The Survivors: A LitRPG Adventure (A Troubled World Book 3)

  SURVIVORS

  ©2023 STEPHANNE PAYNE

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the authors.

  Aethon Books supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact editor@aethonbooks.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Aethon Books

  www.aethonbooks.com

  Print and eBook formatting by Josh Hayes. Artwork provided by Fernando Granea.

  Published by Aethon Books LLC.

  Aethon Books is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead is coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  CONTENTS

  ALSO IN SERIES

  1. A New Purpose

  2. A Quest to Build a Dream On

  3. Po’Boy

  4. Hope for the World

  5. Truth is Painful

  6. It Starts

  7. We Need to Talk

  8. Discovery

  9. A Coordinated Effort

  10. Careless Whisper

  11. Actions Speak Louder than Words

  12. A Reckoning

  13. Anguish

  14. Ending the Aggravation

  15. Vengeance

  16. The Heartstone

  17. Cleasey

  18. Body Armor

  19. Call to Arms

  20. For Whom the Bell Tolls

  21. A Collective Holding of Breath

  22. The Battlefield

  23. Agony

  24. Let it Be

  Thank you for reading Survivors

  Groups

  LitRPG

  I have heard it said that all people die twice: once when their body dies, and once after their name is spoken for the very last time. No monument can ever be grand enough for you, my son… so my hope is to let your name live on. One day I will catch up to you on the journey you’ve already started, but until then, I miss and love you with every beat of my broken heart. I also want to dedicate the inspiration for the character Barue to my Anatolian Shepherd, Bandit. For over a decade you were my steadfast companion and always my most loyal and faithful friend. I’m sure you’ll be where all the good dogs go as you have always been my very good boy.

  ALSO IN SERIES

  Sentinel

  Seeker

  Survivors

  1

  A NEW PURPOSE

  “Argh,” Nikole said and then immediately slapped her hand across her mouth. She had intended to start her statement with ‘what’, but, regardless of her intention, ‘argh’ was what came out.

  Tako, Mace, Barue, and Arianee turned from where they were sitting around a table to look at her. She was dressed in a sort of pirate wench outfit complete with eyepatch, stuffed parrot on her shoulder, and a white-on-black Jolly Roger-emblazoned hat. Next to her sat her companion, a giant electrified wolf-like creature named Chewbarka. Even though he was a dog, he looked unmistakably embarrassed. One could only assume the embarrassment was due to his matching black neckerchief, similarly emblazoned with the crossed bones and skull and little matching hat that sat perkily between his ears.

  “What in the world is that?” Mace asked, obviously amused as a smile stretched across his face, and the laugh he wanted to bellow was clear in his tone.

  Nikole slowly removed her hand from her mouth. “Me thinks it be the reward from Elandria, aye,” she said in a husky voice that rang with the lilt of a pirate. She clamped her mouth shut and felt her face redden.

  “That’s… stylish,” Arianee said, her tone and eyes twinkling with laughter.

  “Argh, me knows it be stupid, and somehow, aye, it affects me speech,” Nikole replied, her face growing redder with frustration. Chewbarka whined and tried brushing his hat off with a paw but couldn’t seem to make it budge.

  Tako and Barue, both of whom had politely been holding back, finally burst into laughter. “That’s fantastic!” Barue bellowed. “What’s it called?”

  “Aye, laugh till ye be blue, ye bilge rat! I be waitin’ fer ye ta sleep, I be! Then, aye, then me takes me retribution! Arr!” Nikole growled and somehow went even redder.

  “Seriously, what’s it called? I want one, too!” Barue exclaimed as Tako, beside him, fell onto his side in now-silent spasms of laughter.

  Nikole shook her head in disgust. “The reward be called Bounty o’ the Seas. Alas, me thinks it be a cruel, cruel joke Elandria hath played,” she growled. She gestured down at Chewbarka, who was still trying to displace the hat from his head, and said, “Arr, Chewie be tellin’ ye truth, he be! Tis not the bounty but the bane of the seas, me beauties. I can say it no more true than that. And, Barue, if ye be lovin’ it, mayhap ye can ask Chewie to be borrowing his hat if ye likes it so well? I be sure he be givin’ it to ya if he could take it off his miserable, flea-bitten head.” Nikole stomped her foot, her face now blazing red with a mixture of anger and embarrassment.

  Tako, holding his side from the apparent pain associated with unrestrained laughter, said, “Calm down, Nik. You’re so red you look like you’re going to explode.”

  Mace, who—to his credit—had yet to actually start laughing, blushed and said, “You know, I think it looks rather fetching.”

  “Argh, ye would say that ye shiny but mangy cur! I thinks me looks like a tavern wench, aye!” Nikole exclaimed, which caused Mace to finally give in to laughter. Nikole turned her eyes to Arianee, the only one still straight-faced, and pleaded, “What kind o’ cruel prank be this, to give me such a reward, me pretty? What good could this provide? Me thinks this is a useless, embarrassing reward!”

  Arianee gave Nikole an amused look and glanced at the three boys who were all in various forms of folding in on themselves, out of breath and streaming tears of laughter. Barue sounded as if he was actually near braying. She smiled and turned back to Nikole. “Just open your bag and change it out with your normal gear, silly. I think they”—Arianee waved her hand vaguely in the direction of the hysterically laughing males—“are clearly showing you the value of that reward, though. Elandria likely knew we’d be a little depressed by the outcome of our last task and need something to lighten the mood. From the looks of it,” she said, giving the boys an indulgent glance, “she succeeded.”

  Nikole got a distant look on her face for a moment before, suddenly, she appeared dressed in all her normal gear, and Chewbarka’s adornments vanished. Chewbarka gave an audible sigh before lying down and giving Nikole a resentful glare. Picking up on the emotion from her animal companion, Nikole glanced down at the vargr and said, “Don’t blame me! I had no idea it was going to turn us into idiots!”

  Tako hiccupped as he sat back up and wiped tears from his still-seeping eyes. “That’s not like any pirate I’ve ever seen. It must have taken memories from your where and applied them here.”

  “Not memories, exactly,” Nikole admitted. “That’s more like the mock pirate version of what we dress up like during Halloween.”

  “Regardless, that was epic,” he said. “Barue’s really going to want one of those.”

  “I do!” Barue agreed as he worked to catch his breath. “That is the coolest toy I’ve ever seen, and I have quite the collection! None of my toys make me talk funny, though. How can I get one of those?”

  “I’ll see if I can work up something for you,” Arianee said, smiling at the big Bennet. “No promises that it can make you talk like she did since she took that from her world. Nik, when needed, think I can convince you to put that get-up back on so I can make Barue one?”

  Nikole gave it serious consideration for a moment—she really had felt more than ridiculous—and finally replied, “Yes, as long as you swear not to make me talk.”

  “Sworn,” Arianee said with a smile. “Trust me, that would benefit us both. I don’t think I could handle you talking like that for hours. What made you think to put it on?”

  Nikole shrugged. “We’ve been back from Valeria for nearly a month, and, honestly, I hadn’t even thought about it. I was tired of just sitting here, waiting on news from Chetonia, and for some reason, I remembered I hadn’t looked at the reward.”

  “When did you actually get it?” Tako asked, his face growing serious.

  Nikole gave a huge sigh and said, “Fastosian.”

  All the lingering laughter in the room seemed to be siphoned away with the mere speaking of that name. She didn’t need to s
ay more. By unspoken agreement, they hadn’t really talked about what had transpired right before they fled the city of Ignis Augustus and the country of Valeria. She assumed the others, like her, were deeply affected by the end of her last quest. They had discovered a Dragonsai heartstone, and her quest made it clear that she needed to destroy it. They learned the only way to destroy a dragon’s heartstone was by introducing it into the heart of another dragon. They had all persuaded themselves, or at least Nikole had, into thinking it may not cause the living dragon any harm. Looking back, she admitted they were being intentionally naïve at best. If she was honest with herself, she knew they had all known it would kill the living dragon. If the act would destroy one heartstone, logic implied it would likely destroy the other. She shivered thinking how their dragon friend Milotuck had volunteered to have the stone put into him.

  While Fastosian wasn’t a good example of a dragon by any standard, it was still extreme, and they all felt guilty. Killing someone outside of the heat of battle felt both dirty and wrong. She shook her head to dispel the images of Fastosian’s blown-apart remains that coated the cell after her dark deed.

  Tako nodded gravely. “I can see why you didn’t think to look at it right away, then,” he said.

  Nikole noticed the small nods of agreement from Arianee, Barue, and Mace. Without meaning to push the topic further, she blurted, “It’s been weeks! Why hasn’t Chetonia sent word yet about the fallout from what we did?”

  Tako shrugged and said, “My guess is there’s no news to send yet. It takes a while to really understand the repercussion of things sometimes.”

  “I get that,” Nikole replied, “but this wasn’t something little. Fastosian freaking exploded through a solid rock wall, and Wilam bellowed for everyone in earshot about treachery or whatever. I can’t even imagine how long the clean-up took. And what if they didn’t get everything? What if some dragon is out for a walk one day and they trip over Fastosian’s nose or something?”

  “He didn’t explode that badly,” Mace said, though not loudly and not with much conviction.

  Nikole turned and looked at Mace in disgust. “How does one not explode ‘that badly’, Mace?” she asked, putting air quotes around the words. “Isn’t any level of exploding bad?” Her temper was peaked, and she wasn’t even sure why.

  “Hey, you know what he meant,” Tako soothed. “He means some of Fastosian’s parts were still in one piece.”

  “Do Dragonsai return to the essence like other creatures?” Arianee asked, shifting the topic.

  No one responded for what felt like a long time until, finally, Tako shrugged and said, “I would think so, but I honestly don’t know.”

  “Me either,” Barue said. “I grew up around dragons, but it’s not like they did more than tolerate us, and that’s when they weren’t actively destroying us. We weren’t invited to any death ceremonies.” He cocked his head to the side before continuing, “You know, I honestly don’t know if dragons even die naturally anymore.”

  “And it’s not like anyone has ever killed one until now,” Mace added unhelpfully.

  “Hmm,” Nikole hummed while she thought and tried to rein her temper in. “It’s not very fair to say they barely tolerated people before, Barue. I mean, the bad things that happened seem to be from a smaller faction of dragons that hate people and not the mindset of most. Anyhow, I bet they do go back to the essence or whatever.” Everyone turned and looked at her with open curiosity on why she, of all people, would think that. Of the group, Nikole was the outlander. Her first stint on Glythador was for a brief period of months, and since her return, a full year still had not passed. Of everyone in the party, she was the least experienced in everything and the least inclined to know some random, speculative knowledge on Dragonsai. She shrugged and continued, “We all know dragons went to my planet for a while. There’s a billion legends about knights fighting dragons and actually killing them, but there’s nothing in the fossil record or any physical record that prove they were real creatures. All we had was stories. But, since we do know they were there, it makes me think that even those who died on my planet went back to the essence after they died. Hence, no fossil record.”

  Tako seemed to think that over for a moment before he nodded and said, “I don’t exactly know what a fossil record is, but physical record I can understand. That said, I can’t fault your logic. So, assuming you’re right and they do return to the essence, then there shouldn’t be any bits of Fastosian just ‘laying around’.”

  “What about that golden tooth though? It was still here,” Nikole asked, arguing against her own point. She was referring to a golden dragon tooth that Mace, in a coordinated effort with their four Dragonsai friends, had used to temporarily solidify a rancid quagmire.

  “That’s different,” Mace interjected. “There was some magic done to it that turned it gold and gave it those explosive properties.”

  “You know what, somehow it makes me feel better that there isn’t some cultural thing where dragons like one gold tooth for aesthetic reasons,” Arianee said.

  “Supposedly, it had a lot of potential uses,” Mace continued, completely ignoring Arianee’s statement, “which is why Tuck had it in the first place. I’m guessing whatever they do to it with the magic changes it, so it’s no longer affected by being separated from its host. Sort of like the corpses necromancers reanimate.”

  “Well, that still doesn’t guarantee that no one heard Fastosian explode, saw what was left of him before it disappeared, or heard Wilam’s tirade,” Nikole added, somberness returned. “I swear they should have let us execute that cockalorum instead. Maybe we should go back.”

  The whole group gaped at her, but again, it was Tako who spoke first. “Why would we do that? First off, we are not going to execute another dragon. And, like you said, it’s only been a few handfuls of moons. That’s not nearly long enough to know if it’s even safe to return. We have to trust Chetonia.”

  “But why?” Nikole asked, hearing the whine in her own voice. “To talk to Cheesepuff, I mean, not to kill Wilam,” she clarified. “We all saw what she did in Ignis Augustus. It felt like a completely different city. It’s proof that people and dragons can coexist peacefully, right? So what did they do, run all the people out of town and tell them to go hide? It was just us! And we haven’t heard any news saying what happened. I mean, we haven’t heard any news at all.”

  “The Dragonsai obviously look up to Chetonia. I mean, they wanted her to be their new leader. She’s the one who said she wouldn’t do it alone and brought in Tuck and the others. You called it right a long time ago, she’s meant to be something special. So give her the time to send us information,” Tako said soothingly.

  Nikole huffed out a breath of air and realized Mace, Arianee, and Barue had turned their faces to her, waiting on her next comment. She felt like she and Tako were batting a ball between them. Their friends—including Chewbarka—were acting like observers at a tennis match, watching the motion of the ball being hit back and forth. “Well, we can’t just sit here, holed up in the Centrum forever,” she conceded.

  “You’re right. And, since you’re pushing, I’d say we can all agree that it’s time to start talking about some ‘what if’ plans. Mace,” Tako said and smiled when he realized Mace had already been looking at him, “you’re our strategist.”

  “Yes, Mace,” Nikole interjected. “What do we do if the brown and stinky hits the oscillating mechanism and the dragons decide this was the tipping point and go bonkers on all people?” Nikole asked.

  “I’m not sure, but I think you just asked me what happens if it gets bad and dragons react?” Mace sort of asked, and Nikole winked and nodded once. “Well, at least we know that we can take down a dragon.”