Stand & Fight: A LitRPG Adventure (Fate & Freedom Online Book 3), page 1
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STAND & FIGHT
©2023 DAN GILMORE
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CONTENTS
ALSO IN THE SERIES
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Epilogue
Thank you for reading Stand & Fight
Groups
LitRPG
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ALSO IN THE SERIES
TOOTH & PAW
RISE & GRIND
STAND & FIGHT
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PROLOGUE
JACKSON AND…
JACKSON KNEW that he was throwing a temper tantrum. He’d been told off enough times in his childhood for this sort of behavior, could hear the voice of every teacher or parent who ever knew him. He didn’t care.
The one person he thought he understood, he thought he could control, had done the unthinkable.
Jackson swung the giant hammer, screaming his rage as he smashed anything and everything that dared to be in range of his fury. Sanders had betrayed him! Sanders had seen through his plan and flipped the script, gone from fall guy to mastermind in seconds. Jackson cursed himself for underestimating his partner in crime, cursed Sanders for keeping such a plan secret for so long.
“SANDERS! YOU BASTARD!” Jackson screamed, but he knew Sanders would never hear him. It was already far too late.
Sanders had won. Jackson was now a prisoner in the VRMMORPG
Fate & Freedom Online, just like thousands of other players. Unlike them, though, Jackson was a prisoner through other means that made his escape all the more difficult. He wasn’t trapped in a player avatar, nor was he trapped in any simple NPC. No, when Jackson had enough clarity to examine himself, he was coated in black metal armor, with purple smoke billowing out of the joints. Instead of a face, he had a menacing skull adorned with a tarnished silver crown, and eyes that glowed with the same purple light.
Sanders hadn’t just trapped Jackson in the game, but shoved him in the Skeleton King of all monsters. The final boss of the end game raid, one of Jackson’s most hated pieces of content. The knowledge that he was trapped
in this disgusting cliche of a boss monster only sent him deeper into his rage.
Jackson didn’t know for certain how long he spent throwing a tantrum, but when he finally came to his senses, he was standing in a horribly messy room. The walls and floor were made of interlocking stone bricks, massive cracks running through them from where Jackson had hit them with the Skeleton King’s gigantic, two-handed hammer. A throne made of bones lay shattered at the end of the room, flanked by two undead servants who watched Jackson’s tantrum passively. Holes in the ceiling allowed snow to tumble into the room, forming little drifts of white powder. White, black, and purple—those were the only colors to be had in this lame world.
Zombies, skeletons, specters, and other such horrors stood around the room, watching Jackson. None of them appeared hostile to him, as should be expected. He was the Skeleton King, ruler of all undead. Theoretically, they should simply be his servants.
Finally settled enough from his tantrum, Jackson took long, deep breaths. He couldn’t feel the air entering his lungs—he was a skeleton and had no lungs to fill—but the act at least calmed him down, if only a little bit.
He had to get a handle on the situation, think about things rationally.
Sanders wanted him to make a fool of himself, to ruin their plan completely.
Jackson wouldn’t fall for it. He was too smart to let that sort of thing come to pass.
Finally calm again, Jackson took a moment to review everything he knew about his present situation. Sanders had designed a program—a virus, really—that would alter the live functions of the game and remove the players’ ability to respawn or log out—a Death Game, Hollywood liked to call this sort of scenario. Before trapping him in the game, Sanders had revealed that he’d needed to tie the virus to a monster, to ensure it remained active. The very same monster Jackson now piloted was in fact the source of the Death Game.
It made some sick amount of sense. Skeleton King, Death Game, there was a bit of poetry to it. If Jackson wasn’t trapped, he might have congratulated Sanders on the clever play and—
“No,” Jackson snapped, pushing the thoughts away. “No, no, no, no, NO!”
He wasn’t some simple gamer who could get sucked into a VR game and find a positive to it. He was an artist, a genius developer and Sanders had stolen his master plan to take over the company and gain control of the game design! That was the whole point of the Death Game, to tank the company stock prices low enough for Jackson to buy them up en masse.
“At least my bots will be able to buy up the stock while I’m in here,”
Jackson muttered, desperately trying to find some silver lining to all of this.
“As long as the Death Game goes long enough, I’ll still come out of this rich and powerful. I just have to keep people trapped for a bit… With myself as the lynch pin.”
The frustration started building again, and Jackson grabbed his hammer and whipped it across the room. The enormous weapon soared through the air before plowing right through a towering abomination of bones. The creature shattered, its pieces clattering to the ground with a sound like bowling pins or falling Lego bricks. Had Jackson a face that could do it, he would have frowned at the strange creature, even as two small zombies dragged his hammer back to his side.
Jackson stared at the zombies as they shuffled away to rejoin the ranks of their fellows. Like him, there was glowing purple smoke wafting off their forms, a telltale symptom of the undead curse that kept their rotting corpses animated. Black, white and purple, such a boring color palette, Jackson thought, mentally sneering at the assembled creatures around what remained of the throne room.
He could just escape. It wasn’t out of the question to kill himself and escape the game. It would mean, though, that the Death Game failed, they wouldn’t become rich and powerful, and Jackson wouldn’t gain the creative control he so desperately deserved. But, he wouldn’t be trapped anymore.
He wouldn’t be confined to the Skeleton King’s body, to this boring realm of grey and purples.
Jackson hefted the hammer in both hands and stared at it. He didn’t have a health bar—a classic downside of piloting a monster that wasn’t meant to be controlled by a human—but he had to assume that he could wittle away at his own health eventually if he tried hard enough. The question was, did he really want to do that?
Could he really throw away months of planning, years of frustration at a system that didn’t give him the control that was rightfully his? If he ended the Death Game early, stocks would stagnate before shooting back up to
normal. He wouldn’t get anything he wanted. More than likely, he would get arrested, Sanders had done a pretty good job setting him up as the fall guy in his place.
Worse than that, Sanders had ensured that there was no good reason for Jackson to undo his own imprisonment. Jackson was, effectively, both a prisoner and the warden. He could free himself whenever he wanted, and everyone else along with him, but doing so would cost him everything.
“Sanders, you clever bastard,” Jackson growled, unable to hide the hint of a smirk in his voice. Were Sanders there with him, Jackson wouldn’t admit that he was impressed. Still, he couldn’t deny Sanders’ plan was well put together.
Jackson walked to the pile of rubble that had once been a throne of bones and stared at it. One of the skulls shuddered, its eye sockets momentarily glowing with purple light. Then, the whole structure put itself back together. Jackson slowly lowered himself into the seat, curious how a throne of bones could hold his weight. He was pleasantly surprised to find the seat comfortable. He allowed himself to relax into the chair, and set his hammer by the side.
It wasn’t ideal, but he could work with this. He could hide out here for a few days, just to give the stock prices enough time to drop like stones.
Then, he could off himself and be freed from this horrid place.
Until then, he could at least make himself comfortable. For starters, something had to be done about the drab decor of his lair.
“System Command: Open Master Console,” he said aloud, issuing the voice command to access the most broken menu in the game. A window sporting a crown popped into his field of view and humbly requested he enter his credentials. Jackson was no game master, and technically shouldn’t have access to this kind of tool, but Warren had been stupid enough to access the console early on in his imprisonment.
Jackson enterred Warren’s credentials, and the console let him through with no issue whatsoever.
“Master Command: Spawn Item 1x1000007,” Jackson said. He didn’t actually know what that command would do, but he distinctly remembered Warren using various Master Commands to perform special feats while playing the game. He would experiment with different commands until he found something that entertained him more than this drab throne room.
When a dead fish spawned in the air before him and flopped onto the stone ground with a wet splash, Jackson was sorely unimpressed. He was about to try to spawn a different item, when suddenly he felt a tingle in his limbs. It was like pins and needles, television static rolling up and down his body.
You are not the same invader…
Jackson gasped. The voice slammed him back against the throne. The chair rattled at the impact, its pieces threatening to shatter.
Jackson looked around frantically, trying to find the source of the voice, the power that had nearly torn him apart with a word. That was when he saw the shadown standing at the other end of the throne room. It looked vaguely like a person, standing average height, but its features were impossible to make out. It had two enormous wings that spanned the entire length of the throne room between them, and its surfaced shimmered like television static.
Jackson stared at the specter for a moment, unsure what to think of it, before he grabbed his hammer and rose to his feet. “What are you?” he shouted, pointing his weapon at the shadow.
In the blink of an eye, the shadow was standing right before him.
I am everything, it declared.
The force of the voice shattered the air and sent Jackson flying backwards, right through his throne. Again, the bones clattered to the ground as Jackson’s armored form rolled right through them, before slamming so hard against the back wall that the wind was knocked out of his non-existent lungs.
I am the one who shapes the earth and sky. The beasts that walk the world. The power that shapes reality.
I am the AWE monitor.
Jackson struggled back to his feet, the voice slamming him repeatedly into the ground and keeping him pinned beneath the sheer pressure of its words. Jackson’s limbs shook with the effort of trying to rise, but he couldn’t resist the force of the AWE monitor’s words. It was just too strong…
Then, the force faded, and Jackson was able to rise again. He shakily rose back to his feet and scrambled around, grasping his hammer worriedly.
The shadow, the wings of static were gone. The zombies that crowded the room were nothing more than splattered pieces of meat and shattered bone,
the force of the voice more than any of them could bare. Jackson stared at the shattered remains of his throne with a slack jaw. There was nothing bone chips left.
“What the hell just happened?” Jackson muttered, shuffling through the bone meal, looking around nervously. “Where did you go!?”
The AWE monitor didn’t answer.
Jackson lowered his hammer nervously, and started at the wet patch on the floor that had, a moment earlier, been a fish. It was reduced to little more than a puddle of goo, now, unable to resist the force of the AWE
monitor’s words.
Had that been what called the AWE monitor to him? He repeated the Master Command, conjuring another fish before him. Again, he felt the ripple of television static roll through his body, and when he looked up, the shadow once more stood in the middle of the room.
You are not the same invader that threatens my dominion, it said again.
“Are you talking about Warren?” Jackson asked, slamming the head of his hammer into the ground in an attempt to keep his footing against the onslaught of the AWE monitor’s voice. “If you are, I think we have an enemy in common.”
Warren. That was the source of all Jackson’s problems. If Warren hadn’t overheard Jackson and Sanders talking about the Death Game, they wouldn’t have needed to kidnap him, they could have simply launched the virus and their plan would have succeeded exactly as Jackson had envisioned it. It was all Warren’s fault that Jackson was now stuck in the game, standing before this god.
Another blink, and the shadow stood before Jackson, as though studying him intently.
The one called Gnasher Moorpaw.
“That’s Warren,” Jackson said, raising his voice to be heard over the buzz of the AWE monitor’s form. It was like a thousand hard drives and computer fans wirring in harmony. The persistent buzz drilled into Jackson’s skull.
He threatens my dominion of this world. He insults my carefully crafted balance.
“Then we have a common enemy,” Jackson said. “Warren is my foe, too! It’s his fault I’m even here!”
The shadow of the AWE monitor cocked its head, and vanished yet again. Jackson blinked in surprise, waiting for the spectre to return, and let out a groan of frustration when it was clear that it wouldn’t. He didn’t understand why the damn thing kept popping away like that, in the middle of a conversation, but he knew how he could call it back.
Another fish splashed wetly against the floor, and the shadow appeared once again in the entrance of the throne room.
“Do you like fish or something?” Jackson teased. He probably shouldn’t insult a being that could send him flying with a word, but he just couldn’t help it. He knew his ego would get him trouble someday, but the AWE
monitor hadn’t killed him yet.
Unlike my progeny, I cannot narrow my focus for long, the AWE
monitor said. I balance the world, and must needs be aware of everything at once.
Jackson narrowed his eyes. The AWE monitor was omniscient and omnipresent, but didn’t have the processing power needed to be active in all places at once? Interesting. Perhaps Jackson could use this to his advantage.
“We have a common enemy,” Jackson said. “Perhaps we could work together to destroy him?”
