Growth Hero

by Brent Tyman

  Growth Hero

  Brent Tyman

  Edited by

  Dutch Palmer

  Copyright © 2021 Brent Tyman.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Names, characters, and places are products of the author’s imagination.

  Contents

  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

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Appendix

  Groups

  LitRPG Group

  1

  The door to my apartment groaned as I smacked it open to get inside. A two-hour bus ride followed by another hour of walking to get back to this rickety old place was almost too much for anyone.

  At least the hours went by quick while on the clock, but still…

  I let out a satisfied whoop as I slammed the door behind me and made a beeline to my PC as fast as possible. This apartment had barely enough to space to fit two couches side by side, so my desk was crammed up next to the kitchen stove.

  Probably not the best place to put it, but it wasn’t like I had other options.

  When I sat down, as if on cue, my stomach rumbled, derailing my plans for diving straight into that hot new RPG.

  With a sigh, I got back up and shuffled a few feet over to the fridge and peered inside.

  Beans, noodles, or some… were those oranges?

  “Crap, I forgot to go shopping,” I griped to no one in particular. Still, the fact that my options for dinner were so limited was a bit of a shock to me.

  Noodles it is, I decided, and plopped the take-out carton into the microwave as fast as I could. I headed back to my PC and switched it on. The screen lit up with a satisfying glimmer, the login screen just a few seconds away.

  Games were probably where most of my money went, to be honest, but it was definitely worth it.

  I stood in front of the microwave and waited impatiently for my noodles to be done before sitting back down.

  It was time to get down to business.

  This particular RPG had been advertised on every gaming website and widely anticipated for years now. I couldn’t wait to play it. Fantasy was my favorite genre, and this game delivered that in spades.

  It also sported a whole lot of fan service too, with the busts of certain characters going well beyond modest.

  That wasn’t the only reason I had wanted to get it, definitely not…

  Well… Maybe it had influenced my purchase just a bit, but I had heard the gameplay was good, too. Honest!

  I booted up my preload of the game and got right into it.

  After I had finished an awesome gaming session, regretting that I had to work tomorrow, I looked next to my mouse and saw that I hadn’t even touched my noodles.

  I had left them to cool, and they sat all soggy and cold now.

  Crap!

  Ah well. I would probably bin it later, but my brain wasn’t really thinking too logically right now. I decided to pop it back in the fridge.

  My bed happened to be right next to my desk, just a single sized one, which was all I could realistically fit in here.

  Many people might have been uneasy with the lack of space in this tiny apartment, but not me. I was used to it, given my lonely upbringing.

  I changed into my pajamas—what the stores liked to market as ‘lounge wear’ for some reason—and hopped into bed, checking the messages on my phone.

  As I expected, there was only a message from my boss—letting me know about some additional constraints on the project I was working on. Other than that, nothing.

  I guess it couldn’t really be helped that none of my co-workers were into video games, never mind RPG’s, but it was truly a shame they weren’t even into anime or manga.

  A lot of them bragged about going out every night, but the amount of money spent on expensive drinks at a bar must have been obscene.

  Well, they had their lives, and I had mine.

  I spent a few moments looking at my screen saver picture of my late parents before succumbing to sleep—dreaming of having a family of my own someday…

  Something felt really strange when I opened my eyes. I had expected the dark gloom of my apartment, since it was surrounded by other high rises on all sides. Instead, everything was a bright white so sharp it felt like it was burning my eyes. I grumbled as I rubbed at them, hoping that would help me keep them open longer.

  White mists rose and fell around me. The sky had perfectly bright, white clouds above and a chill ran through me when I realized this was definitely not my apartment.

  What the heck!

  I stood up as quickly as I could.

  “Welcome to the afterlife for planet Lonikek Four,” a woman’s voice said. “Please allow me a moment to make things more… comfortable.”

  At that instant, a table appeared in front of me, on the other side of which sat an incredibly beautiful woman. Every part of her exuded some aspect of divinity. I held my breath in shock as I took her form in.

  She smiled sweetly at me as white teacups appeared on the table and I found that I was now sitting in a comfortable chair, albeit on the other side of the table from this beauty.

  How did that happen? I was just standing, wasn’t I?

  “What’s going on?” I asked. “Who are you?”

  “Please, call me Persephone,” the woman said. She took a sip from her teacup and shook her head to settle her shining blonde locks over her shoulder.

  “I am a Goddess of this world’s afterlife, again, specifically for Lonikek Four, which would be the planet you are from, correct?”

  I mean, sure, we called our planet Lonikek, but I didn’t understand why I was here. Did something happen last night?

  “Yes. Before you interrupt with more questions, I’m sorry to say that you are indeed… dead. Apologies for this slight nuisance,” she said.

  Weirdly, this Goddess didn’t seem to be that saddened at this revelation, but it was horrible news for me.

  “No way! I’m dead? But I slept just fine last night,” I protested.

  Surely, she was joking, right?

  Persephone took another dainty sip of whatever she happened to be drinking and pursed her lips in thought. “While that is true, you had a fit in your sleep and fell over the side of your tiny bed, somehow managing to land on your head. The trauma to your brain was so severe that your brain simply shut off from the shock.”

  I blinked at that information, then blinked again. Feeling suddenly nauseous, I held a hand to my forehead and squeezed the bridge of my nose.

  “Quite a rare way to go—what we Gods like to call a fluke.”

  “Ugh,” I complained, “What a lame way to die.”

  Even I didn’t think I would go out like this. The paramedics migh
t question such a lame death, once they found my body. Still though, I thought I have been screaming in rage or something? But after my initial bout of nausea, I felt… relieved?

  My life wasn’t that bad, but I wouldn’t say I’d felt fulfilled either. The only possessions I had which had any sort of value was my very power-hungry gaming PC with enough RGB to light the whole room it sat in. I was only twenty-three, so maybe I hadn’t gotten to the good bits yet.

  “Just kidding!” Persephone grinned and my eyes widened in shock as I looked back to her.

  “Huh?”

  “What I said did happen, but we Gods do occasionally like to shift certain souls onto other planets that would suit them better. In your case, because of your lack of family, and certain other factors, the higher ups decided it was time to move you to a place where you might prosper.”

  My thoughts screeched to a halt and I just sat there, my mouth agape.

  Was this Goddess for real?

  “This makes no sense! Are you really a Goddess? Saying one thing and then joking afterwards?”

  At this, Persephone’s grin waned.

  “What do you mean? I’m as God-like as they come,” she protested.

  “I have read light novels—er, stories—where the main character died and then the Goddess turned out to be a phony impostor of divinity or something,” I said.

  “I assure you,” Persephone said, placing the teacup back down onto the table. “I am as beautiful as you see, and this is indeed the afterlife for your particular planet.”

  Persephone’s eyes suddenly became wistful.

  “I am applying to be the Goddess of Tricks and Chance, however, which requires me to be more…” she tapped a finger against her chin in thought.

  “Jokey? Hmmm… tricksy, maybe? The previous God for that role was very flamboyant, you see.”

  I didn’t have a clue what she was on about, and I think she could see that from the look on my face.

  She clapped her hands, and the teacups on the table disappeared. Ah crap, I hadn’t even had a chance to try this tea that the Goddess seemed to enjoy so much.

  Replacing the teacups were a row of cards, all face down with very intricate designs on the backs of them, though all identical.

  “Moving right along, I suppose I had best do my job,” Persephone said. “You will be going to another world that is more suited for you. As recompense for perishing due to our intervention, I am to bestow upon you one free skill.”

  Persephone delivered this news in a business-like fashion, similar to how serious my boss, or I suppose my former boss, usually was. Unlike my grim supervisor, however, she suddenly grinned excitedly.

  “But, since I want that new role, I have changed the way I deliver the free skill. Normally I would let the soul pick from a list, but instead, all the skills are now written on these cards and you must choose one at random.”

  I considered this and tried to quiet the million questions in my head. I was apparently going to a new world and getting a new skill—whatever that meant.

  “Can’t I, you know, go to Heaven or something?” I asked, and Persephone sheepishly looked away.

  “Sorry, you can’t. But don’t worry, you really don’t want to go there. Or any Heavenly world right now—seeing as how they are under Infernal siege.”

  Persephone's eyes suddenly went wide, and she waved her hands round in every which way.

  “But forget I said anything about Infernals! Or anything at all! I assure you—you will be going to a Web of Lands world that is very firmly in our domain… safe from any and all outside threats.”

  I raised an eyebrow at this, but it seemed Persephone didn’t want to say anything more.

  Infernals?

  Web of Lands?

  What the heck was she talking about?

  “Okay…” I said, ready to ask another question, but Persephone waved quickly to the cards in front of me, laid out in a row.

  “All you need to know is that you will pick a card, gain a skill, and be on your way,” Persephone said. “You may do whatever you wish in the world you find yourself in. The higher ups have requirements on how they expect the world to shift—but none of that is of any concern to you.”

  I looked down at the cards; there really was no real difference between any of them. There wasn’t a single imperfection that I could spot, and no particular card shouted, ‘pick me!’

  I tried moving from my seat, simply to adjust, but it looked like my legs wouldn’t obey me anymore. I guess there was no running away from this.

  As soon as my hand rose to pick a card near the middle of the row, Persephone quickly scooped up the cards in one smooth motion and made a show of shuffling them. Like how a bartender would be showing off their juggling and mixing skills, Persephone was flipping cards in every direction. It almost looked like each card was floating in front of her in a strange pattern.

  “Are you gonna let me pick or what?” I complained and Persephone laughed as she skillfully set the cards back on the table, exactly the same way they had been before.

  Although I assumed the cards were completely mixed up now. They had better be after that performance.

  “Just making sure you know that the cards are completely random,” Persephone explained.

  I rolled my eyes. She didn’t need to do that—not like I’d known what card held what skill beforehand. Feeling confident Persephone wouldn’t try prolonging this any longer, my hand shot out and picked out a card. I drew it close to my chest and then flipped it over to see what it contained.

  When the Goddess had mentioned skills, I’d wondered if she meant skills like in the RPG games I played all the time. If that was the case, then heading off to a new world like that would be cool.

  My excitement quickly turned into confusion as I flipped the card over and saw that it contained some strange writing on it that I couldn’t read whatsoever.

  I stared at it for a good while, perplexed, as if waiting for it to become legible before Persephone prompted me.

  “If you would please hand it to me, I will explain the skill to you. Normally the list I use is automatically translated to a soul’s preferred language, but I haven’t gotten around to doing that with the cards yet.”

  As I handed the card back to Persephone, I wondered again if she really was a Goddess. If a camera was suddenly thrust into my face with someone shouting out that this was all a prank, I would genuinely not be surprised. Not in the least.

  In fact… I looked around for a hidden camera.

  “Let’s see here,” Persephone said, preparing to read the card. “This method of bestowing skills is surely going to get me that trickster role.”

  While Persephone was happily humming to herself, I set my sights back on the remaining cards, the one I had taken leaving a gap in the row. Logically speaking, picking from a list surely was better than choosing randomly from an unknown set, right?

  What if I ended up with a crappy skill? I was about to voice my concerns to Persephone when I noticed that she had gone eerily quiet. Her face had turned pale and her eyes were as wide as they could probably go.

  “No, no, no, no, no,” she muttered. “I can’t let him go with this. It would ruin everything.”

  Persephone then looked up to me, her eyes still wide.

  “Sorry soul, I can’t let you have this skill.”

  “Err…” I said, not sure really what to say to that. “Call me Alex, and why not?”

  “I simply cannot allow it,” Persephone repeated.

  She slipped the card down her cleavage, for some reason, and moved to collect the cards yet again.

  “Please choose another once I’ve finished shuffling,” she said. “I can’t allow it. I can’t.”

  Persephone kept muttering “can’t allow it” to herself as she shuffled the deck. Meanwhile, it seemed like the whole region where we sat grew darker and darker. The white clouds in the sky above became gray and then deathly black. The white mist all around me lost it
s shine and became dull.

  I could see a large bead of sweat roll down Persephone’s pristine cheek as she gave those cards the most vigorous shuffle I had ever seen. A sense of dread permeated the air. It seemed the only one who couldn’t sense it was Persephone, herself.

  What the heck was happening now? This might be some crazy dream, but even I wouldn’t have dreamed of something this weird.

  Persephone’s eyes turned fearfully to the sky, and she gulped as a strange rumble emanated from above.

  “I didn’t break the rules, I swear!” Persephone shouted to the sky.

  “The cards have a small chance of being more powerful than the list, but he shouldn’t be this lucky! I’ll… I’ll just have him pick again.”

  Whoever she was talking to, didn’t seem to agree as the rumble became far more menacing.

  From above Persephone's head, a black liquid substance coalesced from the mist, swirling and expanding in all directions. To me it looked like black ink floating above the Goddess in the air, but to Persephone, it must have seemed like her world was ending.

  “Please Deep Watcher, please,” Persephone squeaked meekly, her frame shaking and her eyes wide, terrified.

  “There… Is… No… Way… Out…” A deep voice boomed, coming from… everywhere all at once. It had no distinct feature other than its low pitch. I couldn’t even tell if it was male or female.

  The only thing I knew was that this voice projected such supreme authority that I couldn’t fathom questioning its judgement.

  Persephone cast her head down and let out a defeated sigh. “There is no way out,” she sobbed, as the black liquid fell over her.