Protector

by Sam Ryder

  PROTECTOR: Monster Slayer

  Book Two of the Monsterworld Saga

  Sam Ryder

  Copyright 2018 David Estes

  Kindle Edition, License Notes

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  A sneak peek at The Fatemarked Epic, available NOW!

  A sneak peek at SEEKER, the third book in the Monsterworld Saga, available SOON!

  My name is Sam Ryder. I was abducted from Earth and brought to a planet called Tor, a world of dying goddesses and deadly monsters. I was Leveled up—twice now—transforming me from a slightly overweight gamer with no real career prospects into a man-beast capable of slinging a massive hammer around like it’s made of feathers and cotton.

  At this point I’ve already faced one of the massive demon overlords known as the Morgoss—those who are responsible for the overthrow of the Three goddesses and the predicament we find ourselves in. But I survived, along with several of my allies.

  This is the continuation of my story.

  ONE

  PROTECTOR

  “Protector, huh?” Beat said. “You look like a mafia leg-breaker working for someone named Uncle Guido.”

  I couldn’t argue. After receiving my…reward…for Leveling up from the Three goddesses, I had the opportunity to take a long look at myself in the clear pool down in the gully while Persepheus, Minertha and Airiel slept.

  I was a behemoth. Before, when I’d Leveled up to Warrior, I’d thought I was Hulk-huge. If so, now I was Hulk-on-steroids huge. Wearing only a comedically inadequate loincloth, my legs were like marble columns, my arms like cannon shafts, my fists like Christmas honey-baked hams. My chest was a cast-iron pot, except without the tinny echo when you tapped it. And my skin…

  Hard. Like stone. It was partly because of the layers of corded muscle beneath, but also because of the effects of the primordial ooze as I marinated within a cocoon for the second time. Previously, I’d been informed by our Finder, Eve, that the ooze was goddess spittle, which should have been disgusting. It wasn’t. Nothing about the three beautiful, dying goddesses was disgusting. I’d learned that firsthand.

  “Did Leveling up make you deaf and mute, too?” Beat asked.

  I hadn’t answered her initial question, my mind on one of those carnival rides that spins around and around until you want to puke up all the hot dogs and cotton candy you ate just before you got on. “You’re not that lucky,” I said, plastering a smirk across my broad face.

  I realized other eyes were on me too. Millania, the tall, lanky sea-dweller from a planet appropriately called Oceania. She was the quiet type, but a formidable Warrior in her own right. Though she was out of water, the gills on the sides of her green neck flared from time to time. Her gaze was curious, her head cocked to the side slightly. She nodded and I nodded back, and then she turned away. It was the only gesture necessary to confirm she was with me one-hundred percent.

  Lace, on the other hand, stared daggers at me. The sexy cat-woman’s lips were parted just enough to make out each of her fangs. Her lithe body was as taut as a bowstring, her retractable claws shimmering in the bronze light. The first of the two suns hovered high in the sky, which meant we still had hours until the next night, or the Black as it was known on the planet of Tor.

  Lace, unlike Millania, did not turn away. She stalked right up to me.

  “Uh oh,” Beat said, which wasn’t particularly helpful.

  I said nothing, allowing Lace the opportunity to get whatever she needed to off her chest. She stopped a few feet away, her eyes roaming from my feet to my head and back down again, as if sizing me up. As usual, she wore her small bikini-like coverings that had been the only clothes afforded to her when she was brought here. We’d had a fling once, which had been way better than her eating me, so I knew her skin was covered in a thin layer of fur you couldn’t see with the naked eye. Her hourglass curves weren’t quite to the perfection of the Three, but not far off either. Had we been back on Earth, she would’ve been the most beautiful woman I’d ever laid eyes on. Her tail switched from side to side, reminding me this was no human, even if she had many of the same parts.

  “You?” she said, her lips curling in disgust.

  “Lace, I’m sorry.” It was all I could think of to say. I knew she’d wanted—expected—to be named the next Protector.

  “Sorry? You and…” She redirected her dagger-filled glare at Beat. “…her, take off in the middle of the Black, leaving the rest of us to face the monsters on our own, and they make you Protector?”

  I didn’t think correcting her would help, but technically we hadn’t left during the Black, though two Blacks had passed while we faced the horrors of the demon stronghold known as Annakor, which translated loosely to: the death of sky, earth and sea. In other words, the end of the Three goddesses’ reign.

  “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Beat said, but I raised a hand to stop her. Though I appreciated the way she always tried to defend me—a true friend—nothing she said would help calm Lace right now. She was pissed off and needed an outlet. As the new leader of the Warriors, I was willing to take everything she had to give and more. Eventually, I would need her to fight.

  “No?” Lace said. “Explain it to me. Explain what could possibly be more important than defending the ward shields? In case you didn’t notice, they were breached while you were gone. The first time in over a century. Millania and I…” She shook her head, and I could see the pain of the memory reflected in her eyes. “We should be dead.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  Her lips pursed together. Because leveling up hadn’t removed my man-brain and replaced it with something more useful, I couldn’t help but remember how good she’d tasted. I felt movement beneath my loincloth. Though I’d been with the Three only a few hours before, it seemed Leveling up had also increased my libido. A lot.

  Any thoughts of sex, however, were banished when she said, “There were six types of monsters.”

  Oh man. I immediately understood the ramifications. This monster-filled planet was a dangerous place, but what had always given it balance were the rules, which had been stable for many long years before I arrived. For example, the monsters generally attacked in packs formed by type. The demon horde, the Maluk’ori, always fought together, while hellhounds, winged gargats and the other types of monsters stayed together and out of each other’s ways. Trolls were loners, partly because there were fewer of them, and partly because they didn’t play well with the other monsters—like babies that grabbed a toy and said, “Mine! Mine! Mine!” unwilling to share with the other babies.

  However, since my arrival the rules had started changing, and not for the better. Once I’d been involved in a skirmish just outside the ward wall where demons fought alongside hellhounds. There’d even been a troll. None of them attacked each other. Battling three different types of monsters at once had been scary enough—s
ix would’ve been hell.

  “We were nearly overrun,” Lace continued when I didn’t respond. “Eve showed up with Souza just before Millania and I would’ve been killed. The panther’s presence changed everything and the monsters started fighting each other again. Too bad the damage was already done.”

  I understood how Eve’s massive panther could’ve freaked out the monsters and made them revert to their old ways. She was a formidable steed.

  Still, we’d been lucky. If Eve hadn’t arrived when she did, Beat and I might’ve returned to camp to find everyone dead and the goddesses held hostage or worse.

  “And yet they made you Protector,” Lace pointed out again. “Why might that be, considering I’ve been here ten times as many Blacks as you? Might it have something to do with the giant penis you’re hiding under that cloth?”

  Beat snorted. “I don’t know about giant…it’s all relative…”

  “Lace, I know you’re angry,” I said. “I get it. I don’t know exactly why they made me Protector either. Even Eve admitted you’re the best Warrior we’ve got. But it’s what the Three decided and we all have to live with it. All I can say is that I’ll do my best.”

  Her eyes narrowed, her body tensing even more. For a second I thought she might attack me. But then the fight left her. She spun on her heel and walked away, her tail snapping once across my face, stinging my nose.

  “Nice talk!” Beat called after her.

  I watched her go, hoping I hadn’t just ruined things with someone I very much needed on my side. When a general only had three soldiers, losing one would be disastrous, especially one as capable as Lace. Then again, I was hoping to get more soldiers as soon as possible. Eve was out on a Finding mission, but probably wouldn’t return with a new lot of Level 1 Outcasts for at least a Black or two. Which meant I needed to rally the troops, so to speak. We needed to survive until reinforcements arrived, and we needed to do so with a badly damaged ward shield that now had a big-ass hole in it, as if we were inviting every monster on Tor to come on in. I was tempted to place a Welcome Monsters doormat just outside the breach.

  “Want me to go talk to her?” Beat asked.

  “No,” I said, much too quickly. The thought of Beat trying to talk Lace off a cliff made me want to skin myself alive. I could see it ending in the brawl to end all brawls. Both women would need to soak in an ooze bath for a week afterward to heal their injuries. Assuming either of them were still alive.

  “Joking,” Beat said, smirking. “Give her space. She’ll come around.”

  I hoped she was right. “What now?”

  The question was meant more for myself but Beat answered anyway. “You tell me, fearless leader.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “What do we do about Vrill? Should we go after her?”

  I cringed. The stark reminder that we’d abandoned the first friend I’d made on this world, the very woman who’d saved me that first day in the Circle, sent a pang through my chest. I remembered the lost look on her face when her evil doppelgänger had dragged her through the magical mirror and locked her inside.

  Vrill, are you still alive? I wondered. More than anything, I wanted to run all the way back to the shadowy mountains and search for her. But I knew it wasn’t what she would want me to do. She’d given her life to helping the new Warriors survive the Circle, and now that I’d managed to get the cruel practice abolished, I needed to be here to help them survive the Black. Vrill would want me to do just that. But I also knew I would go after her eventually, once things had calmed down a little. Rescuing her felt like the most important thing in the world.

  “No,” I said, the single word seeming to tear pieces of me off as it emerged from my throat. “We can’t go.”

  “Then what’s the plan? We can’t just leave her there.”

  “I…” I honestly didn’t have a clue. I should’ve been tired, but I wasn’t. Possibly another effect of the cocoon ooze bath that lifted me from Level 2 to 3. Before Protector Kloop died, my only responsibility was to fight, eat and sleep. Rinse and repeat, Black after Black. When he died, everything happened so fast. I wasn’t trying to be a leader—it just sort of happened. I did what I thought I had to do to protect the other Warriors.

  Which led me to what I knew I had to do now.

  Which made me groan.

  “What?” Beat said.

  “First, I’ve got to talk to Lace.”

  Beat’s eyebrows rose to her scalp. She was still mostly bald—the result of the ooze bath that initially leveled her up to Warrior—but a thin cap of hair had begun to sprout. It was odd how the ooze bath affected different people differently. That fact was on a long list of Shit I Wanted to Understand. “You’re a glutton for punishment, you know that?”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “Wait,” Beat said, stopping me with a hand on my shoulder when I started to walk toward the hut Lace had disappeared into. I turned toward her, frowning, waiting for her to impart some wisdom or advice. Instead, she grinned and said, “Want me to smother you in teriyaki sauce before Lace eats you?”

  Hah-larious. “Yes, please,” I said. And then I headed for a dinner where I would be the main course. Just another day in the office on Tor, I thought.

  ~~~

  “Get. Out,” Lace said when I entered the hut. Her cat-like ears were tilted in my direction, though her eyes remained closed. She was sprawled out on one of the thin pads we slept on, her tail curled around her lithe form.

  I was off to a good start.

  “Hate me if you want,” I said, “but I didn’t abandon you and Millania.”

  Her yellow eyes flashed open and I barely managed not to flinch. The size of her pupils fluctuated from wide to narrow and back again. Like a scope trying to lock in on a target. They stopped. Target acquired. “Explain,” she said, her voice a low growl. I had a feeling the quality of my answer would determine my fate.

  All I had was honesty. “I trusted you. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t—couldn’t—have left. I trusted you, Beat and Millania to handle whatever was coming. I didn’t expect Beat to come with me, but I couldn’t deny her. Plus, I needed her help. I wouldn’t have been successful without her. And we were successful. We destroyed the pit of dark magic. The Blacks won’t get any longer.” I swallowed as I remembered how we’d lost one of our own—Vrill—when she’d been dragged into that magical mirror by a darker, evil version of herself. I locked away the thought for now. “But I knew you would survive. I knew you would protect the Three, on your own if you needed to. You think Eve and Souza saved you?” I shook my head. “I reject that. Even if they hadn’t shown up, even if Millania hadn’t been around, you would’ve survived. You would’ve won.”

  When my speech was finished, Lace’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t realize Leveling up would give you a silver tongue, Protector. But I’m not some naïve fool. Without Millania, Eve and Souza, I’d be dead. Now leave, I need to rest. The Black will be here before we know it.”

  “So you’ll fight?”

  “Of course I’ll fight, dumbass. Just because I’m pissed off at you and the Three doesn’t mean I’ll abandon my post.”

  That was good enough for me. I glanced at her one final time as she rolled over and went back to sleep.

  TWO

  MONSTER PARTY

  The worst thing about the Black was that you couldn’t postpone or cancel it. It was like the job that you hated but could never call in sick to, or take a vacation from, or even get a weekend off.

  Oh yeah, and let’s not forget about all the things that go bump in the night trying to eat you. That sucked too.

  As usual, the last rays of the dying Bronze fell swiftly, shadows descending like sword strokes. We lit our demontorches, which were basically metal clubs painted with highly flammable and ever-burning demon’s blood. Handy in a pinch when you needed light.

  If not for the torches, we literally wouldn’t be able to see our hands in front of our faces. Even with the torchlight, the darkness seemed
to press against us, the unnatural flames providing only a small halo of visibility.

  Lace hadn’t said a word to me after she woke up, grabbing her bow and quiver of arrows as she’d shouldered past me. She walked silently ahead of us now, her movements as smooth as melted butter with all the grace of a cat on the prowl.

  Millania, as usual, walked slightly apart from the rest of us, her three-pronged trident cupped in one hand and resting on her shoulder like a Civil War soldier’s rifle and bayonet. Next to Beat’s ripped frame, the ocean dweller was reed-thin. I wondered what she’d looked like before she’d been leveled up.

  Beat walked beside me, her shield and spear clanking slightly as they brushed against each other every few steps or so. We’d marched into the Black together more than a dozen times now, but her presence was always a comfort. Especially after what we’d survived in Annakor.

  As we approached the edge of the ward shield, I felt my mouth go dry. Not from fear, but because of what I saw. Cracks in the air, a visual representation of the damage sustained to the wards that had helped protect this place for many decades. Worse than any of that, however, was the gaping hole, a ragged entrance cut through the shield. When I’d first arrived on this planet, I couldn’t even see the wards. They were completely invisible. Now, in the daylight, they were visible all the way around, full of cracks that seemed more numerous by the day, like a damaged windshield slowly shattering.

  None of us said anything as we passed through the wards, the familiar suck-pop! pulling at our bodies as we emerged on the other side. We didn’t need to say anything. As we’d been trained by Protector Kloop before he’d died, we lit more torches, setting them on the rough ground in a wide circle to give us as much lead time as possible if attacked. Then we positioned ourselves in the center of the lit space, like an island in the midst of a tempestuous ocean infested with sharks.