Unlucky Dead: A LitRPG Adventure (Liorel Online Book 1) Read online

  Even though the sun was beating down on the field, I didn’t feel hot. From all this clothing I would have expected to be sweating like a madman, but I was the perfect temperature.

  Perhaps temperature didn’t affect the undead?

  That thought reminded me of my current predicament. I peeled the gloves off my hand. There were holes where chunks of flesh had rotted away, and I could see ivory bones beneath. I pressed my rotting hand against my face and found the flesh there to be no better. I was a disgusting half rotten corpse.

  “Holy shit” I muttered, unable to stop myself. I had to find a mirror or something. I slipped the glove back on, and started rummaging through my backpack again. An axe came out, magically expanding to the appropriate size as it came free. A small prompt appeared in the air next to it:

  Woodsman's Axe

  Level 1 bladed weapon

  No special abilities

  The head of the axe was a dull grey, insufficient for seeing my reflection. I put it on the ground beside the bag and continued my rummaging. There was no mirror to be found, nor anything else that would let me see myself. I did have a map which marked the field on which I stood, and depicted a small town named Whiteridge. I was no cartographer, but I was pretty sure that was where the faint smoke was coming from. There was a loaf of bread, some hard cheese, a couple of apples, and a carving knife that looked far too small to stab someone with.

  I dropped the health potion back into the backpack, slung it onto my back, and then hefted my new axe over one shoulder. Logan was already half way across the field, an identical backpack on his back.

  Before approaching him I dug my starting charms out of my pocket. They wouldn’t do me any good unless they were affixed to items, and my axe seemed as good a place as any to start. I took the Bull Rush charm and held it against the axe. The golden thread atop the charm stuck like a magnet, leaving the charm to dangle. The Chameleon Cloak charm I affixed to my pants so that it dangled by my waist. Hopefully I’d find some better gear soon, but at least I had both my abilities available now.

  “Holy shit, you’re a zombie!” Logan accused as he came close enough to examine me. He too had a hood, and like me it was resting on his shoulders rather than hiding his skull. Unlike me, he had no flesh left. His bone-yellow skull sat atop carefully aligned vertebrae, as if balancing in place. His eyes were sunken pits with the barest glow of blue light buried deep within. His mouth was stretched out in the dead mans smile, and his nose was a small hole in his face.

  He looked terrifying.

  “You look pretty grim yourself” I joked, trying not to sound too unnerved.

  “Nice axe” Logan said as his face contorted. It took me a moment to realise he was smiling. He had no muscles to use, but his jawline morphed enough to give a passable impression of a smile. It was incredibly unsettling.

  “What’d you get?” I asked. He didn’t appear to be armed.

  One of his hands dropped out the bottom of his long sleeves holding an ornate wand. It looked like it was carved from a single bone - a small femur maybe? Jesus, was his weapon literally made from a dead baby?

  “What the hell?” I stepped closer to better examine the wand.

  “Creepy right?” Logan said, as if he hadn’t given it any further thought. I grabbed his wrist and pulled the wand closer to my face.

  “It’s definitely bone right? Is it a kids leg or something?” I asked.

  “Woah. I didn’t think about it. The tooltip doesn’t say anything like that” he stammered, suddenly inspecting the wand for himself.

  “That’s messed up man. This is why people say necromancers are evil” I said, trying to make a joke of it. We were just playing a video game after all, it wasn’t like a real person had died to fashion the weapon.

  “Yeah. Hope it’s not one of theirs” Logan gestured towards the smoke and cackled.

  I turned away from him to look toward the town. There were quests waiting to be claimed.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  It took the better part of ten minutes before we saw the town. Most of the walk had been spent on a wide dirt path that skirted the edge of the field. It seemed to come all the way from the forest into the heart of Whiteridge. The city itself was hidden beyond a thick wooden wall that encircled it. There was a large gate up ahead where the path met the wall. Small houses stood haphazardly on the outside of the wall, there certainly wasn’t a building code or anything in Liorel. The ramshackle houses surprised me a little - I would have thought the lord would want to keep open ground around his walls. It must be rather peaceful here, which I guess made sense for a starting town.

  Logan was finishing catching me up on the last few months of his life, a story that had been continuing almost since we’d started walking. Apparently being a father was no different to being a regular person, except you got less sleep and more shit. Literally. Most of his tale had been about how cool the little girl was, though to me a baby seemed about as interesting as a sack of potatoes. Still, it was good to hear that he was happy.

  “Anyway, Alice is away for at least the weekend. So you could fly down and we could have a proper party, with blackjack and hookers.”

  I laughed. Neither of us had any sort of illegal connections - hell I wouldn’t be able to get weed, let alone anything stronger. I also wouldn’t know where to find hookers for such a party, nor would I particularly want to. TV made them look like glamorous model-types but in reality you were more likely to find a toothless meth fiend. That was my understanding anyway.

  “We’ve got an entire virtual world to be the heroes of. There’s no time for hookers” I said, perhaps a little too loudly, as a young woman stepped out of the house ahead of us. She couldn’t have been much more than four feet tall, with dirty blond hair that fell over her shoulders in a waterfall.

  “Hi there!” I called out, desperately hoping she hadn’t heard me say anything about hookers. I’m sure if I was alive I’d be blushing right now.

  The woman looked up from the washing basket in her hands, noticing us for the first time. She seemed to stare at us for an impossibly long moment before the washing dropped from her hands and her mouth fell open. Instinctively I looked over my shoulder, certain that a dragon was swooping down toward us. We were alone on the wide road. Not another soul in sight.

  “Undead!” The woman screamed in a blood curdling screech of terror. She turned and ran down the path away from us, heading further into the town.

  “Help! Undead!” She screamed as she got further away.

  “What the fuck?” Logan asked me as we came to a halt.

  “Jira, are you there?” I asked. The sprite popped into existence a few feet in front of me.

  “How can I help?” She asked, her happy enthusiasm at complete odds with the screams of terror in the background.

  “Is there anything you forgot to tell me about being Undead?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have general information on the Undead race. Is there a specific question you’d like answered?”

  “Are NPCs terrified of us?” Logan asked. The bone wand had appeared in his gloved hand. I had to admit, he did look rather terrifying.

  “Oh yes, of course. Normal townsfolk only know of the mindless undead that roam the world. They will be hostile towards any un - oh.”

  Jira glowed brighter for a moment, as if a light bulb had literally appeared above her head.

  “If you hide your true nature, people won’t be frightened of you.” She did a quick lap around me before continuing.

  “Everything else is hidden. You should just have to wear your hood.”

  The woman fleeing from us must have found sympathetic ears, because I could now hear more voices issuing the warning. A church bell began ringing - a frantic wave of sound that screamed a warning for miles. Jira still seemed entirely oblivious.

  “Do you have any other questions?”

  I shook my head, speechless. We’d been in the game no more than fifteen minutes, and an entire
city was on red alert and terrified of us. Peering down the street into the heart of the town I could see people gathering together.

  “Uh… Logan. Does that look like a pitchfork and torches kind of mob to you?” I pointed to where the people were gathering.

  “We should get out of here.” He agreed.

  We started to run.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Now, I’m not saying we’re cowards. But if I had a tail it would have been between my legs. I glanced back every few seconds but the mob didn’t seem to be moving towards us. The town looked to be preparing a defence rather than launch an assault. Still, I didn’t think it’d be wise to stick around and see what they were going to do.

  “Are you struggling to breath?” Logan wheezed next to me. We’d only been running for a couple of minutes, but my legs were starting to strain from the effort. Logan looked like he was going to collapse at any moment so I slowed to a walk. He started stumbling along like a drunk, looking grateful. Maybe my new years resolution wasn’t such a stupid idea after all.

  “Stupid. Game. Logic.” Logan wheezed. He poked at his chest with a bony finger.

  “I don’t even have lungs. How can they hurt?” He moaned.

  I started walking backwards, studying the landscape behind us. I could see some people moving amongst the houses but there wasn’t a mob armed with pitchforks following us. Not yet anyway.

  “Hey, maybe we should put our hoods up. You know, just in case.” I turned around and looked along the path ahead of us. In the distance, probably twenty minutes or so away, was the forest. A river curved close to the path up ahead and a small stand of trees grew on the other side. I couldn’t see anyone else around, but it was worth playing it safe. If what Jira had said was right, we should be able to interact with NPCs as long as we hid the fact we were Undead.

  Logan, still struggling to gather his breath, just nodded and pulled his hood up over his head. His face disappeared from view into a computer-generated shadow. Even though I should have been able to make out his features in the direct sunlight, his hood masked his bony nature. I lifted my own hood.

  “Damn, I can’t see you at all.” He wheezed. He was starting to sound more human again. Well, more normal anyway. I nodded, satisfied that my disguise was working as well as his.

  “Maybe we head for those trees there.”

  I pointed to the small stand of trees by the bend in the river. We’d have to cross the river, but they looked dense enough to hide us. At least long enough to see whether the townsfolk were going to group together and start roaming the countryside. I was starting to feel a little angry at Logan. He was the one that had decided we should play as undead after all.

  “Yeah, I guess so.” He said. It sounded like he’d recovered most of his breath, so we started walking again. It didn’t take long before we were standing at the edge of the river. The water whirled past far faster than I had been expecting. It looked deep too.

  “So, how are we going to cross this?” Logan asked.

  I looked around, but couldn’t see any bridges. I had an inkling there would be one further downstream where the river passed by Whiteridge, but that was the opposite of helpful right now. On a hunch, I plopped my backpack on the ground and fished out my map. As I’d suspected there was a bridge near Whiteridge. No other bridges were marked. The small stand of trees was marked on my map with a cross, but there was no legend to explain what that meant.

  “Hey, look at this.” I offered Logan the map.

  “What do you reckon a cross could be?” I asked him, knowing he wouldn’t have any better guess than me. He studied the map for a time, then shrugged his narrow shoulders.

  “Dunno.” He handed the map back, and I stowed it in my backpack once again.

  “Jira?” I asked, and the little ball of light shimmered into view. Her brightness faded, making her slender form more visible.

  “How can I help?” She chirped, ever the cheerful one.

  “Those trees are marked on my map with a cross. What does that mean?”

  “Your map is from an adventurers kit. The mark probably means a previous adventurer found something interesting there.”

  Her use of the word probably unnerved me a little. She was supposed to be my all-knowing guide, but she seemed pretty oblivious.

  “What do you mean probably?” I asked

  “The cross is just a marker, it has no inherent meaning. Your gear came from an NPC explorer who retired up north. I’m afraid I don’t know what he might have found.” She replied.

  Well that was something. My crappy second hand items all had a back story. This game was crazy deep. I looked over at Logan to gauge his reaction.

  “We have to check it out!” he said, pumping his fist.

  “Alright. Mystery woods it is. But how are we going to cross this?”

  I turned toward the floating sprite. I got the impression she was patiently waiting for us to query her or dismiss her.

  “Do we need to breath?” I asked. Logan jumped in surprise.

  “Wait… you want to walk through?” He peered toward the water as Jira chimed in.

  “Nope. The undead don’t need to breath. It allows you to go to a number of places the other races can’t.” She gave a shrill little laugh and I felt a smile draw itself on my face.

  “So we can’t drown. Lets just swim across.” I said, already taking the pack off my back. I stowed my axe, marvelling again as the weapon shrank to fit within the confines of the pack. The river wasn’t particularly wide, but it was moving swiftly.

  And it looked very deep.

  “What are we going to do with our packs?” Logan asked. I was already eyeing the distance. I was no expert, but it looked like I’d be able to throw my pack across. Logan seemed to read my mind.

  “Oh hell no. You want to throw all your starting gear in the river?”

  “I want to throw my gear over the river. It’s not that far.” I looked at Jira, hoping the impassive fairy might give us a better idea. She just looked back at me blankly.

  “Can you carry things?”

  “For a short time, yes.”

  Logan burst out laughing and I gave him a withering glare. Or at least I tried to, with my hood up he couldn’t actually see my face.

  “Could you hold onto my backpack while I swim across?” I asked her, extending the pack. She bobbed up and down in agreement, and the pack vanished. Before I could second guess my plan, I leapt feet first into the river.

  It was a good jump, and I made it about a third of the way across before I hit the water. It was in that moment I realised how fast the river was flowing. From above it had looked swift, but manageable. As soon as my boots sank beneath the surface it pulled my feet downriver, driving the rest of me deeper into the murk. I sank like a rock, straight to the bottom of the river. Large stones battered me. I managed to wrap my hands around one, arresting my movement.

  The large rock I’d grabbed was anchoring me in place. The water still tore at my clothes and tried its best to push me downriver, but as long as I could maintain my grip I was safe. This whole time, in the panic and the struggles I had been instinctively holding a breath. For all I knew my lungs could have rotted away by now, but the physical sensation felt exactly the same as it did in the real world, and my chest was beginning to burn.

  Jira better be right.

  I exhaled. Only, I didn’t have any air trapped in any lungs, so nothing came out. Instead there was simply nothing. Water swirled past me, and I neither breathed nor choked on it. I simply wasn’t breathing at all. And that was awesome.

  I waited a moment to make sure I wasn’t going insane. Maybe this is what drowning felt like. But nothing hurt, and my vision wasn’t closing to a tunnel or anything. I strained my back and lifted the enormous rock from its home on the ground. Cradling it in my arms I took a tentative step forward, and then another.

  The murky water was impossible to see through, but it was all flowing in a single direction so orienting m
yself to face the opposite side of the bank was easy. I took another few faltering footsteps, then found myself in a bit of a groove. One step forward, a half crouch, readjust the rock, and then take the next step. After a minute I noticed that the water was pulling with much less force. I’d been walking on a bit of an incline for a while, but I seemed to be closing in on the other side.

  It took another minute before my head broke free of the torrent. And almost another full minute before I swapped my grip from the rock to the bank, and pulled myself up out of the water. I was soaked to the bone - though I guess that phrase didn’t mean quite the same thing when I had bone-deep rotted holes in my flesh.

  I sat on the riverbank and looked around. Whiteridge was much closer now, but still a ways downstream - and on the opposite side. I looked back upstream and saw Logan waving to me. I hopped up and jogged back up toward the trees until I was standing opposite Logan.

  “Did you see that? That’s some pirates of the Caribbean shit right there” I shouted. My plan had worked!

  Jira appeared beside me, and dropped my pack at my feet.

  “You coming?”

  Logan gave me a theatrical bow, then dove head first into the water.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I fished my axe out of my backpack while I waited for Logan to surface. He dragged himself onto the river bank much further downstream than I had, which gave me a little kick. He had a nasty tendency to be better than me at everything. Him struggling more than me with something as simple as crossing a river made me smile.