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

by John L. Monk

  He handed me another ring, copper in color. When I slipped it on, my health points jumped by 100 and I received a notification:

  YOU HAVE GAINED A NEW PERK: TROLL SKIN

  Health points now regenerate twice as fast (except for fire damage, which suffers a 50% penalty). Oh, and you’re now twice as ugly!

  William held up a hand mirror so I could see myself, and I flinched. My features were still the same, but the skin looked melted. I quickly pulled the ring off and my face returned to normal.

  Another notification:

  YOU HAVE LOST A PERK: TROLL SKIN

  “Maybe don’t wear it in public,” William suggested.

  I frowned at the thought of Melody seeing me with my face melted.

  “Good tip,” I said. “I’ll take both rings. What’s all this other stuff?”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Unlike Flame Bullet, Ice Bullet wasn’t in the default spell list for sorcerers, and it caused higher damage to fire creatures. William suggested it would have made Under Town too easy—which is why I immediately picked it from his little box of scrolls. To acquire it, all I had to do was stare intently at the swirly nonsense writing for ten seconds and wait.

  Ten seconds later, the scroll caught magical fire and disappeared, and along with it 200 gold. At William’s advice, I purchased three more non-standard spells for later levels.

  “Another question, if you don’t mind,” I said before leaving.

  “Shoot,” he said.

  “Why did my sanctuary flag drop when I came in?”

  William sighed. “One of the problems with owning my own business is I have to play cat and mouse with thieves. No flag makes the game more fun.”

  When he said that, he put little air quotes around the word fun.

  “Ah,” I said. “Good to know. Thanks again.”

  “You bet. Come back soon!”

  I nodded and left.

  It was almost dark now, but I didn’t feel like turning in. Besides, I didn’t have anywhere to stay and didn’t care to go looking. Certainly I couldn’t go back to The Slaughtered Noob. Everyone there thought I was heading to Ward 2. I wasn’t a proud fool, but I did have my pride.

  I chose a direction that didn’t seem too busy and started walking. I found myself admiring the sheer beauty of the city. The towers overhead were lit from unknown sources in beautiful hues. The flying traffic had actually increased, and I felt strangely envious of these busy people.

  Down on the ground, the scenery was no less lovely, with tree-covered boulevards, beautiful garden squares every block or so, and statues everywhere—including a plaque commemorating a player who’d beaten the game. The engraving proclaimed, “If Kraggar Can Do It, You Can Too!”

  In time, I found myself at the entrance to a familiar alley without consciously trying. I took it as a sign. With no real need to sleep anymore, now was as good a time as any to try out my spells and begin the “grind” to Ward 2.

  The unicorn fountain stood exactly as I remembered it, the water pumping steadily away. If I dug it up and looked, I wondered if I’d find the source. Probably more runes. Everything technology provided in life—sound, lighting, burglary protection—was done with runes now. In an ironic twist, the Everlife designers had actually made magic seem less magical.

  “Quit being so negative,” I said.

  Talking to myself was something I’d started after Melody’s death. It helped me focus, but sometimes it drew odd looks from strangers.

  “And quit stalling,” I said.

  Though I didn’t have Rita to help with the fountain, the flagstones still opened when I pulled the unicorn’s horn. With no guardrails to grab hold of, I descended carefully and lit the runes when I reached the bottom.

  I got a surprise when I arrived at the four-way split. The tunnel with the vines and skeletons looked the same as we’d first found it, and the ground was no longer strewn with rubble. My guess was I could go back and fight the adventure all over again and maybe get different loot. Experience points, too. Probably not for the initial quest to scout out Under Town, but certainly for killing the monsters.

  “The road less traveled by,” I whispered, gazing at the heated tunnel. William said there were fire lizards that way.

  Then there was the other tunnel…

  I didn’t hate spiders, but they were sort of intimidating to look at. And in a place like this, with talking skeletons and vine creatures, I knew they’d be terrifying. But fire lizards? The fire part was a concern, but lizards were fun.

  Mind made up, I chose the lizard tunnel and started walking. The walls changed from stone blocks to natural stone, with stalactites, stalagmites, and pools of water I had to navigate past. It grew darker as I left the runes behind, and I wondered how long until the game conveniently provided the glowing moss replacement. It did me one better—a faint orange light radiated from somewhere ahead.

  “Pew,” I said and pinched my nose at the smell of rotten eggs. The air had turned foul and sulfurous, and the stench intensified with every step.

  With each bend, the light grew brighter. Soon, the tunnel opened high over a vast cavern with a treacherous switchback leading down to the cavern floor. Dispersed evenly throughout were glowing pools of orange lava and yellow stalagmites.

  The air smelled positively poisonous now, and the temperature had grown quite hot—easily over a hundred degrees. Beneath my robes, I sweated profusely. Out of curiosity, I took off my +5 resistances ring … and my skin felt like it was on fire.

  Like sitting in a sauna with a broken thermostat, my eyes quickly dried and stung from the heat. When I put the ring back on, the temperature dipped back into regions survivable. I would have loved to take off my magic robes, but knew I’d need their +5 intelligence boost.

  I looked through my spell list for anything else that could boost my chances down here … and smiled.

  “Bingo,” I said, and chose my next spell.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The manual said to cast a spell I had to either say the spell name or willfully think it in an act called “silent-casting.”

  Gathering my will, I thought: Weak Shield!

  My first spell ever.

  How can I describe the feeling? A little like winning a contest. Or that very brief moment between your fourth and fifth drink where your head is still clear but you feel great and nothing much matters. A little like that, but times ten.

  The feeling disappeared a second later. I wanted to chase the high with a hundred Ice Bullets right into the air, just to feel that way again. Such a strange design choice, linking “magic” to my pleasure centers … subroutines … whatever they were called.

  Beyond being my own personal morphine drip, the world had acquired a blue-tinged overlay.

  A quick check of my character sheet showed, per the description, the spell cost no mana. After triggering, it would consume 8 mana and block 20 points of damage. I wondered what would happen if my mana dropped below 8. Would the spell disappear? Certainly it wouldn’t block any damage…

  With a sense that I should have tested all this under safer conditions, I started down the switchback.

  My footsteps sounded hollow underfoot as if walking on a thin shell of lava mere inches above a sea of oozing death. On a hunch, I reached down and touched a finger to the smooth, rippled floor and then snatched it back in pain. The ground was frying-pan hot and I was the bacon.

  The stalagmites I’d seen from the entrance above were actually piles of yellow sulfur towering as high as thirty feet, creating a forest of sorts within which anything could hide. I strained my ears listening for the salamanders William had mentioned, but all I heard was the constant hissing and burbling of subterranean vents.

  “Hello?” I called out.

  The stalagmites scattered the sound enough to prevent echoes. A good thing, I thought belatedly. If I couldn’t hear the salamanders, they couldn’t hear me.

  A minute later, I rounded a particularly larg
e stalagmite and came across a skeleton. Inanimate, thank goodness. The bones had been scattered around as if by some animal. Bits of clothing and a few gold pieces lay here and there, but I didn’t bother picking them up.

  I found a bubbling pool of water along the way, fed from an underground stream no doubt. Very clear. No, I didn’t stick my finger in it, but I couldn’t help wondering if it tasted eggy. Melody and I had visited a park once with a hot spring. They’d had a pool we could sip from if we wanted to. The tour guide claimed the water was imbued with restorative powers, so we’d tried it. Very eggy.

  Done with the pool, I turned around to explore in another direction … and found a creature about ten feet away squatting near a sulfur stalagmite. About the size of a Komodo dragon, it also looked like a Komodo dragon, except that its skin was patterned in brilliant orange and black stripes.

  “Hey there, fella,” I said, smiling to show how friendly I was.

  I considered blasting it with an Ice Bullet but held off. It was just an animal, after all, or at least it seemed to be. Not one of those evil skeletons. If I could scoot by without a tussle and find some unguarded treasure, I could buy even better gear and go kill those hill giants Bernard had mentioned.

  The salamander took a hesitant step forward and flicked its long pink tongue in the air as if tasting it. That gave me an idea.

  “Feeling hungry, fella?” I said and reached behind my back.

  Apple I thought, and an apple appeared. No magical surge of opioid happiness. Perks worked differently.

  “How about a juicy apple?” I said and slowly brought it around.

  The salamander crept forward almost gingerly, opened its mouth … and bathed me head-to-toe in a spray of living flame. I’m sure I screamed. I know I flailed about, lost my balance, and fell in the boiling pool of water. The water put out my burning body, at least.

  Mindless with agony, I scrambled from the pool and tried to run, and that’s when the thing leaped on me. Not through any skill of mine, the staff got lodged between me and the neck of the beast. Otherwise it would have bitten my head off. We struggled for about five seconds while I desperately tried to remember something … something … something that would help.

  “Ice Bullet!”

  The endorphin rush of magic was a welcome, if brief, balm to my fried skin. More welcoming was a loud bang and a chunk of ice blasting a hole through the thing’s mouth. It reeled in shock, then resumed snapping at me.

  “Ice Bullet! Ice Bullet! Ice Bullet!”

  Nothing happened. Then I remembered: I couldn’t cast it again for twenty seconds, per the spell description. A cooldown window, the manual had called it.

  Somehow I pulled it together enough to choose my third spell, using up the last of my three possible skill points.

  “Zap!”

  The creature yowled and jumped off, biting the air around it in confusion. A second later, it rounded on me again, growling and snapping. I swung my staff in a wide arc and it scooted back a little. I did it again and it barely flinched. The world pulsed blue, and a game notification told me a spell had come off of cooldown just as the salamander launched itself.

  Ice Bullet!

  The bullet cracked the creature’s head wide open, but its momentum knocked me down. Blood oozed from its wounds, scalding me in a sizzling-hot spray my ruined face couldn’t feel.

  A game notice appeared:

  ENEMY DEFEATED: Under Town Salamander, 400 EXPERIENCE POINTS

  The creature was almost too heavy for me to heave off, especially in my weakened state. My hoard of 170 health points had fallen to a mere 6. I worried it would keep dropping as shock set in. With luck, the game’s amazing realism didn’t extend that far because if I hit 0, I’d die.

  I could barely stand. My robes were blackened completely. I would have thought they were ruined but my character sheet still registered their +5 intelligence boost.

  Feeling like a human hotdog left on the grill too long, I lay down next to the dead salamander and did my best not to move too much.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  My lips and nose had been burned off—along with all those pesky nerve endings, thank goodness. The rest of me was an oozing scab of pulsating agony.

  About four minutes after checking my character sheet, I saw I’d gained a health point back. Now my health was 7 out of 170.

  Because of the troll ring, which healed fire damage at 50% the normal speed, my health regeneration was only 15 an hour. I dared not take it off, though, because it also gave me +100 health points. Removing it or my +5 vitality boots before healing to full would be suicide.

  My mana regenerated much quicker—a zippy 80 an hour. I’d cast two Ice Bullets for 30 mana each, one Zap for 10, and my Weak Shield had a delayed cost of 8. It absorbed 20 points of damage, and that’s what ultimately saved me from an actual fire-breathing monster.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” I tried saying. The words came out as a series of raspy groans. Very hard to articulate anything with scorched lungs and no lips.

  I considered sleeping through the healing process but didn’t want to get caught in the open. The scent of the dead creature’s body was sure to draw more of them.

  Gasping from the effort, I clambered to my feet and headed back the way I’d come as quietly as possible. Several times along the way, I heard a pattering sound from somewhere in the stalagmite forest. One time, I was sure I heard the same weird growl the salamander had issued, but nothing appeared. Then, just as I reached the path back up, I saw another of the damned lizards behind me, about twenty feet away. I would have missed it if I hadn’t been looking everywhere like a scared tourist. My health was 17 now, and I had plenty of mana, but no way would I try facing off again with one of the awful things.

  I ran.

  The nerves in my back and legs were more or less intact, but the skin was raw. Pain and fright had me screaming when the lizard blew up the area behind me with its fiery breath.

  Despite my previous damage, some feature of the Mythian reality allowed me to run, and I used every inch of my 2 strength points to get away.

  A minute later and I was in the tunnel. A few more, the antechamber, where I dropped to the cool stone floor gasping for breath. If the salamander followed I’d be eaten alive, but I didn’t care. Death would be a relief at this point.

  You could always give up…

  The manual had talked about something called giving up—something players did when faced with the possibility of torture. By willfully giving up, I’d return immediately to level 0, lose all skills, money, and possessions, and restart my life on Heroes’ Approach. It would be as if I’d come into the world a brand-new retiree.

  At my level, giving up was no big deal but for one thing: Rita said I’d lucked into a rare class. Sorcerer. She also said anything rare was an edge. I desperately needed every edge I could get if I hoped to reach my wife. So no, I couldn’t give up.

  You could take off the ring…

  If I took off my Troll Ring, I’d lose my +100 health point bonus. Presumably, that would kill me. A short walk back from Martyr’s Square and I could loot my corpse…

  No.

  Resolved to hold out, I crawled to a spot against one of the walls and leaned back. My skin was definitely regenerating now, causing me to itch like mad. An hour later, the itching morphed into the semblance of a hundred bee stings. Then a thousand. When it became millions, I gave up and tugged at the ring, but my hand was swollen and it wouldn’t come off.

  Before coming to Mythian, I hadn’t been much of a crier. I’d cried when my wife had died. Before that, I couldn’t remember. Well I was crying now, and for the second time in a day. Not from pain, but from shame. I’d survived and Melody hadn’t. Then I’d squandered my remaining years on booze and idleness while awaiting my turn.

  I’d been so blind … She’d known how I felt about Everlife and had gotten the implant in secret. If nothing else, I hated that my ignorance had caused her to lie to me
. I’d been wrong about Everlife. It might not have been biological life, but it wasn’t oblivion by a long shot.

  My suffering was constant and unbearable, and I tried to put myself to sleep. This was impossible because the pain kept waking me. I very nearly gave up. Then I thought of Melody, sleeping forever, waiting for me…

  Somehow the pain got worse. In desperation, I cast Zap whenever it came off cooldown, and whenever I regenerated 10 mana. The endorphin surge of magic-usage helped, but it also highlighted my pain when the effect faded—akin to drinking water after eating something spicy.

  When my health reached 101, I yanked the Troll Ring off to heal at the normal regeneration rate—and screamed. Yes, I was alive without it, but I was sitting at 1 health point. The game assumed such an incredible drop in health meant I should hurt even more.

  Thrashing in mindless agony, I dropped the ring and had to scramble for it with my ruined hands. I tried to put it back on, but they wouldn’t stop shaking. When I eventually succeeded, I fell back gasping and sweating while tears streamed freely down my cheeks.

  “Don’t do that,” I rasped. “Don’t do that…”

  Eight hours later, the nightmare began to lift. The pain faded, replaced by more itching, and then even that disappeared.

  My eyes during most of this had been closed because the skin around them was stiff and scabby, so I hadn’t gotten a good look at my gear. Now I did. My partially destroyed robes were whole again—as blue as the day I’d purchased them. I wondered if it was because they were magical. Did all clothing self-mend like this? My staff also looked great.

  “This is me talking, blah blah blah,” I said, and delighted at the healthy richness of my formerly raspy voice.

  My problems hadn’t gone away just because I was healed. If anything, they were clearer than ever: I needed a great deal of experience points if I was going to make it as a sorcerer.