Viridian Gate Online: The Jade Lord: A litRPG Adventure (The Viridian Gate Archives Book 3) Read online

  Contents

  Summary

  ONE: Breaking the Siege

  TWO: Set Course

  THREE: Level Up

  FOUR: Departure

  FIVE: Ancient Tomb

  SIX: Dark Conclave

  SEVEN: Blood and Bone

  EIGHT: Spiritcaller’s Horn

  NINE: Chakan

  TEN: Nikko

  ELEVEN: Ancient Clues

  TWELVE: The Scoop

  THIRTEEN: Perks

  FOURTEEN: The Crafter’s Hall

  FIFTEEN: The Mad Alchemist

  SIXTEEN: Ankara

  SEVENTEEN: The Lucky Rooster

  EIGHTEEN: Breaking and Entering

  NINETEEN: Vault Job

  TWENTY: Celebration

  TWENTY-ONE: The Knobby Knee

  TWENTY-TWO: Grind it Down

  TWENTY-THREE: Sky Maiden’s Tale

  TWENTY-FOUR: Bones and Battle

  TWENTY-FIVE: Aftermath

  TWENTY-SIX: Tomestide

  TWENTY-SEVEN: Hard Choices

  TWENTY-EIGHT: Twilight Lands

  TWENTY-NINE: Round One

  THIRTY: Desperate Measures

  THIRTY-ONE: Regroup

  THIRTY-TWO: Round Two

  THIRTY-THREE: Crash Landing

  THIRTY-FOUR: Blessings and Curses

  Books, Mailing List, and Reviews

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Special Thanks

  Copyright

  Summary

  November, 2042

  It’s been a busy month for thirty-two-year-old Jack Mitchel:

  Three weeks ago, he died.

  Two weeks ago, he founded the first Faction in the ultra-immersive, fantasy-based VRMMORPG, Viridian Gate Online.

  A week and a half ago the world ended, destroyed by a cataclysmic asteroid.

  Seven days ago, he conquered the Imperial city of Rowanheath, bringing all of Eldgard to the brink of war.

  Though Jack’s Faction, the Crimson Alliance, has a tenuous truce with tech genius and Imperial lord, Robert Osmark, Jack knows it can’t last. Osmark is devious and power hungry, and it’s only a matter of time before he sends his forces to wipe Jack and his underdog crew off the map for good.

  If Jack hopes to survive another month inside of VGO, he must find a way to beat Osmark and his army of bloodthirsty thugs, and a new quest—the Path of the Jade Lord—may be just the ticket. But this quest will be far harder than anything Jack’s faced before, pushing him to his mental, physical, and moral limits. And if Jack isn’t careful, his quest to defeat Osmark and the Empire may end up turning him into the despot he’s been fighting against.

  ONE:

  Breaking the Siege

  I crouched low against Devil’s serpentine neck, put my heels hard into his scaly sides, and jerked sharply on the leather reins, wheeling us around—back toward Rowanheath’s main gate. Pounding wind beat against me, slapping at my face and clawing furiously at my cloak as the city below whipped past us and the spattering of enemy troops resolved into view. More Black Legion members out of Harrowick—though there were a few support mages from the Ancient Ones Faction and a handful of players from the Ever-Victorious Empire, courtesy of Robert Osmark himself.

  “Fire,” someone hollered from down below, followed by the groan of wood and the creak of leather as one of the heavy enemy mangonel---—specialty catapults on heavy rollers—released a barrage of flaming debris high into the air. They were all aiming for me. Since the raid against Rowanheath a week ago, Devil and I had become minor celebrities, and now every Imperial-aligned player and NPC was gunning for us. It didn’t help that Osmark was offering five thousand gold marks, equivalent to half a million IRL dollars, to anyone who managed to bring me down and earn a confirmed PvP kill.

  Devil reacted in a blink, throwing us into a quick dive, avoiding a flaming stone the size of my head, before barrel rolling right, dodging a cluster of baseball-sized rocks. A Griffin—one of Rowanheath’s conjured guardians, now under my control—wasn’t so lucky. A jagged chunk of rubble, burning like an incoming meteor, clipped the eagle-faced creature in one of its wings, punching a huge hole through sculpted feathers. The creature squawked in panic, its broken limb wobbling, no longer able to hold it steady. A second later, the damaged wing simply broke away with a crack and the guardian dropped, twirling in a death spiral toward the ground.

  The Griffin, in one final act of loyalty, or maybe vengeance, angled its fall so it careened just over the wall and slammed into an encroaching group of armor-clad Imperials. The ground erupted in a spray of dirt and stone, taking at least one of the enemy warriors—a stocky Dwarf with a gnarly red beard, wielding a ferociously oversized battle-axe—down for good. Exhausted as I was, I couldn’t help but grin a little. Served those jerks right.

  Devil and I wheeled about again, loitering above the wall’s ramparts as I searched for the on-duty commander. I spotted him a second later, his narrow shoulders and golden skin easy to pick out as he strode along the rampart, shouting commands at each ballista firing position. “Li Xiu,” I hollered as we swooped by, “we need to get those siege weapons down! They’re killing us!”

  Another round of burning shrapnel whooshed overhead; Devil dropped just in time, landing on the cobblestone rampart. Unfortunately, another chunk of flaming stone, this one as big as a football, caught a young Murk Elf woman in the gut; she tumbled backward over the retaining wall, screaming in terror as she fell. Her shriek cut off abruptly a moment later as her body slammed against Rowanheath’s streets, a crimson halo spreading out around her lifeless body. Poor girl. I’d died twice so far and it was far from a pleasant experience, especially with the god-awful debuffs that hit like a car crash at respawn.

  The Devs way to incentivize not dying. I shuddered just thinking about it.

  “Marisa,” a beefy Risi warrior muttered, uselessly reaching out a hand, as though he could somehow save the woman.

  “She’ll be fine in eight hours,” Xiu snapped, his words clipped and tinged with a Chinese accent. “Now, back to work, you er bǎi wǔ, or Rowanheath will fall and then no one will be fine.” The Risi glared at Xiu, who looked frail enough to snap in half, but Xiu stared right back, his eyes squinted, his teeth bared in a grimace, his feet planted wide, one hand resting on the butt of his sword. Xiu was intense. Scary-intense. After a few seconds, the Risi seemed to realize that too, dropped back to a knee, and began working a metal crank, ratcheting back the ballista’s string.

  “We need to get those siege weapons down,” I said to Xiu again, fighting to keep the anger out of my words.

  “You think I don’t know that?” he hissed, rounding on me, hands planted defiantly on his hips. Xiu was a former chief sergeant with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, and he didn’t seem to care who anyone was. In his worldview, there were only two kinds of people: those who obeyed Xiu’s orders and those who should obey Xiu’s orders. He was a heck of a commander, though, and had a way of reading the battlefield better than any other faction member we had. “We’re trying,” he grunted after a moment, his tone a hair more civil. “But they’re too far out. Scatter bombs won’t reach, and those wáng bā dàn support mages keep casting force shields to protect troops on ground.”

  I thought for just a second, brow furrowed, lips pursed. “I’ll take the Griffins and deal with the mages. Once they’re down, sound the drums and send the spider-riders over in force. As for the catapults—let’s break out Vlad’s ne
w javelins. They were designed exactly for this kind of thing,” I finished, urging Devil into a loping gait.

  “But we haven’t tested the javelins,” he shouted at my back, his words laced with tightly controlled panic.

  Vlad, our crazy Russian and resident weapon expert, had been invaluable to our cause, constantly tinkering away in his workshop back in Yunnam, working up ever-new weapons for our troops to employ. Most of his inventions were brilliant—shadow missiles that erupted into a hundred flaming arrows, bombs which released toxic death clouds, cannons with rapid reload capabilities—but most was not all. A few of his inventions had … well, the results weren’t pretty: Players dead, shrapnel littering their corpses. Limbs crudely ripped off. Scorched earth for a hundred feet in every direction.

  “We need an edge,” I yelled over one shoulder, a hand cupped around my mouth, “and there’s no time like the present. Load up the javelins—” My sentence cut off as Devil leaped from the rampart, his wings stretching and catching a stiff breeze as we banked upward. We soared over the top of the assembled Black Legion troops, cruising just out of arrow range. Five siege engines littered the rolling green fields in front of the wall, along with a small army—fifty or sixty deep—of hardened warriors, nimble archers, support mages, and clerics armed to the teeth with buff and healing spells.

  Okay, time to take out those support mages, before we got our first real look at Vlad’s new death-dealing weapons of mass destruction. I glanced left, then right, catching sight of the stone Griffins soaring above me in a lazy holding pattern, their huge wings pumping as they placidly waited for my orders. “Squad A,” I shouted, focusing on a group of Griffins clutching giant stone boulders—each a couple hundred pounds, easy—in their lionesque front paws. I didn’t need to shout; despite the distance and the noise, the Rowanheath guardians were linked to me in some way I didn’t quite understand, and I could summon and command them even at distance.

  But it felt right to shout.

  “Bombardment run,” I yelled, “but focus on the spellcasters.” I paused, turning my gaze on Squad B, which was circling high above on the left. “When the mages put up their shields, sweep in low from the back and hit ’em hard while they’re defenseless. Once they’re down, take out the clerics and archers in that order.” A deafening caw, part eagle part buzz saw, ripped at the air as the guardians acknowledged my command. Then, they were diving. The ten members of Squad A swooped down in a wave, spreading out in a staggered line.

  “Incoming!” an Imperial Huntress in dark leathers screamed as Squad A dropped their boulders toward the most densely populated pockets of people, letting gravity do the heavy lifting. A few panicked Imperials scurried about, raising shields in a pitiful attempt to defend themselves, but most just stood there smug and cocksure. They had reason to be: domes of flickering blue light erupted in the air as the squad of support mages raised hands skyward, all chanting in unison as they channeled their power into a massive defensive barrier of pure spirit.

  The gigantic AOE spell was completely badass, but it only protected the Imperials from aerial bombardment, and the mages themselves would be defenseless while casting it. I grinned and waved a hand at Squad B—time to move. Ten more Griffins wheeled around behind the AOE shield and dived on cue, streaking toward the earth like living lightning. They hit the dirt at a sprint, their powerful feline legs eating up ground in a blink as they closed on the mages. The Imperials were quick—a group of archers turned and peppered the monstrous guardians with acid-tipped arrows.

  They weren’t quick enough, though.

  Squad B slammed into the vulnerable mages—their hands still upraised as they chanted—from behind. Cruel, hooked beaks tore out throats while razor-sharp talons shredded through flimsy cloth robes. The blue dome above flickered, guttered, and died as the mages fell, and just like that, in a snap, hell broke loose on the field. The remaining Griffins dropped from the sky, meeting the ground troops head-on. Shouts and screams filled the air, interrupted by the clang of steel on stone and the snap of bowstrings. The Griffins were badly outnumbered, at least three to one, but they fought fearlessly and ruthlessly.

  To them, death was a minor inconvenience. They weren’t NPCs, not really. They’d respawn in eight hours, good as new with none of the unfortunate side effects players suffered after dying.

  The crash of drums—-whomp-whomp-whomp-whomp—rolled down from the walls, almost deafening even over the din of battle. There was no in-game comm-link for players, and PMing everyone just wasn’t practical, so Otto had suggested the drums as a way of passing orders during battle.

  “Spider-riders!” someone shouted in panic.

  I glanced back in time to see a wave of furry legs and bloated bodies pour over the top of the wall, carrying a contingent of mounted Alliance members: Battle-Wardens, Firebrands, Ice-Lancers, Shadow Knights, Marauders, Cutthroats—players of every class and racial affinity—all bound to spider mounts. The creatures rappelled down on thick strands of gray, gossamer webbing before scuttling into the fray. A chaotic hail of arrows flew in both directions, claiming fighters on each side … Fire and ice cut through the air, scorching flesh or impaling enemy bodies … The clash of steel rang out as hard-hitting melee warriors dismounted and sprinted into battle …

  The enemy catapults were still up and operational, but I had complete confidence Xiu would get the javelins up and working. With everything else in motion, the only thing left to do now was head down and try to grind out some extra EXP. The constant raids—two a day, every day, regular as clockwork, for the last five days—were supremely annoying, but at least they were perfect for grinding. Since the battle for Rowanheath, I’d picked up three additional levels, putting me at level 32, which was phenomenal progress considering how many experience points I now needed to advance.

  Let’s do this, I thought at Devil. Drop me toward the rear, then do what you can to take out the siege engines.

  Siege engines don’t bleed, the Drake replied stoically. Our telepathic bond had grown considerably since our fight against Carrera. I want blood, I want to eat, Devil continued after a second.

  I hesitated for a moment, unsure what to say. You can mop up, I finally sent, feeling a mild wave of revulsion at the words. Devil was a great mount and a terrifying battle minion, but he wasn’t human. Not at all. Not even close. A fact I was becoming more aware of each day. He was an animal, a predator to his core, and he rarely cared about morality or pain. I looked down at the field and saw people—real people, even if they currently wanted to kill me—who would experience the trauma of being torn apart by Devil’s barbed teeth and rending claws.

  All Devil saw was meat.

  Once we’re done, you can eat whatever’s left, but work first, I said.

  Done, he replied, corkscrewing in an instant.

  The world flipped, the ground now forty feet above as my head dangled down. With a gulp, I unhooked my feet from the leather stirrups and let go of the reins. My stomach fluttered as I slipped from the saddle and dropped toward the ground like an insane skydiver who’d forgotten to strap on a parachute. Wind whipped at me, arrows streaked by in flashes, and the whole while the ground rushed up to meet me. I took a few deep calming breaths and triggered Shadow Stride ten feet from the earth. The world lurched to a halt as the Shadowverse exploded around me in all of its monochromatic, blurred-edged glory.

  I turned my body into the fall, flipping head over heels, and landed on my back with a thud and a groan.

  Dull pain radiated through my body, throbbing in time with my heart, but my life bar didn’t drop even a fraction of a percent. A fall like that should’ve killed me outright, or at least broken every bone in my body, but I couldn’t sustain damage while inside the Shadowverse—even natural damage from, say, a really high fall. A happy little loophole I’d discovered a few days back after some Imperial Ice-Lancer blasted me out of the air. Sort of a magic parachute, though I needed to work on that landing. Flopping flat on my back stil
l hurt, even if it didn’t damage me.

  With a grunt, I scampered to my feet—the whole world frozen around me—and found a target: a Wode Berserker with beef-slab shoulders, preparing to split one of my Murk Elf warriors in two with a gleaming sword. Maybe I couldn’t save everyone, but I could certainly help the Murky, whose eyes were frozen in terrible resignation that he was about to die a very painful death. I dropped into a crouch and lined up my shot, taking a few practice swings with my warhammer before stepping back into reality. Time crashed back down like a wave as everyone jerked back into motion.

  The Wode let out a bellow as he lunged forward, but my hammer was already in motion.

  I triggered my Crush Armor ability as the strike landed; the attack cost me 100 Stamina but added 250% attack bonus against opponents in heavy plate armor. Opponents just like the Wode Berserker in front of me. Between Crush Armor and my Stealth Attack bonus, the poor sucker didn’t stand a chance. The spiked heel of my warhammer slammed through the steel gorget protecting his neck and sank directly into the vulnerable flesh beneath. The warrior dropped his sword in shock, staggering to one side from the force of the blow, gauntleted hands flying to his ruined throat, now slick with crimson blood.

  His health bar flashed an angry red—critical zone—but a final Umbra Bolt to the head sent him for respawn, though his body, bloody and ruined, remained behind. I wriggled my warhammer free, offered the downed Murk Elf a helping hand up, then spun and darted back into the heat of the battle. The siege weapons were still operational—though Devil was currently roasting one with a thick column of purple flame—but between the Griffins and the spider-riders, Imperials were falling by the bucket-loads, unable to coordinate a counterassault.

  Off to the right, a group of Black Legion members were staging one last stand: a ring of ten armored warriors with heavy shields stood back to back, fighting off folks in every direction, while a pair of gore-spattered clerics stood in the center, healing the most grievous wounds and casting buff after buff on the fighters. In theory, their strategy was great, but it also left them open to a devastating AOE spell—like my Plague Burst ability. I threw my left hand forward, conjuring Umbra Bog. The green grass beneath the entrenched ring of fighters exploded in a pool of thick prehistoric tar; writhing tendrils of inky black lashed out, wrapping themselves around feet and legs, arms and torsos, rooting the enemy warriors in place.