Raid Slayer 2 Read online

  Raid Slayer 2

  A LITRPG FANTASY ADVENTURE

  Riley Morrison

  Contents

  Website and Social Media

  Dedication

  1. Revelations

  2. Spat Out

  3. LOL Faceroll

  4. The Drunken Fop

  5. The Janitor

  6. Blissful Goodbyes

  7. The Day After

  8. Alone

  9. Rad Fem

  10. Haters Gonna Hate

  11. Blessed Awakening

  12. Random Gen Content

  13. Macbeth

  14. Court Joker

  15. Fist Fight

  16. The Black Witch

  17. The Deep

  18. Shattered Temple

  19. Hot Orc Chick

  20. Fallen Azinore

  21. The Infected

  22. Bookworms

  23. The Deep Ones

  24. Cured

  25. Sweet Cream

  26. Nagging Janitor

  27. Tool Weildzing Mo Fo

  28. Old Codger

  29. Amy

  30. Betrayal

  31. Threats

  32. Broken Hearts

  33. Rats

  34. The Patriarchy

  35. PK’ERS

  36. Phat Lootz

  37. Beta Male

  38. In The Backdoor

  39. Agents

  40. Murderous Reunion

  41. Lies

  42. The Plan

  43. Sludge

  44. Ent

  45. Symbol

  46. All Together

  47. Judgment Day 2.0

  48. Vengeful Goryō

  49. Payback

  50. The Stranger

  Author Notes

  Harem And Litrpg Face Book Group

  Character Stats And Information

  About the Author

  Website and Social Media

  Visit my website at rileymorrisonauthor.com

  My Face Book Page: @rileymorrisonauthor

  Where I will talk about book progress updates, more behind the scenes information and general discussion of things I like or talking to my fans!

  © 2019 Riley Morrison All Rights Reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  I greatly appreciate you taking the time to read my book. Please consider leaving a review or telling your friends about it, to help me spread the word. Thank you for supporting my work.

  Created with Vellum

  Dedication

  Dedicated to my brother Shaun, his partner Anna, to his daughter Willow and their new child coming sometime soon ™!

  Chapter One

  Revelations

  Nothing went as Zack expected.

  He exited the portal, only to find Missy, Betsy and Amy gone and found himself standing in an empty black void.

  Where was he? What was happening?

  “Finally, you are here,” a voice said from somewhere out in the darkness.

  Zack spun around, searching for the speaker. A distant speck of light caught his eye.

  It was moving toward him.

  When he went to reach for his sword, he found it no longer there. He caught his breath. All his armor was gone too. He wore only a simple white gown.

  What the hell?

  The light drew ever closer. Zack backed away as he recognized it for what it was.

  The glowing man he had seen early in his exile into the Underworld.

  Zack turned and tried to run away but found his movements had become sluggish. His whole body felt like it had been afflicted with that slow debuff the Scarlet Wizards in the 5 player dungeon, Unholy Monastery cast on players. He reckoned that was a sign he was about to be thrown in the deep end of something terrible.

  “No point trying to run, Zack John Smith,” the monotone voice of the glowing man said.

  With dread building inside him, Zack turned to face the glowing figure. He blinked. The guy was standing right behind him now.

  “Who are you?”

  Zack could make out little of the man beyond the yellow-white light shining from his body. “Call me Glimmer Man, or if you prefer, G Man. That is not my real name, for our real names have power out there in the City.”

  “What do you want then?” Zack looked around. “Where am I?”

  Two dark circles formed on G Man’s head. They looked like cartoon eyes. “You are still in Aralia Online, but in a micro-fragment of the game world. Time has been drastically slowed here so that the developers and your harem women will never notice I whisked you away. To them, you will only have disappeared for a millisecond.”

  He paused as if studying Zack. “Now, let’s get down to business. The first thing you should know is that the Oligarchy has your real world body in their possession.”

  Zack had figured as much. He remembered the dream, or whatever it had been, of seeing himself being transported into the heart of the City. “Are you with the Oligarchy or are you a developer?”

  “No, I work for neither the developers nor the Oligarchy. In fact, if either of those groups knew I was here, they would terminate me instantly.”

  “I don’t want anything to do with you then.” Zack backed away again. “I’m just trying to get out of here, so I can log the F out of the game and see what is happening out there to my body.”

  G Man followed him, maintaining a distance between them. “Trust me, friend, you don’t want to know what they are doing to you. Now, listen to me. I work with a resistance group, a group fighting the Oligarchy.”

  Zack’s heart raced. If the developers found out that he was approached by a resistance figure… He thought of Amy, Betsy and Missy.

  All he wanted was to get back to them and pretend this never happened. The developers had already locked him inside one of the Oligarchies’ games and they had his defenseless real world body in their possession. He didn’t want things to get any worse.

  “You are important,” G Man said as he stopped and watched Zack continue to back away.

  “Important? I’m a nobody. I just want out of here.” Zack gave up on trying to escape. “Send me back to my harem.”

  “You will be returning to them shortly, but only after I tell you what you need to know. It’s true, you are a nobody, but your mother isn’t.”

  Zack’s heart jumped. “What? My mother?” He frowned. “The cops took her and she’s probably dead by now. If they didn’t kill her, her sickness will have. That’s the whole reason I fled into Aralia Online. I have nothing left out there.”

  “The cops lied to you. They don’t have your mother, she escaped their clutches and is with the resistance in a secure location.”

  “No. My mother was sick. Almost bedridden.”

  “All a ruse, my friend. She couldn’t very well tell you the truth. Your mother was trying to protect you.”

  Zack’s mind spun as he thought of his mother resting in bed, too weak to climb into her stasis-game-pod to escape the shackles of her weakening body. Could it all have been an act?

  A year or so ago, he remembered hearing a man’s voice in his mother’s house when he arrived and yet when he had entered her apartment, he found her collapsed on the floor. There had been no one there.

  At the time, he thought maybe someone had tried to rob her and had knocked her down and fled when they heard her door open. When his mother had recovered, she claimed she couldn’t recall what had happened. When Zack pressed her on it and offered to tell the cops, she had grown upset and demanded he forget about it. In the end, he had let it be. She
was his mother after all.

  Still, other than that, nothing else jumped out that his mother might have been lying to him. Zack scowled. “I don’t believe you. Let me go. I want to return—”

  “Believe whatever you will, my friend. It changes nothing.”

  “What do you want then?” Zack took a menacing step toward the glowing man. Maybe the only way out of here was to kill him.

  “The Underworld is special.” G Man didn’t retreat as Zack bore down on him. “The developers lost control of this place not long after they created it.”

  “I don’t care. Let me out of here.” Zack went to punch him in the face but found his fist would not obey him. Instead of hitting G Man, it punched Zack in the gut. “Gah.” Zack bent over double, the wind rushing from his lungs.

  G Man laughed. “Don’t bother trying to hurt me, I control your body here.”

  Zack found himself frozen in place, his head twisting up to look at the glowing man against his will. Damn it, what the hell?

  “I have a lot to go through, so shut up and listen,” G Man said, his twin black eyes drawing Zack in. “The Underworld is unlike anything else the developers have ever created, a new world born of their desire to reduce the computing requirements needed to run the games. Not long after they created it, something big happened that the devs weren’t prepared for. They lost control of the Underworld and are unable to see much of what happens inside this zone nor are they able to direct factions and events. What caused this loss of control is unknown.”

  The G Man’s voice became grave. “The Oligarchy are up to something big and need all the computing power they can muster. That is why they will do anything to gain back control of the Underworld.”

  “What are they planning?” Zack didn’t like the sound of that.

  “We don’t know yet but are working on finding out. Whatever it is, it can’t be good.” G Man swept his arm around. “As I said, the Underworld is something new, something they lost control over. This is the real reason they have sent players like you down here. They are testing it, seeing what happens, working out if the Underworld raid zone can be put to use.”

  The G Man leaned in conspiratorially. “Ever wonder why they bothered making these games? Well, just think of it. The people outnumber the Oligarchy a hundred thousand to one, so they need to control those masses. And what better way to do it, than getting them all dependent on games, being that they are the only way to escape the oppression of the real world. This works much like religion once did.”

  Zack’s mind spun as he thought of the enormity of that. It made sense. Not only did it help subdue the people so they didn’t rise up and overthrow the ruling Oligarchy, it also reduced the population as hardly anyone had kids anymore.

  “Testing this zone is not the real reason you are here.” G man’s voice pulled Zack out of his thoughts. “The other players in the Underworld are nobodies, but not you, Zack. You are vitally important to the resistance, for your mother will not go on leading us unless we find a way to save you.”

  “Then why come here?” Zack bared his teeth. “You not only put yourself at risk, you also put me in danger. If you have power over this place, why don’t you just pull me out?”

  “I’m here because your mother sent me. She wants to help you escape, as we don’t have the power to log you out of the game. That said, we have a little power here and will do what we can to help you. Just know, you are under the Oligarch’s control now, not the developers so we must be extra careful whenever we reach out to you.”

  Zack was suddenly interested. “Why doesn’t the Oligarchy log me out of here if they think I am important? I assume they want to interrogate me.”

  “We don’t think the Oligarchy can pull you out, as they don’t control the Underworld either. Our insiders working in the center of the City are looking into your case. They want to know why the devs sent you into the Underworld, to begin with.”

  “The head developer told me it’s because I had a Code 8 Violation.”

  G Man crossed his arms. “Our theory is that they didn’t know who you were until it was too late. You were already sent down here by the time they realized who your mother was.” He laughed. “Your mother was good at hiding your true identity.”

  Something occurred to Zack. “She had someone in the black market change our names when I was around thirteen years old. Was she part of the resistance, even then?”

  “Yes. That was her trying to protect you.”

  So much of what Zack thought to be real was a lie. He could barely process it all. “How can the resistance help me escape the Underworld?”

  The light around G Man started to dim. “First, you should know that this Underworld has become a meeting place for the resistance, as it is hard for us to meet in person. The developers control very little of the Underworld and can only see parts of it at any one time though they have agents down here watching for people like me.”

  All the more reason I want to get out of here!

  “Second. The Oligarchy wants you to survive as much as we do. They likely want to use you against your mother as a way to lure her out of hiding or perhaps they want to interrogate you and see if you know her location.”

  “You said my mother escaped the cops. Is she safe?”

  G Man shrugged. “As safe as anyone in the resistance is these days.”

  Zack assumed that meant she wasn’t safe at all. The ruling establishment would pursue the resistance ruthlessly, fearing they might spark a true uprising. “If the Oligarchy wants me out of here so they can use me against my mother, then wouldn’t I be better off staying down here forever?” He could think of far worse fates than spending the rest of his life with three of the most beautiful, loving women in the world.

  “They will never allow that. Like I said, they have some control here. That disease you have is one way for them to hurry you along.”

  “I thought all players got a quest like that.” As soon as Zack said that, he remembered Sonja. The game hadn’t given her a disease to make her progress to the next level of the Underworld. Sonja said she had been in the game for more than a year. Perhaps, the whole quest to cure the Cave Blight was a task tailored only for him.

  Or maybe he had simply been unlucky and had contracted something the developers put into the game as a random side quest, just one with grave implications to the player themselves.

  “What happens if I die in here?” Zack asked. “The head dev said my real world body will die as they would cut off my food supply.”

  “Again, our sources are looking into this but from what we know, it is more complex than them simply removing your food supply. That would be an easy fix.”

  The G Man paused. “If they could pull you out of the game after your in-game avatar died, they’d have killed you by now. There must be a reason they aren’t doing that. Maybe, if you die in here, you still die out there.”

  Zack felt trapped. “So, even if I manage to get back to the surface, they will log me out of the game and drag me off to be interrogated. Sounds like I am screwed no matter what I do.” He didn’t want to mention what normally came with interrogations. He’d seen the horrific scars on others who had been questioned by the Oligarchy.

  “Your body is deep inside their fortress at the heart of the City. But we’re trying to help you. Don’t give up. Even in here, we can aid you in small ways.” G Man told him of a resistance armory somewhere in Middle Underworld.

  “I have no idea where that is.”

  “Your Bard lover will recall the place at the right time. Trust in us and trust in her.”

  G Man had now faded to almost nothing. “What’s happening to you?” Zack asked, as he felt control return to his body.

  “I am only allowed to remain here for several minutes at a time.”

  “Is there anything else you can tell me? Will I see you again?”

  “There is little else I can share with you right now. It will be some time before I can see you again. W
e have to wait for the developers to lose track of you before I can make another appearance, and that doesn’t happen very often.”

  “Wait. I met another player who said she met a man named Fawkes115 and that he took her reverse harem from her. Do you know who that is?”

  G Man reached for Zack, but by the time they touched, he was almost gone. “No, impossible. He is dead. How did you—” His voice faded to nothing.

  Zack swept his hand through where the other man had just been. “Come back. Who is he? What do I do if he comes for me?”

  Silence was his only answer.

  Chapter Two

  Spat Out

  A moment later, a light flashed and Zack found himself mid step. As soon as his foot hit the ground, he stopped. Something bumped into him from behind and he fell forward onto his knees.

  “Hey, whatcha stop for?”

  Amy. Zack got to his feet and turned around. Amy, Betsy and Missy were all looking at him. Betsy put her hand on his arm. “Are you all right, my love?”

  “You look pale.” Missy strummed a note on her guitar. Green musical notes floated around her. “You’re not hurting, for my soft melody does not heal your soul.”