Immersion Online: The Zealot : Book 2 (Immersion Online: Lit RPG) Read online

  Immersion Online

  The Zealot

  Book 2

  Evan Klein

  Immersion Online: The Zealot

  By Evan Klein

  Copyright © 2021 Evan Klein

  All rights reserved.

  Print Edition ISBN:

  Cover design by Karen Dimmick / ArcaneCovers.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form, or by an means, electronic, mechanical, recorded, photocopied, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Please refer all copyright questions to the author, Evan Klein, at [email protected]

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1: Logged Off

  Chapter 2: Havervill

  Chapter 3: Character Sheet

  Chapter 4: Battle in the Grand Plaza

  Chapter 5: The Broken Harem

  Chapter 6: Cast of Characters

  Chapter 7: Cast of Characters 2

  Chapter 8: The Robbery

  Chapter 9: Battle in the Sewers

  Chapter 10: Investigation

  Chapter 11: Sunderer

  Chapter 12: Shannon

  Chapter 13: Back Home

  Chapter 14: Interlude

  Chapter 15: Conclave of Constables

  Chapter 16: Second Investigation

  Chapter 17: Hot Date

  Chapter 18: Tinsie’s Tale

  Chapter 19: Pleasurer

  Chapter 20: Undercover Investigation

  Chapter 21: The Sundaland

  Chapter 22: The Bleeding Eye

  Chapter 23: The Weepers

  Chapter 24: Undercity

  Chapter 25: Recruitment

  Chapter 26: Another Very Shitty Day

  Chapter 27: Greeny

  Chapter 28: Dungeon Dive

  Chapter 29: Drock Blanag

  Chapter 30: Torture Chambers

  Chapter 31: Sacrifice

  Chapter 32: The Zealot

  Epilogue: Stone Does Not Fail

  Bonus Story: The Goblin Ruins

  Dear reader,

  Chapter 1: Logged Off

  The alarm on the telescreen blared so loudly I thought my eardrums would burst! I tossed the pillows on top of my head to dull the noise, but the sound continued to bore through my head like a drill bit into a sheet of metal.

  “Off,” I moaned. “Off!” The harsh din ceased, leaving me with pleasant silence.

  I had stayed up way too late the night before. Between the shindig in Freehold and drinking a few too many beers last night while watching the Granson Gang battle the hundred-headed dragon, I had not slept much.

  My body needed rest while my mind needed a day or two away from the game.

  My contract with the corporation specified I had to spend thirty-five hours a week logged into the game with the hours being flexible. However, I was spending way more time than that logged in, and I was not getting paid extra crypto-coin. When I was a detective, if I worked overtime, I received extra compensation. Now I was working overtime for free. What had happened to me?

  I had been playing Immersion Online (Is “playing” the correct word if I was being paid?) for ten hours a day for the previous ten days. I was starting to understand the addiction a little bit. I woke up excited to adventure with Cali, Jarrell and Flora. I felt young and alive in the game – maybe even a little immortal. The shows on the telescreen bored me. Why watch a battle raging on the screen, when I could fight in one myself? I was finding the mundane world dull, which wasn’t necessarily good. I needed to do laundry, pay bills, clean the house – mostly I needed to order food. A lot of it. My biggest outing in the last ten days had been to the all night convenience store for beer, chips, microwavable burritos, frozen pizza and beef jerky. All the major food groups. After my heart attack, I was supposed to be eating better, but the health kick had only lasted a week.

  What I really needed to do was to return some calls and respond to a slew of emails. I texted Mike Haggerty, [my former boss when I was a detective for the Major Crimes Division and my current boss for Immersion Online] informing him I would be starting my duties in Grandview in two days. Then I buried my head back into the pillows, sleep taking me instantaneously.

  The telescreen thundered again. “Reminder! Reminder! Parent visits to S.U.N.Y. Binghamton begin in three hours.”

  “Fuck!” I cursed, hopping out of bed. Slamming my toe into the wooden frame of the bed, I cursed again. I knew I had to be somewhere tonight. I was losing touch with the real world. I had three hours to shower, throw some clothing on and get the hell upstate.

  I would need to break a few speeding laws to get to Binghamton on time. Unfortunately, the autonomous driving system did not allow that, so I went old school, placed the car on manual, flooring the pedal all the way up Route 17 West. What should have been a three-hour drive took me a little under two and a half hours.

  I entered Amber’s dorm room early by a few minutes. I knew she was in a suite with two other girls, one of them a Kaylie or Kylie I thought. After knocking a few times, a freckle-faced, redhead opened the door for me. I introduced myself. When I walked into the little suite, I saw Amber and some boy around her age, nineteen or twenty, decked out in the same haptic devices I used to log into Immersion Online.

  She had mentioned the parent visit to me in passing a week earlier. I had never seen Binghamton nor visited her before. She was all I had left in the world, so I wasn’t going to let a hundred fifty miles stand in the way of some father-daughter time. I did have an older sister Nancy, who lived in a group home in Sullivan County, yet I had not visited with her in over ten years. I buried the guilt for my negligence deeply away.

  “I’m Katie by the way. One of Amber’s suite mates. Drea’s our other roomie; she’s out right now. Anyway, I think I’m rambling. I do that when I meet new people. Anyway,” she repeated, “Amber said you might or might not come – fifty percent chance. Oops. Don’t think I was supposed to say that. Anyway, she said if you showed up to message her in the game.” Katie, not Kaylie or Kylie, pulled out her phone and began typing a message.

  “She cursed at me for interrupting her. She and Billy, that’s him over there,” Katie said gesturing to the boy next to Amber on the couch, “are in the middle of a huge fight with a horde of goblins. I don’t think it’s going very well. Not sure what a goblin is, but she seems to hate them.”

  “Fuck!” Amber shouted as she abruptly emerged from the game, her hands moving like she was going to cast a spell. “Fuck!” she cursed one last time realizing she was in the real world. “I died. One goblin stabbed me in the gut and another shot me with an arrow at point blank range.” Then Billy joined the real world and she started yelling at him, “You were supposed to tank me! You let them get right by you. How am I supposed to blast them, if they are up in my face?”

  “Sorry Amb,” was all the poor kid was able to get out as he started to remove the haptic devices. “There were too many of them. I told you we needed a full party; not just the two of us.”

  I let out a little cough, which caught Amber’s attention. She looked at me as if she didn’t remember who I was, then finally said, “Hey Dad.” Then she thought for a moment, adding, “Didn’t think you would actually come. Didn’t think this was your kind of scene.”

  “No place I’d rather be. So listen, why don’t I take you, your roomies and Billy,” I gave him an extra-long stare to let him know I had my eye on him, “out for an early dinner before we go to this
parent event tonight.”

  She shook her head in exasperation and replied, “The event tonight is dinner in one of the dining halls.”

  “Well then maybe breakfast tomorrow morning,” I responded. “You can join us Billy if you want.” I don’t know why I was hassling him. He quickly and noisily packed all his haptic devices into a book bag. With his voice cracking he said, “I would love to Mr. Mason. I really would. But I have a thing in the morning.” Then he fled from the suite without even a glance back at Amber as if a horde of goblins was chasing him in real life.

  “I like him,” I said.

  “I am glad you approve,” she responded. That was all I was going to get from Amber on the subject, which was a great deal when it came to her romantic life.

  There was a long moment of awkward silence. It didn’t seem like Amber was going to break it. And Katie, when her chattiness was needed the most, had scampered away.

  “Goblins huh,” I blurted out to break the wall of ice.

  “Yeah nasty goblins. We have been fighting them all week. Trying to get to these ruins in their territory; they keep attacking us.” She went on for fifteen minutes about the goblins, the ruins and the mad wizard who gave them the quest. Her tale finally ended when ten goblins overwhelmed Ragmar, Billy’s avatar. “I hate dying in the game. Such a pain in the ass. How many times have you died? – Wow, there’s a question I never thought I would ask you.”

  “Only once,” I said, sadness suddenly flooding me as I thought about the kelpie who had taken the shape and appearance of my dead wife Bethany before violently drowning me in her pond. I wasn’t planning to tell Amber that sad story.

  “Just once,” she said, astonished. “And you’re fifteenth level? I’ve died like ten times already.”

  “I guess I’ve been lucky. Also, I told you about the siblings. We worked well together; a very balanced team.”

  “Look at you,” she joked proudly. “Talking in gaming terms. You’ve come a long way. Maybe I should have you come along with Billy and me to crush these goblins.”

  “That might be fun,” I said, contemplating the father-daughter outing.

  “I don’t think Billy would like it,” she answered with an amused look. “I think you scared him off.”

  I didn’t reply to the last statement; and changing the topic I asked, “So when is this dinner? I’m starving. Think they’ll have some mead and roast mutton?” Amber laughed.

  *

  I had a leisurely drive home the next afternoon. The car’s autopilot was engaged, with hundred-year-old rock and roll music blaring through the speakers. The dinner the night before had been your typical dining hall fare – it filled the belly but nothing more. Amber told me about her classes, her roommates, and a bit more about her adventures in the game. She was a tenth level battle mage with a focus on fire. She was grinding out levels as best she could – which was difficult with a full course load, and from what I could sense, a romantic life with Billy as well. She wanted to get to twentieth level so she could finally summon a Minor Elemental of Fire. Then to quote her, “I can scorch some goblin ass.”

  She complained for a good while about Ragmar – how he was reckless – and kept getting her killed. According to her, he was a shit tank. “He hates taking damage. That’s the main goal of the tank. He has his receptors shut totally off, so it isn’t even like he can feel any discomfort. I keep telling him to raise them to a one or even a two; at least then, he will feel a little pain and know he is taking damage. With no pain, he has to check his damage bar and he keeps forgetting to do that.” While she went on about Ragmar, she avoided any discussion of Billy – at least in reference to anything outside the game. A psychologist would have a field day with that kind of compartmentalizing.

  From the little I saw of Billy, he was a giant step up from Dirk the Dick as I had named her last boyfriend, the one she had moved in with during her gap year and after our big blowout fight. She didn’t move in with him out of love, but, I am certain to this day, she did so because she didn’t want to be alone. Especially with her mother gone. I thought about planting drugs or stolen items on him to get his ass arrested. I could have done it also. I had the means and know how. Anything to get him away from Amber. He was a big part of why we didn’t speak for almost a year. Dirk the Dick was out of her life, and if Billy the lousy tank was with her now, that was fine by me.

  I spent the next two days attending to everything I had neglected. I paid some bills, piled up the laundry so the drone could pick it up for cleaning delivery, had a month’s worth of healthy food dropped off (even some fruits and vegetables), and so on. I was certain that I was going to be busy once I entered the city of Grandview. If I had been logging in ten hours a day in the backwoods of The Great Realm, the gods only knew the hours I might be spending in one of the largest cities in the entire game. I knew it wasn’t good for my body to sit in an easy chair for so many hours while immersed in the game. I was planning to get into a routine to work five hours before logging out for half an hour to eat some food, stretch my body out, and attend to physical needs. I would then log back in for another three hours – for a total of eight hours. The ten hour days needed to stop! Of course, this plan failed miserably as many do; the city of Grandview had other ideas for me.

  Chapter 2: Havervill

  Similar to the first time I’d logged into the game several months back, a dome of light surrounded me. I kept waiting for the calming voice of Angelica to speak, but I remained in silence except for my own breathing. Finally, I called out, “Hello! Virtual assistant. Are you there?”

  “Hold your horses,” the raspy voice of an older man said to me.

  “Did you just tell me to hold my horses?” I asked.

  No response.

  Another minute passed. I was starting to get pissed. “Hello! Can we get started? I would like to log into the game sometime today. I am expected in Grandview.”

  “Alright. Alright. I’m here. Sheesh! What’s the rush? Grandview is still going to be there when you arrive. Unless there is a massive error message or a blue screen of death. In which case, you won’t be logging in.”

  “Hi,” I said, ignoring the last statement. “I’m Mace. And you are?”

  Silence again for a few seconds. I swear I heard the ruffling of an old time newspaper.

  My virtual assistant finally spoke. “I am Havervill.”

  “I was told I would be getting a Roberto?”

  “No, it was always going to be me. The boss chose me specifically because I am the best AI out there. King of the hill. Top of the virtual food chain! With the crap you are about to face in Grandview, you’re going to need your character to be tighter than a pixie’s ass cheeks.”

  Silence again. More crumpling of papers.

  I coughed. “So? Am I doing this myself, or are you going to help me?”

  “I guess if you need me, I got no choice. First off, I am going to make this easy for you.”

  He popped up my character specs, and then snapped his virtual fingers. All the information disappeared except for my name, my new level of fifty, my perks, and the few magical items I had picked up along the way. “Alrighty. Let’s start at the beginning. Are you keeping the Mace thing, or going with a real name? Maybe one with some authority.”

  He had gone too far now. I couldn’t see Haggerty or Shannon Donally picking this ass to be my virtual assistant.

  “Do you know why the boss picked me to work with you?” he responded to the question I had pondered a moment before. “Because I will call a rose a rose and a pile of shit a pile of shit. You need someone to tell you what’s what, and that’s me. So, are you keeping Mace or not?”

  “Yes!” I answered emphatically. “I’m keeping Mace. And only Mace.” The name flashed on my character sheet.

  “Okay, it’s locked in place. Let’s hit the attributes now. At level fifty, you have two hundred and eighty five points to allocate. If you aren’t certain how you arrived at that number, you ca
n take a gander at this chart.”

  Gander, I thought. Who the hell uses gander anymore? Was my AI a hundred and fifty years old? The Attribute Allocation Chart popped up. I had taken a gander at it the day before, so I already knew how I planned to distribute my points.

  Attribute Allocation Chart

  Levels

  Points

  Total Points

  Aggregate

  1

  40 for level 1

  40

  40

  2 - 50

  5 per level

  245

  285

  51 - 75

  4 per level

  100

  385

  76 - 85

  3 per level

  30

  415

  86 - 100

  1 per level

  15

  430

  SUB-TOTAL

  430

  “I hope you have some idea how you want to allocate them by this time. It maddens me when game employees have to create characters and spend two hours allocating attributes. I mean, they know they are going to have to do it, yet they haven’t planned a damn thing. I’m a busy man and got things going on outside of work. No one ever considers that the AI may have plans, or a date.”

  “A date, Havermill?” I questioned.

  “Havervill… not mill… Havervill,” the virtual assistant corrected with annoyance.

  “Sorry about that,” I said. Though I wasn’t really sorry. Havervill put the ass in assistant as far as I was concerned.