“You killed the rightful king,” he said, coming to a stop as fear of what she might do to him raced through his mind. It’s just a game. She can’t hurt you here, might as well face her down. “King Lachlan?”
Valen’s steps halted. “I killed him for the same reason I fear I may one day have to kill you.”
“Really? And what reason is that?”
“He refused to join me. I could have done so much for him, helped him rule more than just Samar, but he said no.” She snarled and reached out for Bishop’s face, pinching his chin between her fingers. “I blame Tavin. Without her by his side, he would have been mine so easily.”
Bishop yanked his head back and she let him go. “I doubt that.”
“You did not know Lachlan. He was weak, just as his brother is. Soon, I will be strong enough to reach out to Godfrey and I will offer him the same deal I did to his brother. If he is smart and cares for his people, he will consider it,” she said, circling Bishop. “I would hope you would do the same, so I do not have to kill such a remarkable specimen.”
“I could do without your compliments, thanks,” he muttered.
“I don’t understand what you see in them, the other heroes. I could do so much more for you.”
Bishop looked around, squinting his eyes for any way out of this shadowy prison. But there was no other light besides the flames reaching up from where she stepped. “You know what’s going to happen, right?” he said, keeping her distracted as he continued his search for an escape.
“Please, enlighten me.”
“I’m going to kill every single Demon Lord you have,” he explained, slowly and precisely. “All of them, dead at my hands and those of my friends.”
She flashed her fangs at him as he took another step back and felt a strange gust of air against his spine. Whatever was behind him was hopefully a way out. He took another step and another.
“Then, when all your little buddies are dead,” he went on, “I’ll be bringing my friends and coming for you. And you, my Demon Queen, are going to die. One way or another, it’s going to happen.”
“Then I will be waiting for you, Bishop,” she hissed. “But know this. I am coming for your King.”
He laughed. “Yeah? Well maybe you can have him. I’d prefer to see the rightful Queen back on the throne anyway.” He took another step and his heel sank off the edge of whatever he stood on. “Nice chat, but I really have to get going.”
Bishop was ready to plunge into the darkness when Valen reached out and grabbed hold of his shoulder. Her hand burst into flames, burning through his jerkin and down to his skin. He yelped, shoving at her to get her away from him, but she dragged him so she could glare into his eyes.
“You are a fool, Bishop. One day, soon, you will realize this is more than just a game.”
He filed her words away as the pain made him cringe. He kicked out at her legs and she gasped, letting him go. His arms wind-milled at his sides before he was tumbling through darkness and his gut twisted. When he hit solid ground, sunshine blinded him and a hand reached down to tug him to his feet.
“Thanks, man,” he told Jimmy, rolling his shoulder as it throbbed in pain.
“Dude, she’s a freaking nightmare,” he muttered.
“Who? Wait, did you see Valenastrious, too?” he asked, and his fear at the game acting out again faded. Jimmy shuddered. “You did?”
“We all did,” Calista informed him, and he whipped around to see her and the rest of his guild, and the LongBeards, picking themselves off the ground. “That was a trip I was not expecting.”
Bishop sagged in relief and a prompt floated in front of his face. He selected it and a new quest appeared, waiting for him to accept.
You have learned of a plot to kill King Godfrey. Return to Weston and inform the King of the Demon Queen’s plans before she comes for him.
Bishop accepted it and it appeared on his tracker. “I guess we’re taking a trip to Weston.”
“Tomorrow, folks,” Jimmy announced. “Time to log out for the day, boys and girls.”
Bishop wanted to go through his bags first and clear them out, but he helped transport everyone back to Hillside and they logged out together.
When Harrison opened his eyes back in the computer lab, Tyler detached his gear. “That was some show, man, really!” he said excitedly. “Everyone was watching you guys.”
“That dungeon is a piece of work,” he said, sitting up.
Tyler unstrapped him and Harrison stepped down, holding his shoulder where Valen had grabbed him. At first, he thought it was his mind messing with him again. But the stinging pain of a burn only grew instead of going away. He held his shoulder, rolling it to try and relieve the pain, telling himself it couldn’t hurt since he wasn’t inside Samar anymore. As they exited the lab and made their way towards the cafeteria though, the pain continued to grow worse until he was gritting his teeth trying not to show anything.
“Hey, when you saw Valen, what happened?” he asked Jimmy, hoping his voice sounded light and not like he was ready to yell from the building agony.
“She threatened to kill me if I didn’t stop killing off her demons,” he said, scrunching his face up in thought. “And then, she threw me backwards through a portal and I landed beside you. Why?”
Harrison shrugged the shoulder not causing him grief. “The same, I was just curious.”
“Yeah, finding out about her trying to kill Godfrey though, that’s interesting.”
“Do you know who Godfrey really is?” Harrison asked, curious as to what everyone else knew of their beloved king.
“Yes, we all found out when we talked to our main quest people. He wasn’t meant to be king, but his brother died in the plague and he took over.”
Harrison tripped over his feet, forgetting for a moment that not all of them knew the king was really a half-breed. “That’s all you know about him?”
“Yeah. Harrison, what’s going on? There something you’re not telling us?”
“No, nothing,” he murmured. “I’ll catch up with you guys at the table. Have to hit the bathroom.”
“Want me to get you some sushi?” Jimmy teased with a wink.
Harrison ignored him and tried not to run to the bathroom. He checked to make sure he was alone and tugged aside the collar of his shirt so he could see his shoulder.
“What the…” There, exactly where Valen had grabbed him in the game, was a perfect handprint burned into his skin. Gently, he ran a finger over the tender flesh and bit his lip as a jolt of pain shot through his body. Lunch would have to wait. He turned right out of the bathroom and walked as quickly as he could towards the infirmary located on the main floor of the facility.
“Mr. Harper, yes?” the woman who was the local doctor on duty said as he walked in.
“Yeah, how’d you know?”
“I try to put faces with names when doing these gigs. Makes it a little more comfortable,” she explained, and she held out her hand. “Dr. Lily Sanchez. What can I do for you today?” Her brow furrowed and she placed her hand on his forehead. “You do not look well.”
“Might have something to do with this,” he said, and he tugged his shirt aside.
“That’s a second-degree burn,” she said, surprised, and she guided him to a bed. “Is that… is that a handprint? What happened?”
“I think you need to page Dennis,” he told her as she helped him remove his shirt.
“Dennis? What for? You’re not telling me this happened in the game, are you?”
He cringed. “I could say no if that would make you feel any better.”
“Right, I’m paging him right now.” She drew her cell from her white coat pocket and her fingers blurred across the touchpad. She waited and it beeped a few seconds later. “He’s on his way down. I’m going to clean this and then put some ointment on it and wrap it up for you. I’m not going to lie, it’s going to hurt like a female dog.”
She gave him a localized shot for the pain, sm
oothed the ointment over his shoulder, and bandaged him up. She was finishing the dressing when Dennis rushed into the infirmary.
“You said a burn?” he asked, panicked. “How, when?”
“In game, apparently,” Dr. Sanchez said, though she sounded as if she still doubted what Harrison told her. “Dennis, you assured me this whole full body interface was safe.”
“It is! We’ve tested it for years and nothing like this has ever happened until now.”
“Is this the only time someone’s been hurt?”
Dennis glanced at Harrison over her head as he opened his mouth to say something about the bruises around his neck. But the look on the old man’s face said he would appreciate keeping those details quiet, for now.
“Yes, as far as I know. Harrison?”
“Only time,” he lied. “It was weird. Everyone else went through the same quest I did and nothing strange happened.” He stared pointedly at Dennis the second Dr. Sanchez turned away to tell him that his experience was most definitely different than the others and they needed to discuss it, soon.
“I don’t like it,” Dr. Sanchez said. “If this happens again, I’m going to have to report it. You do understand that, right? You can’t have players showing up with second degree burns that look like damn handprints.”
“No, of course not. The safety of my players is as always my top priority.”
“It better be.” She pulled out a prescription pad. “I’m going to give you some mild pain killers just to get you through the next few days. You can fill it over there when you’re ready to go.”
“Do I have to stay here?” he asked.
“I would prefer you stay for a few hours and rest, but I can tell you’re anxious to get back out there. So no, you don’t have to stay here.” She handed him the script and sighed as she walked away, her heels clicking loudly in the empty infirmary.
Dennis clasped his hands behind his back, smiling, until she disappeared into an office at the end of the room. Then he groaned and sank onto the bed beside Harrison. “Those bruises on your neck before, they came from Valen, didn’t they?”
“Yes they did, also during a shared quest,” he replied. “The burn? Came from the quest Valen starts when she captures your group leaving the third dungeon. I’ll bet she said some different stuff to me than she did to the others, too. Dennis, what is this? She shouldn’t be able to physically hurt me, right?”
He shook his head. “In all my years of working on this game, I have never seen an injury sustained, I assure you. Ask anyone here. I tested it myself numerous times in case something of this nature would occur,” he explained. “This game, it reacts differently to you, Harrison Harper, and I still have yet to understand why. Why it wants you separated from everyone else.”
“Like how I’m the only one who knows King Godfrey and his twin brother are half demons?”
Dennis’ head shot up and he nearly grabbed Harrison’s shoulders before he stopped himself. “Sorry, I forgot, but how do you know that so soon? That is not information you gather for many, many levels yet.”
“But we’re supposed to confront him.”
“Yes, about Old Weston, but that comes after you warn him of Valen’s attack, and once you’ve gathered more stories of the old kingdom.” He counted on his fingers. “You’re nearly twenty levels ahead. How did you figure that out?”
“Two of your little birdies told me,” he said. “Tavin and Bronson. They also gave me Lachlan’s journal to try and remind Godfrey of what he is and what his brother and Tavin stood for when she was Queen.” Harrison waited for him to say something, anything, but Dennis appeared at a loss for words. He wrung his hands and seemed to have aged ten years just sitting there. “Dennis?”
He smiled softly as he stood, patting Harrison on the knee. “Sorry, lost in thought is all.”
“What should we do, or what should I do?”
“Do you wish to discontinue the beta test?” he asked. “With what’s happening, I’m no longer one hundred percent certain you will be safe from here on out.”
Did Harrison want to stop playing this game? The world of Samar, his new friends, this facility, they’d become his life now. Could he just so easily leave all that behind and return to his former existence?
“No,” he answered, firmly. “No, it’s only been two minor incidents and I’m sure it’s possible my mind had a hand in causing this injury and the last one, right? Fear and anxiety can actually make you sick, right?”
Dennis sighed in relief. “That they can, but I want you to be careful, more careful than normal. For you, this may no longer be just a game.”
“And the things I know that I’m not supposed to know?”
“I would prefer you not share such details with your friends and let them discover the information on their own, unless of course it tears you away from them. But I did not design the main storyline to do that.”
Harrison swung his legs over the bed and smirked as he stood. “You didn’t design the game’s NPCs to latch onto one player either. I’ll be fine.”
“If you begin to have second thoughts, if you do wish to back out, I would be more than happy to give you a job here,” Dennis assured him. “I can’t imagine going forward with this game without one of my key players here to help me work through the glitches.”
“Speaking of glitches,” he said, “those wards we get from the priests to help against Helenex and her sirens, they don’t work.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean we used them at the beginning of the dungeon but, the second we were all down in the tunnels, all the men succumbed to their singing. She took control of our minds. What are the wards supposed to do if not stop that from happening?”
Dennis scratched at his chin. “What exactly did the priests tell you about Helenex?”
“That she’s a seductress and her and her sirens mostly affect men,” he said slowly, wondering what he could have possibly missed.
“Mostly men,” Dennis repeated. “And I fear you may not have done enough research. The pillars connected to the players, they were easy to break?”
“For the most part, but we still almost died.”
“If you did not have the wards, those pillars would not have crumbled so easily. They were to help shield you all from her magic, but not stop it from harming you at all. So the wards did work.”
“But no female players will be affected?”
“Oh no, I never said that. The algorithm for that quest is quite complex. For your group, it chose to turn all the males. For another, it may do the opposite. It’s meant to be random to keep everyone on their toes.” Dennis stood and held out his hand for Harrison to take. “I’m afraid you have enough of that going on without the game adding any extra twists and turns.”
“No trust me, I’d rather there be all these secrets and cover ups. Otherwise, the game would be boring, right?”
“For you, I feel a game like this would never bore you. We will speak again, soon.”
He left the infirmary and, for the first time since meeting the older man, Harrison sensed a sensation of worry growing in his gut that Dennis was not telling him everything he needed to know. Short of cornering him and making him speak, which was not the type of man Harrison was, he would have to be patient and figure it out on his own terms.
Harrison tested his shoulder to make sure he would be able to keep playing for the day without having to explain to the others what happened. He tugged his t-shirt back on and went to fill his script so he could take one pill tonight and have them ready for tomorrow morning. He had no idea where they were headed next in the game, and he was anxious to keep going through the story, especially now that he was tapping into a part of the story no one else knew. Part of him wanted to spill the beans to his guild, but Dennis’ words reminded him the thrill of discovering a twist in the story of any game. He would keep the details to himself until absolutely necessary.
Dinner was nearly over by the time he m
ade it back to the cafeteria. Callie had saved him a plate and he scarfed it down. While his mouth was busy with food, he avoided answering too many questions about where he went to. Callie nudged him a few times, giving him a suspicious look, and when he finished eating he told them he simply wanted to check in with Dennis about how the third dungeon went.
“Promise, nothing else is going on,” he told everyone. “But I did ask him about the wards. According to him, they worked as they were supposed to. They weakened the pillars tying up our players and the algorithm is random,” he added in a whisper. “Not the same group will be affected each time, so things could go very different for another guild.”
“Nice to know we didn’t mess that up,” Alana said, but she didn’t sound happy about it.
“As long as you’re good, because we have a ton of stuff to sift through when we get back in game tomorrow morning,” Jimmy told him. “I can’t wait to level up some more! New Talents, here I come. Did I tell you I get a dragon?”
Harrison put him in a fake chokehold, and they goofed their way down the hall and outside to enjoy the evening air before heading off to bed.
Chapter 11
“Okay,” Maverick said the next morning as they entered the game. “Two days ago, we wiped out the third dungeon, turned in the quests from that and everyone is about halfway to level twenty-three. What’s on the agenda today?”
Bishop almost didn’t want to think about doing anything that day. Yesterday, he convinced them all to take it easy and enjoy Hillside and the surrounding farmland. They all worked so hard for the last dungeon, they deserved a rest. In reality, his shoulder hurt, almost worse in game, and he couldn’t focus to save his life, or anyone else’s if it came down to it. Being around town though, they managed to catch up on some in-game gossip. He smirked, thinking of the dungeon they ran successfully. He’d been wondering, aside from the wards, if there was another glitch involving the cleansing ritual and how nothing attacked them at the temple. A second group ran the dungeon and, from what he was told, they opened the tomes instead of taking them straight up to the tower.
Necromancers, Demons & Kings: A LitRPG Epic (World of Samar Book 2) Page 17