Immersion Online: The Noob: A LitRPG Novel

by Evan Klein

  I was going to protest but I took a deep pull of the cheroot and was in heaven. The virtual nicotine along with the virtual alcohol was so good – a prefect buzz I hadn’t felt in years.

  “You always need a good smoke to go along with orc ale, don’t ya know? Them orcs know how to brew.”

  “Thank you,” I said taking another deep pull. I didn’t even cough. The virtual nicotine added an entirely new sensation.

  Mother looked at me, her eyes clouded from the tankards of alcohol, and said, “You are going to do great things in The Great Realm. You are going to change it.”

  My mind was a bit addled as well and I slurred, “Thank you.”

  Words jumbled in my mind like a thousand piece puzzle. I took another puff of the cheroot, blew out the smoke, and concentrating said, “I came here to earn some gold to help my daughter Amber pay for her education.”

  Sometimes alcohol makes me maudlin; sadness flooded me like quicksand, “My Amber,” I finally said, “I did wrong by her and now I am going to make it up to her.” A tear fell from my eye and I suppressed the stream of tears that were about to fall.

  “What you came here for Charlie Mason doesn’t really matter. What you will become does,” she said dead sober.

  I didn’t respond. Changing the subject I asked,” Who are you and your sisters? For real?”

  She didn’t seem surprised by the questions and responded, “My sisters and me are as you say in the realm of the Starborn, alpha and omega. We are our own beginning and our end. We were here eons ago when the Grey Mother sundered herself and gave birth to The Great Realm and all her races; and we will be here at the end when the Grey Man comes to consume the land and all its being.”

  I didn’t know how to break it to her that the eon she is speaking about is just about five years ago when Shannon’s programmers began writing code for the game.

  “Good luck in Grandview City, Constable Mace. You are about to live in very interesting times.” With that she downed her tankard, refilled it again form the keg, and then sauntered off into the night.

  I shook my head in disbelief at the woman’s knowledge. She should not know about my being a constable. I guess if she is embedded in the gaming code, then she has access to the mainframe where a record of me and my character must exist.

  I stood there for a moment and downed my own tankard. I took one last drag from the cheroot and logged off.

  Epilogue 6: The Final One

  It was three in the morning when I logged off. I lowered the easy chair, removed the haptic devices, stretched my stiff muscles for a moment and then attended to some personal needs. In Freehold I had been quite drunk, but now I was cold sober. The sensation of going from being very drunk to sober was disconcerting. I wondered for a moment of the long-term effect the game left etched on the player’s minds. Anyway, it was the dead of night. I knew I should get some sleep but my mind wouldn’t shut down, like I had drank five cups of coffee. I grabbed a beer from the fridge and guzzled it down.

  I was real thirsty!

  I tossed the empty can in the recycler and went to grab another one. My stomach growled. Just minutes ago my belly bulged consuming too much of Hearn’s roasted pork and thick loaves of bread dripping with butter. Now I was famished. I scrounged around the kitchen but it was barren. I really needed to set up a good delivery. I made a few pieces to of toast, slathered on the last of the butter and munched down. My stomach settled down a bit.

  I still couldn’t sleep so I grabbed a third beer and sat back in the lounger. I said, “Vid Screen ON” and it blared to life. “Next. Next. Next” I ordered over and over to get to the next channel. An old movie from the 1970s – nearly a hundred years ago – played on the vintage station. Repeat of a college baseball game on another. Nothing interested me. Finally on channel 5092, I came to The Immersion Online channel. I knew they had a channel but had never seen it. A great battle was taking place on the screen. And two announcers, a man and a woman, described the action, almost like the play by play of a baseball game.

  Woman: Granson doesn’t like the word “league” instead he calls them a gang – the Granson Gang. Whatever nomenclature one uses, there is no doubting that they are the most powerful and elite league / gang on any of the three continents.

  Man: They are going to make clam chowder of Ladon, the hundred headed dragon.

  Woman: I don’t know about that John. Ladon is considered the most powerful creature in the entire Great Realm. She is level two hundred and fifty, the current cap on monsters, with over a hundred thousand damage point, more than Granson’s entire starting warband combined. Ladon’s magical body also is self-healing. So even though damage is taking place, it is being healed just as quickly. The heads can regenerate also but that happens very slowly. Every head has a different effect: One spews fire, another acid, another noxious gas, and on and on. They all have teeth that can crush diamonds. Ladon has destroyed every raid party that has assaulted her domain before.

  Man: That might be true Susan but the Granson Gang is something special. And here they go. They have finished preparing their buffs and are ready to enter the cave of the final boss.

  With that a crazy melee broke out. The cave only allowed thirty players in total to try to defeat it at one time. The Granson Gang had lost players along the way but still had twenty one of the most powerful fighters, wizards, monks, gadgeteers, rogues and so on in the entire game. Bright lights surrounded many of the tanks and front line fighters – buffs of some kind. Balls of healing light – similar to the ones Flora was just beginning to use – danced above the head of most of the players. Balls of fire and streaks of lightning impacted the great beast. The battle raged for a good ten minutes. A cone of black air struck an Atlantean swooping down at one of the heads. The black air froze the flying woman midair and another head, with golden teeth the length of a baseball bat, bit her head from her shoulders. The body shuddered and disappeared. A stream of molten lava from another head impacted an elven mage who also disappeared from the battle. A wave of zero degree kelvin sprang from another head – freezing the player’s atoms before smashing them to a thousand shards of ice.

  However, the power and the fury of Granson Gang was also on display. A slight woman – four foot nothing and eighty pounds – mumbled some words and soon morphed into a ten foot giant – bulging with sinewy muscles. Using just brute strength, she grabbed onto one of the heads. The head shot out sharp darts that peppered her torso. But a moment later red blood spouted from the stalk of the missing head. A young man, dressed all in black, whirled two scimitars faster than the eye could see. He had some sort of accelerated speed because he would chop at one head before dashing away. A moment later three more decapitated heads fell to the cavern floor.

  But the Granson Gang’s warband was down to just a dozen. And some of the dragon’s heads were beginning to grow back and reform. Granson, their leader, who up to now had stayed back, calling out commands and orders to his war party, now readied for the fight. The woman announcer spoke: “Here comes Granson. One of the five most powerful players in the game.”

  Granson. Leader of the Granson Gang. Warrior Rogue level 100. 44 personal achievements (Number 1 in the Realm); 54 League achievements (Number 2 in the Realm). A whole string of other accolades followed.

  Man: Here he goes. Granson is the only player in the game with the ability to phase. And there it is.

  With that Granson turned translucent for no better term.

  Woman: His corporeal body is no longer attached to The Great Realm. It is rumored that the developer have been working on a pocket dimension where the gods dwell. Is this the dimension where he goes when he phases? Only Granson knows and he’s not saying.

  Granson strode right into the body of the great beast. As soon as he did so, the remaining warband began to retreat from the cave and back into the protection of cavernous passages.

  The remaining heads shot out in all directions, looking for something to consume, to gnash, t
o destroy.

  The remaining heads bellowed in pain all at the same time. The sound was so intense that the plates drying on my counter rattled.

  An explosion burst from inside the great beast. Guts and gore flew in all directions. The cameras catching the action suddenly dripped with red blood and flesh. The magnificent creature that had once been Landon had been reduced to a pulpy corpse and in the center stood Granson, no longer phased. Not a lock of his blond hair was out of place. His armor gleamed brightly. Whatever Granson had done inside the beast had not seemed to impact the man one bit.

  Woman: “Oh my John. Oh my! What was that John? What did he do?”

  Man: “I don’t know Susan, but it was something special.”

  “Off,” I called to the vid screen. I sat there in silence for a few minute wondering if I had the strength to make it to my bed. I thought about dozing off right where I was. But I knew my back would pay the price in the morning if I did so. So I stumbled towards the bedroom, stripped to my underwear, and crawled beneath the warm comforter.

  I fell asleep, dreaming of a hundred headed dragon.

  Postscript: Hearn’s Tale

  It was the same night the Kelpie had drowned me to death, and sleep wouldn’t come, so I picked up my tablet to read the news, but it was filled with nothing but disease, death and all the detritus that fills the world. I found myself exploring The Great Realm forums. There were hundreds of thousands of posts – some from the corporation itself, but most from individual players – and I found the sheer number of posts overwhelming. I don’t know why, but I decided to do a search on Hearn. He had recently given Bondi the quest to find out how Thomas the Razor’s sword Blackthorn had ended up in the abandoned bandit cave. I figured she would look into the forums as well and wanted to know if there was much there to give her a hint where to start. Most of the listings for Hearn concerned a different Hearn who was a Realmborn smithy in Fairmont. Searching information about Freehold in the Wilderbrook finally gave me a little information. Again, very few players started out in the Wilderbrook. It was in the middle of nowhere… several weeks by horse to the nearest major city. But there was one mention of Hearn the brewer. Clicking on Hearn’s hyperlinked name led me to the following written by an early beta player who just went by the name Thrang:

  *

  The moonshine flowed like water through the rapids. I stared across the dirt road at the framed out building that would soon become Moonshiner, Hearn’s inn. The large brewer, usually stoic, was maudlin this evening.

  “Why build it?” Hearn slurred, drunk on his own moonshine. “It all turns to dust eventually. Or the powerful destroy it out of greed, lust for power, or their own madness. Madness. Yes it was madness that led me to the Wilderbrook.”

  “How’s that?” I was able to mumble. Between the moonshine and the happy weed my jaw didn’t want to move.

  “I was gonna name it The Jenni, after her. It would just hurt too much to hear her name every day. So Moonshiner it is. Nice and easy.”

  “Jenni,” I echoed.

  “Aye Jenni.” He took a deep drink from the jar, shadows from our dwindling fire crisscrossing his face. “Aye Jenni. I was a mercenary many years gone by. A sergeant in the famed Shadow Company, a band of mercenaries for hire.”

  “Before my time,” I said. It was before everyone’s time as the game had only been open a few months so far and the tale he was going to tell me would be whatever the writer of the Wilderbrook had created.

  “They called her Mad Queen Regina of Brakenmoor Keep. And aye she was. The redheaded she-devil was not happy with ruling just Brakenmoor Keep and its surrounding lands. Nay, she wanted all the lands, from the Brakenmoor north all the way to the Tranimore foothills, and east to the Sunrise Sea, and south through the forest where the elders of our world dwell and none dare sojourn, and to the West – aye the west – the Westerreach where the orcs, ogres and trolls dwell in their mountains high and their mines filled with diamonds, rubies and other shiny baubles. Aye, the orcs would be our bane.” He reached out and took the rolled happy weed from me. He used the embers of a twig to relight it, took a deep pull, and handed it back to me.

  “Nay, she did not risk her own home guard to attack their dwellings in the mountain, but hired bands of expendable mercenaries: Shadow Company, Dwarf Elite, Mance’s Mercs, Llyone’s Lucky Ladies, and several more. She emptied her vaults to pay us. But the rewards, the ownership of the mines, aye that would refill them to bursting. So we attacked the orcs, ogres and even the trolls. We brought powerful fighters and mighty magic. We brought lightning and flame. Aye, our attacks were swift and many of the foe died. And Thomas the Razor led us all – all the mercenary groups – his enchanted blade Blackthorn cutting down any who challenged.”

  His eyes glazed again in deep contemplation and he took another drink of his potent moonshine. I joined him by taking a swig myself. My throat burned like a bonfire. I was thinking why the developers and game designers would create such an elaborate backstory for an innkeeper in a small village on the outskirts of literally nowhere. I also wondered if I would be granted a quest after the tale was done.

  “Unable to withstand the force arrayed against them, they fled deep into their caverns below the haunted earth where even the dwarves feared to follow. It seemed like they had disappeared into the stone. For months we saw naught of them to finish the job. The coffers of the mad queen ran dry and she cursed Thomas the Razor. She ordered, ‘Attack the caves now. Take them one foot at a time if thou must. But take them!’ She was not just a queen but some said a powerful witch and many feared her more than the caves.”

  He paused for a moment and continued. “Thomas took me from the cold streets of Fairmont, a starving urchin, and trained me to fight and kill. He saved me from certain death by either disease or the law and I would follow him to the halls of the Grey Man if he had need. So we attacked the caves. We journeyed downward and downward but found nary a soul. We found many a foul trap set for us – fire sprays, spiked pits, and pools of acid. Aye, we lost many those weeks. Then a scout, we called her Whisperer, ran back to us. She had been gone several days and we feared that a trap or a creature of the dark got her. But not Whisperer. ‘Captain Thomas,’ she said softly. ‘We must flee. All is lost. They have amassed the largest army I’ve ever seen. Must be twenty thousand. Orcs, ogres and trolls be the least of it. There be mountain giants, leviathans, and all foul creatures of the dark. Creatures not seen in eons. And with them march dark shamans and witch doctors. We cannot stand against such a foe. None could.’”

  Hearn once again paused and closed his eyes. I thought he had fallen asleep. Then his eyes blazed alive. “Thomas the Razor was a brave man, but not a fool. And the harm it would do to our reputation as a mercenary group meant naught if we all perished there in the dark. We retreated from the caves as fast as possible, the dwarves leading us back towards the firm earth and the sun above. We fled back in all haste to Brakenmoor Keep until our legs felt they were no longer part of us. The sentries on the walls could see the vast army of monsters following close behind. Their witch doctors and shaman had altered the weather. And the bright sun that would normally burn creatures of the dark was blocked by thick gray clouds that loomed menacingly, like dragons ready to swoop down.”

  Hearn got up and walked about to the other side of the fire to relieve himself. Then he stumbled back to the stump he had been sitting on. “Where was I again?” he asked absently.

  “You had fled back to the keep.”

  “Aye, Aye. We fled back to the keep to await the siege. However, it was not a siege but a bloodbath. Walls do not last long against giants and soon our enemies flooded the keep. ‘Come Sergeant!’ Thomas screamed to me above the din of violence and slaughter. ‘We must flee to the Queen’s quarters. She has a passage behind a tapestry that leads to an underground river. From there we can flee.’ I was not sure how he knew that. I think he had become the queen’s consort… not for the physical pleasure, but to stay c
lose to her. Or to perhaps murmur sanity into her wicked mind.” I nodded my head, acknowledging his last statement.

  “’I am your man Thomas. And will stand with thee. I will gather Whisperer, Constantine, and Flex to accompany us.’ After Thomas, the three of them were very powerful in the own disciplines. And I wanted power to come along with us. You see, Jenni, my Jenni, was the mad queen’s lady-in-waiting, and where I found the queen I would find my beloved. The whole realm could burn and rot for all I cared as long I found her safe.” He took another swig of the moonshine before passing it towards me. I just shook my head. Virtual world or not, I felt quite blitzed by now and feared any more that I might pass out.

  “We fought our ways to the queen’s quarters. Men-at-arms fought orcs in the narrow hallways. Ogres bashed through walls. Giants tossed broken masonry to the courtyard below not caring who was crushed – ally or foe. Wizards tossed lightning and fire. Mothers held their babes close to them trying to find any safety they could. The walls were a tapestry of blood.”

  I wish I had been there, I thought. That would be a hell of a battle. So many levels to gain. And so much loot. Though I was still low level and wouldn’t have lasted long at all.

  “Constantine died on the way. His skull bashed in from a troll’s stone club. The rest of us were battered and bleeding. Flex’s arm hung like a lifeless fish at his side. Whisperer’s face was charred on the left side from a shaman’s fire spell. We had exhausted all of our magics and potions. But we beat them all back. Captain Thomas and his sword Blackthorn leading the way. We finally arrived at the door we sought. A dozen dead men-at-arms and just as many humanoids lay scattered across the marble floor. Blood and bile running along the floor like a rivulet. The door to the queen’s quarter was barred and a green light illumined it. Magic I guessed. ‘This is it. We die here today,’ Whisperer whispered.”

  I chuckled at Hearn’s play on words. Tension filled the air. Cold gripped my bones as just embers remained of our fire.