Final Quest: Dungeons of Perdition - Book 5 (A LitRPG and GameLit Adventure)

by Abhisek Basu

  David, on the other hand, was someone Josh hated, but he masked it well enough to not let him know. He wasn’t close to him like Miss Tessa and Lewis, and the day Josh found out about his betrayal, he swept further down his line of trust. Lewis suggested that he should be killed right away, but Josh had bigger plans for him.

  Death was the final answer to the question that always lingered on mortal minds.

  Josh was sure that Lewis and Miss Tessa had to die, and he knew how they would. Family would bring Josh down, would distract him, and the simple fact of caring for someone else would take a toll once he started ruling over 10 billion people. They had to die, and that would happen soon, but it wouldn’t be his choice. The only person he would care for would be his wife, and for the first time in his life, Josh knew who that would be.

  Lewis came running up, and Miss Tessa joined him. “Close the door behind you,” Josh said and turned towards Lewis.

  “Did you hear from Marcus Adams? Where is he?” he asked. Then, he closed his eyes and raised his hands, “No, wait. Let me guess. He’s in a prison somewhere for manslaughter, sentenced for life, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah,” Lewis said. “Louisiana State Penitentiary. He was charged on three counts of murder. Do you want us to do something about it? We can get him out if you want?”

  “No. That won’t be necessary for now. The man started out as a despicable predator, but he managed to reform himself to the point where he sacrificed himself to save Natalie in Tholos. It just goes to show that reformation is possible for even the worst souls out there, and how the system won’t let us believe that. That’s the system we will break, Lewis,” Josh said.

  “I’m sure we will, sir,” Lewis said.

  “There has been a change of plans. Initially, the plan was to torture the other person till they hand over the key. That’s not a part of the plan anymore. So, I’ve asked David to return the cargo,” Josh said.

  “But sir, those had no refunds as the clause,” Lewis said. David nodded, as if two other voices ever made Josh change his mind.

  “I’m sure we would get a lot more from the Russians once they realize they have been helping somebody they wouldn’t be able to stop,” Josh said.

  “Mr. Bones, forgive my interruption, but aren’t you supposed to torture this other person till they willingly hand over the key? Without torturing them, how do you plan on getting the key?” Miss Tessa asked.

  “Because the new plan involves not torturing her. This new plan- it involves showing her who I am, making her a part of our Alliance, and in the end, making her my wife,” Josh said and smiled from ear to ear.

  There was an eerie silence in the room. Josh knew his people had their doubts, so he knew he had to elaborate.

  “I know, this is not a part of the plan, but I’ve seen and read about the person that she is. I know enough now. I know that whatever she is projecting to the world, beneath all that, there’s a person who just needs someone superior to guide her, love her and nurture her. She has never got that. The closest she got was Ian Floyd in that world, and we’d need to do something about that,” Josh said and turned at David. David immediately typed the right words down on his projected screen.

  “So, since two keys have to go in and one dead key would destroy everything we know, we cannot kill her. That was already known to us. She has to willingly transfer over the key, and for that, we either torture her or she does it because she wants to. Today, I think that I will be able to convince her enough to say that she wants to,” Josh said.

  “I think that’s a good proposition, Mr. Bones,” Miss Tessa said.

  “Are the murderbots and press drones still on our count?” David asked, always being the one with the dumbest questions in the room.

  “They are. But now, we need to go see our good friend Bruce and make a video with him,” Josh said and walked over to the red tiger-shaped mask on the wall. He clicked on it and it popped out to his hands. Wearing it over his face, he turned around to face the rest of his crew.

  “Call the studio and get them ready. And Lewis, did you bring the crypto wallets?” Josh said, turning towards him.

  “Yes, sir. They’re right here,” Lewis said and pulled out 32 digitized tokens from his pocket.

  “Keep 17 of them on my desk. The password for all of them is Infernos573342. Take 5 each, all three of you, and take the rest of the day off. Each wallet has around $43 billion, enough to buy a night at the world’s best harems, visit the top underwater clubs or eat the most exotic meals money can buy. Spend $2 billion on security so that you’re always safe, and go have fun,” Josh said.

  “But sir, we cannot…” Lewis said.

  “Mr. Bones, this is too much,” Miss Tessa said at the same time, but they both stopped seeing Josh raise his finger at his two loyal warriors.

  “This is yours to keep. You can spend it tonight, and I hope you do. You can give a portion of it to parents, friends or lovers. You can donate it to a cause you trust if you run out of ideas. But whatever you do with it, do it today, because where we are going tomorrow, you might not be alive to see this kind of wealth again,” Josh said.

  “Thank you, sir,” David said, pocketing five tokens. The others echoed the same words of gratitude.

  “David, get the studio ready,” he said. David left the room.

  Josh turned towards the door as it slid open. He knew what he did, and he was proud he did. Sure, giving David that amount of money was equivalent to throwing the money down a drain, but it didn’t matter. He had enough.

  If you had enough social skills and if you figure out what people want, what they truly want, which is quite different from what they say they want, they would throw money at you. That’s what happened during all the negotiations that he sat on. Figuring out what the most powerful men on Earth wanted was easy. Figuring out what the women wanted was tougher, but what they feared proved to be far more profitable.

  Josh knew how to leverage everyone. He had thought about how to reward his trusted members the moment his acquired funds crossed the double of what was required for the operation. He knew this reward was a small speck of what they were sacrificing- their most valuable asset- time, but he knew that he also wouldn’t get a chance to give them something better.

  “Sir, I can understand you giving this to us, but why to David? We all know he’s feeding information to CELIA,” Lewis said, finally getting the opportunity to ask the question as David wasn’t in the room anymore.

  “And that’s what we want. In this whole Alliance, there’s just one traitor, and that is David. He has been feeding half truths and wrong information to CELIA all this while. That is what we wanted, and he’s doing his job perfectly despite having no idea about it,” Josh said.

  “So, you’re not planning on marrying Natalie?” Lewis asked.

  “I am, but I have a hunch that she won’t be too agreeable. The whole point of keeping David in the know is that we need someone to take the fall for our activities at Quanti Valley. Once we engage in the notion of transparency, the world would dig in. Reporters would scour every member. And they will all inevitably find CELIA to be the one organization responsible for all the killing. And I guess I just made them a billion times richer,” Josh said.

  “Mr. Bones, are you suggesting that David will donate his money to CELIA?” Miss Tessa asked.

  “He is not paid by that organization, so I know that he will. The false sense of control and authority that he has in our alliance must remain till the perfect moment. Do what you’re doing and tap his AR phones and location at all times. And yes, enjoy yourselves too,” Josh said and smiled.

  His office door slid open.

  “The studio’s ready. We have him strapped in,” David informed him as they walked out of his room.

  Josh reached into his pocket, wore his brass knuckles and muttered to himself, “Time to meet the Vice President, America.”

  Chapter 7

  The road leading to the highway was filled wit
h self-driving cars maintaining the speed limit, going the normal route. The time was 7:58. Natalie shifted to the front seat, realizing how late she already was. She enabled manual controls, and a steering popped up from the dashboard, making a wheezing sound as it did. She grabbed on it firmly, focused her eyes on the road ahead and changed her gear. Speeding through the road, swerving left and right, blazing away at the highest speed she could drive, she was glad she didn’t have her uncle in the backseat. He wouldn’t approve of such reckless driving but sometimes, reckless driving is necessary. The engines of her Ferrari growled leaving behind all the other cars.

  As she reached the highway, Natalie pushed the steering back again, turning the car to its natural self-driving mode. At highways, self-driving cars naturally went at their highest speeds, so there was no need to control it manually. She opened her AR phone and projected a screen up to check her socials.

  Her feed was buzzing with people speculating on the mass scale experiments, and a very vocal minority were against it. This included self-proclaimed members of CELIA, self-proclaimed members of the Red Alliance and other common folk. While she was scrolling through, she noticed a live feed from the hacktivist group Red Alliance again and clicked on it.

  The live feed had just started. It showed a man wearing a red, tiger-shaped mask towering over a man who also had the same mask on.

  A robotic voiceover announced, “It’s much better to live one day as tigers, than a lifetime as sheep.” Saying this, the man towering over the man in the suit punched the man beneath him and his mask came off instantly, breaking apart from the impact of the punch.

  Natalie noticed two things then. One, the man walking around the seated man had brass knuckles fitted to his fist, and the other, the man beneath him was Bruce Flint, the Vice President of the United States.

  “America, this feels uncomfortable not only because you’re seeing someone getting beat up,” the voice over said as the masked man punched the Vice President again. “This feels uncomfortable because you’ve been lied to, again. You’ve been made to believe that everything is right, when things are clearly not. Today, it was announced that the Vice President was not held hostage. Here is the truth.”

  The camera panned over to show the seated man’s now-bruised face. The Vice President's mouth was taped shut and the punches had carefully landed on his cheeks and jaw, so as not to knock him out, but to make him feel each stinging blow after another. Natalie noticed that his hands were tied to the chair he was seated on, which prevented him from falling over.

  “The Red Alliance will free you from the lies. We will defy all authority till we bring along the light. Quanti Valley- that is our next destination. All civilians have to leave Quanti Valley within the next 16 hours. The ones who don’t will be sacrificed to the Gods of Tomorrow, and we will make sure everyone is given a chance at redemption. If the government doesn’t provide housing and maintenance to all workers leaving the valley, we will drop Bruce’s kidney on the top of the White House tomorrow. The emergency fund titled 88C is well equipped to handle this, a fund that has also been hidden away from the public, and yet it is visible to large lobbies. Use it. Save your people, because in a few days- we will. We have one other demand, and this…”

  Natalie suddenly felt like she noticed something when she glanced ahead. She clicked on Watch Later on the feed and quickly parked the car ahead of where it was supposed to stop. It was Evan, and despite her being over an hour late, he was still standing at the spot he was supposed to be at.

  Natalie, before getting out, decided to sit in the car and observe Evan. He was peculiarly staring at a window of a building in front of him and just watching it without turning his head anywhere else. People walked past him, cars drove by, some pedestrians too busy on their AR phones almost bumped into him, but nothing swerved him. He kept looking at the building. Natalie was far enough from the building, but right then a notification buzzed up on her AR phone, distracting her. She took her phone out and changed its setting to the silent mode, then swiped over to the notification.

  It was on her business ID on a social feed, and when she clicked on it, she saw that it was a message from Ian Floyd. It read, “Hey, I know you probably won’t see this message, but I just received a generous donation on my stream from a user named NatalieW, and you seem to be the only person with that kind of money to throw away. Was it you? If you read this, do let me know.”

  Natalie clicked on Ian’s profile instinctively as she always did when anyone messaged her. His stream page popped up. She was about to click away when she noticed something odd. Ian had tens of thousands of viewers on his last stream, whereas his last stream had an audience of 34. The replay had people reacting, sending “angry” and “sad” floating emoticons. Natalie glanced ahead and saw Evan still standing there. She looked back on her AR phone and clicked on the stream, forwarding the replay to the region that was quoted most in the comments.

  It showed Ian strumming his guitar, singing a John Denver song, when the lights to his apartment started flickering. His phone buzzed with a break-in notification, and before he could pause the notification, the door behind him swung open. Three men wearing red tiger-shaped masks, perhaps actual goons sent by the actual Red Alliance, entered the room. Ian started to get up on his feet when one of them sprayed a green mist on his face. The other swung a baseball bat towards the camera, and that’s when the stream stopped. There were no updates on his profile since then, and the comments were buzzing about why the members of the Red Alliance took him in. Many even speculated that it was their initiation process and that he would be a member of the hacktivist group soon.

  With trembling fingers, Natalie closed the feed down. The fact that they targeted Ian meant that whoever was running the Red Alliance knew more about her than she initially realized.

  She looked at Evan. Did he betray her? Was he the one who told the hacktivist group about her association with Ian? Were they going to go after Travis now?

  Evan was still standing there, looking up at the building like he had for the last twenty minutes.

  Natalie got out of her car and looked up at the building that Evan was staring at. It was an empty building which was still under construction. There was nothing much to look at and the windows were all open. It had no doors either.

  She had to know why Evan was staring at that empty window. Sneaking past the traffic, Natalie entered the under-construction building. Tiny building bots were on the ground floor, drilling a hole silently with their mechanized arms, making a passageway for the basement construction. The stairs to the top weren’t constructed yet, and Natalie could look up and see the open ceiling. There was nothing to look at. It was empty. There were no upper floors yet. Just the empty shell of the building had been constructed.

  She walked out of the building hurriedly, fearing Evan wouldn’t be there, but he was still there, still as a statue looking at the empty building. Natalie ran up to Evan, and before she could say anything, Evan said, “You’re late.”

  “And you waited here for this long?” Natalie asked.

  “I keep my word,” Evan said. He had a strange serious tone in his voice, and while he talked, he kept staring at the building.

  “What are you looking at? That building is literally empty,” Natalie said. This prompted Evan to look at her briefly, and he went back to staring at the building.

  “It’s empty for those who didn’t look hard enough,” Evan said, and then he turned to face Natalie. “The bots in the building, do you think they are conscious like me?”

  “No. Last I checked, they didn’t have the capacity to think.”

  “Like I do. A virtual augmented personal assistant made by Quanti Valley to make lives easier for everyone. It’s a shame I went rogue and became useless, right? Would you say I’m useless?”

  “Unless you answer my questions first. How does a Red Alliance exist in this world and why did they just kidnap Ian? Is all this connected to me?”

  �
��Answer one question for me, first. Do you believe in God?”

  “Not in the all powerful, omniscient way that it is portrayed, no,” Natalie said and saw a strange smile on Evan’s face. “But I’d like to believe that someone is out there. Why?”

  “If your God turns away and looks down on you, if your God doesn’t care about your existence, what does it say about you?” Evan asked and glanced at the building again.

  “What?” Natalie asked, and Evan turned to face her.

  “You’re late,” Evan said again.

  “I know. I had to go have dinner with my uncle,” Natalie said.

  “Your uncle will be having breakfast with the Feds tomorrow,” Evan said. Natalie looked at him and raised her eyebrow.

  “Did you not see what the Red Alliance demanded?” Evan said. “They want you to be at Quanti Valley, and yes, it’s all connected.”

  “But how?”

  Evan waved his hand and a screen popped up from his wrist. It showed the video feed where the Vice President was being beaten.

  “I’ve watched this part. Fast forward to where they ask for me,” Natalie said, realizing that it must’ve been the part she had clicked ‘Watch Later’ on.

  Evan forwarded the feed, and it ended with a picture of her, in wrestling gear holding up her championship title, with the background voice demanding her to be there at Quanti Valley by 9pm the next day. The video feed closed and the projected screen went back on Evan’s fist.

  “Why me?” Natalie asked.

  “The Red Alliance was started by Josh Bones, the first and only winner of Dungeons of Perdition till you won and completed your journey. You are the second winner,” Evan said and smiled. “But don’t worry, you don’t have to fight to the death to find one winner. At least not yet.”

  “So, he’s calling me there to kill me?”

  “He won’t kill you, Natalie, and you won’t kill him either.”