The God Machine 2: An Isekai LitRPG, page 1
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THE
GOD
MACHINE
✦ Book 2 ✦
EMERGENCYCOMPLAINTS
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without prior written permission from Podium Publishing.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2024 by David Sherman
Cover design by Iromonik
ISBN: 978-1-0394-5054-7
Published in 2024 by Podium Publishing
www.podiumaudio.com
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CONTENTS
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CHAPTER 1
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CHAPTER 2
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CHAPTER 3
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CHAPTER 4
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CHAPTER 5
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CHAPTER 6
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CHAPTER 7
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CHAPTER 8
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CHAPTER 9
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CHAPTER 10
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CHAPTER 11
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CHAPTER 12
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CHAPTER 13
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CHAPTER 14
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CHAPTER 15
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CHAPTER 16
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CHAPTER 17
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CHAPTER 18
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CHAPTER 19
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CHAPTER 20
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CHAPTER 21
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CHAPTER 22
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CHAPTER 23
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CHAPTER 24
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CHAPTER 25
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CHAPTER 26
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CHAPTER 27
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CHAPTER 28
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CHAPTER 29
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CHAPTER 30
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CHAPTER 31
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CHAPTER 32
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CHAPTER 33
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CHAPTER 34
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CHAPTER 35
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CHAPTER 36
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CHAPTER 37
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CHAPTER 38
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CHAPTER 39
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CHAPTER 40
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CHAPTER 41
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CHAPTER 42
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CHAPTER 43
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CHAPTER 44
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CHAPTER 45
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CHAPTER 46
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CHAPTER 47
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CHAPTER 48
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CHAPTER 49
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CHAPTER 50
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CHAPTER 51
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CHAPTER 52
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CHAPTER 53
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CHAPTER 54
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CHAPTER 55
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CHAPTER 56
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CHAPTER 57
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CHAPTER 58
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CHAPTER 59
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CHAPTER 60
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CHAPTER 61
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CHAPTER 62
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CHAPTER 63
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CHAPTER 64
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CHAPTER 65
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CHAPTER 66
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CHAPTER 67
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CHAPTER 68
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CHAPTER 69
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CHAPTER 70
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CHAPTER 71
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CHAPTER 72
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CHAPTER 73
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CHAPTER 74
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CHAPTER 75
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CHAPTER 76
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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CHAPTER 1
Luke woke up a little bit stiff, sort of cold, and ravenously hungry. Zea was practically lying on top of him with both her own cloak and his pulled over top of her. Their legs were tangled up, and she had one of his arms firmly anchored around her, his hand grasped with hers. Her hair tickled his nose with each breath she took.
It was a good way to wake up.
After a few minutes of just sort of existing and enjoying the moment, Luke disentangled himself and left Zea wrapped in both cloaks while he went to relieve himself and see about finding something to eat. Game was surprisingly scarce, considering how easy it normally was to find something meaty and aggressive to kill, but [Survivalist] was quick to point out various nuts, berries, and roots that were edible.
“I guess we’re going vegan today,” he said as he gathered them up in his pockets, then used the hem of his shirt as a basket when he ran out of space.
He didn’t have a clue how to prepare them, and they would probably taste like shit raw, but Luke was hungry enough that he didn’t care. His only regret was that he’d completely demolished all the food they had last night while they were walking. Zea hadn’t said anything about it, but he could feel her judging him.
He found her awake at their campsite and hard at work rebuilding the fire that had burned low throughout the night. Wordlessly, he deposited his haul into a pile nearby. She gave it a look, then arched an eyebrow at Luke.
“Sorry, it was all I could find. I don’t have anything to cook them with.”
“I’m not surprised.” Zea reached into her bag and pulled out a small, long-handled metal pan. She sorted through what he’d brought back and separated out the fruit, then tossed the roots into the pan and held it over the new fire.
“Here, take over for me while I finish this,” she said, gesturing for him to hold the pan. “Just keep it at that height and give it a shake a few times a minute.”
He watched, bemused, as she started cracking shells and peeling things and doing other stuff that he didn’t even have the words to describe. “How do you know how to do all of this?” he asked.
“This is basic [Cooking] stuff. Do you not have that skill?”
“I don’t, no.”
“That’s weirdly impressive that you managed to go this long … Oh, right … I’m sorry. You probably don’t have a lot of the skills people normally pick up just from living life.”
“It can’t be that bad, can it?”
“I have twenty-eight skills,” Zea told him.
“Oh … wow.” Luke called up his own status and skimmed his list. “I have … sixteen.”
“And how many of those are combat skills?”
“Eight …”
Zea sighed and shook her head. “This is what I mean. Since you got here, you’ve done nothing but fight. And that sucks. There should be more to your life than just fighting to keep it.”
“I mean … it’s not all bad. And besides, it’s not like I didn’t have a life before I got here. My whole existence hasn’t been just running headlong into the next disaster.”
“Still—Oh, hey, give that another shake and pull it off the heat. Still, it’s not fair to you, and it’s not fair that you got pulled into this whole shit show. Thousands of people want you dead for something that’s not your fault.”
Luke did as instructed, though it was a mystery to him how she knew it was done. It all looked the same to him, which was probably why most of what he cooked for himself ended up burnt. If this ended up not tasting like crap, he would have to consider picking up [Cooking] for himself.
“Do you think we’ll run into more people looking for me?” Luke asked. There were no cell phones, no internet, not even a postal service as far as he could tell. They didn’t have cameras, so he doubted anyone really knew what he looked like unless they’d personally interacted with him, though he did find the idea that someone had made some big oil painting of him from memory to use for a wanted poster sort of funny.
“If we’re quick enough, we might stay ahead of it,” Zea said. “But I’m not that quick. You might beat it, but I won’t.”
“It’s probably best to plan as if we should. We’ll be better off sticking to small villages and towns for resupplying and sleeping, maybe staying off the main road completely. You need a new set of clothes, too. You can’t just go walking into town wearing a shirt covered in bloodstains.”
“That’s true,” Luke said. “Uh … I don’t have anything else to wear though, and I don’t think we’re going to find a pants tree anywhere on the road.”
“Yeah. It’s going to be an issue. No matter what we do, people are going to remember it if anyone from the church comes around asking questions. A dwifkin buying human-sized clothing is weird. A human covered in dried blood is probably worse. Maybe we could steal something.”
“Um, not to change the subject, but, Zea, I’m sorry you got caught up in all of this. You don’t have to come with me. You can take the money and go somewhere else. I’m sure they won’t look for you all that hard if I’m still out there running around.”
Zea just rolled her eyes. “You’re an idiot. Of course I’m coming with you. But I have some stuff I need to tell you first. I don’t want you to be surprised later if shit goes wrong because of my past.”
Luke had figured she’d had something going on, but it hadn’t felt polite to bring it up. She’d been homeless and hanging onto life by her fingernails, no family, no real friends, no belongings. When they’d met, she’d been wearing literal rags. People didn’t fall that low for no reason.
“I’m an escaped slave,” she said. “So, you know … a fugitive, kind of like you. Fun, right?”
“Slave?” he echoed. “What the fuck. This world allows slavery? Why? That’s like the evilest shit.”
“Your world doesn’t?” she asked, surprised.
“Well … not most of it. Not where I lived, at least. So … Yeah, that’s super fucked up.”
“I’m glad to hear you’re not on the slavers’ side, but technically speaking, I’m runaway property. There are people who make their living hunting for slaves, and we’re all marked magically to make it easier to recover us. That’s why I live so far north. You noticed there weren’t many dwifkin in Valtira, right?”
“That’s true,” Luke said. “I guess, practically speaking, my only concerns are the chances that someone will recognize you and try to capture you, and where we can get warmer clothes in your size.”
“So that’s the other part. The reason I’m a slave. You know how most people don’t level up as high as you have, and AP is scarce for them? Well, one of the ways rich people get around that is by making slaves level up and get support skills for them. I’m an enchanter. I’ve got a whole bunch of skills related to it, but they’re mostly rank 1 since I wasn’t there long enough to start merging them. If I hadn’t run, they would have forced me to level up a bunch more, set me to work enchanting anything and everything they wanted, then killed me in a decade or two as soon as I started showing signs of XP madness.”
Luke just sat there, speechless. He’d never given much thought to how exactly a society that existed under the system functioned, or the ways in which the rich would abuse the poor, but it seemed there were shitty people everywhere. Exploiting others for profit was a tale as old as time, and the fact that people who leveled too high regularly went insane and had to be put down was no reason to slow down the collection of money.
He made a mental note to come back to the idea of merging skills. Curt’s build notes had given him the impression that the skills had to be at max rank to do that, which would require a ton of AP, so either he was misunderstanding something or slave owners regularly pushed their slaves up to level 35 or 40 so they could afford to do that. Neither would surprise him.
“Anyway, yeah … I escaped by suppressing the slave runes. That’s the danger of training an enchanter; we know exactly how we’re being controlled and how to fix it. It’s costly to get what I need to keep them from reactivating, and the only way to permanently drain them is to let them run for a few years, more than long enough for a slave hunter to follow the trail to me.”
“That’s why you’re so poor,” Luke realized. “I knew there had to be something. You’re too smart to not be successful.”
