by Eric Ugland
The Good Guys Chronicles
Books 1-3
Eric Ugland
Air Quotes Publishing, Inc.
Air Quotes Publishing
Copyright © 2020 Eric Ugland
Cover by Sarah Anderson/No Synonym
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.
This is a work of Fiction. All of the characters in this novel are fictional and any resemblance to people living, dead, or undead is purely coincidental and surprising. And, let’s not even begin to talk about the fact that it’s all in a fantastical world in some other universe. There may be mentions of real places in this book, and while these passing mentions of real locations might have passing resemblance to said real locations, that's really just incidental, and these locations are all used fictitiously. The science in this book is only accidentally accurate, and no medical or scientific value should be attached to any of the ideas espoused within.
Except that Kent is a jerk.
Also by Eric Ugland
The Good Guys - Epic LitRPG/GameLit
Four: The Loot
Dukes & Ladders
Home, Siege Home
The Bare Hunt
Eastbound & Town
The Bad Guys - Epic LitRPG/GameLit
Scamps & Scoundrels
Second Story Man
Skull & Thrones
War of the Posers
Part One
One More Last Time
Like any good story, it began with a girl. It was supposed to end with a bullet.
The gun was on my desk, and I was in the midst of writing a lengthy and rambling note explaining my reasons for using the bullet to make a delicate hole in one side of my skull and blow out the other in a glorious, gruesome display of Pollockian gore. But something interrupted my attempts at apartment redecoration.
I lived on the third floor of a building that was too expensive for me, too nice for me, and about to evict me. I heard the rumble of an engine downstairs. I limped over to the window from the desk, and peeked out through the drapes. A van had pulled up. It was white and impressively ordinary, specifically chosen to be like every other white van you’ve ever seen. But on this particular evening, it was filled with men coming to kill me. They were related to the girl. Everything was. Well, most everything. One thing wasn’t.
The phone rang.
An unknown number.
Normally I’d pass, but considering the killers outside, the gangrenous wound inside, and my pseudo-suicidal state, what was the worst a telemarketer could do? I figured, at the least, I could ruin someone else’s day.
“Hello?” I asked as an answer.
“Nils?” a voice from my past replied.
“Yeah, is this—”
“Normand. No last names, I’d venture.” My former boss. A friend. Perhaps the last friend I had. Eccentric millionaire and all-around good guy. I highly recommend eccentric millionaires as friends — they’re almost always worth it.
“They’re probably listening, yes,” I said. They being the police. Or the FBI. Or both. As far as I knew, I was being investigated by multiple agencies.
“I’ve heard a few things about you.”
“Some might be true.”
“Not everything, I hope.”
I didn’t answer, but I think he knew what I would have said.
“In that case,” he said, understanding me, “I think I have something for you.”
I took a chance at peeking out the window once again. The men were outside the van now, talking to each other. One at the back was loading bullets into a clip. Up and down the street, it was deserted. As if the rest of the neighborhood knew to avoid the area on this night.
“Normand, I appreciate the call,” I said, “I really do, but I’m not sure—”
“I am offering a way out.”
“Better get here in the next thirty seconds, or it’s too late.”
“Should be there now.”
“Uh, Normand—”
“Check your email.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
I limped back over to the desk and sat down with a grunt. Something definitely oozed out of my stomach wound. A quick few clicks, and I had my email up. Sure enough, first in the inbox was from Normand. A few more clicks and I was confused.
“It’s a link,” I said.
“Click it.”
“I—”
“I thought you had mere seconds.”
“Seconds might be pushing it.”
“Then trust me, and click it.”
I sighed. I had very little to lose at this point, and almost hoped it was going to lead me to something like blue waffles or lemonade party so I could have one last laugh.
The link took me to a webpage for a game with a rather silly title, iNcarn8. There wasn’t a ton of information about the game, just a lot of marketing talk hyping the game up. All about changing lives. Living in a new world and being free. A game with total freedom. More than a game, a life.
“What the fuck is this?” I asked.
“It’s, I mean, it is what I, it is a way out. A way for you to live. Or continue to live.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t think I have time to explain further, do I?”
I stood up and looked out the window just in time to see the street light get shot out.
“Nope,” I said.
“So you will have to trust me. It’s something I’ve been investing in. Bringing this, uh, opportunity to, well, to us. To people whom I find worthy, and there’s really not many who are going to be given the chance to join, and be a part of this, I mean, I guess, experiment.”
“So I’m a guinea pig?”
“To an extent.”
“What extent?”
“Does it matter? From what I understand, you’re about to die anyway—”
“How much do you know about me, Normand?”
“Enough,” he said. “Enough to spend a lot of time, money, and other things in order to give you this chance.”
I took as deep a breath as my wounds would allow, then exhaled slowly, giving my brain a moment to consider. It promptly spat back that this seemed the only option for continued existence.
“What do I do?” I finally asked.
“Fill out the forms, press accept, live your new life like you told me you wished you had lived this one.”
“I don’t get what this is going to do, old man.”
“Give it a try.”
The phone started to crackle, and I took a peek at it. Down from full bars to one.
“I think they’ve got a cell phone jammer,” I said.
“Good luck. I hope to see you the next time around,” Normand said.
“Thank you,” I said, but I have no idea if he heard it, the phone cut out.
I stared at the screen.
“Fuck it,” I said, and I started typing.
It was the usual rigamarole for an RPG. Name, sex, race, distribute attribute points, choose starting location, stuff that normally, you know, if I was going to be playing a game, I’d have relished taking my time with. If I’d had time, I’d have been effusive with my praise for the developers giving so many options to the players — the list of races and places was seemingly endless. Instead, I cursed at them, clicking through as fast as I could, selecting random anytime I could. Finally, I clicked submit.
Which pulled up a huge list of questions.
Fuck.
The questionnaire was more along the line
s of a psych eval. At least, that’s what it seemed like to me.
The front doorknob jiggled.
I pulled my gun from the desk to my lap.
I answered the questions just like any internet poll — as quickly as possible, not giving a fuck about veracity. Being done was more important than being right. I flew through the questions, then clicked the damn button at the bottom of the page.
A fucking pop-up.
But this seemed like the end.
Whispers outside my door.
I scanned the pop-up briefly. It was asking if I was really ready to submit. I clicked yes.
Another pop-up asking me to accept the terms and liabilities.
I clicked accept.
Another fucking pop up asking if I was sure.
Yes, dammit, I’m fucking sure.
Then two things happened.
First, another pop-up window, a last notice making sure that I knew everything was final, that there was no chance to remake my character after I pushed this button.
Second, the window next to me exploded inward as a man in black tactical gear came flying into the room, assault carbine aimed near me.
I clicked the yes button just as the man’s feet collided with me. Training kicked in, and, thank God for that. I swept his feet to one side, doing my best to push him into the chair as I came out of it. It might have been a cool move if not for the second dude coming in behind the first asshole.
He smashed me over the back with two hands together, and I dropped to my knees, my gun clattering across the floor and disappearing into the black hole underneath the fridge.
With only the shit that had fallen around my desk as an option, I took a half second to search for any semblance of a weapon, and saw a fork. As they say, any fork in a storm.
I used said fork to stab Asshole Two through the foot. He screamed, and I had the barest of moments before Asshole One grabbed me and pulled me up by the neck, squeezing hard.
My innards were screaming at me, my homemade stitches having torn out. Blood poured out of my flabby abdomen. Flabdomen. There might have been pus too. Likely a lot of it. It was gross, okay? Let’s leave it at that.
Black seeped around the edges of my vision, and I knew my end was coming soon. I snuck a glance at the computer screen: it was processing something.
Asshole One’s fingernails dug into my neck. My lungs burned, desperate for a quick breath. I snapped my head back hard, and sure enough, Asshole One had missed the lesson on don’t-keep-your-face-right-against-the-fucking-skull-of-your-opponent. I did a number on his nose — I could feel the hot rush of blood from his ruined schnozzola soaking my neck. His grip loosened, and I took in a huge gulp of air.
Asshole Two had his gun up and trained on me. I’m sure he was desperate to fire. So desperate, in fact, that he hadn’t taken the safety off, and the gun just kinda did nothing when Asshole Two pulled the trigger.
I stomped on the fork, driving it all the way through the man’s foot into the previously unblemished hard wood floors below. So much for getting my security deposit back.
Then, I stomped on Asshole One’s insole, and bit his hand. I grabbed Asshole Two’s hair and pulled him towards me.
He punched me, absolutely perfectly, his fist going through my newly re-opened wound, and actually into my intestines.
There was quite a bit of screaming from everyone involved. We were all in solid amounts of pain, and conjoined in a seriously unpleasant way. I was barely holding on, the only thing keeping me going was that, at least I was going to go out in style. Then, a telltale terrible noise: the tink tink tink of a metallic object bouncing across the floor. The grenade came to a gentle stop on my fucking foot.
A sharp bong rang out from the computer, and everything went black.
Chapter 2
I thought I’d died.
Everything was black.
Everything.
Not like your-eyes-are-closed black, but like a ceaseless, unending void of darkness. Besides, as far as I could tell in that moment, my eyes were open and there was nothing to see. An absence of light and matter and everything. I felt and saw and tasted nothing. All my senses reached out as far and as hard as they could. They all stopped at me.
I mean, given that I’d heard a grenade bounce across my floor and seen it wind up balanced neatly on my boot, I figured this was what death was.
A void.
Awesome.
And wrong. I mean, obviously.
“Welcome, Hero!” a deep and melodious voice boomed out from the nothingness. “You have been summoned to the world of Vuldranni, to be a noble—”
There was a bit of a pause. A very obvious unplanned pause.
The voice continued, much quieter, as if speaking to someone off stage. “This can’t be right — it says—” then there was muttering. People talking off mic.
“Yeah, and there’s also three of them,” the deep voice snapped angrily. “Three. Yeah… Because I can see them, numbnuts.”
I looked around. Still nothing. Blackness. But for the first time, I could feel something near me, that vague sort of vibration surrounding living beings. Someone, perhaps, was almost touching me.
“This isn’t supposed to, you know, I was told this was a professional operation, and—” there was a loud click as the mic got turned off, and lights flicked on. Bright, sterile lights illuminated a blank white room. A large window to one side revealed an empty recording studio.
To my right, Asshole One.
To my left, Asshole Two.
Which left me — Asshole Three, I suppose — in the middle.
Just a bunch of assholes.
They still had all their gear on. We were all dressed as we were in my apartment. It meant I had no weapons on my person, which was a minor minus in my book, but, you know, plus side, I was also no longer bleeding out of my gangrenous wound. Which, oddly, didn’t seem open or gangrenous anymore.
Asshole Two, for the record, still had the fork stuck through his foot. Below that, a very large section of hardwood floor had come too. Termites were already spreading out, and as soon as the lights shot on, one brave cockroach had made a scurry for a wall he’d never find.
Things were still for a moment. Finally, an elegant man in a three-piece suit walked out of a door that wasn’t there until he came through it. He sat down at a desk that appeared between blinks. Right around the time chairs appeared and I realized that I was sitting down. Maybe I’d been sitting the entire time. I was pretty sure I’d been standing.
The man pulled out a pair of platinum rimmed glasses and perched them on his nose. He looked down at the desk, and flipped through a sheaf of papers that came into existence.
“This is some Alice In Wonderland shit,” I said softly.
The man seemed to smile ever so slightly while reading over the papers.
We three assholes sat there in silence for a moment, completely caught off guard and unable to process a damn thing we were seeing or experiencing, which, you know, was a bit weird. Because, well, they’d been quite actively killing me mere moments before, and now we were sitting in front of a man at a desk like we were truculent teens hauled before a tweedy vice principal of a second-rate middle school.
“So,” the man said, plucking a manila folder from mid-air and laying it on the desk. He put all the papers in it, and then looked at us slowly, making eye contact with each of us before continuing. “There are a few things I’m confused upon. First of all, which one of you is actually supposed to be here, and which are—”
“Dude, what the fuck is all this supposed to be?” Asshole One yelled.
Asshole Two chose a more proactive route, and launched himself across the desk at the man with glasses.
I was going to raise my hand, but, instead, I grabbed Asshole Two by his tactical webbing, and pulled him back down to his seat.
“Well,” the man said with smile, clicking his pen and making a note in the folder, “that makes it quite clear.”
/> There was a bright popping sound, and the assholes simply disappeared. Now it was just me and the elegant dude.
“We’ve got a number of,” the man paused and looked around, trying to find his words, “well, questions for you. You managed to break our system quite soundly.”
“I’m a little confused,” I replied, “because I have no clue, in the least, what’s going on.”
“Did you not read the EULA?”
“Does anyone read that shit?”
“I do.”
“I just ran out of time.”
His eyebrows went up, and he snapped his fingers. “Time, right. Must remember the time,” he made a note. “See, I thought you’d read it because you brought a lot to trade.”
“Trade?”
“Yes. All the goods and creatures which aren’t you.”
The man opened the folder and spread out a huge variety of photos. All the things that had come along with me, that weren’t, well, me. The two men, the cockroaches, the termites, the guns, the grenade, the fucking floorboards, the fork. All photographed and catalogued.
“Uh, I guess I just try to be prepared? Because I was a Boy Scout?”
“A Boy Scout?”
“Yeah, uh, this group of—”
“I know what the Boy Scouts are. What rank were you?”
“Eagle.”
“Ah, congratulations.” He made a note in the folder.
“Thanks?”
“With what you’ve brought, I should think you’ll be quite prepared for your new adventure.”
“About that—”
“Oh time. I nearly forgot. I’ve just got so much on my mind lately, I’ve been late for almost everything.” He glanced down at his wrist, where there was now a nice watch. “Gods, just one moment—”
He gestured at the wall, and a clock popped up. Not a small little thing either, but something I imagine was equitable to Big Ben, with a massive second hand clicking along.
“Apologies for the disgusting decor, but I simply must keep an eye on the exact time. Vitally important to get you processed before time is up. Or, you know.”