God Mode: A LitRPG Adventure (Mythrune Online Book 1)

by Derek Alan Siddoway

  Leesha frowned at the figure. “Okay, now that’s insulting. And do you really think you can make it eighteen more days without messing up again? You need my help. You’re terrible at making things up. Plus, it will be easier for both of us to level and find a tournament token if we’re working together.”

  She had me there, but the last thing I was going to do was admit to it. “Fifteen percent.”

  “Well, if that’s how you feel, I may as well start uploading this video right now.” She made a motion to open up her menu.

  “Okay, fine — thirty percent!” She opened her mouth to argue again, but I cut her off. “I’m the one who figured out the hack. And I’m the one who is getting the hell beat out of me. Plus, if we get caught, you can just say you didn’t know. I’m the one who’ll end up banned or in jail for online fraud.”

  “Jail? You think highly of yourself to think this is a jail-worthy offense.”

  “It’s ten million dollars,” I added.

  Leesha bit her lip, deep in thought. “Thirty percent,” she said, testing the number. “That’s three million. Just so we’re clear.”

  I knew I had her — time to close the deal.

  “Thirty percent. Three million of the ten million in winnings.” I held out my hand to her and, heaven help me, she shook it.

  “Looks like you’ve got yourself a partner, partner.” She gave me a broad grin and a wink that made my stomach curdle. I felt like I’d just signed my soul over to the devil herself. A notification popped up.

  Leesha has invited you to join her party. Would you like to accept: Yes or No?

  “Only if I get to be party leader,” I said. “And that means I have to invite you.”

  Leesha gave me a toothy grin. “Oh, darn. And here I thought you wouldn’t notice. You are a smart one.”

  I ignored her condescending tone. After rejecting her offer and wading through a few prompts, we were greeted by the most obnoxious prompt yet.

  Congratulations! You have formed a party with Leesha.

  “So, we know what to do now, partner?” Leesha asked cheerfully.

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Okay, you got it, Big Z — what’s next?”

  I sighed again. This was going to be a long eighteen days.

  “What about your quests?” I asked. I’d pretty much made up my mind to move forward with Ugola’s quest to track down the bandits, especially now I had help. It didn’t hurt to see what our options were, though.

  “Pfft!” Leesha waved her hand. “I wasn’t lying when I told you my starting spot was a crapshoot. We’re probably better off doing whatever you have next on your log.”

  That raised my suspicions again. I wondered what exactly she’d spent her time doing to level up and made a note to ask her later. As it was, we both agreed sticking to my main quest thread would help us gain the most experience while building up to tougher quests that could lead to a potential tournament token. Another thing we agreed on was that we needed to leave any preconceived notions we had about the game at the door. They’d clearly put a lot of work into making the actual game completely different from the beta.

  That settled, we prepared to set off in search of the Blue Hand Raiders.

  “Hold on just a minute there, partner,” Leesha said.

  I whirled around on her, and my hand instinctively went to my battle axe handle over my shoulder. I half expected to feel a knife between my shoulder blades as I did, but she laughed and shook her head.

  “Calm down there, Big Z — my rest mode warning just popped up. We might as well rest up together so we’re in sync before we head out.”

  The logic made sense, but I couldn’t get rid of the sinking feeling in my gut. Could I trust this girl not to run off and publish that video? I supposed it didn’t matter. At this point, I had no choice but to trust her.

  We made our way back to the tall grass I had slept on the night before. It was the softest area nearby and hadn’t provided me with any negative sleep debuffs, so it was as good a place as any. The last rays of sun painted the Horuk camp in gold, and if I hadn’t had a mountain of worries threatening to squish me into oblivion, I probably would have been able to appreciate the scene.

  “Oh, how romantic!” Leesha said, clasping her hands together and holding them up to her face. “You know how to show a girl the sights.”

  I rolled my eyes — when had I become the one constantly rolling their eyes?

  “So, how long we napping for?” she asked, suddenly all business. “Four hours will take us to midnight, but I don’t really want to hunt for bandits in the middle of the night. I do have a night-vision bonus because of my Sylvad race — your call, Big Z.”

  She was calling me these annoying names on purpose. I ignored it. “Let’s do the standard four hours,” I said. “There might be eighteen days to go, but I don’t want to waste any time.”

  Straightening up, she gave me a sharp salute. Who was this woman? I started to roll my eyes again then caught myself and shook my head instead. We looked at one another, as if willing the other person to go to rest mode first. Leesha laughed again and shrugged.

  “So this is a trust exercise, huh? Well, goodnight!”

  She winked, then rolled over. Her body went slack immediately. Of course, I knew she could have set her rest cycle to end early and that there was a real chance I’d wake up to find her gone. But there was nothing I could do about that. Either she’d keep her word or she wouldn’t. Like it or not, my fate was in the hands of this quirky, backstabbing Sylvad. It wasn’t exactly a comforting thought.

  I took my place next to Leesha and rolled over to face away from her before selecting Rest Mode.

  17

  Rest Mode

  Z: ok, we may have a problem.

  B: …what now?

  B: what in the sam hell did you do now? you’d better not be screwing with us here

  B: sorry, that was Unc.

  Z: i could tell

  B: enough with the suspense dammit what happened?

  B: that was Unc again.

  Z: tell him to chill.

  Z: so, the secret is sorta out. Some player named Leesha camped me and attacked. I should have died but I didn’t and she noticed.

  B: take her out, then.

  Z: It doesn’t work like that, Unc! You realize if I do that, she doesn’t die in the real world, right?

  B: Oh, right. Take her out anyway.

  B: Brandon here. So she found out. what happened then? Did she tell anyone or threaten you?

  Z: No…I made a deal. I told her she could take thirty percent of the winnings when we win. Didn’t have much of a choice.

  B: WHAAAT!!!

  Z: Chill, Unc. Your share is safe

  B: oh ok

  B: B here again. So, what does this mean?

  Z: she and I are partying up. She’s going to help, and she says she’ll keep my secret.

  B: and you trust her?

  Z: No way. the first thing she did after I met her was backstab me in a cave and leave me for dead.

  B: this isn’t good.

  Z: it gets better. She recorded it so she’s got proof.

  B: it’s actual video footage.

  Z: yup

  B: and you’re sure it’s clear you should have died?

  Z: Doesn’t matter. she took me out again and basically proved I was cheating. She may have been recording then too. i dunno.

  B: well damn — what now? I told you I should have been the one to do this!

  Z: There wasn’t anything I could have done! This is still less risky than putting that kind of strain on your heart

  B: I know you’re worried about me, but I can take care of myself, you know

  Z: Just get more info on her, then. I’ll do the same. look into her feeds, social media, and maybe even get a lock on where she lives. If she tries to publish anything, let me know.

  B: …I hope you know what you’re doing.

  B: And that goes double for me!


  Z: Unc, stop grabbing the keyboard!

  18

  Bandit Bait

  Day 3 — Seventeen Days to Tournament Start

  I turned over in the tall grass and noticed Leesha staring straight at me.

  “Oh no,” she said, surprise and revulsion crossing her face. She looked at me like we’d just woken up together after a wild night. “I must have had a lot to drink.”

  “Ha-ha,” I said dryly. I got up, shivering from the slight chill. It was just past one in the morning, and although my virtual body and mind felt refreshed, it still felt way too early to be chasing bandits. “We should get going.”

  Crossing through the silent, sleeping Horuk camp, I realized a small flaw in my plan to sleep the minimum four hours. At this hour, none of the Horuks were up to do business with. It didn’t matter that Chief Ugola had given me his stamp of approval — anyone I tried to do business with at this hour was more likely to sink an axe in my head than sell us anything.

  As we headed south from the Horuk camp, I explained my latest quest to Leesha, who was especially excited about all the potential loot we could find that the bandits had stolen. She once again reiterated how she’d been dealt a pretty lame hand regarding the quests in her spawning location. I looked at her decent leather armor and two steel daggers.

  “Well, then how did you level up and get all that gear?” I asked.

  She didn’t respond right away and a mischievous smile grew on her face. “I just happened to come across a few players weak from fighting monsters…so I took them out while their health was low.”

  My already less-than-handsome Urok face wrinkled in disgust. She wasn’t just a camper and a kill thief. She was a career player killer.

  “Hey, don’t look at me like that! It’s not like I’m a homicidal psychopath — it’s a game! If you weren’t allowed to kill other players, they’d make MythRune non-PvP.”

  She had a point there, although I wasn’t about to argue the finer points of civilized gaming society with her.

  “I snagged a few Attribute Orbs, built up my Assassination and Sneak skills — it was a pretty good haul before the other players caught on. After I screwed some groups out of drops in the beginner dungeons, a bunch of the Sylvad players tried to hunt me down, so I hauled ass outta there. That’s when I found you!”

  The way Leesha said it made it sound like it was divine intervention that had brought us together. I was simultaneously impressed and appalled by her. Did this shady attitude carry over to the real world? Or was she just a goody two-shoes at home who took things a little too far in the gaming world?

  “So why run?” I asked. “It’s not like you can feel any pain. Just let them kill you and they’ll stop chasing you, right? You wouldn’t even lose your gear!”

  Leesha looked at me as she would a cute kid. “Aww! You sweet summer child. There are worse things than dying in this game, you know. These guys told me if they caught me, they’d chain me to a tree or lock me in a trunk until the tournament was over.”

  “No way,” I said, mouth agape. “You can do that?”

  “Oh yeah.” Leesha nodded, face now deadly serious. “They don’t kill you and you can’t fast travel, so what do you do?”

  “Can’t you just message the game moderators?” I asked. “That’s got to be against the rules.”

  “Not exactly,” Leesha said. “They’ve got this weird policy, like this game is some kind of petri dish of society. Besides, even if they found out, they’d realize I got locked up as a result of being a player killer. They’d probably throw my Sylvad ass right back in. Or maybe even mercy kill me with an added mod debuff. I wouldn’t be able to respawn until the one-day real-world penalty period ended.”

  If ever stuck in an inescapable situation, a non-death penalty was always a possibility. But to discourage it, the devs implemented a one-day real-world penalty, meaning you wouldn’t be able to play for twenty-four hours following your respawn.

  “By then,” Leesha said, “I’d be so far behind there’d be no way I could be competitive in the tournament.”

  “That sounds very…judicial of them?” I’d heard of the game mods doing some weird stuff in beta, but this seemed a bit extreme. As Leesha had pointed out earlier, it was still a game, after all. “Well, nobody likes someone who kills other players just for the heck of it.”

  Leesha turned to walk away, thought for a moment and then spun around. “And who are you to be all high and mighty? At least I’m playing within the parameters of the game!”

  She had me there. “I have my reasons.”

  “Don’t we all,” Leesha said.

  A brief flare of anger coursed through me, but I kept my mouth shut. She didn’t need to know about Brandon. She was just some petty con artist. My reasons were none of her business.

  Several miles south of the Horuk camp, we finally came across a trade road running east and west. Leesha explained that west led to Sylvad territory (near where she’d spawned), and east headed through the hill country, parallel with the Bloodbone Plains. Caravans either went west to the Sylvads’ Lazulis Forest or ended up going north from Crystal Fen along the foothills of the Ice Spears. According to Ugola, the smaller or lighter-guarded caravans had been struck in the hill country northwest of Crystal Fen as they made their way to Sylvad territory. If the Horuks had any hope of drawing them north from the trade road, the route would have to be safe.

  Defeating the Blue Hand Raiders seemed easy enough in writing, but even finding them could prove to be a monumental, time-consuming task. If we were a trade caravan with plenty of goods for the taking, it might have been different. As it stood, Leesha and I were a couple of broke adventurers with basically nothing of value. We likely weren’t even worth the trouble for the Blue Hands.

  We kept our eyes peeled as we made our way down the road for any signs of ambush or bandit activity. I managed to unlock the Tracking Pursuit and even gained +1 Tracking Skill Point, but it didn’t do any good. Even Leesha, whose Tracking Pursuit Sphere was farther along than mine (she’d spent a good amount of time tracking parties to rip off), wasn’t really much good without a recent attack site to go off of.

  The terrain didn’t help our cause. The hill country was aptly named for — you guessed it — hills. Rolling hills, meandering canyons, a scattering of juniper trees, and thousands of rock outcrops that each could have hidden a raider band for all I knew. If the raiders had been one ridge over from us, we’d have never known it.

  After a couple more hours of fruitless wandering, I decided it was time to change tactics.

  “We have to find a caravan and use them as bait.”

  “Oh-ho! Look who’s taking a page outta my book!” Leesha said with a laugh.

  “It’s not like they’re real people, you know,” I replied, trying to justify my plan for some reason. “And it makes a lot more sense than romping around the wilderness hoping to find their hideout.”

  Leesha threw up her hands, palms out. “Hey, no arguments here. Lead the way, oh fearless leader!”

  We followed the road east until around midday. Finally, in the distance, we saw exactly what we were looking for: a slight dusty plume of smoke rising from a growing column of wagons and riders. As we drew nearer to one another, the dusty column shaped into mules and oxen pulling wagons loaded with goods. A few more riders on horses surrounded the caravan, cantering up and down the length on their mounts.

  They spotted us a couple of hundred yards out, and the wagons halted. Four riders broke away from the column and headed our way.

  “Guards,” Leesha said.

  I nodded in agreement. It was common practice for traders and merchants in MythRune to employ armed protection. There was even a Caravan Guard player profession in beta. In my experience, it amounted to half your time spent on mind-numbing rides through empty country and the other half fighting for your life against bandits. The pay wasn’t great, but many beginning players thought it was a great way to get early exper
ience, money and reputation.

  The group riding toward us was led by a Valkyrie woman and an Eedari male on horseback, both sporting basic leather armor, spears, and short bows. Behind them were two Urok males mounted on ostrasaurs, native Urok mounts. The easiest way to describe them was to imagine a raptor with the head and neck of a brontosaur or a duckbill. They had no talons on their long legs but did sport moderate claws on their arms. The real value of these two-legged herbivores wasn’t in their combat abilities but rather their ability to travel great distances with heavy loads. Plains Urok loaded them with packsaddles or hitched them to travois when moving their camps.

  As they came to a stop, the Valkyrie gave a quick hand motion, and the Eedari rode off, making a wide sweep of us. The only text above their names was “Caravan Guard,” which marked them all as NPCs.

  “Greetings, travelers,” the Valkyrie said, raising her hand.

  “Greetings,” I replied, raising my hand in response.

  Clearly not one to conform to in-game etiquette, Leesha gave a simple wave and a, “Yo.”

  “Forgive us for asking,” the Valkyrie continued, “but what business do an Urok and Sylvad have sharing the road?”

  Her question was innocent enough, but I could tell the woman was on edge. One hand gripped her reins tight and the other kept a tight grip on her spear. The two Urok behind her looked ready for combat as well, each holding an axe as they swayed on the backs of their ostrasaurs.

  “We could ask you all the same thing,” Leesha said before I could reply.

  “We’ve come from an Urok village to the north,” I quickly added, hoping to offset Leesha’s lack of diplomacy. “A hunting camp led by Chief Ugola.”

  The Valkyrie looked to the two Uroks behind her. “Do you know this Chief Ugola?”

  Both shook their heads.

  “It’s a small tribe and they’ve only recently come from the plains,” I conceded. “Ugola hopes to establish a trading post nearby. But the only problem is —”