On My Brother's Grave: Reconnaissance: A LitRPG Adventure (Vatenkeist Online Book 1)

by E. M. Hardy

  We both chuckled and she stuck out her tongue at me with a naughty look on her face. “Can I say I’m cheering for you guys? The Silver Blades have always been good friends. I guess it’s just a bonus that you happened to be their newest member.”

  “Why so?”

  “Cause I like you too,” Sweetness said with a cute wink. She then poured me another glass. “This one is on the house, handsome. I think you’re going to need it.”

  She pointed over to the door and I turned around to see Elia. She looked pretty roughed up, bruised and bloodied up. Right beside her was an elf. This elf was slender and tall, perhaps a good six-foot-two, and looked like a really powerful Warrior class. He had some of the most elegant armor that was clean white with a blue shimmer to it.

  This elf carried two short swords by his side. They were both very fancy looking, with dragon-shaped hilts made from the purest silver and gold. The sheath that housed them was decorated with glowing runes – a definite hint this man was more powerful than any player I had met thus far. He looked even more threatening than Lord Commander Vahn Alben.

  “Excuse me for a bit,” I told Sweetness as I headed to a corner table, far away from the rest of the customers in the tavern. Elia and the elf came and sat down to join me.

  “Here,” Elia said as she handed me my weapons and gear. “By the way, I gave the ledger to Null. He took it and delivered it to Vahn in the Obelisk Gallant. There’s no way for the Ascendants to get it now.”

  “Who’s this?” I pointed at the elf as I stood to put on the armor. I also took a moment to sling the Elven Longbow around my shoulder and lock the dagger on my belt. “He doesn’t look like a run-of-the-mill player.”

  Elia was about to introduce him when he raised his hands and interrupted, “My name is Darshan. I am the leader of this section of the Ascendants.”

  In that instant, a fire exploded from within me and I could not help myself from grabbing my knife and slashing forward, right at his face. The blade struck true and blood spattered across the table from the deep gash on his cheek. Even then, Darshan did not budge.

  “You’ve got the balls to come talk to us?” I said as I gripped the hilt of the dagger tight. The tip of the blade was still pressed hard against his flesh and, by then, I noticed the other patrons had their eyes set on us.

  “It’s not like I had a choice,” he answered. “I wanted to speak with Vahn but your companion here says he is gone. I will have to settle with just you.”

  Smack!

  I hit him with a solid punch to the face and then another and then another. He took the blows like they meant nothing to him. At his level, I was pretty sure my attacks were nothing more than annoying mosquito bites for him. They still felt so satisfying.

  “You killed my brother,” I growled at him. “You and your pathetic band of pricks were responsible for his death. You think you can log in here, treat other players like crap and not have to answer for your behavior? Let me tell you right now pal, you’re not a god. No matter how many achievements you accomplished in this game, no matter how many riches you gained, you’re still an effing moron who has to obey by the rules.”

  Darshan laughed, blood spilling out from his broken nose. He looked at me like I was the idiot. “You’ve no idea just how stupid you all are. You have no clue as to the ramifications of what you just did.”

  Elia cut in, “What do you mean? We defeated you. Your influence over Cael’vron is over. It won’t happen overnight, but the wheels have been set in motion. White River will fall and become ours. The other guilds will fight and split your other territories. It’s inevitable, Darshan. Nothing lasts forever.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Darshan said. “Whatever you had against us, we had against the Horde.”

  “I don’t give a crap about your dealings with the Horde,” I told him. “The Horde didn’t force my brother to commit suicide. You guys did.”

  Elia then dropped the bomb. “He’s right. I have nothing against the Horde. But I do have something against you. Your Lord Commander, Trystan – he’s the one who hurt me. He’s the one who raped me.”

  My jaw dropped when I heard that. Even Darshan looked severely taken aback from that revelation.

  “W-what?” I stuttered. Elia and I had never talked in detail about our personal beef with the Ascendants. Although that’s the thing that had brought us together in the beginning, we had never explicitly told each other why we were so set on making them pay. But now that I heard her motives, I could only understand why she too had kept it a secret.

  Elia explained, “I had just discovered this game and I was playing a Mage back then. I was looking for some help. I didn’t know how to properly log out, add Friends, use skills, or locate suitable missions. I found a friend in Trystan. I thought I could trust him. But he took advantage of me. One night, while we were alone, he cast some spell to immobilize me. Then, he proceeded to do everything to me. Just talking about this, it makes me feel… I…” She squeezed her fists. “This might just be a game but it felt real. Too damn real.”

  Her story got me even angrier. The wrath was boiling over and I wanted to stab this Darshan again and again just to fill in the void in my chest.

  “Even then,” Darshan responded, “your actions have doomed us all. We’re all going to die now, and I’m not talking about this virtual world where we can just respawn. There’s no time now to fix what is broken.”

  I perked an eyebrow up. “What do you mean, we’re all doomed?”

  Darshan nonchalantly said, “Go ahead, try to log out of the game.”

  Elia and I both activated our menus.

  I went down to the Exit Game option and tried to log out. Elia did as well. Yet, no matter how many times we tapped the button, nothing was happening. Elia started to panic and she began fumbling with every option.

  “What the hell is going on?” I asked Darshan.

  He shrugged. “The Horde has figured out a way to keep us all in. They figured out some sort of glitch in the game and learned how to abuse it.”

  “What are you saying?” Elia asked. Her voice quivered with fear and doubt. “Are you saying we’re permanently locked in here?”

  Darshan raised his open palms. “It just took effect about the same time you came to me.”

  “How did you find him anyway?” I asked Elia.

  “I peeked into the ledger,” she answered. “There was a lot of information, but one thing made very clear was that Darshan was among the members. Everyone knows Darshan – he’s a freaking hero. It was a little disappointing to discover he belonged to the guild. He didn’t even try to escape when I told him the gig was up and that the Ascendants were about to lose the battle.”

  Darshan looked at us both. “What’s the point? We’re all prisoners of Vatenkeist Online now. We found out about this a long while back. This is why we started infiltrating every court in the Kingdom of Strovnia. We wanted to quietly take over Strovnia and all its lands so we could have the power needed to prevent the Horde from executing their plans.”

  “So you’re saying everything you did was to stop the Horde from keeping people in the game?” I asked. “Why didn’t you just tell others?”

  They could have told the authorities in the real world. They could have warned other gamers. They could have tried to do so many other things instead of keeping this a secret and solving it on their own.

  “We did try to tell others,” Darshan said. “We even tried calling the developers of the game, but they didn’t listen. All they cared about was the next DLC and the next expansion. They wanted to add more things to the game like loot crates and microtransactions. Rumors of a guild discovering and exploiting a glitch in the system were at the very bottom of their priority list.”

  Elia punched him in the ear and Darshan took it without a word. She then looked at him with tears welling in her eyes. “What the hell does this mean now?”

  “It means we’re all permane
nt residents of the game,” Darshan said. “Unless, of course, you neglected to take care of your body in the real world. Then you’ll probably die before the rest of us.”

  For the first time since I had logged into this game, I felt a sense of dread and fear. “Wait, the game can’t automatically log us out? Isn’t it programmed to boot people out when they’ve been logged in for too long?”

  “It should, but the Horde has worked around it,” Darshan replied. “That was the last thing they were working on, and I was about to send a final confirmation to the Lord Commander so they could launch their attack against the Horde. They just needed my confirmation to postpone the Horde’s plans, but you idiots just had to strand us here in Cael’vron at the wrong moment.”

  I slammed a fist down on the table. “Screw you!”

  “You can hit me all you like,” Darshan said, “it won’t change the fact that you are responsible for this. It’s your fault now that millions of people are permanently stuck in here. Many of these people are going to die in the first few days because their bodies aren’t properly sustained. Some gamers eat, exercise, and take care of themselves because they know they could be in the game for a long period of time. Not everyone is that careful. Those who didn’t plan ahead are going to starve and they’ll be the first to go.”

  Elia did the math quickly in her head. “If a person takes a week to die from starvation and lack of water, that means most people here have four to five months in-game time before they die in the real world.”

  “Those who prepared will have a little extra time, but only by another month or two in the game,” Darshan pointed out. “Those who don’t live alone and have friends and family with them will likely be able to help them too by keeping them sustained or hooked up to an IV system similar to those in a hospital.”

  “What happens if someone just hacks you out of the game?” I asked. “What if a relative or friend just removed the VR headset?”

  Darshan shrugged. “I don’t know. Nobody knows right now. All the warnings and caution signs for the game state that it shouldn’t be done. We can only assume that suddenly jocking someone out from the neural connection could fry their brains and kill them. That’s likely going to be my death. I have a wife in the real world and she’s only out on a vacation. When she comes home and sees me wasting away, she’ll probably take off the headgear and that’s the end of my story.”

  “Why would they do this?” I asked. “What’s the point?”

  “Just imagine the kind of power you have when you can tell the real world that you’ve got around two million people held hostage, stuck in a virtual world that even the developers can no longer save?”

  That was true. With so many people held hostage, the Horde members could demand anything as part of their ransom. It was the perfect terrorist attack. They could ask for all the money in the world. Two million players from all over the world meant every nation had at least someone stuck in this virtual reality right now.

  We had to take them down. Whatever anger I held against the Ascendants was still there and burning a hole in my chest, but I knew I had to focus on the bigger picture for the time being. That picture was finding a way to exit the game safely. We could spend weeks or months just trying to find another glitch to counter-attack the one the Horde had utilized, or we could bring the fight to them and request that they undo their actions.

  That was, of course, assuming that we’d even win. From what I had learned thus far, the Horde was unbeatable. They were the epitome of what a guild could do and be in Vatenkeist Online.

  I looked at Elia and, with a heavy heart, I knew what we had to do. With such little time left, there was no other choice.

  “El,” I told her. Tears were flowing down her eyes. I could feel the pain inside too. We finally had our shot at revenge and, yet, even that little victory was stolen from us. “We need to let Vahn know. We need to bring Darshan and his group together. We need to get the heck out of Cael’vron and head to whatever country the Horde now controls and face them.”

  Darshan laughed and he shook his head with disbelief. “Just because you outsmarted the Ascendants, it doesn’t mean you can beat the Horde. They’re on a whole different level.”

  “We’re not going to beat them on our own,” I stood by my statement. “Within a few days, Lord Commander Vahn is going to have complete control over Cael’vron, White River, and the few towns and holdfasts in between. Darshan can communicate with Lord Commander Trystan and maybe we can pool our resources together and launch a siege against the Horde.”

  “I’d rather die than work together with these bastards.” Elia was not having it. She was getting livid with anger. I understood where she was coming from, but this was a whole new level of insanity. We were stuck and we were all going to die if we didn’t figure this out. I needed to let that sink into her mind.

  I pulled her face towards mine and said, “El, if we don’t cooperate with the Ascendants and pull them together with the Silver Blades and some other guilds, then it will all be over. Not just for you, or for me, or for them – everyone is going to die.”

  Elia stood up and turned to Darshan. “Excuse us real quick. Fhauste, if we may? I want to speak with you in private for a moment.”

  “Sure,” I agreed, and I got up and followed her to a table distant from the one we were seated at. From here, we were out of earshot.

  I gestured at Sweetness for a round of ale, and then turned to Elia. “This is a lot of bullcrap, isn’t it? We just won a major battle and we don’t even get one minute to celebrate. The fighting isn’t even done yet and we’re already facing a much bigger issue.”

  “I wonder how many people have just discovered they can’t log out,” Elia pondered. “It’s been nearly an hour since Darshan confirmed the Horde activated their program.”

  “We’ll hear about it soon enough,” I said. “I bet you the moment we walk out of this bar, we’ll hear people screaming for help.”

  Elia sighed and it was the first time I ever felt true sorrow for her. It was weird, given how long we’d known each other now. In the real world, it had only been like two days but, in here, it had been like forever.

  “So why’d you pull me here?” I asked.

  “Just in case we die,” she replied. “I want you to know who I am. I want you to know who I really am. It’s nothing much, but I feel like it’ll make this whole journey in the virtual world feel a little more meaningful if we know each other beyond what our avatars look like.”

  I felt the sincerity in her tone and it finally made me drop my guard. Without really thinking, I went first. “My name’s Corbin Rivers. Although my avatar here looks like a teenager, out in the real world I’m thirty-five years old and I work as a gun for hire.”

  The information dumb struck Elia, but she managed to hold in her shock and responded with her own little revelation. “My name is Freya Nathalie Smith and I’m twenty-eight years old. In the real world, I work as a small-town middle school teacher. There’s nothing amazing or truly notable about me. That’s why I gave this game a try. At least, in here, I could be this monster-slaying badass. Now I can’t think of anything else but leaving.”

  “Freya,” I called her by her real name. “I know this doesn’t sound like a good idea, but it’s the only play we have right now. We need to team up with the Ascendants, pull them together with the Silver Blades and find a way to bring the Horde down. If we don’t, we’re going to be stuck in here until we dwindle and die.”

  She gnashed her teeth and looked at me with a furious anger billowing from her very presence. “Corbin, Trystan raped me. I just can’t let go of that.”

  “They killed my brother,” I reminded her. “We both have reasons to let them rot in here and die, but that doesn’t mean we should die with them.”

  “It also doesn’t mean we have to work with them,” she snapped back. “Can’t we find a different way to fight the Horde?”

  “They
were apprehensive about it and they’re one of the top guilds in the whole freaking game,” I pointed out. “If they had to go through months of political manipulation to get comfortable with the idea of fighting the Horde’s country of soldiers, then what do you think our chances will be? We don’t stand a chance alone.”

  I hated it when I was right and the truth was something no one wanted to hear.

  Elia hung her head back and screamed in frustration. She slammed her fist down on the table, nearly knocking our drinks off, and then rubbed her forehead as she assessed the situation one more time. It was a good five minutes before she looked back up at me and said, “Well, to hell with it. Let’s ride with this stupid idea and see how far it’ll take us. If we don’t do anything, then we’re all going to croak anyway.”

  Finally, with her consent, I led her back to the corner where Darshan was still waiting for us. He seemed a little busy though. He didn’t notice we were there until a few moments had passed and it just occurred to me he was accessing his menu privately.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  Darshan shook his head. “Apparently, there’s another little issue. The in-game chat system has been disabled too. I’m trying to contact my guild mates but the chat box won’t even load.”

  “Great, this is getting better by the minute,” Elia said. “How the hell are we going to bridge an alliance between our guilds if we cannot even speak to our commanders through chat?”

  “We’ll just have to do it the old-fashioned way,” I answered. “Let’s take Darshan to the headquarters and we can discuss everything there. We’re the only ones with a skyship right now, so we’ll pick up the rest of the Ascendants and Silver Blades, head over to the location of Lord Commander Trystan and have him speak terms with Vahn.”

  Darshan raised a hand. “I do know one thing that Trystan is going to demand in exchange for this alliance. He’ll want the ledger you stole from Gorghen. The information there is private as it details a lot of information regarding the guild and its members.”