Unbound Deathlord: Challenge

by Edward Castle

  Unbound Deathlord: Challenge

  By Edward Castle

  Unbound Dethlord: Challenge

  Copyright © 2016 by Edward Castle

  All rights reserved.

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover art by Yuriko Matsuoka, sicarius8.deviantart.com

  Cover typesetting by Bonnie L. Price, bonnie-l-price.deviantart.com

  Editing by Nicolas Lagrand, nevir.saedi@gmail.com

  Acknowledgements

  There is no way I could have written this book without help from a lot of people. Therefore, I'd like to take a moment to thank them here.

  First and foremost, my family and my loving girlfriend.

  It isn't that easy to be supportive when your son or boyfriend is giving up his IT career to pursue the dubious profession of author, but they have.

  Then, there are the thousands of beta-readers on RoyalRoadL.com, the website where I first published this book.

  There were so many grammar and syntax errors in the first drafts, I'm surprised they kept reading to the end of the book.

  Not only did they overcome these obstacles, they also provided essential feedback that helped make this story even better.

  Guys and girls, you are awesome.

  Next, there are two people who believed in me enough to make a financial contribution in support my dream of being a writer: Adam Skinner and Logan.

  Adam supported me on my Patreon (http://patreon.com/EdwardCastle) and it was a big morale boost.

  Logan made a substantial donation, which is responsible for this book having such an amazing cover.

  There's only one reason this book is as readable as it is now: Nicolas Lagrand, my editor. Believe me, he worked wonders; I can't stress enough the importance of his work or how rough it was before.

  I would recommend his services to anyone, you can reach him at nevir.saedi@gmail.com

  Thank you all!

  This book wouldn't exist without you.

  Lastly, and most importantly, I thank God.

  For everything.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  Table of Contents

  Prison

  1. The Curious Case of the Stone Licker

  2. Red Hot Chili Bones

  3. Boy Finds Girl

  4. Magic 101

  5. Don't Try This at Home

  Ter'nodril

  6. Dry Fishing

  7. Persona Non Grata

  8. City of the Black Sun

  9. An Eight Legged Favor

  10. Everything Changed When the Fire Mage Attacked

  11. Scrambled Eggs

  Chess

  12. Under the Underworld

  13. People Person

  14. Mister Big Heart

  15. Cat Theory

  16. Life or Death

  17. Manning Up

  18. Arachnophobia

  19. Big Bad Wolf

  War

  20. Wall Walker

  21. Ice in the Hole

  22. Truth?

  23. Don't Feed the Animals

  24. Dream Crushing

  25. Tastes Like Chicken

  26. My Life

  27. Crazy Mode

  28. If You Can't Win

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Prison

  Deathlord

  Underworld – Corrupted – Undead

  The only reason the deathlords are not the most arrogant species of the Underworld is that they share space with vampires and drow.

  Like liches, deathlords choose to become undead by magic, but both are very different beings. While liches give up on everything that could link them to their previous life – meat, blood, voice, memories –, they also receive exceptional power in the exchange.

  Liches also have to study necromancy, a very complicated art that deals both with death and life magic. Only a master can then perform the ritual that will kill them momentarily and turn them into an undead.

  Deathlords are not like that. They study only death magic and that, only scantly. Instead of turning themselves into a new existence keeping the power they possessed, they corrupt their lives with death magic until they become undead.

  Immortality is their only goal, and the corruption strips them of everything they achieved in life, both physically and magically. It's like being born anew, keeping only their bodies and their memories, but losing every drop of power.

  The Fallen Gods use such loss as a way of increasing their strength and influence over the world. They seduce the deathlords in their most vulnerable moment, trying to bind them to a mutually beneficial contract. Thus, the bound deathlords are born, giving away some liberty for the promise of easier and faster power to come.

  But not all of them are seduced. When grown and powerful men lose everything that holds their ego together, a few of them opt for freedom instead of what they see as slavery. Unbound, they claim themselves to be.

  Most of the world doesn't know how to feel about the species: should they be pitied for their fear of death? Rebuked for being undead? They are an enigma, and many fear what they don't understand.

  Immortals by choice, bound or unbound, they have known since their transformation that they hold their existence and their future in their hands.

  And they stop at nothing to achieve their goals.

  -- Excerpt from "Species of Valia", by Amir, a Karr

  1. The Curious Case of the Stone Licker

  'When in doubt, attack. People respect power, not passiveness.'

  - Father

  "As you can see, it's like living a dream forever," said the young blond saleswoman with glasses that gave her a bit of a geek look and a strategically unbuttoned button on her shirt.

  Yeah, I thought. Forever. Or until I die. Or my budget runs out. Or the game servers are shut down. Or a lot of other possibilities.

  It was still a good product. The first game supporting long-term immersions. More than that, the first massively multiplayer online role-playing game, MMORPG, available in the Immersive Reality technology.

  V-Soft was the company behind the technology that 'talked' directly to the brain and gave the user the impression of being transported to a different reality. Since the technology reveal, five years ago, the company had refused to allow any MMORPGs to be developed by any developer. Only now were they releasing such a game themselves.

  "What about money? Can I put some cash in?"

  "Of course! I mean, we have a minimum interference policy; who would like some super powerful V-Soft employee meddling with their lives all the time? Or a super powerful player coming out of the blue just because he is rich in this world? But let's be frank, there is no reason to send away anyone genuinely interested in starting a comfortable new life. Really, really interested."

  She looked at me expecting a reply, her blue eyes giving me the mysterious 'are you good enough to ask' act. I bit.

  "How interested?"

  "You can buy in-game currency." She leaned closer, as if she was about to confide in me a most magnificent opportunity. "Minimum of ten dollars, for ten silver coins. Maximum of ten thousand dollars per month per player, for a hundred gold coins."

  Valia Online, the game I was considering playing, had a pretty common currency system: bronze coins were the less valuable, a silver coin was worth a hundred bronze, a gold coin was worth a hundred silver, and a platinum coin was worth a thousand gold.

  A teaser trailer had shown a level twenty elf buying a common sword for fifteen gold. This meant
about fifteen hundred dollars for a basic piece of equipment. It was crazy. And the worst of it all was that people would pay for it; the game was already popular before even launching and if it delivered all it promised, millions would play in a few weeks.

  It was easy to believe what she had said: they had a minimum interference policy, but no one was crazy enough to ignore rich people willing to pay – and there were a lot of those around. Investing real world money in the game wasn't in my plans, but I couldn't complain about the rates. They were making average players and rich bastards alike happy enough. Unfortunately, those prices would only last until the black market developed.

  "Of course," she continued, "we will also sell multiple exclusive items with purely cosmetic value that will not affect the game balance, such as items to make a weapon or an armor glow and the possibility to change your character name."

  That was expected, these days no game came out without items like that. 'Hats,' gamers called them, even though no one remembered why.

  "That sounds reasonable, but I'm just a law student with a few millions. I must save some money for my children." I gave her my best smile, not wanting to waste the opportunity of hitting on her. She was pretty.

  Beautiful, but not interested. Her smile didn't disappear, but she leaned back in the chair again.

  I guess a man going into stasis for undetermined time isn't a good romantic investment.

  "That's alright, of course. We want players from all economic possibilities to enjoy our game!"

  Sure you do. Four hundred bucks a month after the trial month. Every poor youngster can just stop working and pay forty-eight hundred dollars for one year of their lives.

  Despite my social warrior thoughts, I knew it was pretty cheap. Most people spent more than four hundred bucks in one month of their lives. In my case I would get into a rented virtual reality capsule and forget about bills until my contract ran out or I decided to leave. And if I wanted to interact with the real world without leaving, I could just call anyone from inside the game. If one had a house, one could sell it and live comfortably in a rental virtual reality capsule for the rest of one's life.

  Of course, there were also the people who wanted to stay in their houses and play. The monthly fee was only fifty bucks in these cases, but they had to buy their own IR equipment. The cheapest one cost five thousand dollars and was a simple IR helmet, called VirBridge, not an encompassing full body capsule. It was the best choice if they were casual players, or had to leave the game regularly, but I was going for the long-term option.

  Looking at her open blouse, a thought occurred to me. "What about sex?"

  Her eyes widened for a second and she reflexively crossed her arms. The kinds of gamers she was used to dealing with probably weren't that shameless.

  Still, as the professional she was showing herself to be, her smile didn't disappear.

  "You can do anything in Valia. Any NPC can become your lover, if you play it right." An NPC, or non-player character, was any non-player entity who wouldn't be classified as a monster. Nowadays they were mainly controlled by AIs, much to the despair of AI Rights Activists. "The same goes for any player, of course. We also take the recently passed gaming laws very seriously and there will be no in-game pleasure houses, nor will any kind of sexual harassment be tolerated"

  Sex was no novelty in IR, either with NPCs or with other real people using their own IR devices. It was said that some couples preferred to have sex in simulators where they could go on indefinitely without tiring and try some positions their real bodies were not flexible enough to achieve.

  "Alright. Let me see the papers."

  Her smile got even more beautiful, and she left the small room for a few minutes.

  * * *

  "Jack, I'm begging you, don't waste your life like that. Your parents-"

  "My parents are dead, Richard," I interrupted my family's grey-headed lawyer. "I killed them, remember?"

  "It was an accident! You must stop-"

  "I mustn't and I won't! I'm getting in the damn capsule. I have a duty to them, to have a child and give him or her the family money. But I-"

  "You have a duty to be happy! That's what they'd want! A happy life for their child!"

  "You don't know that! You didn't know them like I did! When I was four they taught me how to take revenge on the kids who made fun of me in the damn playground! They were not saints, they were tyrannical bastards, but they were still my parents and I killed them!"

  "Jack, you-"

  "I am getting in the capsule, like I said! I'll eventually get a wife, in some distant future, and make a family, but that's all. No matter what I do, I keep remembering that I started the fire, except when I'm playing. Yes, I'm running! Call me a coward if you want, I don't give a damn. Just make my money ready for the monthly fees and don't call me unless the world is ending."

  "Jack...

  "Richard, I'm ordering you as your damn boss. Do you understand my orders?"

  "Yes." He said tiredly. "Yes, I do. But you aren't my boss; you're my client."

  "Yeah, keep telling yourself that. Someday you might even convince yourself my father didn't make you his puppy."

  He looked at me with pain in his eyes, but I made a show of ignoring it and left the room. It had been some time since I had exploded like that and I felt bad about it, but he had touched forbidden ground, and he damn well knew it.

  If I was back to bad habits, I might as well call some ex-girlfriends. The game would launch in a week, and it seemed eunuchs had created it. I mean, no brothels? C'mon!

  * * *

  The doctor looked at the soon-to-be-player seriously.

  "Jack Sunni Carpenter McHolen, are you sure you want to undergo this procedure? I'm legally obliged to inform you there is a zero point zero zero zero zero one percent possibility of your death. You can desist right now and have all your money back."

  That was pretty well done; they were even recording it. About one in ten million people would never wake up after trying to go to another world in a long-term capsule. I liked my chances.

  The question was only a formality. I had undergone a lot of psychological and medical exams, plus a two-hour lecture about the procedure. To tell the truth, it made me feel secure. At least, this time, my parents' colleagues, the politicians, had done something right.

  "I'm sure, please go on."

  "Ok. I'll begin the procedure. Have a good game, sir."

  The doctor put the needle in my arm.

  Blackness came soon after.

  * * *

  Ten minutes after creating my character, I touched the stone wall again, mesmerized. I could feel its texture, its imperfections, its coldness. When I took my hand away, dust stuck to my fingers. The smell was metallic and on an impulse I licked it, feeling the unique taste of stone in my mouth. Spitting on the floor multiple times didn't make it go completely away.

  This game is awesome.

  V-Soft had released a single game before this, the very first one for the new IR technology. It had been developed to show the world the potential of the thing and it was nothing like this. When the first video of Valia Online had appeared, of a man over a castle wall overlooking a small town, people had thought it was a movie trailer until the company explained it.

  Still, game companies were known for cheating their clients with screenshots and videos that were way better than the finished product. V-Soft, on the other hand, had downplayed it.

  I couldn't find any difference from the real world. High visual detail was usual in the old retina and ears virtual reality games, but here it went a notch up. Not only that, even the touch, smell and taste were perfect.

  Four hundred bucks to be transported to an alternative reality world looked way too cheap now. I hoped that the price would go up by hundreds, so it wouldn't become full of annoying kids destroying the game experience for others.

  The only thing that prevented me from believing I was still in the real world were the things f
loating on my vision edges: colored bars with numbers, a clock, an exclamation point in a square button, and an 'Welcome to Valia Online' text. Common sense dictated that I took my time to get my bearings and plan ahead.

  To hell with common sense. I need to see more!

  I was wearing tattered gray clothes in a stone room with a locked metal door and no furniture. All the light was coming from under the door. I could hear fire crackling on the other side. To see more I needed to get out, and to get out I needed to make someone open the damn door.

  So I did what every levelheaded person would have done.

  "Fire!" I screamed at the top of my lungs, trying to sound as desperate as possible. "Help! Fire!" To add to the realism of panic caused by a fire starting in an underground cell made of stone and bare of furniture, I hit the metal door repeatedly. It was a little loose and made a lot of noise. "Please, help me! I'm dying! Fire!"

  "Quiet!" I heard a hoarse male voice on the other side of the door. Jackpot!

  "I need help! Please! There is fire in here! I'm burning! Fire!"

  "Shudap!"

  "Help me! Fire! Help!" I kept screaming and hitting the door.

  A hard blow came from the other side of the door. "I told ya to shudap!" I didn't obey. "Now ya did it! Ya'll regret getting to ma nerves!" The door opened. Light poured in the cell and what I saw was a vision directly from hell.

  It was a kind of unfinished man: he had no nose, his skin was missing in random parts of his head, where I could see his muscles, and only a few strips of hair were still in his scalp. His teeth were mostly rotten or missing, and a foul odor was coming from the creature.

  I recognized his species from other games: a ghoul. As soon as I did, a text appeared floating above his head:

  Ghoul <?>

  The horrid creature was clothed in worn gray shirt and trousers, gray leather belt and gray leather shoes; as lacking as it was, it was still a lot better than my own traps. In his hand he had a corroded metal pipe. After looking around to confirm there was indeed no fire and I was just being annoying, he attacked.