Endless Online: Oblivion's Price: A LitRPG Adventure - Book 3

by M. H. Johnson

  "It's okay, dad. It just grazed the muscle. I'm damn lucky."

  "Don't give me that, Val. You can't even walk."

  Val laughed. "I pulled my back something fierce, attempting a throw from the worst angle. But with a knife in play, I had to wrench, twist, and snap. Jacob would have had fun stabbing the shit out of me otherwise, maybe even nicking an artery before I could choke him out."

  His father gave a slow nod. "I'm sorry, son. I knew the best thing I could do was pull distance so they couldn't put us against each other, hopefully pulling a few with me as I did so. But they were too well trained." He flashed a bleak smile. "But not well trained enough to take out the best, thank god."

  Val chuckled softly. "Most people can't see through shadows."

  "But Jacob could."

  Val swallowed, chilled, wondering just how much his father really understood. "Yes, he could. May it serve him well in Hell."

  His father sighed. "I doubled back with the first shots, of course, knowing it either meant you had taken one or more out and it was time for me to kit my old ass up, or they had taken you out, in which case I would have made them pay, even if it killed me."

  Val frowned. "Dad..."

  "No, Val. We won't even discuss what would have happened then. Thank god we never have to. What matters is you were still up and fighting, and this old fool hasn't forgotten all the tricks of the forest. I was armed and ready to assist, but you all had pulled away." He chuckled softly. "I was hoping you'd send them my way."

  Val shook his head. "Hell, no. Jacob would have killed you. He knew where all the pieces were on the board, the entire time."

  "Just like you?"

  "Except for Jacob, yes."

  Quiet laughter. "No shrink would buy that as anything but delusion."

  Val grinned. "Fuck em."

  His father helped him up. "Come on. Let's get ourselves clean transportation and get out of here."

  Val frowned. "We can't trust either vehicle. And Jacob was wired and mad enough he might have rigged more cars to detonate, just because he was a malicious fuck. And we dare not head home." He forced himself to meet his father's gaze. "They already took out Johnny, dad, and it wasn't a clean kill. God only knows if our whole damned house isn't rigged to explode, or if a sniper is lying in wait, even now."

  His father winced. "Damn, I'm sorry to hear that. I could tell he was a good kid. I was hoping... hell, it doesn't matter now." He looked back at the just barely visible crumpled forms of the first two men Val had taken out. "Righteous kills, my son. Righteous kills. Those bastards deserved every bullet you served. Alright, I'll make a call. This site will be contained, and our house under friendly eyes. We'll be ready to extract Johnny if there's even a chance he's still alive and Jacob was playing you. And if anyone else is in there..." A cold, hard smile. "It will be taken care of. No asshole invades my home and walks clean."

  Val nodded. "Now let's boost a car and head back."

  His father's brows furrowed. "It's dangerous, Val."

  "No shit, it's dangerous. Dirk's over his head. Our last discovery after uploading ourselves to Jordia... it's a big fucking deal to serious players who sure as hell aren't friends of our government, for all that they burrowed into the deepest circles, somehow. Honestly, dad, if that asshole was right, Doctor Mordare is going to wipe out our whole team."

  His father's jaw hardened. "I'll make a call. Come on, let's get ourselves a car."

  And no boosting was necessary, Val found, his father knocking on a distant neighbor's door, near enough to the scene of their battle, the alert and armed old man who unlocked the door to the coded knock already aware that something was going down, not blinking twice to see Val and his father armed for battle and at his doorstep. He flashed a hard smile. "How was the hunting?"

  Val's father gazed intently at the older man. "Alex, I could really use a big favor right now."

  "You bet, John. After what you did for my boy in Afghanistan, all you need to do is ask."

  "Hell, Alex, a car and some coffee, and you're gold in my book."

  The old man smiled. "Done. Give me just a minute and I'll set you up with a couple roast beef sandwiches for the road. Now have a seat and rest, the missus will help with the wound," he said, inviting them into their stately home, near as well appointed as Julia's family manor, for all that Alex had the air of a no-nonsense blue collar man who had worked a factory job for forty years. Even if he just happened to own the factory. Nothing kept a crew sharper than a captain always on hand.

  "You probably don't remember, Val, but the wife and I used to visit your family, not so many years ago. I saw you on more than one birthday. Alright, don't give me that look. There's the missus with the gauze and bandages now."

  Val smiled as a frail-looking woman, still quite beautiful despite her years, flashed Val a motherly smile before demanding he shuck off his armor with a no-nonsense tone. "I was a battlefield nurse for four years, son. Now close your eyes and let me sew you up."

  And as briskly and efficiently as any surgeon, she did just that. It stung like the dickens, but her glare didn't allow him even the grace of a whimper, and she was done almost before he knew it, even taking the time to knuckle his strained back and apply odorless muscle cream. "I have stronger liniments, but they have a stink, and god only knows what you're up to, so this will have to do."

  With that, she put several roast beef sandwiches carefully sealed in wax paper in his hand. "Your father's finished his calls, and thank goodness Alex had one of those prepaid phones. The government might have forgotten the fourth amendment, but we never did."

  Val grinned, recalling that his father's friend just might have been in a bit of hot water, sometime in the past. Something to do with a too liberal interpretation of the tax code, but as far as Val was concerned, the man was entitled to every red cent of his business.

  A final handshake saw them off in a nondescript sedan with tinted windows that looked like so many government vehicles that it would go perfectly well with the fake ID his father pulled out. Just in case.

  "Good luck John, and don't worry. Neither car nor phone will ping on any big brother satellite." The old man flashed a hard smile. "Never did trust the government, after what happened to my son. You're one of the good ones, John. You take care, now."

  John nodded solemnly. "Thank you, Alex. This means a hell of a lot, and I won't forget."

  "Of course you won't," the old man laughed. "Next year you're loaning me all your goddamned tax lawyers, and footing the bill."

  "Of course."

  "You take care, John."

  "You too, Alex."

  Val smiled and waved as his father pulled out, belly full, thirst slaked, and the coffee did nothing to stave off exhaustion. It was almost more than he could endure, just keeping his eyes open.

  "Rest, son. You've done enough. We'll talk when you get up."

  Val grimaced, having the sudden suspicion his father was heading to a safe house, but before he could say another word, he was lost, plummeting down the endless vortex of exhaustion that had suddenly claimed him.

  25

  "Pay attention, Val!"

  Val jolted upright, blinking at his surroundings, surprised to find himself in a classroom, barely able to fit in his wooden desk.

  At the front of the room was a beautiful woman with golden hair and violet eyes that pierced his soul. Val frowned, strangely certain he recognized her. She looked just like a younger version of Christine, in fact.

  "Off in never-never land again, Val?" Snickered the gnomish looking boy behind him, his shock of salt and pepper hair more befitting Einstein than the scrawny youth it was perched upon, the two students behind him chuckling at the jest. The laughter wasn't cruel and they flashed him friendly smiles. One boy could have been an actor with handsome features and a roguish smile more suited to flying starships and smuggling lost treasures than sitting in a classroom, the other belonging to a jock, save for his cybernetic eye.

  "G
ood to see you, little buddy, even if it's just in a dream," the jock said.

  The teacher banged on the desk. "Pay attention, Val. This is important."

  Val blinked and looked forward once more, only then noting the hideous complexity of the diagram on the board before her. Val shook, icy winds echoing with the dying shrieks of dozens of butchered souls as he gazed at that diagram seeming to expand to infinity in all directions. Resonating with magic in all its impossible permutations, somehow using the most hideously advanced equations and formulas to conceptualize manipulating and mastering the energies not only within him, but without as well.

  Val shuddered and looked away, dizzy and disoriented, his mind unable to comprehend the diagram that roared in his mind, crushing in its hideous complexity.

  And the classroom door began to crack and bleed.

  Someone wanted in.

  "Val! I know you're in there!" Val shook. Jacob's voice.

  He'd recognize it anywhere, even in death.

  Sick laughter washed over everyone in the room. Even Halvar and Sten those were their names, he remembered now! looked afraid.

  "Val, what the hell is haunting your dream?" Gregor whispered.

  "Let me in, Val..." A horrible scratching and burrowing could be heard on the other side. "I think I spy a spy do I. Time for that little spy to die! You didn't think a simple broken neck would stop me, did you, Val? Besides, are you sure I'm the one who broke his neck? Perhaps it was you, no? Perhaps I am standing above your body right now, laughing as you choke and die, your final thoughts of madness before blackness takes you to Hell!"

  Val shook and swallowed, part of him wondering if it was true.

  If he had twisted just a little bit differently, if Jacob had pivoted around instead of holding desperately onto the knife as he flipped over...

  "Yes... think it through Val... you know it's true..."

  Val's face jerked back with a crack, blinding pain bringing him to the moment, shocked to see Elise -that's who she was- glaring so furiously at him. "Don't be stupid, Val! You know where we are!

  And Val did. Riding between one version of reality and the next, perfectly quantized waveforms syncing between moments in time. The catalyzation of all he was or could ever be. And if he wasn't careful, it wouldn't be him that emerged when the nightmare was done.

  "Focus!" Elise screamed. "Look at the board and take it in!"

  Val whimpered, overwhelmed by the hideous complexity of what he saw, a tenth order diagram ripping into a mind far less advanced than their own.

  Suddenly it was Gregor frowning down before Valor, blocking his gaze. "His brain's been altered. Those dwarves. Ripping into him with so much power that it shifted his mind. He sees the ethereal clearer than ever, and he always had a wolf's protective instincts. But abstract concepts are almost as hard for him now as when he first entered our world."

  Gregor's cybernetic eye whirred thoughtfully, even as Val heard Jacob's scritching, crawling finger slide under the door. Glistening, pulsing, like a hideous worm.

  A worm with a bulging sack at the tip, bursting forth into a single bloodshot eye, leaking ichor and maggots. "I see you, Val." Jacob's skittering voice whispered into Val's brain as that awful finger slowly stretched, bones crackling, desperate to touch the boy gazing helplessly from his chair. "I see you...."

  Val whimpered as Gregor's eye whirred. They couldn't hear the voice. They didn't know Jacob was coming.

  No one ever knew.

  Not until it was too late.

  "I think we're going to have to operate," Halvar opined. "If we don't grow him a brain, he won't process the chart. If he doesn't process the chart, it's all over."

  Gregor nodded, turning to their professor. "Elise?"

  Elise sighed. "I suppose that's how it has to be." She then gazed sadly at Val, before pulling open her desk drawer and taking out the hilt of a weapon exotic and terrible. And suddenly a sickening hum as crimson and violet lightning crackled along a sliver of blackness, dark and terrible. The event horizon of oblivion, able to slice through anything, even reality itself.

  "Hold still, Val, it's time to operate." And with a single flash of crackling darkness, she sliced open his skull.

  And Val screamed. Screamed as his mind was consumed by pain hideous and unending, neurons forged into being in heartbeats, tearing through him with pain as furious and vicious as any blazing through him, a handful of cells dying for lack of oxygen as Val's body began to spasm, heart and lungs racing to keep up as new neurons were instantly formed.

  "There's the problem," Elise sighed. "That neuronal cluster isn't big enough. Halvar? Give him yours."

  "Yes, ma'am," the jock said, cracking open his own skull and tearing free a portion of his own brain even as he stared calmly at Val, warm words of reassurance nothing but a garbled mess as blood slowly trickled down his face.

  Val screamed, seeing the glistening gray folds speckled with blood, his friend's bloody skull held calmly in his off hand, desperate for his friend to put himself back together before Val's vision was blinded by searing light, Elise spooling alien flesh into his own, and Val suddenly understood the diagram before him, in all its horror and complexity.

  Congratulations! Your Scholarship has increased by 2! (2 of 7 points spent.)

  +10% to Mana, +10% to Psion, compounded. (4 of 7 points spent.)

  Congratulations! You have achieved Rank 10 in Personal Resonance Mastery! (7 of 7 points spent.) You are now a Master of Personal Resonance! With utter control of the energies you summon to your will, magic will heed your call like never before!

  Congratulations! You now sense the interharmonies between Jordia and Earth! Your Dimensional Rift is now open to you in both worlds!

  And Val screamed on as the chalkboard seemed to grow and expand, overshadowing the howls of desperate children in the corridor beyond the classroom, the skittering laughter of Jacob's vile soul, even Elise's concerned gaze and Halvar's stupefied smile dimmed into inky shadow as the board consumed everything, until there was only the impossibly vast and complex matrix shining in brilliant contrast to the endless darkness, revealing all its secrets as Val blinked and saw that the darkness was really just the night sky.

  "Can you move the stone without the stone moving you?" Asked the soft voice of the sage old man smiling down at the small boy Val had been, endless lifetimes ago.

  The young boy nodded, gently gazing at the pebble by his feet in the ancient monastery, the Dominion resonator's needle not moving a hair as the stone slowly rose in the air.

  The old man grinned, pleased, though his eyes creased with worry as Val held up his other hand. "And that's not all. Look! I can lift all the stones." And numerous other pebbles began to levitate, the old man's wonder turning to horror as the ground bucked with cracks and the roaring of ruptured stone. "I can lift the whole temple," Val proudly declared as the needle refused to flicker, even as everyone in the temple screamed or cried out, jostled off their feet as they began to levitate through the air.

  The old man's wondrous gaze turned to horror. "No, don't do this. You cannot do this!"

  Val gazed into desperate eyes pleading with his own and he smiled. "And that's not all. Look what else I can do," he whispered as the roof of the temple was torn off and hurled into the heavens, screams rising in pitch.

  To gaze in awe at the majestic night sky as Val clenched his fist.

  And the night sky flashed brilliant white, everyone screaming with sudden pain as the tiny moon hovering over their world exploded with such terrible force that the air began to burn as the quantum force wave tore through their fragile planet.

  "Why?" screamed the old man with his dying breath, as fire consumed them all.

  For I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.

  Val smiled with sad eyes as the old man and his students burned before him.

  Risen upon the ashes of the fallen phoenix,

  Blazing to life once more.

  And Val closed his eyes as the wo
rld entire choked on fumes of death, a lifeless husk where a planet rich and bountiful had once blossomed, clouds of ash and dust choking out even starlight in the years to come.

  Eclipsed by eternal darkness,

  Forevermore.

  With a soft whisper, Val opened a rift between time and space, sparing not a glance for the husks of ash left behind, allowing himself a tiny smile as he gazed upon the Dominion resonator, it alone unharmed by the shock-wave of devastation, quivering not a sliver before his terrible magics. The young boy gave a satisfied nod, knowing it was time to return.

  Open wide the gates of Oblivion,

  For I have come home.

  ____________________________________________________________________________________

  Valor Hunter - Level 15

  Primary Attributes

  Strength 13

  Vitality 13

  Finesse 13

  Quickness 17

  Perception 18

  Scholarship 14

  Willpower 17

  Charisma 13

  Luck ?? +2

  Health 10xVit+Str+IC= 148

  Survival (Health+(10xLevel)+Luck) = 298+?

  Stamina 10xVit+Str+IC= 153

  Mana 377 (371Accessible: 251 kg Elementium Stored)

  Psion 377 (371 Accessible: 200.9 L Silbion Stored)

  Insight 17

  Base Appearance 10. +1 (13 charisma) +1 (athletic) = +2 to reaction rolls. (+5 when you let your potency show.)

  Dark Points 3 (+3 to reaction rolls and influence when you let your intensity shine. -1 if you try to hide the darkness in your soul. +30% potency increase when you embrace your wrath!)

  Reputation

  Champion of the Dwarves: +6 reaction from all surviving dwarves in the northern hemisphere.

  Hero of the Skogur tribe: +6 reaction from all Skogur dwarves.

  Team Player: +2 reaction from all Terrans encountered off-world.

  Helpful Hero: +1 Reaction from Dominion friendly citizens, +6 reaction from forest faeries.

  Skills of Significance

  Shadowmind Rank 5 (Adept) / Psi-Sense (Shadowmind Dependent) Rank 4 / Psionic Perception Rank 3 / Mindmeld Rank 1 / Arcane Perception Rank 4 / Arcane Artificer Rank 2 / Psion Artificer Rank 2 / Cypher Rank 2 / Meditation Rank 3 / Rift Mastery Rank 2 / Psionic Oathbinding Rank 1 / Stealth Rank 4 / Magesight Rank 2 / Synergized Mageward Rank 2 / Basic Literacy Achieved! (Limited to texts of Arcane or Psionic nature) / Deception Rank 2 / Inquisition Rank 2 / Intimidation Rank 3 / Spirit Link Rank 2