Lord of the Dead: A LitRPG Saga (The Eternal Journey Book 2) Read online

  Lord of the Dead

  Eternal Journey Online, Book Two

  By C.J. Carella

  Published by Fey Dreams Productions, LLC

  Copyright @ 2020 Fey Dreams Productions, LLC. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced, displayed, modified or distributed without the express prior written permission of the copyright holder. For permission, contact [email protected]

  Cover by: SelfPubBookCovers.com/ riafritz

  This is a work of fiction. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  To learn more about LitRPG, talk to authors including myself, and just have an awesome time, please join the LitRPG Group. https://www.facebook.com/groups/LitRPGGroup/

  Books by C.J. Carella

  The Eternal Journey

  Twilight Templar

  Lord of the Dead

  Labyrinth to Tartarus

  Warp Marine Corps

  Decisively Engaged

  No Price Too High

  Advance to Contact

  In Dread Silence

  Havoc of War

  Warp Marine Corps (The Complete Series)

  The Bicentennial War

  To the Strongest

  They Shall Not Pass

  Victory or Death

  New Olympus Saga:

  Armageddon Girl

  Doomsday Duet

  Apocalypse Dance

  The Ragnarok Alternative

  New Olympus Tales:

  The Armageddon Girl Companion

  A Crucible of Worlds

  Outlands Justice

  Short Story Collections

  Land of Gods and Monsters

  Heroes and Rogues

  Beyonder Wars:

  Bad Vibes (Short Story)

  Shadowfall: Las Vegas

  Dante’s Demons

  Prologue: Ripples Across Realms

  Arbiter Vicesimo – government name Larry Maurice Higgins – had seen a lot in his life. That didn’t mean he couldn’t be surprised, only that he hated surprises.

  Born in the glory days of the 23rd Century – he had been a teenager during the Alien Singularity – he had watched everything he had taken for granted be destroyed, been one of the lucky few who survived the change, and been one of the unlucky who landed at the bottom of the new hierarchy. For the last six thousand years, he had done the equivalent of custodial work. He had more power than any superhero in the old movies he loved, but he mostly used it to clean up the messes created by mortals, gods who went off script, fellow Arbiters who forgot their mandates, and, worse, the Makers of Universes themselves.

  The most recent mess was… confusing more than anything else. It annoyed him that Arbiter Primus had put him in charge of dealing with it, but he’d learned better than to question orders. Arbiters who did that got reassigned to the Realm of Gates. Vice had done a few tours in the Breach. The first one had been enough to convince him that anything was better than that.

  “Hey, Vice!” Arbiter Nonaginta said, materializing in front of him. “Heard you could use some help.”

  “Yeah,” he told her, creating a hologram pillar for her; showing was easier than telling. “One of the new recruits is pushing the envelope. From the new batch, of course.”

  Nona’s smile disappeared. “Oh. One of them. Who thought it was a good idea to drop sixty thousand Eternals on the Realms?”

  Instead of saying anything, Vice pointed up and then used his fingers to pull the corners of his mouth into a distorted grin. He was reasonably sure that nobody was watching them, but Somebody might be listening.

  “Oh,” Nona repeated. “Say no more.”

  “You hadn’t heard about the newest project?”

  “I know we need more cannon fodder for the Breach.” They both shuddered at the name. “But this seems excessive.”

  “Yeah. Nobody asked us, of course. We just get to wipe the blood off the floor and walls when a brilliant strategy fails.”

  Nona sighed. “Anyway. Who is making waves?”

  “This guy.” The 3D image showed a seemingly ordinary denizen of the Realms. A guy in armor.

  “Let’s see… Half-Elf, Paladin – no, Twilight Templar and Monster Trainer. They are handing Elite classes to first-timers now?”

  “Look again, Nona,” Vice said. “You were right the first time. He arrived at the Realms as a Paladin. Turned into a Twilight Templar a few levels later. He’d been active for under a week.”

  “Switched Classes? How?”

  “Divine intervention. All legal, just unusual as hell.”

  “Freaking gods. Another brilliant idea, to bring Hyper-Jungian Archetypes to the Realms and expect them to follow orders. They had to know those entities would have their own ideas on how to run things. Anyone who’s been worshipped for thousands of years is going to resent being told what to do!”

  Vice shrugged. They and other Arbiters had had that very conversation for literal centuries. Arbiters had more raw power than gods, but the old bastards weren’t pushovers. A few Arbiters had been perma-killed in the line of duty. More than a few gods had gone bye-bye as a result, of course: there was a reason Zeus and Jupiter were no longer in the Realms, and that their place had been taken by the more archaic Shining Father. Most of the pantheons had gotten the message and no longer challenged the Arbiters. Not openly, anyway. The gods had other ways to throw monkey wrenches into the works, however.

  “Anyway, the same guy has also started Mana channeling, about ten levels too early. And just became Ruler of a Town.”

  Nona squinted at the armored figure in the hologram. “Switched Classes in a week, now he runs a town. How long has he been down there?”

  “Not even a month.”

  “I can see why Primus wants to keep an eye on him. He’s going to be trouble.”

  “We are going to increase the Mana levels in the local zone. It already had a Necromancer Stronghold, a Lair, two Dungeons and a Labyrinth; everything is getting boosted. Things were already ramping up, on account of the Necromancer eating a bunch of Eternals, but now it’s getting pumped up even more.”

  “Why? Whatever doesn’t kill that Eternal is only going to make him stronger.”

  “Primus wants to put pressure on him. If he makes it, we can use him in the Higher Realms.”

  “And if he doesn’t, he’s not our problem anymore,” Nona said. “Gotcha.”

  “Hawke Lightseeker is his name. He’s surprisingly hard to keep under surveillance, too. One of his patrons is Tenebra.”

  “She doesn’t do anything without at least three schemes in mind. This is going to be tricky.”

  * * *

  Kaiser Wrecker, Guild President of the Nerf Herders, was not having a good day. That was unusual. The past few months had been very good to him.

  “Where is he? Where is Hawke Lightseeker?”

  The highest rated spell-slinger in the Guild, Aristobulus Highgarden (Level Fourteen Mage and Scryer), looked downright terrified, but he knew sugarcoating the truth would be worse than giving bad news to the boss. Kaiser knew better than to terrorize his underlings into lying to him. That had been the downfall of many a ruler. He had no intention to undergo any sort of fall.

  “He’s got some means to block divination spells,” Aristobulus said. “If he is in Gallia Nova, I should be able to get his general location, within a hundred miles at least. And if he isn’t in Gallia Nova, I should be able to sense that, too. My best ritual – cost almost a hundred gold in materials and a permanent Mana sacrifice – worked about as well as a fr
eaking magic 8-ball. It makes no sense.”

  “All right,” Kaiser said, forcing himself to adopt a more relaxed posture. Aristobulus exhaled in relief. “Can we hire someone higher-level to try?”

  “That might work, but it would be extremely expensive. Our best shot would be to get a twentieth level Scryer to do the job. That’s the best we could find here in the Common Realms. As far as I know, there is only one of those in Akila. Maybe half a dozen in all of the Ruby Empire. The local one is a Grandmaster of the Council of the Wise.”

  “And they don’t care much for us,” Kaiser said. “As in they hate our guts.”

  And that was my own fault, he admitted to himself.

  He had antagonized the mages’ society by refusing to have his pet spellcasters pay their union dues. At the time, the nascent Nerf Herders had been strapped for cash and he’d had better things to do than bend over for a pack of rent-seeking NPCs. He had overreacted, and the Herders had turned the Council into an enemy. Kaiser had two concurrent programs in the works to deal with that situation: one to smooth the Council’s ruffled feathers, and another to wipe it off the board.

  “All right,” he told the Mage. “We’ll try again when we get you to fifteenth level. I’ll put you on the fast track for the Malleum Mallum. One run through that Labyrinth should be more than enough.”

  Aristobulus went white as a sheet. The Malleum Mallum Labyrinth had zeroed out three Nerf Herders already. Kaiser didn’t care. He’d made one run himself, and hit level fourteen thanks to it. Great rewards required great risks.

  “Unless you would decline the honor,” he told the magician. “That would be disappointing. The Herders are building a reputation as go-getters. A can-do attitude is paramount. But if you’d rather concentrate on crafting, say the word.”

  “No, no, sir. I’ll be happy to join a Party.”

  “Glad to hear it. On your way out, let Girl-Has in.”

  Kaiser smiled as Aristobulus all but ran out of his office. People always started to sweat when he brought up the Crafting Center. Probably because once you went in, you only came out feet first. As far as Kaiser was concerned, a little hard work didn’t kill anybody, but people from Earth were too soft. Put them in a harsh environment like the Realms and most of them wilted like so many hothouse flowers exposed to the wild.

  Case in point: Rowena, Kaiser’s personal servant, who entered his office along with his next appointment. Rowena had been a casual gamer who’d caught the hype for Eternal Journey Online and, under normal circumstances, would have played for a couple of months before rage quitting and badmouthing the game on social media for assorted real or imaginary offenses.

  Circumstances had been anything but normal, of course, and Rowena (born Meadow April Durham) had found herself in the same swamp where Kaiser and several other unlucky players woke up, unclothed, scared and with nothing but each other and an idiotic Quest notification beamed directly into their brains by some bastard going by the name of Arbiter Primus.

  They had survived – after a few deaths and other mishaps – and reached civilization. Kaiser had been among the first to make it there, as well as the quickest to understand the situation and take advantage of it. He rebuilt his own Guild, not because he had any affection for the name – he hated it, actually – but because a few other members had also shown up in Akila, and the stupid Star Wars reference would serve to attract the attention of other castaways from Earth. Kaiser wanted to take as many of them as he could under his wing. Or dispose of them otherwise.

  At first, Rowena had been enthusiastic about Kaiser’s reform plans. But her ideas had focused on dismantling the admittedly patriarchal system in the Ruby Empire. Kaiser had no intention of upsetting the local social structure, however. He wanted to co-opt it. Rowena saw reason after being subjected to a number of object lessons. The bruises had faded away, eventually; the lessons he had taught her had not. Now she was a part of the patriarchal order, as well as his concubine and personal servant. A number of magically-enforced oaths ensured her obedience. Rowena brought him a glass of chilled wine and sat on his lap, just like she’d been taught. Good girl.

  The short, dark-haired woman that followed Rowena into the office was completely different. She didn’t care about changing society. Her only concern was amassing power, and she had decided that the best way to do so was to hitch her wagon to Kaiser Wrecker’s rising star. She also greatly enjoyed hurting people. Kaiser was okay with that, within reason.

  Girl-Has No-Name bowed before him. She was a Rogue and Shadow Assassin, an elite class that was outlawed in Akila. Her secret was safe among the Nerf Herders, of course. Nobody in the Guild gave a damn about the laws of the Empire.

  Her name still made Kaiser cringe, though. Yes, he also had picked a dumb name for his first EJO character. Why not? He rarely used early characters in a game for long; he was an alt-character maker, always chasing a new and different power trip. Nobody had known their first choice would be their only one until Final Death took all choices away. But his name had been nowhere as bad as hers.

  The player in question had been a George R.R. Martin fan. Somebody in the game had already snagged the character name she wanted, so she’d gone with the character’s iconic saying instead. She had even used the character creator in the game to make her look as much as her idol as possible. Unoriginal and silly, but nothing else about Girl-Has was silly. She had dropped over a hundred bodies in the two months since her arrival, and those were the ones Kaiser knew of.

  “What’s the good word?” he asked her. While Aristobulus had been using magic to find the damn Paladin, No-Name had been doing some old-fashioned sleuthing.

  “I have two separate witnesses saying that the subject claimed to come from Herona, a port in the east. I have dispatched four agents there to see if they can pick up his trail.”

  “But you don’t think he’s there. You’d have gone there yourself, otherwise.”

  She shook her head. “He was very careful. Why give away his point of origin? It smells like a cover story. It’s still worth checking out, of course.”

  “What else have you got?”

  “I turned my attention to two Eternals he was seen talking to the day before he visited the compound,” she said.

  Her voice had an emotionless inflection that set people’s teeth on edge. It was as if she was an alien trying to pass for a human being and not quite pulling it off. She must have been a delight on Earth.

  “I have positively identified them: Desmond the Destroyer, a Warrior, and Nadia Morganna, Elven Sorceress. They were given an entry interview at the gate, but there was an incident and they left before it was complete. It was Gerrod, getting handsy with the woman, just the way he gets with every female he runs into.”

  “That idiot should have never been on gate duty,” Kaiser growled.

  He didn’t mind if members in good standing indulged in their hobbies or vices, but not during gate interviews, when the Herders were trying to convince people to come in of their own free will. You wanted to put your best foot forward for that, and Gerrod was definitely the wrong man for the job.

  Little Gerry and the moron who had assigned him to gate duty were off in the Labyrinth, grinding levels and getting killed on the regular; last he’d checked, Gerrod’s Identity had dipped below eight and the guy could barely remember Earth, or his old name. That was fine with Kaiser; owning a level fifteen Warrior who had forgotten most of his old life would come in handy, moving forward.

  Girl-Has went on: “Yesterday, I was able to confirm that Desmond and Nadia spent the night at an inn with a third party who paid for their room and board.”

  “Hawke.”

  “Can’t confirm it. He was wearing civilian garb at the time, but the general description matches. The next day, they left. I have a possible sighting of them in Dwarven Hills. That’s where the trail has led so far.”

  Kaiser grimaced. The Guild didn’t have a lot of connections with the damn Oompa Loompas, mainly
because the only Eternal player who had picked a Dwarf for his character’s race had gone native. Attempts to recruit him had ended poorly; now nobody in the Hills wanted anything to do with the Nerf Herders. Being too proactive could backfire sometimes.

  “What is it going to take to learn more?”

  Girl-Has thought about it. “Two hundred gold denars in bribes. I’ll have to go through intermediaries, but I already have a few assets with access to the Hills.”

  “Any other news from the Oompa Loompas?”

  “Word is that someone was recruiting miners for a hush-hush project. They were also hiring mercenaries for a war with a Goblin Horde off to the west. I will look into both events, just in case they are related to the target.”

  “This is a Priority-One project. That bastard made a fool out of us in the middle of our compound. The only way I will live that down is if he doesn’t live any longer than it takes to find him.”

  “I’ll find him,” Girl-Has said. “And I’ll bring him to you.”

  “Don’t underestimate him. I did. A vocational school grad managed to waltz in and out of here, and sent two of my best bodyguards off to respawn. He is a lot smarter than I thought.”

  One

  “Maybe this was a bad idea,” Hawke Lightseeker said as the giant shadow monster prepared to crush him like a bug.

  his talking sword and future wife Saturnyx whispered into his mind. She was a Fury, a human soul turned into an avenging angel, and had been doomed to (or chosen to; she was vague on the details) inhabit a sword and give it all sorts of deadly powers.

  He was going to need every one of those abilities to overcome the Guardian of the Mana Node he was trying to claim.

  It was the biggest critter he had encountered so far. Fifteen feet tall, maybe twenty feet wide, with four elephant-like legs supporting a barrel-shaped torso from which four tentacles protruded, each tipped with a sharp pair of pincers. And it was solid black, a thing made of pure Darkness. The only reason Hawke could see it against the equally black background was that he had Dark Vision, courtesy of his Half-Elven heritage. Anybody else challenging the Guardian of that Mana Node would have been effectively blind and helpless while the monster sliced and diced them to death.