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

by John L. Monk

  Dutifully, the demon floated up a few feet and came back down.

  I smiled. “Great. Here’s what you’re going to do. I want you to fly through those doors over there, find my friend Rita, and…”

  And just how many people were in there named Rita? What a fool I was. After all the time we’d spent together, I still didn’t know her last name.

  “Ignore that order. Just stand there quietly.”

  Ghanut didn’t have a huge mana drain at my level, but I still kept an eye on it. At 5 a second, it was high enough to outpace my regeneration.

  “Okay, let’s try it anyway. Ghanut, find anyone in there named Rita and wake her up with a scream. Now, go!”

  Ghanut didn’t move. It also didn’t scream. It just stood there, floating in the air.

  Desperately, I said, “She’s got bushy hair. She’s a monk. Her name’s Rita and she’s my friend. Isn’t that enough? Find her and wake her up!”

  Ghanut didn’t care that she was a monk with bushy hair or that she was my friend.

  I tried yelling at it. I begged it to go find her. In a panic, I told it to find anyone at all and wake them up. All it did was float there staring at me.

  “Ghanut, go through those doors and return!”

  The demon sailed through the doors as if they weren’t there and came right back. Then it started screaming.

  In every way that mattered, the demon’s scream was the most awful sound I’d ever heard. As punishment, I let it carry on while I wept in rage at my own stupidity. Poor Rita, kind and generous to a fault. Gone forever because she’d trusted a foolish idiot like me.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Eventually, I hit bottom in my self-pity and sent Ghanut away. Calmer now, I realized something that made me feel even stupider, if that were possible. Though Cipher had said there were two spells that could help me, he hadn’t said there were only two.

  “Okay,” I said. “You’ve got nine diviner spells, and you’ve only used one. Think, dammit.”

  Upon rereading each description, I discovered I’d completely skipped over Lurk. The reason was obvious enough: early on, I’d associated it with eavesdropping. But the spell description suggested a wider variety of possible uses:

  Ever wish you could be a fly on the wall somewhere? Well, now you can. Send your awareness through any obstacle to spy on friends and enemies alike. Hear interesting conversations! Learn who your real friends are! And best of all: peep on people having sex and get away scot-free! (Psst: that’s why the mana cost is so low. You’re welcome!)

  After killing the Awful Calamity, I had more gems now than I needed for just about any demon and would for a long time. So it was no trouble at all to call up my biggest, most powerful guardian demon—Oguun—to protect me while I was out of body.

  “Here we go,” I said, after gathering all the blankets around me. “Lurk!”

  I stood up from my spot near the wall of statues, glanced down, and saw I’d left my physical body behind.

  Over there, I thought, and my body flew to the double doors. Then, just like the screamer, I passed right through.

  I was in a massive foyer with a high ceiling lit with runes to better display frescoes of heroes engaged in battle. That theme carried to the walls, which featured a running bas-relief of stylized fantasy world violence. The floors were exquisitely crafted from tiles fitted together into a repeating pattern of Everlife logos.

  A glance back showed the massive doors had an inside lever that could be pulled if needed. On a hunch, I returned to my body and again called up Ghanut.

  “Ghanut,” I said. “Just inside the doors, there’s a switch—a lever. Pull that lever, then come back.”

  Ghanut didn’t move or give any indication that it understood me.

  I pulled a sword from Rita’s bag and tossed it to the demon. “Catch!”

  The sword passed right through it.

  “That solves that,” I said in disgust.

  After dismissing Ghanut, I re-cast Lurk.

  As I wandered down the first few branching hallways, I couldn’t help wondering why it all looked so beautiful if everyone here was asleep.

  Not for the first time, I became aware of the differences between the creators of this world. Some of them, it seemed, took their jobs seriously. They made beautiful mountain scenery and eye-popping artwork. Others wrote snarky spell descriptions and put deserts next to forests.

  The halls had more than statues and carvings. There were exquisitely crafted wooden doors every ten feet or so. Carved into each, inlaid with gold, were people’s names.

  Though I was incapable of opening anything in my incorporeal state, I popped my head through several for a look—small sepulchers, as seen in my vision. The ones I checked held players, one per room, fast asleep on kingly stone biers. As I’d seen with Rita, each was surrounded by a golden nimbus of light.

  One sleeper in black leather armor had a pouch at his side. This helped explain why nobody awake could enter. Like the tombs of Ancient Egypt, their bodies would quickly be looted if just anyone were allowed in.

  The man clutched a faintly glowing sword in both hands by the pommel, with the point facing his feet. I wondered what would happen if I tried touching him.

  Feeling brave, I reached out and ghosted my hands through his foot…

  Hraith Doomguard wasn’t his real name. He’d chosen it because players always laughed when he told them it was Tom Butler.

  “That’s too boring,” they’d say. “It can be anything you want here.”

  Tom had grown up with two brothers and a sister. He’d been teased mercilessly by other kids who called his parents “breeders”—couples who had more than one child. Overpopulation, everyone knew, was the biggest threat to the world, and never mind that the global population was smaller than at any point in the last hundred years.

  Having grown up in a large family, Tom wanted a family of his own. But every woman he met at the law firm or singles bars had taken the sterilization package to shave ten years off retirement age. Theirs was a purgatory-like existence. None of them wanted marriage. They lived overly safe lives for fear of dying too young, all in the hope of paradise worlds, game worlds, theme worlds, or hedonistic worlds characterized by muscly bodies and supersaturated sensuality.

  As Tom’s life plodded along, he was plagued with bouts of deep depression which he managed with a medical prescription. In time, he did meet a few women who wanted a family. But he was either too picky or they were, and nothing ever came of it.

  Lonely and mostly celibate, Tom kept to himself in his later years after watching his friends, parents, brothers, and his sister retire to the Everlife worlds, never to be seen again.

  At the ripe old age of eighty-five, he finally succumbed to the near-constant government nagging that he was a drain on the system. After a little research, he retired to Mythian. It was fun at first, but eventually the ogres, goblins, and skeleton armies couldn’t replace his longing for a life of purpose.

  One day, after waking up for the thousandth time—perfectly rested yet unfulfilled—Tom realized the only thing he enjoyed about living was being asleep. That’s why, having reached level 164 for no good reason, he gave up adventuring, went to sleep, and never woke up again.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  My self-control returned, leaving me momentarily disoriented. I’d sifted the man’s history as if it were a placard in a musty old museum. Unlike placards in musty old museums, part of me had experienced Tom’s lonely, hopeless life.

  Staring down at his sleeping form, I felt a what-if sort of kinship with him. But for Melody, I might have come to a similar fate.

  I glided through the door into the hall and nearly collided with one of those ghastly spirits with the claws and staring eyes I’d seen in Raul’s Lesser Vision. I retreated before it could swipe at me, then sped as fast as Lurk would allow down the corridor toward an intersection. More spirits appeared, and I dodged those too.

  A left turn,
and the way ahead was choked with ghosts. A look back also showed ghosts. After a moment’s hesitation, I passed through the corridor walls into the rock of the mountain.

  Darkness and the lack of gravity had me quickly disoriented, and I lost my sense of up and down. I continued straight and kept going for several minutes before appearing on the far side of Mount Rage.

  Lurk off.

  Physical sight returned, and I gaped at what I saw: my guardian demon, Oguun—a nightmare thing of claws, teeth, and spikes—was locked in battle against three yetis.

  “Hey!” I shouted. “Get off my demon!”

  The largest yeti—a cross between an enormous upright gorilla and an old mop—roared at me, dropped to the knuckles of its long arms, and charged across the courtyard faster than I could react. It slammed through my Mighty Shield for 12,300 points of damage, pummeling me with a hairy fist for 20% of my health.

  “Word of Death!” I shouted over the reedy snake charmer music—or tried to.

  As had happened on the bridge to Ward 2, what emerged was a strangulating snarl of evil and horror. Like the gestated spawn of some hellish parasite, the variegated sounds crawled painfully from my throat and snared the yeti in a haze of blackness.

  ENEMY DEFEATED: Mount Rage Yeti, 125,000 EXPERIENCE POINTS

  The way the spell worked, I couldn’t cast anything else for a full minute. And I couldn’t cast Word of Death again until I died or rose at least one level. Game balance, as Rita would have said.

  So as not to get smooshed, I flew a hundred feet up and waited while the battle raged below. The fight lasted more than the one-minute incapacitation from Word of Death, so I could have assisted the demon if I’d wanted. Still I waited, because I wanted to see if Oguun could win against two of them. Turns out it couldn’t. The demon eventually killed one of the yetis, after which the remaining yeti killed it.

  I was about to attack and reclaim my camp, but the yeti shook its fist and bounded off the cliff face. A good lesson. If these creatures could land safely from any height, I’d never see them attacking from above.

  Oguun had a 24-hour cooldown. Given what I’d just seen, I worried I’d need its protection again during my search for Rita.

  The last time I’d bound myself was back in that mining town. If I died here, I’d end up there—days away from another attempt at helping Rita, surrounded by people who’d like nothing more than to kill me for what we’d done to them. Worse, I wouldn’t be able to fly. The carpet, my robes, and my amulet would be stuck here, on my corpse. Months could pass before I scratched enough gold together to fly back.

  If you came back at all.

  An unworthy thought, but an honest one. Rita needed me, yes, but my first vow was to Melody. Despite Cipher’s assurances, I couldn’t be sure how long she’d be safe in that tower. If the Crimson Sigil felt I wouldn’t come, would they let her go? Or would they kill her out of spite?

  “So don’t die,” I said through clenched teeth.

  As if in answer, a faint bellow of rage carried from far below.

  There was a chest waiting for me when I landed. Bronze. I opened it and found 10,000 gold pieces and a scroll for a Warlock spell called Pain Lash.

  As a matter of course, I transferred the gold to my coin purse and stored the spell in my bottomless bag. Maybe I could sell it for a good sorcerer spell that didn’t feel like swallowing razor blades.

  “What a mess,” I said, looking around.

  The tent, unfortunately, had been torn to pieces. Also, the temperature had dropped dangerously. I needed a fire, shelter, and sleep. Preferably eight hours.

  I summoned Ignis and told it to stand next to the statue of a paladin just beneath its shield, which stuck out a little. With luck, the shield would capture a lot of the heat.

  Next, I summoned two small guardian demons that would, I hoped, hold off another yeti attack long enough for me to fly away. One was a shadowy creature named Scythian that slinked away whenever I tried looking at it directly. The other one—Shlatz—was an ice demon with jagged ice sickles for claws and teeth, and a spiked mane of ice shards. Whenever I looked at this one, it growled and pawed the earth as if ready to charge.

  Worried Ignis might melt it, I ordered Shlatz to guard the perimeter near the cliff. After that, I took out Rita’s secret tent from her bag and set it up as close to the fire demon as safety allowed. Then I went to sleep.

  Chapter Forty

  As powerful as Oguun was, the mana cost of 6 a second far outstripped my 9530 hourly regeneration rate, and I needed a lot more time in the halls to find Rita. The solution was in the bag, so to speak.

  The trader’s instructions had been clear: one person needed to be on the flying carpet at all times, and they had to be awake. Which is why casting Lurk while sitting on it didn’t cause the carpet to fall crashing to the ground. In theory, by floating far out from the mountain, I’d be perfectly safe from yetis.

  Yes, we’d seen dragons in the area, but none up close, and the yetis seemed far more populous. A gamble, sure, but I felt a safe one.

  The ghosts were waiting when I entered the halls. Clearly, they could see my Lurk form. I skirted them quickly so as not to get cornered.

  My main concern was searching the branching hallways, which held the majority of the sleeper rooms. Taking a systematic approach, I started down the first one on my right. I proceeded slowly at first, popping my head into one room or another to see who was in them. When the corridor ended, I backtracked to the main hall and tried the left-hand side. Then on to the next intersection, then right and left again.

  Six intersections later and I began to despair. There were too many doors! Each branch held an even five hundred doors, and there looked to be at least a hundred such branches. If that didn’t make my task hard enough, the ghosts were becoming a problem. Slow, yes, but they passed through the walls in direct pursuit, somehow homing in on me. If I tarried too long in any given spot, I could find myself with three ghosts to deal with. The halls looked to be twelve feet wide, based on the floor tiling. Just barely, I could avoid one of the things if I hovered close to a wall, then sped around it. If I ever got stuck with two, I’d be forced to exit the mountain through the walls again—a dangerous prospect, because they floated into the halls from the walls themselves.

  I searched all day for Rita with no luck. The next day, I’d cleared what I thought were all of the hallways, only to find a grand staircase leading down to another such hall with radiating tunnels left and right. Hard to believe Mythian was so soul-crushing that countless thousands had chosen to give up like this.

  On one occasion, I returned from Lurk to find about forty Yetis clustered below the carpet staring up and roaring. When they saw me looking down, they roared louder and threw boulders into the air, though I was well out of their reach.

  Fearing other creatures might be attracted by the noise and activity, I took shorter sessions inside and moved the carpet each time I went in. A few days later, after finding yet another set of stairs, I gave up early and retired to my groundside camp to feel sorry for myself. There, hovering on the verge of sleep, I had an insight. I didn’t need to check each and every door in my hunt for Rita. All I had to do was find the end of the doors—that place where new doors stopped and empty corridor continued.

  The way the place had been designed, it seemed, was like Bernard’s taverns, with their perpetual vacancies. If there were ten guests, there were ten rooms. A hundred guests, a hundred rooms. It was all automatic. Likely, it was the same case here. In theory, if I found a corridor with fewer rooms than any of the others, the last room would belong to Rita.

  I was too excited to sleep, though I gave it a good try. Eventually I got up, checked my shield, and dismissed that night’s demon. Then I set about testing my theory.

  In no time, I learned there were sixty sets of stairs. All I had to do was find the last stairway down, then the last hallway on that level.

  With an excited grin, I glided down as fast as
I could and found Rita’s room in less than fifteen minutes. So quickly had I moved, I only saw one ghost.

  Interestingly, there was one more door beyond hers. After that, nothing. Rita had only gone to sleep a few days ago, which suggested the rate of new sleepers was very high, indeed.

  So beautiful…

  The thought came unbidden. As with the other sleepers, Rita’s form was surrounded by a nimbus of golden light. Her face seemed so calm. Certainly she wasn’t worried about me anymore. Not risking her life. And no more pain.

  Despite knowing better, I didn’t release the Lurk spell like I should have. Instead, as I’d done with Tom, I reached out and touched her foot.

  Growing up, Rita Kline, daughter of Andrew and Samantha Kline, had three older brothers, no sisters, and a funny sheepdog named Jasmine (her first love).

  Because her parents preferred home education, she never had any in-person friends until later in life. As a coping mechanism and training tactic, she practiced social interaction on Jasmine. At first, her parents disapproved because they thought Rita would grow up awkward and unbalanced. Fearful of losing her only friend, Rita researched their fears and presented a case backed by scientific studies that showed “playing pretend” helped children grow up well-adjusted.

  Staring in the face of cold, hard science, her parents relented. They were also ecstatic that their little girl was so smart and determined. To encourage her, they hired tutors to teach what the government schools no longer emphasized—math, science, history, and best of all: literature.

  Poor Jasmine … Now she had to share Rita’s time with the characters in all the great books of Western Civilization. Good dog that she was, she didn’t mind, because Rita always made sure to pet her during chapter breaks.