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

by Derek Alan Siddoway

  As Dart finished speaking, the fog faded away. The stun debuff lessened just enough for me to turn my head up and find Dart standing over me, his long dagger in hand.

  “You’re the one who took that first token from us!” Leesha snarled from somewhere behind me.

  It all fell into place. The empty chest in the Blue Hand Raiders’ cave. There being only one totem. Dart must have taken the other, knowing it would lead us down a similar path. He’d been leading us along like puppets on a string this whole time. He even admitted that he’d been to that cave. How did I not put two and two together?

  Dart gave a sly grin. “I really thought I was in trouble when the Jotuns caught me sniffing around for a token in this stupid temple. Then I couldn’t convince you to let me out. I guess you could say I was lucky things turned out how they did. All I needed was a little bit of patience.” To add insult to injury, he flipped his — our stolen — newly acquired tournament token in the air.

  I could feel a tingling sensation throughout my body, like I’d slept too long on one of my arms and it was coming back to life. I had to keep Dart gloating, had to keep stalling until Leesha and I could attack.

  “You’ve already got one,” I said. I curled my toes inside my boot and they responded — I was almost free of the stun debuff. “Why do you need another token?”

  Dart laughed and shook his head. “Goodness gracious, I’m not going to redeem this. Do you know how much these things are going for? Why take a chance on some stupid tournament when I can just pawn this off?”

  “But how —”

  “I think I’ve said enough. Now, I think it’s time for me to say goodbye. I don’t advise that you follow.” With a last infuriating wink, Dart jogged out of sight.

  I managed to swing my half-numb body over just in time to see the red-haired cheat passing Leesha. A second later, the tingling faded and I jumped to my feet.

  I hurtled past Leesha, wishing at the moment that I’d dumped all of my points into Speed. It took seconds to realize I would never catch the token thief, but that didn’t stop me from chasing after him.

  “On your left!”

  Leesha flew past me just as Dart entered the ice tunnel on the opposite side of the boss chamber. Whether it was wishful thinking on my part or not, it looked like she was gaining on him. My lungs burned and my legs ached, but I didn’t stop. I knew one wrong step and I’d eat total shit, but I didn’t slow, even on the icy floor. We had to catch Dart. Brandon’s life depended on it.

  A step later, I felt my foot go out from underneath me, and I crashed into the mouth of the tunnel. I looked up as I desperately scrambled to my feet, and saw Leesha standing in place just a few yards ahead of me.

  “What are you doing?” I shouted. “We can’t let him get away!”

  Leesha didn’t answer. Didn’t even turn around to look at me. Instead, Dart’s voice carried down the tunnel from somewhere uphill just out of sight in the dim light.

  “She stopped because she’s smart,” the thief said. “I threw a trap over my shoulder, but Leesha here was bright enough to spot it. If she steps past it, she’ll blow both of you right off the edge of the path down to who knows where.”

  A sickening feeling gripped my gut as I surveyed our surroundings. Both sides of the section of the path dropped off into sheer nothingness. I squinted my eyes and thought I could make out a dark spiderweb shape on the ground just in front of Leesha. She’d been one step away from setting it off.

  “What would you say if I could offer you a third option?” Dart said. He was now seated on the other side of the tunnel.

  “Any reason why you’d be so generous?” Leesha said through gritted teeth.

  “Obviously, now that you know my identity, I can’t have you following me all over Tournia. It’s bad for business. So I’m going to make you a deal.” Dart paused, though I couldn’t tell if it was for dramatic effect or to think. “If you agree to let bygones be bygones, I’ll give the two of you twenty percent of whatever I sell this token for. That’s ten percent each, to be clear. At the current RuneCoin exchange rate, we could be looking at a cool five thousand dollars. And if I hold on to it until the tournament gets closer, who knows how much this little beauty will be worth.”

  I briefly entertained the offer, but it didn’t take long to realize that even if Dart kept his word, my ten percent would be nowhere near enough for Brandon’s procedure.

  “Please, Dart.” I hated begging. The words felt like salt in my mouth. “We need that token. This isn’t just about a game.”

  Dart chuckled, and I knew we were screwed. “That’s what everyone says, but I promise in a couple of real-world days when this is all over, you’ll still be fine. I take it no is your answer? If so, I really hope Leesha’s good enough to disarm that bomb. Something tells me you’ll have a hard time respawning if everything goes kaboom.”

  Another punch in the gut. Did he know? Had he somehow figured out I was cheating? The guy was smart enough I wouldn’t have put anything past him. And then it hit me.

  “Leesha, it’s not a trap, it’s an illusion — kill him!”

  Leesha didn’t move. Dart laughed. I was really starting to hate that sound. I wanted to punch his face into mashed ginger.

  “That’s quite the hypothesis. Doesn’t seem like she believes you, though. I’m going to say goodbye now and let the two of you work this little puzzle out in private.”

  “No!”

  I blundered forward, falling, slipping and crawling. I couldn’t let Dart get away. “Move!” I snarled as I drew closer to Leesha. She stepped aside, but just as I reached the spiderweb markings on the floor, I felt her grab my arm and yank me back. We crashed to the ground, and before I could right myself, Leesha was on top of me, fighting to hold me back.

  “Z, it’s not an illusion —”

  “Let me go!” I screamed. I threw an elbow and felt it connect with something — probably Leesha’s face.

  “Z, stop!”

  “He’s getting away!” I roared. With one last shove and kick, I pushed away from Leesha and clawed my way across the spiderweb markings in the path. Nothing happened. Leesha had been wrong.

  “I told you — come on!”

  “Z, look out!”

  I looked up just in time to see one of Dart’s bombs hit the ice right in front of me. I had a split second to register the fuse wink out as it reached the charge.

  And then I was blown to hell.

  42

  Bitter Symphony

  For once, I didn’t feel the pain of a near-death experience. I awoke, disoriented, with no idea where I’d ended up or how long I’d been out. Wincing, I sat up, but everything felt okay. I was all in one piece, all my limbs working. How was that possible? Maybe my brain had just completely shut off to protect itself.

  I looked around, trying to make out what I could in the faint, cold glow of the ice. At first glance, I didn’t see any possible way to escape my frozen prison. Cliffs of ice surrounded me on all sides.

  Checking the time, I saw two in-game hours had passed. Slowly, my brain started piecing everything back together. The explosion had knocked me from the path into the abyss. I looked up, but there wasn’t enough light to see the top of the cliff. That, or I’d really fallen that far. I had serious doubts that I’d be able to get out on my own either way. Opening my Party Menu, I was relieved to find Leesha still in my group. But her name was grayed out, meaning we couldn’t chat with one another.

  That meant one of two things: Either we couldn’t chat simply because we were both still in the dungeon, or — and I really hoped this wasn’t the case — Leesha was dead. I didn’t know how PvP deaths worked in MythRune when you were partied up. Could Leesha respawn without me? I really hoped the non-PvP death rules didn’t apply.

  Regardless, the least I could do was look for a way out. That or give up and log out. I could switch off God Mode, but if I did that, there would be no guarantee I would be able to switch it back on, and if I kil
led myself, I’d end up back near the Horuk village where I spawned, and would have to spend days trekking back to the Frostfang clan just to turn in the quest. And I wasn’t going to let Dart beat me again, even if he would never know how thoroughly he’d defeated me.

  I walked about a quarter of a mile down the narrow, icy gorge. Although I wasn’t looking forward to a fight, the lack of enemies wasn’t a good sign. It meant that this area was likely one the devs never intended players to traverse. Technically, someone could have used a rope to rappel down to where I was, but what would have been the point?

  After wandering for about an hour, I returned to the spot where I’d landed, frustration growing inside me. I briefly contemplated using my axe as an ice pick, but with only one, I wouldn’t get very far off the ground. I dug through my inventory even though I knew the answer — I didn’t have so much as a butter knife in the bag. The battle axe was my sole weapon.

  I looked back at Leesha’s grayed-out name on my menu. If there was a time for her to betray me, this would be it, and I couldn’t even blame her. What would be the point to remain partied up with someone she couldn’t even find or speak to?

  As much as I wanted to be found, I couldn’t just sit at the bottom of this gorge and expect to get rescued. It was possible at some point there would be a place for me to climb out. So I set off in the opposite direction I’d taken earlier, in hopes of finding something other than sheer walls of ice.

  There was nothing.

  Panic gripped my chest. I made my way back to where I’d fallen, hoping I’d somehow missed something. Anything. I screamed in frustration, then drew my battle axe and hacked away at the ice walls until my hands went numb and the weapon fell out of my grasp. A sob escaped me as I slid to the floor.

  We’d had the token. I had literally held the chest in my hands. Now, it seemed more and more that my only option was to log out, log back in, and find a way to kill myself so I could respawn.

  It took everything I had to open the opaque menu screen. But just as I raised my Urok hand to throw in the towel, something flickered in the corner of my vision through the menu.

  Heart racing, I closed the menu and turned around. A rope was dangling right in front of me.

  “Why the hell do you have to weigh so much?” Leesha groaned. “Do you know how freakin’ hard that was? Why —”

  Leesha’s words were lost in my bear hug. Still squeezing her, I threw back my head and laughed. I probably sounded like a lunatic, but I didn’t care. Leesha tensed, then patted my back, being purposefully awkward.

  “You all right, there, you big softy?” she said. “Didn’t hit your head too hard, I hope?”

  I held her at arm’s length, still grinning my big toothy Urok grin. “You’re the softy! How come you didn’t just ditch me? How’d you even know where to find me?”

  “Ditch you? I have a three-million-dollar check to collect on from you.” Leesha winked. “And it was like fishing — I just threw out a line and figured you would run into it eventually.”

  Fortunately for both of us, the blast had knocked Leesha backwards down the tunnel instead of off the side, like me. When she’d come to, she’d yelled for me for almost an hour before returning to the Frostfang clan to get a rope. Dart, of course, was long gone. In the moment, I didn’t care. I was free, and that was all that mattered. We still had a shot…even if it felt like the longest one in gaming history.

  My cheeks were starting to hurt, I was smiling so much. “Thanks for coming back for me.”

  Something changed in Leesha’s enchanting Sylvad eyes and she glanced away. “I told you, we had a deal.” Somehow, the words didn’t come out all business like I suspected she’d wanted them to. “Besides, there’s a whole lotta loot we need to split.”

  “What loot?” I asked, confused. “There was only the chest, and I’m sure Dart cleaned it out when he grabbed the token.”

  Leesha winked again and motioned for me to follow her. At the back of the yeti’s chamber, part of the frozen wall had broken and slid away to reveal an alcove filled with several unopened chests.

  “Dart shouldn’t have been in such a hurry to hose us,” Leesha said.

  My momentary elation at escaping the ice gorge evaporated quickly at the mention of Dart’s betrayal. “Yeah, but he got the token…how did he take the token?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The token was a part of our loot. Shouldn’t he have had to check in with us before—”

  “You really think the token is being treated the same way as a standard piece of loot?” Leesha said.

  I nodded. She was right. But then my stomach sank. “You know that token’s worth more than all of this crap combined.”

  “Look,” Leesha said. “I know you won’t believe it from the rich girl…but it’s just money. And at the rate we’re going, we’ll have a solid stash of RuneCoins even if we don’t get into the tournament.”

  I took a deep shuddering breath. At that point, I didn’t feel like I had anything left to lose — not long ago, I’d been trying to figure out how to cut my own head off with a battle axe, after all.

  “It’s not just money.” I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling more like a scared kid than a towering mass of muscle. “It’s…”

  I told Leesha everything. About Brandon, his sickness, and the real purpose of the money.

  When I finished talking, she stood there, stunned. “I don’t know what to say,” she said. “And you somehow didn’t kill me when I kept goofing off?”

  “Oh, trust me,” I said. “That was the hardest part. But now that Dart’s taken the token…I think it might be time —”

  “Wrong!” Leesha said, holding up a finger at me. “You’re dead wrong, Z. Think about it. Over the course of our quests so far — which has taken up only around half of our allotted time before the tournament — we’ve been on course for two tokens. If that dumbass Dart hadn’t taken them, they’d be ours. Now that he’s off our trail, we can finally get our own. And let’s not forget the quest with the Frostfangs. We initiated it. We cleaned out the temple. We killed the yeti.”

  “Well, technically he did help with that last one,” I added.

  “Okay, Mr. Smartypants. But it doesn’t matter, because they don’t like him and won’t give him anything. We have all this loot and more coming our way when we’re done with this quest. We’re good, Z! We have time. We have skill. We have a way.”

  “A way?”

  “Let’s take a page out of Dart’s book. We know we can steal from other players. We have a list of them, don’t we? As we get closer to the tournament, we’re sure to come across them. Why don’t we just steal one?”

  “I don’t know…” I said, my stomach twisting in knots.

  Leesha’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how much you liked dead brothers.”

  “What the hell, Leesha?”

  “Too far? Okay, you know what I mean. This is a serious deal here, dude. If we want to save him, we may have to do some things we don’t like.”

  “All right,” I said. “But how? We only have a list of the players who had them when they were first announced. We don’t know if it updates when tokens change hands, and if it doesn’t, we could have spent the entire time searching for someone — which may I remind you, is like finding a needle in a haystack — for no reason.”

  I could tell Leesha was growing exhausted feigning enthusiasm. “Okay, then, big guy. Let’s just grab our haul and head back. We can sort through it later and worry about allocating everything when we’re at the village.”

  We spent the next few minutes opening chests, claiming all, and stashing items away. There seemed to be a lot of good that had come with beating the yeti, but we didn’t stop to take any of it in. We had plans to concoct.

  After finishing up with the final chest, I looked down at the chest that once held the token Dart claimed. A pang of bitter envy filled me, and I opened it once more, on the off chance it had someho
w been left behind. I was greeted with the familiar prompt:

  This tournament token has already been claimed! Lord MythRune wishes you the best of luck in your continued search for greatness, intrepid adventurer.

  43

  Sweet Symphony

  By the time we made it back to the Frostfang clan, we’d been hit by multiple sleep debuffs to the point we were on the brink of the dreaded twenty-four-hour Exhausted status. I felt tired down to my bones, but I wasn’t about to rest until I had something positive to report to Brandon. So, like a good former athlete, I sucked it up and trudged right to the doors of the longhouse. The clock read four in the morning, but that didn’t stop me from pounding on the heavy wooden doors. Tauren pushed his way past scowling guards, looking none too pleased himself.

  “So you are back,” the shaman said. “What kept you? Your companion returned hours ago and gathered his share of the reward.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Not only did Dart screw us and steal the token, but he’d also had the nerve to collect the reward for the quest chain we’d done almost all of the work for.

  “That son of a bitch,” Leesha hissed.

  “I suspected he had played you falsely,” Tauren said. “But sometimes fire teaches best about the burn. Even so, my people owe you a great debt. You have done us a great deed in restoring our temple, and the Frostfangs do not forget. You will be honored among our people, and should your Chief Ugola ever need our aid, know that we will be the first to answer his call.”

  Quest Complete: Yeti-gain

  Chill out! You put the poor Temple Protector on ice and finally made the Temple of Hoarfrost safe for the Jotuns to worship in once more.

  Rewards:

  - +50 Esteem with the Frostfang Clan

  - (2) Unassigned Attribute Orbs