The Last Warrior of Unigaea Box Set: A Fantasy LitRPG Adventure

by Harmon Cooper

  “She will.”

  “Where is she?” I plead. “I can ride to her, tonight even!”

  “She’ll join you sooner than later. Before that, a giant surprise awaits you.”

  The mermaids behind her begin to hum. The Obelisk’s sharply angled helm begins to melt down her face, boiling her flesh away. She has no features, no eyes, no nose, and no mouth – just an empty stretch of skin. As her pointed helmet evanesces, so does the rest of her dragonfly armor, from her sharp epaulets to the brittle ribcage coverings.

  It’s as if she wears a flawless latex bodysuit, no blemishes on her skin, no genitalia or nipples.

  I take a step back, overcome by the oddity of it all.

  Wolf barks and I wake.

  Morning has come.

  (^_^)

  To my surprise, Deathdale is still logged in. She sits cross-legged facing the pink-crimson sun and Wolf sits next to her, both their backs to me.

  I stand and rub the sleep out of my eyes. I try to recall the dream I’ve just had, but I can only settle on the image of the Obelisk’s expressionless face.

  Hunger pangs remind me I’d better eat something soon, and seeing how all I have is jerky – jerky I’d prefer to ration – I’ll either have to do some scavenging or a bit of hunting.

  Or not.

  Two large rabbits approach me from outside the circle of stones, fall to their sides, and let out their last breaths.

  “Who wants rabbit?” I say aloud after I’ve grabbed both fat woodland creatures by the legs.

  Wolf turns to me and trots over, his tail wagging. He barks, tries for one of the rabbits, and I pull it away just in time.

  Deathdale remains motionless, her gaze focused on the horizon. I walk around to her front side and smile at her.

  “Where?” she asks, her eye locking on the two rabbits.

  “A gift from the Obelisk. There are some things, um, I haven’t really told you yet.” I lay the dead rabbits on the ground and remind Wolf to keep away from them.

  She looks up at me curiously.

  “I guess this is kind of an important detail, so here it is: On our way back from Stater, Sam Raid and I were attacked by vampiric mermaids from Hashmonean. I woke up in a lagoon on Hashmonean, alone, and was visited by the Obelisk, whom you may know as Unigaea’s AI, its Neuronal Visualization Algorithmic Seed, the NVA Seed. Damn, that’s a mouthful. Are you familiar with what I’m talking about?”

  She nods.

  “So that’s where this came from.” I move my hair to the side and show her the bite mark. “Don’t worry, I’m not a vampire now or anything, but I can breathe underwater. Which is cool.”

  “It is.”

  “Anyway,” I say as I unclip my chestplate, “the Obelisk gave me five levels and this mark as well.” I take off my undershirt and show her the symbol on my chest.

  Her eyebrows raise, either at my new mark or my muscles. I secretly hope it’s the latter, quickly swallow this shallow thought, and continue, “This mark allows me to rage once per day, and by rage I mean my attack power and defense doubles. I get faster too. Long story short – and here’s the important part regarding our little arrangement – the Obelisk has our back. She wants us to ride north to see about the Red Plague.”

  “Source code bomb.”

  “So you know. Good. Anyway, I was visited by the Obelisk again last night, I think.” I recall her armor melting away and her complete void of a face. “Could have been a nightmare too. She said Sam is alive, and will join us. Or at least she insinuated that. She also said something about ‘a giant surprise,’ which I’m still trying to piece together.”

  “Drachma Killers.”

  “I have not forgotten that I promised you we’d see to the Drachma Killers. That’s our first stop; if you plan to ride north with us after, whoever ‘us’ may be at that point, that’s entirely up to you.”

  She nods in a way that neither confirms nor denies this is her intention.

  “Anyway, what I meant earlier is these two rabbits simply approached me and fell over and died, something I will take as a gift from the Obelisk. So, who’s hungry?”

  Wolf barks excitedly; Deathdale’s expression remains the same. Her gloved hand comes up and she produces a small package of food from her list. Wrapped in a brown leaf, she places the package on her lap, removes her glove, and warms it with her bare hand.

  “Microwave hands,” I tell her. “That’d be a useful skill.”

  She looks up to me.

  “What?” I equip a kitchen knife given to me by a family in Tangka. “It would!”

  Holding the first rabbit with one hand, I slit its jugular and let the blood drain out. I do the same to the other and then remove the first one’s head, keeping it in the air long enough for the blood to completely drain out.

  Wolf goes for the rabbit’s decapitated head and runs off with it.

  “Don’t worry,” I tell Deathdale, “Wolf and I aren’t as animalistic as we seem. Actually, I guess we are. At least we’re not eating seagulls, not that there’s anything wrong with that.” I turn the second rabbit upside down and drain its blood. “You know how it is to be a Player Killer; no one likes you. I’m pretty sure if there were blues musicians in Unigaea instead of bards, they’d be Player Killers. Just a hunch.”

  I hold the rabbit by its hind leg and gather a bunch of skin around its ankle. I twist it until it breaks and begin the process of pulling the fur off the rabbit’s body. I do the same for the other leg, and once the skin is off, I find a rock and cut off its paws.

  From there, I flip the rabbit over and make a cut along its belly, through its ribcage and pelvis. After I pry open the side of the belly, I get hold of the windpipe below the rabbit’s severed neck and yank it out.

  Wolf goes for it and I let him. A few minutes later and I’ve done the same to the second rabbit.

  Now it’s time for the seasoning.

  I throw on a little of the Tritanian lemon pepper and let them sit on my cutting board until I can find some sharp sticks, which require a bit of whittling but not enough to really work up a sweat.

  The rabbits on their new skewers, I get a fire going using my fire-starter kit and a mixture of twigs and bramble. Using a makeshift rotisserie I found lying next to the fire pit – most these public camp places have items to aid in cooking – I get the rabbits over the fire and slowly roast them to perfection.

  “Smells good, admit it?” I ask Deathdale.

  She gives me a cold, Glomar response.

  Wolf circles the fire, his eyes on the roasting rabbits. Once they’re ready, I toss him the fatter one. He snaps it out of the air and goes to town, finishing it before I can get a bite off.

  I chew on mine for a moment – tastes a bit like chicken, but so does most meat I’ve encountered in Unigaea – and once I’ve had a good three fourths of the rabbit, I toss the rest to Wolf.

  “He’s hungry,” Deathdale says in a soft voice as she approaches me.

  “One thing I’ve learned about dogs here in Unigaea is they’re always hungry. They will literally eat themselves into a coma. Never had a dog up there. Had a cat though. He was different.”

  When I say “up there” Deathdale turns away from me, ending our conversation. I guess now is not the time to ask about who she is in the real world, not that it really matters to me. It’s not like I’ve been there in a year anyhow.

  Hell, for all I know, Deathdale is a seventy-year-old, retired, gender-neutral millennial living behind the hurricane barrier in Tampa, Florida.

  There really is no telling.

  “You ready?” I ask. She nods and I whistle for Wolf, who gets the hint we’re about to leave, relieves himself, and trots over to me. I mount up, Deathdale lifts half a foot into the air, and we take off towards Metica.

  It’ll still take us another day to get there, but if we travel at a steady pace all day, we’ll be in Metica by morning.

  (^_^)

  There’s a noticeable chill in the air
as we move further north.

  With less moisture in the air comes less chance for rain, evident in the light-brown patches of grass. Prone to wildfires, the stretch of land between the Eastern and Western Splits is one of the most traversed areas of the continent.

  We pass a group of men carrying heavy loads on their packs, which they have tied to their foreheads like Sherpas. Their skin brown from the constant sun and their leg muscles pulsing, they march past us without so much as looking in our general direction.

  These carriers are paid by delivery, so it is in their best interest to quickly move past anyone who looks as if they may cause trouble. I’m not saying a Solar Mage and a Player Killer with a giant Tagvornin Wolf will cause them trouble, but if I saw our odd little trio, I’d be heading the other direction as well.

  The carcass of a dead horse along the side of the road catches my eye.

  It’s a Shire horse, clearly bigger than the small horses used in the south, and by the look of its skeleton, it’s been dead for quite a while. The next thing that catches my eye is an overturned wagon, the wheels of which have been stripped.

  It is inadvisable to travel on this swatch of land without protection. Once, many avatars ago when I was a dark mage, I accompanied a trio of merchants from Solidus to Tael. It was a grand journey, and we were lucky one of the merchants was good with a sword.

  But really, the bandits up here are different than the bandits near the southern coast. These are more ruthless, stronger, and there are more occurrences of odd conditions in this area, like pyro affliction.

  Deathdale and I keep to the main road, avoiding any paths that splinter off from it.

  Cloud coverage overhead blocks out most of the crimson sky, casting the rolling plains before us in a maroon and gray mashup akin to a photo viewed with a sepia filter on it.

  I smile as the Solar Mage whizzes past me.

  Since the day we met, there’s been something about her I can’t quite place my finger on. The desire to know more about her is hard to suppress, but I bottle it up, knowing better than to probe for answers.

  Both of us skid to a halt when we see a red-haired giant seated along the roadside.

  A giant surprise, huh?

  Visible from half a mile away, it may be better for us to loop around the giant entirely. Then again, if he is hostile and we kill him, it will net us a ton of EXP.

  “What do you think?” I ask.

  “Let’s go.”

  Deathdale moves along the road at a slower pace than normal.

  Wolf and I follow behind her, keeping a good distance so she can use one of her more powerful solar spells if need be.

  The NPC giant wears the deep-blue toga of a scholar from the Solidus University of Alchemy. He’s young, regardless of his stubbly red beard, and by the looks of it, he’s probably a recent graduate. While he may be four times my size, the fact that he’s wearing oval glasses, sandals, and is currently poring over a bit of parchment makes me a lot less scared of the towering youth.

  “He’s not a hostile,” I call up to Deathdale.

  Oblivious to our approach, the scholarly giant continues reading the parchment in his hands. It is only when we are within firing range that he turns and locks eyes with me.

  [Taelian Giant, Level 20]

  Wolf slows and barks. He paces back and forth, not sure of what to make of the giant.

  The giant glances from me and Wolf to Deathdale. He considers her for a moment as a blade of light forms on the Solar Mage’s forearm.

  I hop off Wolf and approach cautiously.

  “Easy,” I tell Deathdale under my breath. “He’s a scholar, not a fighter.” I chuckle. “Ever heard ‘I’m a lover, not a fighter?’ That sounded similar. Sorry, getting off track.”

  I clear my throat and grin at her.

  “In a previous incarnation I was a lecturer at one of the academies in Solidus, the Academy of Topographical Studies. Most of the knowledge left me when I respawned; sorry, TMI. All this to say – he’s not going to fight us.”

  “I’ve only seen one other Solar Mage,” the giant says as he places his parchment on the ground. He sits on his haunches with his knees in front of him. Next to him is a crate known as a meditations box.

  The Unigaean higher education system revolves around three main student classifications: pupil, post-pupil, and scholar. A meditations box, which doubles as a storage container, is something used exclusively by scholars.

  The word “meditation” pluralized is not meant for meditation in a Buddhist or Eastern spirituality sense; rather, these are boxes one sits on to think deeply at night rather than sleep, allowing for total, uninterrupted concentration on a subject.

  I know, I’ve done it – although like many of the lecturers, I didn’t do it very often and only kept the meditations box around to encourage others to think deeply on their subjects.

  Appearance is everything.

  “I’m Oric Rune. This is Wolf, and this is Deathdale.”

  He takes off his glasses and uses his blue toga to clean the lens. Once he has his glasses back on, he speaks in a calm voice. “My name is Lothar Shane. Might I ask you a question?”

  “Shoot,” I tell him.

  “I am trying to understand the meaning of this letter I received from my … well, I don’t want to call her a girlfriend, but we were closely associated, and she has been there for me over the last five years, while I was in Solidus becoming a scholar.”

  “So she was your girlfriend?” I ask.

  “We never established an agreed-upon definition of our relationship.”

  I glance to Deathdale, who now has her hand on Wolf’s head and is scratching him behind the ear. As she does, he sits and thumps his back leg against the ground.

  “I also have questions about your Tagvornin Wolf, but logic dictates that we should begin with my first question,” Lothar says, “as it has been troubling me and it is the reason I was sitting here, the reason we have crossed paths, which taken into the whole scheme of things is unique in and of itself.”

  “You are pretty hard to miss,” I remind the red-haired giant.

  “My size is something I’ve long since come to terms with, so if you are saying that to get a response from me, well, I’ve given you that response. Now this letter … a Player Killer from up there would surely know what this letter means.”

  He’s a scholar, I remind myself as I approach him, and only NPC scholars, RPCs and of course, PCs, understand the existential nature of Player Character diving to an online Proxima world such as Unigaea.

  “Let me take a look at it,” I say as he flattens the letter, which is about the size of a tablecloth, on the ground. Written in a bubbly, feminine handwriting, the letter reads:

  Lothar Shane,

  I’ve been waiting for five years for you to finish your trials and become a scholar, and I am incredibly proud that you have done so. That said, you returned to Tael and immediately got to work on a post-scholar thesis. I’ve been patient, and I’m sorry it has come to this.

  Goodbye,

  Gadsaa Malin

  “It’s a breakup letter,” I tell him almost immediately.

  “Breakup? Why would we breakup? What would Gadsaa and I have to breakup from? We’ve been together for a very long time.”

  I stare at Lothar incredulously for a moment. “It says right here why she’s breaking up with you. ‘I’ve been patient, and I’m sorry it has come to this. Goodbye.’ It’s pretty clear.” I turn to Deathdale for support and she nods. “See, even the generally silent Solar Mage gets it!”

  “This is just a departing letter. I do not understand why she’d want to end our relationship right as I set off for Solidus. It seems illogical.”

  I shake my head up at him. “You’re not reading between the lines, Lothar. This letter basically says you didn’t pay enough attention to her, she waited, and now she’s ending it. Plain and simple.”

  “I see.” He sits back for a moment and runs his hand along
his beard stubble. “Well, that’s fine then. Your interpretation is likely correct. I couldn’t figure out what she could be apologizing for, and figured it was because she didn’t understand my explanation of my post-scholar thesis.”

  I reread the letter with the giant’s interpretation in mind. “Okay, I can see how, if you lived in a vacuum like most scholars do, you’d misinterpret this. Sorry, giant friend, this is a breakup letter. You need to get a new girlfriend.”

  He sighs deeply. “That’s too bad. I am disappointed in her lack of patience, even though she claims to be patient in this letter. But what can I do? The source code bomb has arrived. There are more important things to do than procreate.”

  “So you know about it?” I ask.

  He takes a deep breath and nods. “It’s why I was heading south to Solidus, to see how I can be of assistance in researching it.”

  “But the bomb struck up north.”

  “Yes, starting in Lucre, in the Rune Lands.”

  “Which is where we are heading,” I tell the giant. “By way of Drachma.”

  “Why Drachma?” he asks.

  I glance to Deathdale, not sure how to interpret the look on her face. “We have our reasons.”

  “Revenge,” she says firmly.

  “Intriguing. So you are going to Drachma for revenge and then heading north. May I ask why you are heading to the Rune Lands?”

  “I’ve made it my personal mission to put a stop to the source code bomb, whatever that entails. The Obelisk recently gave me her support.” I touch my chest, even though Lothar can’t see the mark through my armor.

  There’s a twinkle in his eyes as he says, “If the Obelisk wills it, then I will join you. Not for your petty revenge, as I am a pacifist, but I will accompany you to the north. I’ve heard how much Governor Talonas has helped the south fight back against the Tagvornins, and while I don’t quite understand why the Stater symbols on your armor have been removed, I am well aware that you must have his blessing as well. Normal soldiers aren’t given that type of armor.”

  “How do you know I didn’t kill someone for it?”

  “Did you?”

  I shake my head.

  “Now I know.”

  “And another thing, you aren’t a pacifist,” I tell him. “That’s bullshit. No one in Unigaea is a pacifist. Everyone here fights for one thing or another, and sometimes that ‘one thing’ is simply survival. All scholars have to go through combat trials; I know, I was a scholar at the Solidus School of Topography, several avatars ago.”