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

by Derek Alan Siddoway

  The first two swings put the opponent on their heels, and the third broke through like a blitzing linebacker through the A-gap. The only downside was the forty-five-second cooldown, meaning I couldn’t just spam one combo into another. But it was still the best move I’d unlocked so far.

  You have learned the skills Overpowering Blow and Axemaster!

  +2 Two-Handed Battle-Axe Skill Points

  I wiped the sweat from my face with a towel, feeling the exhausted satisfaction that only came after a killer workout or a hard-fought game. There was nothing else like it. All that was missing was a Gatorade and the roar from the bleachers.

  “Congratulations, Zane,” Torgul said with a bow. “That is all I have to teach you for now.”

  “Thanks, Torgul.” I bowed in response, bringing an end to my session.

  I wiped the sweat from my Urok brow with the back of a shaking hand and looked to the Ice Spears, a blue-gray smudge in the distance.

  Here we come.

  29

  To the Ice Spears!

  It was late afternoon when Leesha and I mounted our trusty steeds and headed out of the Horuk camp. I’d told her about my new skills, but she remained suspiciously silent on the knowledge she’d acquired. I guessed she was hoping to reveal it in some unnecessarily dramatic fashion down the line. The smirk she gave me confirmed my suspicions, but I didn’t push the issue.

  Setting the waypoint on my map, we set out east, following a barely treaded path across the Bloodbone Plains. There wasn’t a lot to write home about in terms of the view— rolling plains, sagebrush, tall dead grass. What was impressive was the sheer emptiness of it all and the way the plains just made you feel…small. Like a tiny little insignificant bug in an ocean of land. I wondered if this was what it had been like to step foot on the Great Plains back in the day. Our journey might not have been beautiful, but it was still visually stunning to say the least.

  I assumed I wouldn’t be impressed for long though. This was going to take us a hell of a long time, and the big open expanse would probably prove to be monotonous. Unfortunately for me, Leesha hit bored status barely two hours after we’d left the village. The sun hadn’t even started to set.

  “This is driving me crazy!” Leesha yelled out of the blue, scaring Frank in the process and forcing me to rein him in until he calmed down.

  +1 Riding & Combat Riding Skill Points

  “Entertain me, peasant,” she continued as if Frank hadn’t just freaked out.

  “Not sure I can do much to help you out there. We have quite a ways to go still.”

  “Do you know any road-trip games?”

  “What?”

  “Road-trip games. You know how on TV they have these characters go on a road trip and they’re playing games like…I dunno, I Spy or something? People do that, right?”

  “You make it sound like you’ve never been in a car before.”

  “I’ve been in a car before!”

  “Ah, right. Most people who have been in cars before are always this defensive,” I said with a laugh.

  “I’ve ridden in cars before, smartass! I just never really took road trips growing up, you know?”

  I raised an eyebrow and put on what I hoped was a quizzical expression on my Urok face…if a brute like me could look quizzical. “You don’t, like, live in a bubble because of some medical condition, do you?” Suddenly I was concerned I’d pushed the subject too far.

  Leesha vented an exasperated growl. “I’m not a bubble girl! And quit annoying me — you’re the one who doesn’t want to share any personal information, dude.”

  “I just don’t —”

  Leesha waved a hand. “Yeah, yeah, for when you gotta make your big getaway to some private island with all that cash.”

  I didn’t know if it was because I was bored out of my skull, too, or if my curiosity got the better of me. “Okay, I give. But just fun facts — no identifiers, okay? And you have to go first.”

  Leesha rolled her eyes and I grinned. I hoped the trip would last long enough to bug her as much as she’d bugged me the past few days.

  But the annoyed expression fell from her face and she suddenly turned serious. She took a deep breath, showing an insecure side I hadn’t seen before. “This is going to sound bad. Like really bad.”

  “It sounds dramatic enough. What, do you kill people and chop off their feet?”

  “Never mind.”

  “I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” I said, holding up my hands. “No more jokes from me. But seriously, I have to know now. Please? I promise I won’t laugh.”

  Leesha bit her lip, obviously still torn. “Well, my parents are…pretty well off, is all,” she began slowly. “Whenever we go on vacation, we usually take our jet.”

  “Your jet?”

  “I knew you’d make fun of me.”

  “No, no, I’m not making fun,” I said. “I’m just surprised.” We rode in silence for several seconds. “Okay, but if you’re so loaded, then why do you even need the prize money?”

  Leesha gave me a sideways smirk, that air of confidence returning. “Nuh-uh. I told you one thing. Your turn.”

  I nodded. “Okay, fine. If we’re talking embarrassing things…I used to be something of a football star in high school.”

  She snorted. “I’m pretty sure every guy who has ever played football thinks that. What makes you such a big shot?”

  I shrugged. I hadn’t said it because I thought it would impress her. Big dumb jocks didn’t seem her type. “I was a four-star recruit, had offers at a dozen different colleges at the start of my senior year.”

  “So then what happened?” Leesha asked. “Did you get hurt in the big game and screw up your chances of going pro someday?”

  “Not quite.”

  “Not quite? What kind of answer is that?”

  I suddenly got an uneasy feeling. I thought I was over it, but bringing the past up again with someone new sort of felt like yanking off the Band-Aid. Time to change the subject. “Your turn again. You’re rich. So why this whole thing?”

  “First off, I’m not rich,” she assured me. “My parents are rich.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And it’s true. My parents cut me off a couple of years ago. Won’t even talk to me.” She said the last part almost with a touch of pride. “Last I checked, I only had $87.50 to my name.”

  “But I imagine you have a pretty hefty credit card limit for emergencies?” I said, unable to hide my condescension.

  “I refuse to use that!”

  “So you do have a daddy-funded credit limit.”

  “Screw you, dude. I’m paying all my bills in converted RuneCoins right now.”

  In addition to the in-game currency, RuneCoins had exchange value as cryptocurrency IRL. But the exchange rate was never very favorable to players. If what Leesha said was true, there was no wonder she was so obsessed with loot.

  “Your turn again,” Leesha said. We both seemed to be playing hot potato with the topics neither of us wanted to discuss. “Tell me more about big bad Z of yesteryear. You said it was a big game. What actually happened?”

  My stomach knotted again. I’d spent a lot of time trying to forget that game. Here in MythRune, where I didn’t have a jacked-up knee reminding me of what I’d lost every waking minute, it almost seemed possible to write it all off as a bad dream.

  “I never said it was a big game. Actually, it wasn’t even an important game,” I said, the bitterness creeping into my voice. “Some random running play on second down in the first quarter. The definition of a throwaway moment. I hit a running back and…” I paused and swallowed a click in my throat. I wasn’t even sure I’d ever said this aloud to anyone before. “He wasn’t a good running back. Wasn’t even particularly big or fast. It was just a bad angle and bad luck. I got caught in a pile and my knee got all jacked up. ACL. MCL. Meniscus.”

  I snapped my fingers. “And that was that.”

  “Why didn’t you just get it replaced?” L
eesha asked. “Athletes get implants and recover from stuff like that all the time.”

  I bit back the quick surge of anger rising up. “We couldn’t afford it. My parents tried, but…” I stopped myself before I opened up that old wound too. Things were getting a little too personal. “So, when I hear about how you just threw away all that money, it’s hard not to resent it.”

  “I may have had money growing up, but I was stuck in a cage the entire time,” Leesha said.

  “But you do realize how much freedom actually having money gives someone, right?”

  Leesha looked away. I could tell she wanted to yell back at me. “Yeah, I get it. That’s why I want the money for myself. So I can have the freedom without the strings. And then I can walk into that stupid mansion of theirs, knock over grandfather’s urn, and tell them to suck it.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “So this is all just to stick it to your parents?”

  “Oh, I did that when I walked out on the fancy parties and formal dinners,” Leesha said with a grin. “This is for me. I’m not cut out to work in a convenience store and don’t want to live on packaged ramen the rest of my life. What about you? Gonna buy a new knee?”

  I gave a dry laugh. “No, I think my football days are done. I just want…”

  Once again, I struggled over how much to tell her. I wanted to believe I could trust Leesha, but…it was just such a personal thing. My little brother was dying, and there was still a chance this chick was a four-hundred-pound guy living in a trailer park in Omaha. I didn’t really believe that, but crazier things had happened on the internet, after all.

  “Earth to Z, you still there? You’re doing that thing again.”

  “Sorry,” I said quickly, as if she’d been able to hear my thoughts. “Just looking for the right word. Like you said, freedom, I guess. The freedom to not worry about what life will be like if you don’t make ends meet.”

  A lump formed in my throat at the thought of a future without Brandon in it. I blinked and looked at Leesha, who was watching me with an expression I couldn’t read. She smiled, not her usual Cheshire grin, but a much more sincere one.

  “Let’s go get that freedom, then.”

  30

  Hidden Tribe

  Day 6 — Fourteen Days to Tournament Start

  Given that we’d only just rested up in the late afternoon, and that neither of us had any desire to set up camp in the dark, Leesha and I agreed to ride on through the night. Between her night-vision abilities and my map and Pathfinding, and as long as we were both on high alert, we wouldn’t run the risk of running into any dangerous monsters or bandits.

  Around noon, we passed a small creek winding its way through the grasslands. It didn’t look like much but seemed to be a natural divider between the Bloodbone Plains and the foothills of the Ice Spear Mountains. Over the course of a mile or so, the land changed from sagebrush and tall grass to meadows pockmarked with small ponds and groves of aspens. The mountains themselves were still a ways off, but their craggy peaks looked much more imposing. Leesha shot a couple of rabbits while I put my Survival Skills to work — well, my sole Survival Skill — and built a fire.

  The only other thing I needed to do was set up our tent, which was easy enough. Still, since it was the first time I’d established a camp in the wilderness, I gained two Survival Skill Points for my labors.

  We cooked the rabbits over the fire using a stick to turn the meat. I was far from a backwoodsman in real life, and the sight of the skinned rabbit crackling in the fire was a bit unnerving. High-class girl or not, Leesha didn’t seem bothered. In fact, she was almost excited to be “roughing it,” as she put it.

  Unlike how the result of our campfire barbecue would have been in real life, the food actually wasn’t bad. It tasted like chicken (doesn’t everything weird?) and could have passed for a grocery store rotisserie. I gave yet another silent thanks to the devs for not sticking to ultra-realism when it came to food. It might not have been mandatory to eat, but the fact I didn’t have to taste the actual product of my rabbit on a stick was much appreciated. Our attempt at being Daniel Boone netted me another Survival Skill Point and a plus-five-percent health regen boost for adventuring on a full belly. Not a bad haul.

  At that point, our twenty-one-hour rest period came knocking. It was a bit odd, but the two of us settled into our tent with the sun still high in the autumn sky. Thankfully, all we needed to do was lie down on our bedrolls, snap on rest mode, and call it a day…or a night. Whatever. I just wanted to get to sleep. Luckily, the tent was Urok-made, meaning my big defensive end of an Urok body fit with room to spare for Leesha. We were still cozier than I had expected, and her perfectly designed Sylvad physique made it just a tad bit…distracting.

  “Hey, I need to tell you something important.” I looked at Leesha with my most serious expression.

  “Uh…okay?”

  “So I know this is going to be pretty tempting, but I need you to promise that you’re not going to take advantage of any of this” — I motioned to my avatar’s body — “while I’m in rest mode.”

  Leesha rolled her eyes, but I could see her fighting back a smile. “Oh, don’t worry, I’m not into giant muscleheads with skin the color and texture of old chewing gum.”

  “That’s racist! And our skin is basically the same color.”

  “Dude, your Urok looks like leftover Silly Putty, and I am a beautiful shade of lavender. Plus you’ve got more wrinkles than an elephant.”

  “Leave the elephants out of this! And maybe I’ll find some restorative moisturizer in-game. You don’t know!”

  Leesha snorted. “Whatever you do after I’m in rest mode is your business, as long as you leave my avatar out of it.”

  “Wait! No! That’s not —”

  But she was already asleep.

  The sun was still up when my avatar woke from rest mode. Judging by the real-world clock, Brandon and Unc were fast asleep. Rather than spamming them with messages until someone woke up, I gave Brandon a quick update and took a minute to actually sleep. By the time I woke up, Leesha was already out of the tent, packing things into Beauty’s saddle. I still thought it was a stupid name for a boy horse but wisely avoided the topic. I was beginning to learn some things could instantly ignite a fiery temper with my traveling companion, and teasing her mighty steed was one of them.

  From the foothills, our journey took a literal and figurative uphill turn. The terrain grew more rugged, and when the sun went down only a few hours after we’d broken camp, things got chilly. As easy as it had been to travel at night on the plains, the mountains proved to be far colder and easier to get lost in. Worse than that, I realized that extreme temperature changes were also part of my one-hundred-percent pain threshold experience. Apparently the tech in this game necessitated me freezing my balls off on the side of a mountain.

  “I’m not sure this was a smart idea,” I said, squinting through the cold breeze. Beneath me, Frank let out a plaintive moan. We hadn’t hit snow yet, but he wasn’t enjoying the night’s chill any more than me.

  “I think I might be with you,” Leesha agreed. Even though she would hardly feel the cold at her settings, she still had a hood pulled up over her dark blue hair. If not for her Night Vision, I was sure we would have been hopelessly lost already. Between that skill and raw luck, we’d reached the outer circle of Raza’s waypoint.

  “We’re here,” I said, looking up from my map.

  “Here where?” Leesha motioned to the foreboding pines and broken rock around us.

  “Here, at the edge of the waypoint.”

  “But there’s nothing here.”

  “Raza said he only knew the general area of where it was. I think we’re just within that general area.”

  “So that stoner probably led us on a wild-goose chase,” Leesha muttered.

  I didn’t want to believe the game would be so cruel, but this was certainly disheartening. I hadn’t expected Raza’s directions to be exact, but I thought
we’d at least have some clue where to go once we reached the perimeter of the marked area. A small village, a physical landmark in the distance — anything, really. It looked like I’d have to bust out my Tracking Skill and do things the hard way.

  I pulled up my map and placed a pin at the center of the large yellow circle that made up the rough area Raza had given us. With a waypoint in place, the map gave me a vague path to take to reach the center. Of course, until I explored the area, I had no way of knowing if I’d placed my pin on the top of a cliff or something, but at least it would help us cover some ground.

  +1 Exploring Skill Point

  And so we continued on, slow and steady. I shared Leesha the map to let her guide us with her Night Vision, but as soon as I did, the path my Tracking Skill had created on the map faded away. Luckily, it came back as soon as she turned the map screen back to me, but whenever the game caught her looking at it, the path disappeared again. With Leesha swearing up a storm at arbitrary game rules, I took the lead.

  It didn’t take long to find the snow. I didn’t know why the devs had decided to kick off the game mid-autumn, and in that moment, on top of a freaking mountain, I had a hard time appreciating it. I might have looked like a big Urok warrior, but I was still a softy when it came to the cold weather. Snow. Sucked.

  I alternated between keeping an eye on the map and Frank as he pushed his way through the snow. I had no idea how the realism with a mount worked, but I hoped my cold-blooded ostrasaur didn’t keel over from the cold. I also didn’t want to find out if he’d survive a fall if we walked off a cliff in the dark.

  Hours passed, and as the temperature dropped, things got even slower. None of the party — mounts included, thank the game studio — suffered any cold debuffs, but it still hampered our progress. Then, as if the feet of the stuff wasn’t enough, it started to snow. Big wet flakes fell like someone was shaking powdered sugar on the entire mountain.