Aether Knight: Desolation: A LitRPG Light Novel

by Tracy Gregory

  Aether Knight: Desolation

  A LitRPG Light Novel

  Tracy Gregroy

  P.W Hillard Fiction

  Copyright © 2021 P.W Hillard Fiction

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter One

  The Eyes have It

  Alex felt the crunch of burnt leaves underfoot, the remnants of this section of forest just blackened ash. It had been months since wildfires had swept through this area, destroying vital resources and displacing machina. It had been a blessing as much as a curse, the fires forcing an army of religious zealots to travel through the narrow mountain pass, a choice that would ultimately mean their doom as the guild's airship fleet blasted them from the air. Alex still dreamt of that day, of death and destruction. Of cannon fire blasting away sections of mountain as flying machina tore airships from the sky.

  Another crunch snapped him back to his senses. He was walking forward slowly, trying to be as quiet as possible as he approached the machina laying on the ground before him. The crackling noise from every footstep wasn’t helping his attempts to be stealthy.

  Nearby, the rest of his party was trying to do the same. Cassius with his enormous cannon, Erwin with his scythe that could transform into an energy blast firing staff, and finally Casey and her katana. Cassius was a local, born and raised in the aether lands like the majority of the knights, hunters who protected their home form the massive living machines known as machina. The rest of the group was like Alex, visitors from Earth transported across dimensions against their will.

  It had been pitched to Alex as a game, a fully immersive virtual reality experience. That was a lie, the pod he had climbed into during a glitzy launch event was, in reality, a dimensional teleporter, one that altered the fibre of his being during the trip to maintain the video game illusion. It made him stronger and tougher than a normal human, as well as bestowing him with the ability to understand the innate properties of objects and giving him a pocket dimension he could store items within. These abilities, powered by the strange phenomena called aether, had been presented as statistics and an inventory respectively. It was surprising how much of an advantage operating under video game logic was when everyone else was bound by the real world.

  The machina shifted, adjusting its position on the bed of burnt lumber that it was resting on. Alex had never seen this species before, though that was to be expected. The fires had swept through the prairie and most of the forest, chasing away the machina that lived there which in turn displaced machina from other regions. The ecosystems populated by the machine creatures had been thrown dangerously off balance.

  The creature before him had an almost canine shaped to its body, a massive wolf forged of synthetic parts. Its muscles and flesh were made of tightly bound cables, brilliant white armour plates covering its vital parts like oversized scales. The thing’s head was like a wolf's skull cast in the same white metal as the armour plates, though it lacked any eye sockets. It lacked any eyes at all as far as Alex could see, though that wasn't unusual for machina. Before the fire, the eyeless walking piles of gnashing gears known as muckgrinders, and the much larger muckmother, had been common in the forest. From the back of the beast several thick cable-like tails rested on the ground, Alex could count six in total from where he was.

  Sickening crunching noises filled the air as the machina took a chomp from the corpse before it. The beast was taking bites from a smaller machina it had killed, lurid neon liquid covering its snout. Alex knew machina preyed on each other, but he had no idea why. It was still something of a mystery to the people of the Towers, the settlement that had taken him in. Nobody knew if they needed to do it to survive, or if it was some mockery of flesh and blood beings built into their design.

  Alex lifted his clenched fist, signalling for the party to stop. He had seen the motion in a movie once and had adopted its usage, something that had elicited an eye roll from Casey when he had first used it. The others came to a halt and Alex tried to mime firing a cannon, something that just drew confused looks.

  “Shoot the thing,” Alex said in a whisper, swinging his arms as he tried to replicate the recoil of the gun.

  “Ah, right,” Cassius replied, adopting the same low tone. He hoisted his cannon, the weapon held at his waist by a long strap. He pointed it towards the feasting machina, gripping the cannon by the two handles mounted to the top. “Ok, three, two-”

  The creature’s tails stood up pointing towards the approaching knights. At the end of each tail was a baleful glowing eye.

  “Of course,” Alex said, not bothering to keep a whisper.

  Light pulsed out from the eyes, beams of aether slicing across the scorched ground, clouds of ash following in their wake. Each was a different colour; some seared the ground whilst others left a trail of ice. One beam crackled with furious lightning, bolts arcing off into the ground as it moved.

  The knights scattered, fleeing in different directions as they tried to confuse the eyes. They circled the machina, a standard tactic that had developed during their battles. There were four of them and only one monster. Turning its attention towards one of the knights meant exposing itself to the three others. Or at least, that was normally the case. This creature was having no problems firing its beams at all of its adversaries at the same time.

  “Any ideas?” Alex shouted, waving at Cassius.

  “Not a clue, never fought one of these myself.” Cassius jumped backwards as a beam swept the ground before him. “Can’t say I like it.” He squeezed the trigger attached to the cannon’s rear handle. Within the weapon was a cartridge, one made of several chambers brimming with aetheric energy. On pressing the trigger, a mechanism within the cannon removed the seal from one of these chambers, the aether escaping from its confinement with explosive force.

  The glowing bolt screamed through the air and crashed into the side of the creature, exploding with fury and light. It staggered to the side, the impact landing in the gap between armour plating. It howled, the noise a curious mix of agony and static. The beams emanating from its eyes winked out, the pain distracting the beast.

  It found its footing, crouching down low to the ground. The cables that formed its body began to slide apart, glowing eyes appearing across its body, hundreds of tiny lights staring outwards.

  “God damn-” Alex didn’t get to finish his sentence. The eyes across the body of the creature flashed in unison and a wave of aether pulsed out from the beast, forming an aura that washed outwards from it in a perfect circle. It hit Alex in the chest, lifting him from his feet and pushing him backwards.

  He hit the ground, the health bar in the top left of his vision reducing. A tenth of it had gone completely, whilst around a third of the remaining bar was red. It was a big hit, but Alex could afford to take another. He knew that wouldn’t be true of Casey an
d Erwin, they favoured lighter armour. It meant they could move easier but didn’t have the same inherent resistance to damage that Alex did. Each knight was protected by an aetheric shield known as a ward, their armour providing both physical protection and focusing that shield with its inherent properties.

  Alex scrambled to his feet, pulling his sword free from its scabbard. Runes glowed along the blade, generating a field of aether around the sword that allowed it to cut into the thick armour of most machina. He held his shield close to his body, ready for the monster to attack again. The beast wasn’t moving simply remaining in its crouched position, the eyes now dim. A thick slimy liquid, vivid green in colour, slopped from its jaws.

  “Go! Go!” Alex shouted. It was clear to him that the monster had spent a huge amount of its energy on its attack. This was an opening, a window to land as much damage as they could before it recovered.

  Alex charged, his blade held high, a battle cry on his lips. He rushed forward, swiping his sword across one of the beasts back legs. It was a tried and true tactic. Slow the movement of the machina and you made it easier to deal with. His comrades had the same idea, the energy blasts from Erwin’s staff and Cassius’s cannon shaking the creature as they struck its front legs.

  Casey did something different. She swung her blade rapidly, making cut after cut, a charge building as she did. With enough energy built up, she changed her target, swinging the now glowing blade at one of the monster’s tails. The katana cut through, severing the limb. It hit the ground and twitched, the last remnants of life escaping from it.

  It was enough to wake the creature from its stupor. It lurched forward, limping as it tried to escape from the knights still striking blow after blow upon it. The eyes across its hide began to glow again, but the light was weaker this time, flickering in some places. Hunting a machina was often a battle of stamina, chipping away at the beast until it finally fell. The creature’s desperate attack had given the knights an unusually large window to cut away at it. The machina knew it was losing and was attempting to flee so it could lick its wounds.

  “It’s trying to get away,” Casey said. She knew she was stating the obvious but couldn’t help herself.

  “I've got it.” Alex slid his sword back into his scabbard. He placed his hand in the bottom right of his vision, hovering it over an omnipresent bag icon. It was strange how quickly he had gotten used to having an overlay constantly in his eye-line. The bag opened into a row of squares, each with a different item resting within them. He grabbed a silver sphere, the object popping into existence as Alex pulled it from his pocket dimension.

  The device was a personal favourite of his. Some activated by pressing a rune atop it, and some needed to be twisted, it depended on who exactly had crafted it. This one had the rune, so Alex placed his thumb to the symbol, blue light pulsing across the orb. He threw it, the silver ball hitting the machina’s side.

  Lightning arced across the beast’s hide, blue bolts coursing across it. The stun bomb had delivered a paralysing blow, enough for the knights to fall on the beast a second time. They didn’t aim for the legs, not this time. They knew the creature was close to death, they sensed it, so each knight went for the killing blow. Ranged strikes crashed into its head whilst Alex slashed at the beast’s stomach. Only Casey carried on with the same tactic as before, severing another of the monster’s tails.

  The beast let out a final pained roar, the shrieking sound agony to the ears. It slumped forward, crashing onto the charcoal and ash, the eyes on its body winking out.

  “That wasn’t too bad,” Alex said, stepping towards the machina’s body. “We’ve dealt with worse.”

  “Not so bad for you maybe. I’m at less than half my health bar!” Erwin was leaning on his scythe, using it as a crutch. He had broken his leg not long after meeting Alex and whilst it had long since healed using his weapon to prop himself up had stuck as a habit.

  “You know, sometimes I wish I had all your powers. Knowing exactly how close your ward is to failing seems incredibly useful,” Cassius said. He slumped to the ground, shifting to a seated position. “Well, that and not being instantly tired from a fight.”

  “Trust me, even with improved stamina, this is tiring. This is what, the sixth hunt we've done this week? It's only Tuesday!” Alex reached into his quick item bar a second time and removed another ball, this one much larger than the first. He threw it towards the body of the machina and the crab that lived within the ball unfurled. The small machina scuttled onto the head of the larger one and began drilling into its skull with the bit attached to one of its limbs. The small creatures had a symbiotic relationship with the knights. They fed on whatever it was they were drilling for, and as a side effect, the corpse would detach several of its components.

  “Can't say I'm surprised. We lost a couple dozen knights in that battle and we were hardly the most numerous to begin with.” Cassius placed his hands against the ground and leant backwards. He quickly regretted it, lifting his hands off the ash, the palms of his gauntlets stained black. “Plus, most of what's left is following that Deus as it waddles out to the west.”

  Alex shrugged. Cassius wasn't wrong. During his time in the aether lands, the bulk of the guild's knights had been deployed trying to deal with a Deus, a more powerful and dangerous kind of machine creature. That lumbering mountain-sized beast had ignored them as it had plodded onwards, its course bringing it directly towards the Towers. The airship cannons blasting the mountain pass during the battle had awoken another of its species sleeping beneath the stone.

  No-one knew exactly what the two behemoths relationship was. Mates, family, it was a mystery. It had come as a shock to Alex that machina were capable of breeding, though Casey had seen it once, a Muckmother spitting out its offspring as it died. The thought reminded Alex of a movie he had seen once, where tiny alien robots built offspring from used soda cans.

  An expedition had been sent to follow the newly emerged Deus, though this time they were tasked with observing, rather than attempting to stop it. The hope was once the two met they would head off away from the Towers. The presence of the creature had already proven beneficial, the ice aspected aether that sopped from it serving to put out the raging wildfires.

  “I wonder what will happen with that?” Erwin said.

  “Hopefully they fall in love and choose to live somewhere very, very far away,” Casey said. She was stuffing one of the severed tails into her backpack, the limb vanishing into the impossible void within it.

  “Yeah, we’ve got enough problems as is.” Alex bent down, picking up the sections of machina that had dropped from the corpse.

  Occuhound cable. Common crafting material.

  Occuhound eye. Uncommon crafting material.

  Occuhound plate. Uncommon crafting material.

  There were four cables, two eyes and three plates total. The name of the creature seemed familiar, likely from one of the patterns in the big catalogue the blacksmith Granald had given to Alex. It had been a while since Alex had been able to consider making an upgrade. His party had been mostly dealing with confused muckmothers and triolisks for the past few months.

  It suddenly dawned on Alex he had been in the aether lands just over six months now. The guild master, Horton, was a fellow traveller from Earth and the inventor of the transport system. He had told Alex a long time ago now that time worked on a one to one basis. Six months here was six months on Earth. Alex wondered if anyone was looking for him. He had lived alone for the past few years and had always preferred his own company, but it would be nice to know if he was missed.

  “Occuhound stuff, apparently,” Alex said.

  “Occuhound!” Cassius slapped his leg. “That’s what it’s called. That was bugging me.”

  “Occuhound? What does that even mean?” A look of confusion had settled onto Erwin’s face. “The names here are so, so stupid.”

  “Didn’t you have a pet crocodile monster called Rory?” Casey said, pushing the last of t
he second tail into her bag.

  “He was hardly my pet.”

  “Occu, like ocular, as in eyeballs?” Alex said, tapping at the visor of his helmet. “And hound as in a dog.”

  “How does anyone here know what a dog looks like?”

  “The uh…huh.” Alex hated to admit it, but Erwin had a point. “No clue. Cassius, do you know what a hound is?”

  “Not a clue. I’m guessing something that looks like that.” Cassius gestured towards the corpse. “There is a couple of different machina with hound in the name. Maybe whoever named the first one, a long time ago, knew what a living one looked like, and all the others are named after that first species?”

  “Are we just going to sit around discussing names all day?” Casey said. She had removed a stick wrapped in red paper from her bag. “Or are we going to go home?”

  “You’re assuming they don’t have another expedition waiting for us when we get back up to that airship?”

  Above them, floating in the sky, was the Wayward Moon. The airship was massive compared to the ones Alex and his friends were used to, the smaller faster variant more common for transporting knights. The enormous ship had taken significant damage during what people were calling “the battle of the pass”. It was still airworthy, though too damaged to join the bulk of the fleet as they followed the Deus west. Horton had commandeered it to act a mobile guildhall whilst the knights worked to get the areas nearest the Tower under control. That had been months ago, and they were still struggling to get a handle on things.

  “God, I hope not,” Alex said. He hoped desperately that Cassius was wrong. He needed a hot meal and a warm bed.

  “Well,” Casey said, cracking open the flare, red smoke billowing out from it, “only one way to find out.”

  Chapter Two

  Home