Warden (Nova Online #1) — A LitRPG Series

by Alex Knight

  “There’s no clearing my name,” he said, barely managing the words. “That’s been my hope since I was first put in here, but...but now I realize I was never getting out. The game’s been rigged since the beginning.”

  “I’m sorry, Kai,” Zelda said with a sad nod. “They’re monsters. This is how they operate. They’re just so good at hiding it, no one believes it until they see it for themselves.”

  “Yeah, now I know how that feels.” He was feeling dizzy. That had never happened in-game before. The VR pods were supposed to suppress the real world’s inner ear while you were in them. Apparently, the feeling of crushing despair transcended such trivial barriers.

  “Even if we succeed,” Kaiden said, looking at Titus, then Zelda, “it won’t matter. I can’t clear my name. The Party runs the prison; they’ll never let me out. I’m going to be stuck in here for the next fifty years.”

  His stomach felt like it was going to drop out of him. A wave of nausea hit and he stumbled backward, vertigo overtaking him.

  Fifty years in prison. Even playing Nova, that’s half a lifetime. I’ll be an old man by the time I’m free. The better part of my life just...gone. Thrown away by some politician I don’t even know.

  Another thought struck him and his despair hit even harder.

  “I’m going to die in here. Out in the real world, I’ll never escape Manson for all those years. He’ll get me eventually, one way or another. I’m sure of it”.

  “Kai.” Zelda stepped over to him. “Kaiden,” she said, voice comforting but firm.

  He looked up at her.

  “You’re not going to die in prison.”

  “How can you know that? I can’t clear my name. That’s been my hope from day one. That was our agreement. I help you find out the truth about Bernstein’s murder, and you help me clear my name. But that’s impossible now. The Party will never let me out – they’re the ones who did it.”

  “Then maybe the Party isn’t who you should turn to.”

  “What?”

  The mad thoughts spiraling in his head paused at that.

  “I didn’t just put myself into prison without a plan.” She smiled. “Come on, Kai. You know me better than that.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying the rebels are on standby to break me out. As soon as I have Bernstein’s file, all I have to do is post a coded message on a Nova forum – which I can do from in-game – and they’ll come get me.” She smiled. “Come with me.” She turned to Titus and gave him a sharp nod. “You too, big man. If you want.”

  “What in the stars have I stumbled into?” Jax asked from where he lay on the floor. “This is insane. No, this is beyond insane. You’re all going to get yourselves killed. And I don’t just mean in-game.”

  Kaiden’s emotions were going wild, switching back and forth so fast he didn’t know what to feel. And then, suddenly, there was clarity. He made the decision without really thinking about it. There wasn’t anything left to think about. He was done thinking. Now, he was going to act.

  He wouldn’t be the Party’s plaything. They intended for him to rot in prison for the next fifty years. Had tortured and murdered his friend, and framed him for it. But enough was enough.

  “Jax,” Kaiden said, drawing the assassin’s attention and walking over to him. “Thorne hired you to kill Bernstein, yeah?”

  “Yes.”

  “And when you looted that encrypted file from him, you turned it over to Thorne?”

  “I did.”

  “You think she still has it?”

  “Probably. She said something about needing more information to open it. But I don’t know. I was just collecting a paycheck.”

  “Awesome. Thank you.” Kaiden smiled, then brought his hammer down on the assassin’s head. His health bar flashed, then emptied completely.

  Assassin assisted kill - 1,000 EXP gained!

  On instinct, Kaiden looted Jax’s inventory. He hadn’t been carrying much – certainly not Bernstein’s encrypted file – but it’d been worth checking. He did have a pretty rare stimpack, though.

  Agilix Mach 5

  Doubles dexterity for 10 seconds, drastically improving speed, the ability to dodge attacks and the potential to deal critical blows.

  Kaiden looted it and the stim automatically equipped into the spare slot in his forearm chamber to keep cool. He looked up at Zelda.

  “So let me get this straight. Your people can bust us out of prison? All three of us?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Kaiden looked to Titus next.

  “Any interest in that?”

  The big man laughed.

  “What’s the other option? Rot in prison while my brother’s in danger? Yeah, consider me interested.”

  “We need Bernstein’s encrypted file first,” Zelda said. “We can’t leave until we’ve secured it.”

  “And there’s a good chance Thorne still has that.” Kaiden crossed his arms. “So what are we waiting for? Let’s go take down Thorne.”

  A new notification appeared.

  Quest: Confront Captain Ava Thorne and locate the mysterious file taken from player Bernstein_14

  Expected difficulty: Impossible

  Rewards: 10,000 EXP

  Kaiden hoped the game wasn’t being literal in that difficulty setting, though he supposed it was an accurate description. Either way, they didn’t have much of a choice.

  They were going to have to try the impossible.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  “This is absolute insanity,” Titus said for the fourth time as the Borrelly hurtled toward the Anakoni’s position. “Absolutely insanity.” He smiled. “And I love it.”

  “Thorne just confirmed our meeting request,” Zelda said, reading from a console. “I told her we caught the assassin and are bringing him back for questioning. I also told her he’s claiming a warden hired him for the trade war hit. She’s personally meeting us in the hangar to take him into custody – no doubt she would have insisted on interrogating him alone.”

  “Perfect.” Kaiden smiled, too excited by the prospect of imminent freedom to feel any nerves. He was done being afraid, anyway. He’d lived in fear too long. He was taking his fate into his own hands.

  Thankfully, by the time they arrived at the Anakoni, all their abilities would be back online from their cooldowns and their health would have fully recovered.

  “There won’t be many wardens on the Anakoni,” Zelda said, continuing her mini mission brief. “Most are dead, and the rest are handling the cleanup on Andros, or the trade war. The ship’s running on a skeleton crew. And if my hunch is correct, Thorne’s going to want to meet us on her own anyway. If what Jax said is true – and I’m convinced it is – she’ll want to keep anything we learned quiet.”

  “Even alone, Captain Thorne is no lightweight,” Titus said, his mouth curling into a smile. He was clearly looking forward to the challenge.

  Kaiden didn’t share the sentiment. Captain Thorne was the highest-level player they had encountered so far in Nova Online. If they simply rushed in, hammers blazing, she’d tear them to pieces.

  “We need a plan,” he said, bringing up the message logs from his visor. “Here’s what we know about Captain Thorne. She’s level twenty-five – that’s at least eleven levels higher than any of us. She took out a void titan that nearly destroyed an entire warden outpost. Oh, and she’s a power warden, so front-line combat is her forte.”

  Zelda nodded. “That power warden war hammer gains charge by dealing damage. Which means she can gain charge both by attacking us and blocking our hits with her shield.”

  “It also deals twenty-five percent extra base damage,” Kaiden noted, checking his visor’s readout. “Not to mention the fact that her hammer is the best she can get at her level. She told me that herself.”

  Wish we'd asked the turen to take a look at our hammers, too.

  “Also, all those power warden abilities help her deal extra damage,” Kaiden c
ontinued. “Hammer Overload and Berserker are particularly dangerous as they have big damage multipliers.”

  “So we can assume she will be dealing massive damage,” Zelda concluded. “Even Titus would probably only be able to take a few hits before overloading. How do we deal with that? The strategy we used against Jax isn’t going to work. We took way too many hits.”

  Titus had been quiet during the exchange, but now a smile spread across his face.

  “Float like a butterfly…”

  Kaiden beamed.

  “Of course, that’s it!” he said. “We starve her out. If she can’t hit us then she can’t gain charge, and if we get hit we're dead anyway. If I can get her to focus on me, I might be able to dodge her attacks for long enough to wear her down, with some help.”

  “I guess that makes you the new tasty piece of bait,” Titus said, clapping Kaiden on the shoulder. “Dancing around is not my strong suit. If I’m up front like usual, she’ll go straight for me to build her charge.”

  Zelda chimed in. “I’ll be ‘floating’ a bit further away, but if you can keep her distracted I can still sting like a bee.” She started smirking. “With that tiny buckler of hers, I’m sure I can land some decent hits without giving her much charge.”

  “I guess that leaves me waiting in the wings to save your squishy hides if something goes wrong,” Titus said. Kaiden should never have taught him that term for the more fragile classes in gaming.

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Kaiden said. “I still have one stimpack left, which should help. How about you two?”

  “I’m out,” Zelda said. “Used my last one during the raid.”

  “Me too,” grunted Titus. “Jax and his boys nearly made Swiss cheese out of me in that warehouse.”

  Kaiden chewed his lip. “Okay, that’s not ideal, but we still have the turen shields as a last line of defence.”

  Zelda nodded with an air of finality. “It’s the best plan we have and our best shot at getting the cipher. I’m in.”

  Titus simply tightened his grip on his hammer.

  It was decided.

  With the plan set, Kaiden opened his stats screen to allocate the points he had gained from capturing Jax. It was only one level, but they were going to need all the help they could get.

  Given the plan was for him to act as the ‘tank’ via dodging, a few points into endurance for health or strength for damage wouldn’t help much. He would have to dodge nearly all of Thorne’s attacks and needed every drop of dexterity he could get. He allocated all three points to dexterity and reviewed his stat sheet.

  Character

  Name: Kaiden

  Race: Human

  Level: 14

  Class: Enhanced Warden

  Attributes:

  Strength: 29 (+2) Intelligence: 23

  Endurance: 29 Perception: 23

  Dexterity: 50 (+2) Unassigned: 0

  Abilities:

  Hammer Smash, Shield Bash, Hammer Toss, Shackle, Burst of Speed, Enhanced Senses, Riposte, Flash Bang, Blur, Onslaught

  Perks:

  Turen Tinkering

  Happy with his choice, Kaiden refocused on the conversation.

  “If – I mean, when we pull this thing off,” Titus was saying, “your people are on standby to bust us out, right?”

  Zelda nodded.

  “The plan is ready to go. Has been the whole time I’ve been in here.”

  The Anakoni appeared on the consoles, still distant, but drawing closer by the moment.

  “It sounds like we’re all set, then.” Kaiden clasped his hands. “Let’s do this.”

  Titus laughed in agreement.

  “Nothing makes you feel more alive than a suicide mission, eh? Even if it is just a game.”

  Just a game, Kaiden thought as they hurtled toward their target. Nova is a game, but now, the stakes are real. Deadly real. This has become much more than just a game. If we attack Thorne and don’t get that data file, we’re dead. In both worlds.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  “Ensigns!” Captain Thorne greeted them with a smile as Kaiden and Titus walked down the rear loading ramp of the Borrelly.

  She’d come alone, as Zelda had predicted.

  Good. That means the plan is still viable. No complications. Now we just need Zelda to kick things off.

  Kaiden found he had unintentionally tightened his grip on his hammer, but now he forced himself to loosen it as he raised his eyes to Thorne.

  “You’ve done it again, against all the odds,” she said, crossing her arms as they stepped down onto the hangar floor. “You must be three of the most talented ensigns we’ve had in a long while.” She paused. “Speaking of which, where’s Ensign Zelda?”

  “She’ll be with us in a moment,” Kaiden said forcing himself to keep his eyes on the captain and not the distant figure of his squadmate, sneaking from the cover of one shuttle to the next.

  “She’s on the shuttle? With the assassin?” Thorne’s smile had fallen a bit. She leaned to peer past them and into the Borrelly. Kaiden moved to block her view. Thorne frowned at that.

  “So what’s all this he told you about being hired by a warden?” she asked. “Odds are he’s just trying to protect himself, but on the off-chance there is a traitor amongst us, I want to hear about it.”

  “He did name the traitor,” Titus said, poorly concealed tension in his voice as he hefted his hammer onto his shoulder.

  Thorne seemed not to notice the aggressive move. Playing dumb, perhaps.

  “And who has he accused?”

  “You,” Titus said with a scowl. “He accused you of hiring him to kill a player named Bernstein_14.”

  And there it was, out in the open at last. Kaiden would have sighed, but he was too nervous for the fight ahead of them. Not to mention there was still a bit more of the truth left to tell. And Zelda still needed a bit more time, he realized, sparing her the briefest of glances.

  “And while Jax killed Bernstein_14," added Kaiden, "your real-world counterparts tortured and killed the character’s owner – my friend and neighbor – then framed me for it.”

  Thorne’s smile was gone entirely now, replaced instead with something approaching a look of regret. Not a look he’d expected. But it didn’t matter. Thorne had done what she’d done and helped to ruin his life in the process. That was the truth of the matter, whatever she had to say for herself.

  Her look of regret sank into a long sigh as she shook her head slowly.

  “For what it’s worth, Kaiden, I’m sorry. I didn’t know anything about what was happening in the real world. My job was to arrange the assassination of the player’s character in-game. A player, might I add, with known rebel affiliations. All I did was follow my orders.”

  Following orders? That’s her excuse? Seriously?

  “That doesn’t absolve you of guilt. Furthermore, it’s a poor excuse for ruining someone’s life,” Kaiden said, anger rising inside him now.

  Thorne shrugged, then sighed again.

  “You’re not wrong. But, you see, that’s the luxury of your generation. You’ve only ever known this peaceful world, this ordered and structured paradise the Party has created. It’s a beautiful thing. It means your generation can be hopeful, can pursue their own wants and dreams, because you weren’t alive for the Great Test.” She spoke more quickly now, a fire burning behind her eyes and passion fueling her words.

  “You didn’t fight, didn’t watch your friends and comrades die to bring order back into this world. I did. I’ve seen the evil, the injustice, the wanton waste and death, that chaos causes. I fought to conquer it once, and now I fight to keep it at bay. And I know these rebels – well-meaning though they think they are – teeter on the edge of bringing chaos back. They threaten everything we’ve accomplished.” Her tone softened, then, and she took a step forward. Titus raised his hammer and shield, but she ignored him.

  “Look, Kaiden. It’s not fair of me to ask you to understand this, but sometimes s
acrifices have to be made. My entire generation dedicated their lives to ending the war and rebuilding what was left of society. Do you think we wanted to do that? Don’t you think we had dreams of our own? Families? Hopes? We did.”

  She took a deep, shuddering breath.

  “But we were forced to abandon them so we could bring that Great Test, that war, to an end. We sacrificed everything to create a world in which our children, and our children’s children, would be free to dream again.”

  She looked at Titus, long and hard, then back to Kaiden.

  “Sacrifices have to be made for the greater good. Order and peace must prevail.”

  Her logic makes sense, in a twisted sort of way. But she’s wrong. Nothing justifies what she and the Party have done. She has to see that.

  “We owe your generation a debt of gratitude,” Kaiden said. “Of that there’s no doubt. We’re only here because of you. But what you’re defending isn’t order and peace. Order and peace doesn’t kill innocent people, doesn’t frame others for it. There’s a clear distinction between right and wrong, even if you’ve lost the ability to see it.”

  “It’s you who’s lost the ability to see clearly, Kaiden. But you can still make things right. You’ve made real progress as a warden, and could have a bright future in the corps.”

  Is she serious?

  “I just need something to show the Party you are a team player. I looked into the three of you on my way here; the files were quite enlightening. Perhaps if you had knowledge of someone working to undermine the Party. Someone who had an axe to grind after the Party bought her employers. A little digging might even show that a known dissident by the name of Bernstein was a colleague of hers. Her misguided anger may have driven her to become a dissident as well. If you were able to name such a person, help confirm certain theories, I’m sure the Party would be very grateful."

  Kaiden’s heart pounded as he realised what she was saying. She knew what Zelda was. A rebel.