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

by John L. Monk

  YOU HAVE ADVANCED TO LEVEL 2!

  +5 Stat Points

  +1 Class Point

  +1 Skill Point

  YOU HAVE ADVANCED TO LEVEL 3!

  +5 Stat Points

  +1 Class Point

  +1 Skill Point

  Rita and I gazed at each other in wonder.

  “Did you just level twice?” she said.

  “Yeah. Wait a second, I think I…”

  Holding out my hand, I wished for an apple—and an apple magically appeared on my palm. Because I was showing off, I took a small bite and smiled. Red and delicious, as promised.

  Rita squealed with joy. “Wait, check this out!” She held out her hand, stared intently at it, and a yellow pear appeared. She took a bite of hers, too.

  I shook my head. “Too bad we can’t trade. Melody loves pears.”

  The words had just slipped out. I hadn’t meant to share anything about my wife with anyone. Not until I figured out whether I was here on a lie or if Cipher’s story was on the level.

  Rita cocked her head. “Who’s Melody?”

  I opened my mouth to say something—possibly the truth—but then Bernard appeared with a big smile and a hearty laugh, carrying two huge flagons of delicious noob ale.

  “Look at you two!” he shouted in a voice like thunder. “Victors! Heroes of Mythian, indeed! And by the looks of it, wealthy beyond your wildest dreams. Why, just look at those Initiate’s Robes, Ethan. And you went and made sorcerer! Very hard to kill at high levels, what with their various aspects and all. I must know how you did it. Wait, no, don’t tell me…” He closed his eyes in concentration. “Aha, very interesting. You found a grimoire on your very first dungeon crawl. That’s pretty rare, you know … and all that gold, my my … and bonus perks too? Very lucky! Too lucky? Who can say?”

  He was talking again before I could reply, marveling over Rita’s “kung-fu headband” and asking if she wanted to buy monk training—only a gold, and he could do it immediately. And did she know what she wanted to do with all her stat points?

  While they talked, I strayed into the common area—cleared of tables and chairs—and flinched when the runes overhead pulsed with light. Where previously they were a dim yellowish hue, they now dazzled through the spectrum to dance music that kicked in from a hidden source. Modern music, and it was loud.

  About ten people from the other night stood from behind the bar and came around. They clapped and shouted “Surprise!” and “Congratulations!” and other celebratory things while pounding me on the back and shaking my hand.

  I quickly learned Bernard had set up this burgeoning shindig in honor of our victory, which he’d learned of the moment it happened.

  Most of the parties I’d attended had been before I was married. I’d always hated them. Never knew what to do. Usually, I’d find some other reject and chat them up so they wouldn’t feel as lonely or uncomfortable as I did. Today, at least, loneliness wasn’t a problem. Everyone wanted to talk to us. Mainly to get tips about Under Town for when they decided to try it. Rita did better with the tips. Mostly I smiled and shook hands and tried to be polite.

  Squinting at the funky lighting, I wondered at Bernard’s break with the medieval theme. Where were the lutes and mandolins? Did the designers realize the runic lighting system had been subverted to pulse and strobe like in a nightclub? My guess was they did or it wouldn’t be here. Clearly, the rustic realism advertised on Earth began and ended at the whims of the retirees Everlife catered to.

  In retrospect, it didn’t seem as if Rita and I—and Jim, nowhere to be seen—had done very much to deserve a party. All we’d done was wander into the semblance of danger and then hit stuff until it went poof. Not that I minded. I was here to get “powerful.” Once I did that, I could go to Ward 2. Then the Ethan that wasn’t me and the Melody that wasn’t her could try to resume our life together.

  Someone handed me a flagon and shouted, “Farty hearty!”

  I didn’t want it. I wanted whiskey on ice and a quiet place to drink it. And how was it that in a room full of septuagenarians—five to six years my senior—I was the old fogy?

  So be an old fogy then. What do you care?

  Taking my own advice, I raised the flagon in polite salute, waited for the reveler to go away, and then slipped upstairs to bed.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Upon waking, I could tell eight hours had passed via the clock in my character sheet. It had an alarm I could set to wake me at specific times, though it defaulted to eight hours. Never had I felt less human.

  There were no creaks in the ancient timbers of my room. Interestingly, the inn had about ten rooms total, despite the thirty or so people I’d seen at the party. A good deal of time/space trickery was clearly at work here.

  The air smelled clean with a hint of cedar. Not a speck of dust on the dresser or nightstand. So long as the door was shut, I enjoyed silence so complete that my room might have been a tomb.

  I opened the little drawer in the nightstand and blinked in surprise to see a book. No, not a Bible. It was a paperback version of the game manual done up to look weathered and ancient like a tome of ancient lore. I thumbed through it and noted the perfect similarity to the manual in my head. Same fonts, spacing, pictures—everything.

  It’s all up here…

  In a sort of science experiment, I held the book open so a few of the pages stuck up. Then I held my hand an inch away from one of them and summoned an apple. The apple appeared, but the page didn’t move. Either the air had been replaced by the apple, or the game’s physics considered such details trivial and hardly worth addressing.

  Would my new apple rot as the days passed, or stay eternally red and delicious? If I summoned one a day for a hundred thousand game years, just how big would that pile get? If I summoned a thousand a day, would they fill up the whole world? If that happened, would Everlife’s employees have to step in and clean it up?

  My robes from the night before seemed cleaner, and I didn’t feel uncomfortable in the slightest for having slept in them. No aches, pains, or random itches in need of a scratch. Being human normally came with a degree of casual discomfort.

  There was a window in my room with perfectly smooth glass panes that swung out to let in the morning air, which smelled faintly of flowers. The view looked out on an empty alley with a low stone building on the other side. The sky overhead was brilliant cobalt blue with several towers piercing the sky. I was captivated by the sight of people astride fantastical creatures flying from place to place. What could they possibly be doing up there? Getting “powerful?” Looking for parties like the one Bernard had thrown?

  I clomped downstairs to the common area, every bit as crowded as the night before. A few new faces, and something else: music I recognized from Earth, though not the modern stuff from the party. This was piano from when there used to be pianos, played by Count Basie when there used to be Count Basie. I tracked the sound to four shimmering runes high up in the corners. They were blue and differently shaped than the yellowish light runes.

  Bernard stood behind the bar polishing a metal tankard. He wore the same pleasant smile that greeted me two days ago. For all intents and purposes, today was two days ago, except with magic apples.

  “Ethan Crane!” he shouted heartily and called me over. “Slayer of Creepers! Dungeon crawler! Sorcerer of the first order! What sayeth thou on this fine Mythian morning? Going back to Under Town? Plan to take on the horrible spiders?” He covered his mouth briefly in surprise. “Whoops, spoiler alert, hah hah! That’s okay, though, you saw the webs. But that other tunnel? My, my … Anything could be down there.” He chuckled kindly and stared into his tankard. The tankard shimmered and filled suddenly with brown and bubbly ale, but not for long. He drank it down in a single gulp. After a stupendous burp, he laughed and returned to his polishing.

  “How do I get to Ward 2?” I said.

  I half expected the music to screech to a stop and a glass to slip from someone’s hand, s
hattering on the floor as all eyes turned to me. Instead, Bernard appeared not to have heard me.

  “Hey,” I said in a raised voice. “Can you please tell me how to reach Ward 2?”

  “Why the devil would you want to go there?” he said, still polishing.

  “That’s the game, right?” I said, unwilling to talk about Melody, especially to a lucid. “Ward 1, 2, 3, and 4. Then I’m a robot and back in the real world. You’re part of the game. Rita said you’re a tutorial lucid, so you have to help me.”

  Bernard nodded slowly, noncommittally. “Well yes, in theory, I suppose. But Ward 1 is so much nicer than those other places. More people, for one. Less dangerous for another. Why, did you know that if you die in Ward 2 a thousand times, it’s permanent? Yes, I’m afraid it’s true. Which is why almost everyone who comes to Mythian eventually ends up living full-time right here”—he rapped his knuckles solidly on the bar top—“where it’s safe. Oh sure, they occasionally dip a toe over into 2. No big risk in that. What’s a few deaths if it means you can get one of the cooler perks or non-default spells—or those flying mounts? And better weapons. But they always come back here, every time. And almost nobody ventures into Ward 3. That’s tantamount to a death wish if there ever was one.”

  He gave a little shudder, filled his tankard again, drank again, burped again, and again resumed his polishing.

  Dammit…

  “Fine!” I said loudly. “Just dandy. But if I wanted to go to Ward 2, how would I get there?”

  This time the music did stop. The people at the various tables turned and looked at me, though nobody dropped any glasses.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “You’re absolutely determined in this folly?” Bernard said, setting down the tankard and fixing me with a steady gaze.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I love folly. Folly’s my favorite. Now how do I get there?”

  “Open your map.”

  I mentally opened my map from yesterday.

  “Not that one,” he said impatiently. “Your world map. Look under Maps, for the love of…”

  Right above the map from yesterday was a World Map tab. I mentally clicked it and saw four squares one on top of the other connected by bridges. There was water between them as described in my initial research. Ward 1 was almost completely grayed-out except for a little dot representing Heroes’ Landing in the bottom third of the map.

  “Very simply,” Bernard said, “you proceed in a straight line north to the bridge through all that gray in the middle there. Less simply: you’ll die before you take your first five steps out of the city. Well, no, not literally. The hill giants will pull you apart shortly after the city disappears behind you.” He shrugged. “They’re hill giants, that’s what they do.”

  I waited for him to continue, then realized he was done.

  “That’s it?”

  He nodded. “Pretty much, yes. Oh, there’s a guardian you have to fight on the bridge. It’ll kill you with a casual sigh. You’re still too wimpy, Ethan.”

  “Is there at least a road to this bridge?”

  Bernard threw back his head and laughed. “A road! The lad wants a road … Ethan Crane, you seem very nice, and I want to help you, truly. There are plenty of roads. But none of them go straight to Ward 2. They go west and east and a little north, sure. Mostly, they end in swamps and impossibly high mountain ranges—or impenetrable deserts with winds so fierce it strips the flesh from your bones. What roads you encounter along the way … why … some take you to regions you’ll never find on any map in the four wards. Only a fool would travel so far, and only a grandmaster among adventurers could hope to return. Ah, but with their sanity intact? That is the question.”

  I waited for more but realized he was done.

  Bernard was gloom, doom, and jolly mixed together like toothpaste and orange juice. Well, I didn’t need toothpaste anymore. Or juice. I needed to find Melody, and I couldn’t get bogged down with skeletons and spiders or ancient what’s-its from a make-believe past. I was going to Ward 2 in a straight line. I’d figure things out along the way and eventually make it. I was immortal, right? Being murdered twice by Magda had proven that. If and when I died, I’d get up and try again—each time slightly differently, until I figured out the right path to get me past whatever had killed me. Painful, sure, but doable.

  “Oh, good lord,” Bernard said, shaking his head in disgust. “You haven’t listened to a thing I’ve said, have you?”

  “Every word. But I’m leaving.”

  I turned to leave, oblivious to the stares, and found Rita standing just inside the entrance. She looked troubled, confused … and hurt?

  “So you’re just going?” she said.

  Though I couldn’t care less about Bernard or my fellow noobs, I really did like Rita.

  “Listen,” I said, “there’s something important I have to do. I got carried away yesterday. Thrill of the … whatever. I mean, it was sort of fun winning gold like that, killing skeletons and fighting whatever that vine thing was. But this just isn’t me.” I gestured around us. “None of it. Sorry. I need to go now, so…”

  When I moved to pass her, Rita said, “Who’s Melody?”

  Feeling like a jerk for some reason, I paused and leaned closer so no one could hear. “She’s my wife. She’s waiting for me in Ward 2. It’s hard to explain.”

  Considering what we’d gone through, I wanted to hug her or shake her hand goodbye. Instead, I chucked her on the shoulder.

  “Good luck,” I said. “It was nice meeting you.”

  Fresh out of embarrassing platitudes, I left.

  The city map showed several exits, but the closest was the western gate directly across from The Slaughtered Noob. This led to the road I’d arrived on, where the newest retirees entered the world, and where I’d run into Magda. I wondered what the clueless developers were thinking in starting us there, rather than the safety of the city. It was almost as if they wanted us to be robbed and killed fresh out of the gate.

  Crossing the threshold, I received a notification saying my location had changed from Heroes’ Landing to the road’s official name: Heroes’ Approach. The sanctuary flag I’d enjoyed in the city was gone, replaced by PVP/PVE, which the manual’s glossary said stood for “player versus player/player versus environment.” I could be murdered by monsters now, or by another player and looted again.

  After my arrival in the city, my “Binding Location” had automatically switched to Martyr’s Square, which was somewhere in the city. If I died, I’d appear there and not on Heroes’ Approach. The manual said I’d have to bind myself anywhere else on my own.

  Looking out across the chewed-up earth, where low-level gamers gathered once a month for a “goblin raid,” I wondered if maybe I’d been too hasty in declaring out loud my destination. If I turned back now, I’d be a laughingstock.

  As I picked my way around the towering city walls, I noticed hoof prints in the dried mud and wondered if it ever rained in this world, or if this was simply ambiance. I also wondered how I could get my hands on a horse.

  You don’t even know how to ride.

  Once or twice, I glanced back the way I’d come, half-hoping to see Rita following out of concern for my well-being. She was clever, and would have had great ideas for overcoming the … what did Bernard call them? Hill giants?

  I shook my head in disgust. How the heck was I going to get past one giant, let alone plural giants?

  “Ethan, you idiot,” I said, stopping in my tracks. “Didn’t even ask Bernard about your stats, did you?”

  At level 3, I’d already used 1 stat point for strength. That left 14 stat points, 3 skill points, and 2 class points. The only class I could choose from was sorcerer, so I applied both class points there.

  Now I just had to figure out what to do with my skill points.

  Chapter Twenty

  The path to power appeared to be a slow one, as I could only choose one spell per skill point. The Spellbook tab of my character sheet h
ad a massively long list of spells to choose from, only a handful of which weren’t grayed-out:

  Zap

  Weak Shield

  Sprint

  Flame Bullet

  Disappear

  Choking Cloud

  Weak Illusion

  Tangle

  As my inner cursor moved from spell to spell, I tried to imagine which would be the most useful. Flame Bullet definitely looked interesting: a flaming bullet that cost 30 mana to use and dealt 9-20 points of damage. A decent improvement over Zap, which only caused 1-6 damage, used 10 mana, and required that I physically touch my enemy.

  Disappear would make me vanish for five minutes, so long as I stood in one spot for the duration.

  Choking Cloud would briefly incapacitate a group of enemies in a fit of coughing.

  Weak Illusion had a variable mana consumption based on the difficulty of the illusion attempted, though I wondered how the game knew what was hard and what was easy.

  Tangle would instantly bind the feet of my opponents, wrapping them in a web of magical string and tripping them if they tried to move.

  For now, I held off picking a spell. If needed, I’d quickly choose one and use it. I did add 10 points to intelligence and 4 to vitality, giving me 100 extra mana and 40 more health. My mana regeneration and health regeneration increased too, but only by 5 per stat point.

  Moving north along the city wall, I brought up the game manual and dialed down the opacity so I could read and walk at the same time. Much of it was sort of interesting. The only way I could raise my resistances to fire, cold, acid, and magic was by using magic items and spells. Resistance to poison was keyed off vitality, and I already knew about intelligence and mind control.

  Something else I learned: at level 10, “Bernard, the Innkeeper” would change my appearance or sex for free. After level 10, those sorts of modifications cost money. He couldn’t make me better looking, though. My physical attractiveness would only go up with my comeliness score, which took the same points as useful stats like vitality and intelligence.