummy wanted to win. He was a big gamer in his day and he did okay here. Made it as far as Ward 3. I begged him to give up…” She stopped and glared at me. “No more questions. Got it?”

  I nodded hurriedly and we started walking again. If what I’d read about the 3rd and 4th wards was true, this woman’s husband might actually be dead.

  The city gates were about half a mile out, and the landscape had begun to change a little. Where before there were grassy hills and stands of trees, now the grass and trees were gone and the earth looked exposed and chewed-up by the passage of a great many feet.

  Magda heaved a heavy sigh. “The game is centered around quests. You know that much, right?”

  I nodded to keep her talking.

  “Well one of them involves joining an army and heading out to fight the goblins in the Swaze Pit. It’s low level, but higher than Under Town. They meet here once a month after the goblins pop and then march out. Good points and a chance at a rare perk. You should join them.”

  “What do you mean pop?” I said.

  “After you kill them,” she said, “you have to wait for them to come back. Like in farming. Some people say respawn. Others say pop, or repop.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Magda reached inside her vest, grabbed my hand, then put a gold piece into it. “Your cut—not a favor. Got it?”

  “My cut for letting you kill me?”

  “There are other ways to be cut.”

  I didn’t want to die and start over again, so I put the coin in my pouch and enjoyed the view as we walked.

  From afar, the fantasy city matched the marketing material. Up close, it was stunning. Breathtaking, really. Some of those towers nearly reached the clouds. Between them flew magic carpets, dragons, and other creatures with people riding them.

  When we walked through the ironbound gates, I half-expected to see guards like in movies about the Middle Ages, but there weren’t any. And why would there be? Once I got past the gates, I couldn’t be killed. Something to do with it being off-limits or … there was a word they’d used. All the wards had cities in them, and every city was a—

  The world pulsed with a comforting blue light, and a message appeared as the announcer’s voice spoke:

  “EXPLORATION AWARD: Heroes’ Landing, 100 EXPERIENCE POINTS.”

  “LOCATION FLAGS: SANCTUARY.”

  “BINDING UPDATE: Heroes’ Square, Heroes’ Landing.”

  Chapter Seven

  “How do you turn the voice off?” I said.

  Magda didn’t reply.

  I dismissed the visual with a thought. On a hunch, I checked the status log in my character sheet. Sure enough, there were dated entries with the same messages. Also, my Next Level amount had dropped from 1050 to 950.

  “It is sort of amazing,” I said to her, staring dubiously at the spectacle of towers and dazzling spans of light. “Though I wonder at all the talent lost on stuff like this rather than the problems we still have. Why not build a city like this in the real world? You know?”

  I lowered my gaze and found myself alone. Farther along, Magda’s tall, lithe form marched steadily away down a broad thoroughfare crowded with every manner of people, not all of them human. There were fantasy elves, dwarves, and other humanoids I had no name for.

  I sniffed the air. “Oh, that smells good…”

  Something heavenly wafted my way through the streets, and my mouth started watering. Fresh-baked bread, and it was coming from a simple stone building across the road. It had one window, behind which flickered a candle with a brilliant blue flame.

  Unlike a real medieval city, a few of which I’d visited in my younger days while studying abroad, the city street was wide and evenly constructed. Looking up again, I wondered what those towers were like inside, and who lived in them. Then, seeing the dragons and griffins flapping around, I wondered if the creatures ever had to poop.

  “Out of the way, noob!” someone shouted.

  I’d been standing in the road grinning like an idiot. Quickly, I hurried across the street and out of traffic—most of which was on foot, or in coaches pulled by horses.

  I hated that I was so excited, but I hadn’t had this much fun in years—even on trips with Melody. With what little money we’d made from her gaming and my teaching job, we’d only rarely gone on vacations.

  There was a sign over the doors: “The Slaughtered Noob.” Beneath it hung a picture of a man in a tunic like mine, with a pouch hanging around his neck. A spear pierced the man’s chest, pinning him to the wall of the establishment. Just to the right of the door was another sign reading, “No Minions!”

  I felt a strange sense of shyness—as if walking in would draw all eyes to me. I tamped it down and pushed through the unlocked doors into an old-fashioned bar with rustic tables and chairs. The walls were decorated with threadbare tapestries of terrified adventurers in tunics being chased by monsters. Runic tracery in the ceiling provided a faintly yellow illumination.

  First date lighting, Melody would have called it.

  From what I could see, it was needed. Unlike the heroes on the streets, with faces and bodies every bit as beautiful as Magda’s, the twenty or so human men and women sitting at the tables ranged from plain to downright unattractive.

  On a hunch, I opened my character sheet looking for an explanation and found it on the first page. There was a stat below the more obviously useful ones called Comeliness. Mine had a 1 next to it. Which, I figured, meant I was 1 attractive. Everlife had completely turned the eye of the beholder rule on its head.

  Behind the long and mostly empty bar stood a well-muscled man in short sleeves. He was massive—about seven feet tall. He had a big black beard and his arms were covered in runic tattoos that glowed in eerie tandem with the magical lighting. Tattoos had gone out of fashion long before my time, and I forced myself not to stare.

  Despite the tattoos, for the first time since coming to this strange world I felt completely at home—because I was back in a bar.

  “Howdy-do, Mister,” I said after picking a stool.

  “Howdy-do yourself, Ethan,” the man said, eyes shining with amusement.

  My thoughts turned to Cipher and his mid-transference message. I was supposed to meet his friend … associate … whatever. Was this Jaddow?

  In a deep, booming voice, the man said, “I’m Bernard, the innkeeper. Don’t worry, I know everyone’s name. One of my perks! I’m also not a hero, like you, but I’ll pass a Turing test faster than you can say I think therefore I am. Just so we’re clear. What’ll ya have?”

  I fingered my neck pouch. Magda had given me a single gold piece, but I didn’t want to waste it on booze if it meant sleeping on the streets.

  Bernard rolled his eyes, but his manner was kindly. “Everything’s free at The Slaughtered Noob. Even the rooms, which are magical. If we have fifty people, we have fifty rooms. Isn’t magic fun? If you like magic, you should choose wizardry!”r />
  I nodded. “Uh, yeah. Free’s great. So what do you have? Food, I mean.”

  “You’re in luck! Bread, beef, water, and lukewarm ale. Just the basics. You want better? Get a sword, kill a dragon, and you’ll live like a king. Now, if you’re not going to order anything, you must be curious about the marvelous history of Heroes’ Landing. Many years ago—”

  “Actually,” I said, holding up a finger, “I was just wondering: if I live forever, why do I need to eat?”

  Frowning at the interruption, Bernard said, “You don’t need to eat. Or sleep. Or use the bathroom, or shower, or pretty much any of that Earth stuff. You can get hungry if you want, and if you want to sleep you can do that too. It’s just as enjoyable here as your old life, or so they say. That said”—he speared me with a thick finger—“no sleeping in the common room. Bad manners! You want to sleep, you get a room.” His voice took on a dramatic tone. “Now, as I was saying: many years ago, long after the fall of that ancient race called the Taliathe, who created the elves and dwarves and brought magic to this land called Mythian, the first heroes arrived on magical ships from a faraway world. They stopped here and—”

  “Actually,” I said, “I’m not really into the fantasy folklore stuff. Maybe later. Right now, I’ll have an ale—if it really is free … and, um, if you don’t have anything stronger.”

  Bernard sighed loudly with telegraphed annoyance. “Stronger? Hold on while I check.” He waited there, staring at me a full three seconds. “Nope, nothing stronger. I’ll get your free ale.”

  The innkeeper stomped away muttering under his breath and returned a minute later with a metal flagon of flat brown liquid. Tentatively, I took a sip.

  “Hey,” I said, looking up. “This is good.”

  Bernard said, “Best damned ale in the four wards. Even the fancy taverns can’t compete with it. But it takes a lot to get you drunk. And once you start putting points in vitality, you can drink it all day and feel fine. But what do you expect for free?”

  Enjoying what had to be the best ale I’d ever had, I nodded as if listening and took another sip.