Realm of the Nine Circles: The Grind
by
P. Joseph Cherubino
Published by Cherubino Press
Copyright © 2017 by P. Joseph Cherubino
First Edition
www.pjosephcherubino.site
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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Other Works by P. Joseph Cherubino
Realm of the Nine Circles (with Amy Hopkins)
The Genetic Imperative
Fleetfoot Interstellar (Book 1)
Fleetfoot Interstellar: Rogue Messiah (Book 2)
Science Fiction Short Story Three Pack (free)
The Expanding Universe (anthology)
Dead Wired and Online
Table of Contents
Title
Copyright
Thank You
Other Works by P. Joseph Cherubino
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 1
Dante picked up the immersion harness and slipped it over his forehead like a magical circlet because that’s what it was. Just because it ran on regular old electricity didn’t mean it wasn’t magic. What else to call a device that transports its wearer to another world without requiring the wearer to move? The marketing department at Plexcorp viewed it as magic of another sort. In the pre-beta announcement they were forced to make, marketing dubbed it “the xirclet” with an “X” because everyone knows that “X” is the coolest of letters. Soon, it would hit the market and conjure up bonus cash for vested employees.
The young developer relaxed as he eased into the game chair, its perfect incline provided by the engineered confidence of aluminum tubes hand welded by one of the xirclet’s creators. A seat custom printed from carbon fiber welcomed him with its fitted form, and Dante released a breath that seemed imprisoned for days. Breathing seemed much easier now that nobody was trying to break into the lab and whisk him away to the Plexcorp building basement and turn his brain into a game processing unit.
Had it only been thirty-six hours ago that he entered The Realm of the Nine Circles to save his life? It was hard to believe. He could not stop thinking about being back in the Realm, because the answers to his many questions were locked up in that world, along with the deranged genius who created the game and then locked himself inside.
“Welcome back, Dante,” a tinny voice said from the xirclet’s built-in speaker. “Brainwave modem synchronized and ready for immersion.”
“Ready,” Dante said. The lab disappeared, and with it, weariness. Even after a marathon sleep back home in his suburban apartment, exhaustion clung to him like a wet wool blanket. A drive through rush hour Northern Virginia traffic only intensified the anxious feeling. But in the realm, he was relieved of that pressing weight. It wasn’t as if the Realm was free of chaos and danger. It was that the Circles provided certain rewards should an adventurer be brave enough to give themselves fully to its magic. You got from the Realm what you put into it.
He stood in the atrium of the main cathedral, that place where all brand-new characters go. The sudden realization that he was still himself in the virtual world dimmed his relief a few degrees. Looking down at his simulated sneakers brought back the sting of losing his favorite avatar in the Realm World War.
The sound of footsteps echoed through the chamber. Dante reached over his shoulder for the haft of his boar oak axe before realizing that combat was disabled in the spawning cathedrals. Not only that, he no longer owned an axe. He’d sacrificed that axe-wielding dwarf to win the war. Feeling the loss of his favorite weapon made him wonder if his sacrifice was worth it.
He turned towards the footsteps to discover the pale-faced, lanky form of Gideon Thistlethwhaite moving toward him from the shadows with his hawk-like face held in its familiar expressionless drape. Dante growled and prepared to lunge at Plexcorp’s founder and CEO before a familiar voice gave him pause.
“Hello again, Noble Player,” Virgil said through Gideon’s form.
“Virgil?” Dante replied. “Take off that damn Gideon skin. It’s freaking me out.”
“As you wish,” Virgil replied. His body morphed rapidly back into the form of an old, bent wizard with a long, gray beard and tattered, once-white robes now stained completely with black soot and fading varicolored potion splotches. “I was not expecting to see you so soon,” the wizard said, leaning on a gnarled, black staff of bonebark wood that rose a full foot above his snowy-haired head.
“I couldn’t stay away,” Dante replied softly.
“Your visit is timely,” Virgil replied. “We have grave matters to address.”
“What do you mean?” Dante asked.
“I have a quest chain to begin both here and in the Lesser Realm,” Virgil said, using his own special term for the world outside the game—Dante’s world.
“Quest chain?” Dante asked.
“Yes. Acting as the lesser form of Lord Mylos, I must convince the Knights of the Boardroom to take certain steps. Lord Mylos is defeated, but he is not dead.”
Dante stood dumbfounded. “You’re going to let the board think you’re Gideon?”
“I do not see any other way to save The Realms. The poison of Lord Mylos pollutes both our worlds. His dreams are rising, and with those dreams, his power grows, for his dreams become elements of the Realm. He sends agents to scour the land, harvesting souls to fuel his power.
You must assemble the Noble Four again in the Sixth Circle, for the dreamer will sleep but for seven days more. When he wakes, he will have power over a vast army, and the Realm will burn once more. Without the Nobles standing in the Sixth Circle, those armies will take the Realm unchecked.”
Dante frow
ned as Virgil turned away. “Wait...you said a week more. In the new circle? But you only allow level twenty or better into the new circle! It took me months to get my old character to level twenty!”
Virgil turned back, a ghostly smile softening his face. “Then you have choices. The dungeon instances leading to the new Circle are open to all players, but will only allow the higher levels to find the secret passage to the circle itself. You can seek your fortune underground, or in any other part of the Realm, but you must hurry, for we have little time.”
“What will happen if I don’t get to the new circle in a week?”
“Then I will cease to be. While my power grows in the lesser realm, it weakens in the Nine Circles,” Virgil replied.
“What?” Dante replied. “Then don’t play Gideon. Just stop.”
Virgil sighed, leaned on his staff and said, “How can it be that I understand more of your world than you? If Gideon’s magic is exposed, the paladins of the lesser realm, I believe you call them “police” or “feds,” will soon descend on Plexcorp castle and destroy the magic that allows the Realm to exist. Mylos breaks many laws across worlds. This is why I need to speak with your dark wizard and dwarf warrior inside my cathedral.”
“Dark wizard? Dwarf warrior?” Dante muttered, shaking his head as if to force all the information to sift down into his brain. By ‘Wizard’ and ‘Dwarf Warrior,’ Virgil meant Martin and Najeel. Virgil wanted them to enter the game for some reason. Dante snorted, then put hands to knees with uncontrolled laughter. Najeel had two PhDs, and Martin was an ex-marine turned engineer and computer scientist. The two were technically his bosses, but Dante often acted as recess monitor and chaperone to the two men who loved to argue. The thought of those two playing a video game seemed like high comedy. “Virgil, you’ve got no chance. They’re geeks, but they’re not that kind of geek. You’ll never see either of them wearing that harness. They are not gamers.”
“They need not be suitable to the Realm, but they must witness it for them to understand. Only I can show them,” Virgil replied. His movements fluid as always, Virgil turned away, but not before Dante caught a glimpse of a deepening smile. That universal game interface grew more like a real person every day. Why not, Dante thought, somewhere deep in the Plexcorp basement, the VIRGIL construct ran in parallel across a network of disembodied human brains, with one unknown human mind as its governor. The thought made Dante shudder. He wondered if Gideon even cared those human brains were capable of suffering and showed signs of awareness beyond the game.
“Take me to the character creation screen,” Dante said emphatically.
“Please specify the race you would like to play,” Virgil said, his voice becoming practiced and impersonal. Virgil appeared to all players in the game, everywhere. Only Dante and his friends knew that Virgil was much more than an element of the system. Sometimes, the great Wizard slipped back into his canned programming, a fact that increasingly made Dante feel uneasy. It reminded him that Virgil was a living entity existing across harvested human brains, and much of his identity was derived from computer code.
Dante hesitated, then shook his head. He’d hoped Kalmond the Dwarf would have lasted…well, forever. Planning a new build hadn’t even crossed his mind. A door materialized, and Virgil stepped through. Dante followed.
He entered a room cluttered with display tables, armor racks, and statues. Each of the races: Human, Elf, Dwarf, Centaur, Ogre, and Orc, were represented, along with the subraces of each. Glass-topped tables showed faces, lying still like death masks, displaying the multitude of character options available in the game. Dante reeled.
“Wow,” Dante whispered. He wandered through the cavernous space, edging past flaming swords and menacing spearheads. Now, to decide his future.
He headed directly to the matched pair of dwarf statues, each hewn from bright, white marble. Leaning close, he reached a hand out to touch the male dwarf’s impossibly fine, carved whiskers.
The female dwarf vanished, and when he looked up, the room was far less cluttered.
“Well then,” Dante said. “That’s my choice.”
He turned towards the three smaller dwarf statues lined up at the other end of the room. The first was carved from vines and branches that contorted itself into the shape of the short humanoid. That was a wood dwarf. The second was hewn from stone, rougher than the marble statue he’d touched. That was the stone dwarf, of course. The next would be the sea dwarf, carved from driftwood and sporting a string of fish around his neck and his beard fashioned into two long braids.
“How do I see their stats?” Dante asked aloud. In one eerie motion, the statues moved to hold up chiseled stone tablets. He ran his eyes over each, weighing the options.
Dwarves were a hearty race. All three sub-races gave +2 to stamina, giving them great potential as tanks. They paid for that advantage with a significant hit to mana capacity, providing them the lowest starting mana level of any race. While all the dwarf races had -1 to their mana capacity, the stone dwarf was the only race that also had -1 to intelligence. Mana capacity and intelligence gave the player that all-important mana charge level. But what gave the Stone Dwarves their hitpoint advantage was the +2 to strength. All the other dwarf subraces had +1.
Deciding right then and there to be a giver and taker of damage, Dante reached out and tapped the tablet held by the stone dwarf. The other two vanished.
“What next?” There was no obvious answer now, so Dante followed the sequence of the character creation screens he was used to, then chose his appearance. This didn’t take long, despite the dizzying array of faces, beard styles, and hair colors laid out on display. A dwarf should, Dante thought, have a ginger beard, and it should be thick and untameable. His beard should be plain, not ugly, but not pretty, either. He pointed to one that caught his eye, a weathered face with a light scar on the left cheek. Dante didn’t bother to look at the rest once he’d chosen. He just knew.
Next was class selection. Fleeting thoughts of paladins in shining armor crossed his mind, and he walked over to the paladin statue to take it in. R9C allowed Paladins to be of any race and a choice at character creation time. Bonuses to charisma, intelligence and agility allowed the Paladin to achieve combat skills early in the game. The tradeoff was that choosing Paladin put one on a three-forked path, each very narrow. Choosing quests that exemplified the path of good, neutrality or evil gave the Paladin skills in the areas of melee, unarmed and persuasion. The Realm always presented Paladins with choices and rewards to enhance those skills. Of all the class choices, it was Paladin that made the dynamic quest engine most specific. Some loved that, but Dante didn’t.
Fighting for the fate of the Nine Circles filled Dante with a weight of responsibility he’d not known before. He’d always been passionate about the game, but it was never a matter of life and death. Now, lives and fortunes were wrapped up in the Realm. It was no longer a game. The choices he made in-world had grave consequences in the physical realm. A paladin would stifle his love of the game, but would it be worth the potential advantages?
In an instant, he turned away. A calm settled over him when he made his choice, touching the blackened leather armor set, with its daggers and poisons hanging from its belt. Yes, this was him. He was a rogue. Another realization followed close behind. He didn’t need shiny armor to do great things. He’d already done great things while kitted out in a mishmash of untraditional armor. Dante smiled. Yep, you didn’t have to be the good looking, shiny paladin to save the world. You just had to stick to your principles and try. Stealing stuff, sneaking around and stabbing things with daggers also helped.
Being a rogue gave him one more point of intelligence, effectively neutralizing the race mana deficit. That single point was needed, as the rogue class came with two basic spells: sneak and detection. Every little bit of mana helped. When he chose his calling, he’d have more opportunity to increase his mana capacity. Until then, it would be a serious grind. Dante could hardly wait.
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He nodded, happy with his decision. Choosing the stone dwarf over his previous wood dwarf also sacrificed a point of agility for strength. His love of giant axes meant that an extra point of strength would add damage to every successful swing. He swiped over to the next screen by dragging his fingertip through the air, then poked his finger at the text that read “ACCEPT.”
A booming voice filled the space, seeming to shake the soaring arches above. “Who comes forth to enter the Realm of the Nine Circles?” the voice demanded.
Massive onyx letters descended from the ornate ceiling, nearly slamming Dante in the face. “Character name:” the letters read.
“Kalmond,” Dante said proudly.
The word “California” populated the text bar.
“What the…” Dante muttered.
“Wutha” appeared as his name.
“No, damn it…” Dante said, exasperated. Those words also appeared. Was Virgil messing with him, or did the lobby have a bug?
“Delete!” The words disappeared. “Kalmond,” Dante said slowly and with great deliberation. It worked. His name appeared, expanded, then rose up as it faded away. He made a mental note to check for buggy code in the last portion of the character creation sequence.
“Kalmond the stone dwarf,” the voice announced, “Enter the realm if you dare!”
Orange light crept slowly around the corners of his vision to reveal corbel arches of rough, gray stone. As a level 1 character with ten measly experience points, he spawned back in the stone dwarf cathedral, not too far from the altar chamber. He looked down at his feet, to the calf-high leather moccasins and took note of the rough cloth of his pants and shirtsleeves. He barely remembered the standard stone dwarf outfit, not having played a low-level character for the past two years. That’s how long it took him to reach Level forty with his previous dwarf.
Virgil appeared once again, announced by soft, shuffling footsteps on dusty stone. Virgil said nothing and fixed Kalmond with eyes that promised to envelop the dwarf in the sea of knowledge that swelled behind them.
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