“PRIEST!?” Lady Blades interrupted.
“Have you seen him?” Priest continued.
“Yes,” the Gatekeeper said. “I gave him a choice. The same choice I am about to give each of you. First, I want to welcome you to the God Worlds.”
“God Worlds?” Cryptic said looking over at Stokes.
Stokes shook his head and shrugged.
“Yes,” The Gatekeeper told them, “You have reached another level of the simulation. The creative mode. It is within the omniverse that includes your entire multiverse along with many others. I offer each of you the chance to explore it.”
“Another level for the Game Master Corps to explore?” Priest said.
“Yes,” the Gatekeeper said. “Phaze6 chose to stay for a while to explore creative mode. In fact, that galaxy there,” the Gatekeeper pointed to a bright spiral over a mountain. “He’s there. He is in training to become a Gatekeeper. Few get the chance.”
“He was only a few minutes in front of us,” Lady Blades said.
“Time moves differently here,” the Gatekeeper replied. “Would you like to experience creative mode before you leave? Create your own galaxy? Usher life into newly formed planets? Or perhaps take control of an existing civilization? If you decide to stay, your body will be in stasis for a lot longer than normal. Can you take a tour?”
Angel Kali smiled, “Heck yes! Let’s play for a little before we go!”
“I’d love to try it,” Stokes said.
“Sounds interesting. I’ll do it,” Cryptic said.
Priest nodded, “Well that’s it then. We all agree. I think the GMC will understand. Let’s check this place out. Then we’ll go back.”
“No.” Lady Blades said.
“What do you mean ‘no’?!” Stokes said.
“C’mon, sis.” Angel protested.
“Kiera,” Priest said moving closer to her. “Our primary mission is to explore reality. Now here we are on another level of the simulation. What could be more import—”
“I’m pregnant,” Lady Blades said. “I can’t be in stasis in the pod for more than a day. And I—”
“You’re pregnant?” Priest said.
Lady Blades looked at him, “I was going to tell you on your birthday.”
“I’m going to be a father?” Priest asked.
She nodded and smiled.
“I’m going to be a father!” He yelled and picked her up off her feet. They’d been trying since they were married.
“Alright,” Priest said. “We’ve gotta go back. You guys stay here without us.”
The Gatekeeper said, “If you go back now, I can’t allow you to keep your memory of this place. Humanity is not ready yet. And actually, we’re not ready. Creative mode is still in beta testing.”
“Ok,” Priest was pacing. “I-I don’t know if I’ll stop. I mean, I know how my mind works. The memory of this place will be gone but I’ll keep trying to figure out how to get here. You tell me about the baby on my birthday. I’m sure that will help. But just to be safe, I need something else.”
Priest walked over to the Gatekeeper, “Can you take away my powers? Like just temporarily. By the time I need them again our team should be back again, right?”
The Gatekeeper nodded her head, “I can take your memories of this place and your powers temporarily. I don’t think it’s necessary to take your powers—”
“Oh, yeah. Trust me,” Priest said. “It’s necessary. Besides, it will help me to focus on my new family, you know?”
Priest and Lady Blades walked out of the portal smiling and holding hands. On the other side of the portal, their smiles faded and they looked at each other. Their hands dropped as they turned to see the golden door portal that they had just entered was gone. The last thing they remembered was walking into the portal. Now, suddenly, they were outside where they’d started. Their team was gone.
They sent a message to support, then to a Game Master Corps. They discovered that Priest had completely lost his ability in addition to having no memory of what took place inside the lost portal.
Once they logged out, the GMC Directorate took them into a white room with no windows. They were given a classified meeting by the directors who told them more details about the lost portal anomaly. The GMC told them lost portals were very rare and very dangerous. So far, seven high-level gamers, all advanced level portal mages, had gone in and never returned. All seven gamers were comatose. The very first high-level portal mage had been in a coma for almost a year since she’d gone through the first lost portal. And now their friends and a couple of family members were in a coma in a pod.
Director Giordano spoke, “We are working closely with the Developers to figure this out. But for almost a year now we have not been able to figure it out. The good news is that you two came back from a lost portal. Unprecedented. You coming back and bringing back Phaze6’s portal gun might help us. Seems to be some sort of glitch.”
The two were sat in the classified GMC room devastated. Lady Blades was shaking, “I told you don’t go in, Priest.”
“I didn’t know it was that dangerous, Kiera,” he reached out to touch her hand. She slapped his hand away.
“Your brother told you NOT to follow him. Not to let anyone in, Priest!” She screamed.
He looked away.
“LOOK AT ME!” Lady Blades said. She slapped the glass of water off the white table. It smashed against the wall. She stormed out of the briefing.
Chapter 56
Priest and Lady Blades stood in the Apothecary in front of the Gatekeeper.
“You were pregnant,” Priest said. “That’s why we left. But then…what happened?”
Lady Blades had tears in her eyes, “I was obsessed with getting back to the lost portal and finding the team. I was offered a game master role and I took it. I did so many hours in the pod that I miscarried. I never told you because I blamed you for losing the team.”
Priest put his hands on her shoulders, “Kiera, if I had known that users were in a coma and not returning then I would not have gone. I just didn’t know.”
He hugged her. She didn’t return the hug. But the fact that she had not stabbed him or put a katana to his neck meant that progress was made. Now a child could be added to their list of losses.
“Gatekeeper,” Priest said. “We’ve opened the lost portal to bring back all the users that have gotten stuck in your realm.”
“Let’s go see them,” the Gatekeeper said walking through the portal. “This time we’ll allow you to keep your memory so don’t worry about that.”
They walked into the portal and saw the familiar frozen landscape with its constellation of galaxies overhead.
The Gatekeeper swiped a hand at the sky and the constellation of galaxies changed to a night sky with a spray of stars. “Each of them is a god of one of those stars you see. You can start off small as the god of a continent. And as you learn the system, you end up able to control an entire solar system. Then a collection of solar systems, a galaxy until you are creating, managing or controlling your own multiverse.”
“Our people have been there for months. Some for over a year now,” Lady Blades said. “We need to bring them back. How do we know that they’re not just stuck here and this isn’t just some kind of a glitch? Can we see them?”
“Yes,” the Gatekeeper said. She spread her hands out and displayed a view into a dark ruined metropolis. On top of smoldering rubble was a girl with dark hair over burning red eyes. A dark lord of death hunting for her prey. There was the silhouette of a broken corpse at her feet.
“Is that…?” Priest said.
“Angel?” Lady Blades said not wanting to believe it. The red-eyed creature flew away and the view went blank. “What happened to her?”
“We need your help to figure that out,” the Gatekeeper said. “We want you two to go and talk to each of them and see if you can get them to go back with you. They can leave anytime. For some reason they don’t.”
&n
bsp; “I’m assuming your people made this place,” Priest said. “Can’t you just yank them out of there or turn off the creative mode or something.”
“We are merely Gatekeepers,” she replied. “I only have control over who has access. I didn’t create the God Worlds. Gatekeepers are like… like Omniversal customer support, Omniversal help desk... we only make accounts and control access of sentient beings to and from multiversal sets... If we turn it off or pull them out abruptly, it could potentially hurt them. The main thing is that I don’t understand human psychology enough to know if this is normal behavior.”
“That didn’t look like normal behavior,” Lady Blades shook her head.
“Perhaps if you can go in and talk to them, we can determine if it is our system that is the problem or them,” the Gatekeeper said. “Also, we’d like you to go back to your world and tell them what is happening. You can be ambassadors of the God Worlds.”
Priest and Lady Blades looked at each other and nodded.
“Yes,” Priest said. “We’ll do it.”
New Quest: God Worlds
Talk to your friends to get them to come from the god worlds.
Reward: allow the human race to gain access to creative mode within the Czarzakian Omniverse.
For this quest you are granted the following abilities:
-World Crafting (limited)
Failure: Lose access to creative mode in the Czarzakian Omniverse; possible loss of friends currently within creative mode.
Epilogue
Samantha rubbed her eyes. She handed an order to the short order cook in the kitchen, “Thank you, baby!”
Another chef chimed in, “Yum!”
Samantha rolled her eyes. The chef’s harassment was relentless. It was funny for the first month but now it was annoying. She walked out of the kitchen as soon as possible. It wasn’t worth the extra $700 per month, but mom lost one of her jobs. They needed the money.
Her supervisor passed by her with an order, “Sam, get your butt to table 45.”
Samantha walked over to the table, forced a smile and started the speech, “Welcome to Colorado Roadhouse have you ever been—”
Priest stood up and interrupted her with a hug, “Samantha! How are you?!”
Samantha took a moment to register who was hugging her, “Priest?”
It had been weeks. She thought about Gina and her eyes got a little wet.
“Good to see you again!” Priest said, “You’ve met Lady Blades. I want to introduce you to Dee, he is a developer.”
Lady Blades gave a head nod. Dee was a tall thin man in dreads and a beard. He looked familiar. Dee waved.
“Have a seat, Samantha.” Priest moved Dee over.
“Oh, no. Really sorry. I can’t,” Samantha said. “I’m on the clock. But it’s nice to see you. Do you have a menu?”
“You’re working?” Priest asked. “Why?”
Samantha laughed, “To make money…”
“You made like 200 system credits, right?” Priest said. “You should be good for a while. I mean I don’t know the exact conversion.”
“System credits?” Samantha remembered the Cross Roads portal. “Oh, the game and the portals and stuff. We live on dollars here.”
“You can convert system credits to most denominations. Right, Dee?” Priest said.
Dee nodded, “System credits can be converted in most Universal Sets were the Game Master Commission has a presence. There’s a System Credit Exchange on 7th and Main street.”
“Really,” Samantha said. “Well, I only have 430 system credits. Not really enough to live on.”
“Actually,” Dee said. “One system credit converts to 253 USD. That’s the current exchange rate.”
“Wow,” Samantha said. “So that’s about…”
“108,709 USD,” Dee replied. “Should be enough to live on for two people.”
“Yeah,” Priest said. “You must make a lot of money here. Anyway, we have another quest in the God Worlds. We’ll need to explore so we’ll need your abilities as a portal mage. We’ll compensate you in system credits. Would you like—”
“Yes.” Samantha said taking off her Colorado Roadhouse name tag. “Can I start now? Where is that System credit exchange lets go.”
“Why don’t we have some dinner here and talk it over?” Lady Blades said.
“No,” Sam insisted. “Trust me. You do not want to eat here. Let me get some system credit cashed out and I will take you guys to a nice restaurant. My treat.”
Priest handed Samantha a phone.
“What’s this?” Samantha asked.
“It’s your new portal device,” Priest said. “You’ll needed it where we’re going.”
Afterword
Hey Guys!! This is Bruce. Thanks for reading my book. This is my first fiction book! I enjoyed writing this as much as I enjoy reading other people’s books.
If you liked the book and want more of this story let me know. I welcome your constructive criticism because I want to become a better writer. Also, I would love to hear your ideas on expanding the Czarzakian Multiverse Online.
You can contract me here:
brucexwrites.com
[email protected]
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.brucexwrites.com/patreon
If you are a fan of LitRPG, here are some resources for you to check out:
http://litrpgpodcast.com/
http://www.brucexwrites.com/litrpg_reroll
http://litrpgforum.com
reddit.com/r/litrpg/
www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/litrpg
https://litrpgreviews.online
www.facebook.com/groups/LitRPG.books/
About Bruce X. Brown
I am a father, a husband, a cyber security engineer and a writer. Currently living in Colorado.
I am a combat vet who served in the USAF. I am a new author but a long time sci-fi/fantasy, LitRPG and GameLit fan. For me, being a published author is a dream come true. It’s not just therapeutic, it is a way to travel to a new place, look through the eyes of other people, experience the impossible and dive into a deeper discussion of what it means to exist.
It’s exciting to know that there are other people out all over the world that feel the same way. Feel free to join me on this journey through the multiverse:
brucexwrites.com
[email protected]
brucexwrites.com/youtube
brucexwrites.com/reddit
brucexwrites.com/twitter
brucexwrites.com/facebook
brucexwrites.com/goodreads
.brucexwrites.com/patreon
Lost Portals Page 25