Warbreaker's Rage: A LitRPG Apocalypse Adventure (The Connected System Book 3), page 1
WARBREAKER’S RAGE
©2024 TROY OSGOOD
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Contents
Also in series
Previously in The Connected System
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
INTERLUDE ONE
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
INTERLUDE TWO
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
INTERLUDE THREE
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
INTERLUDE FOUR
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
INTERLUDE FIVE
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
INTERLUDE SIX
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
INTERLUDE SEVEN
INTERLUDE EIGHT
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Thank you for reading Warbreaker’s Rage
Groups
LitRPG
Also in series
THE CONNECTED SYSTEM
Warbreaker’s Rise
Warbreaker’s Risk
Warbreaker’s Rage
Warbreaker’s Ruse
Check out the entire series here! (Tap or scan)
Previously in The Connected System
Book One:
The Connected System has come to Earth. It changes the world and adapts the survivors, granting them Levels and Classes. The Connection feeds off the Spirit generated by the planet’s new Worldcore. The Adapted, the survivors of Earth, use that same Spirit to grow stronger as they fight against the many challenges they now face. Striving to Advance, grow stronger, and survive. Earth has now become a Resource Planet.
Lochlan Brady and his two teenage daughters find themselves Adapted, their mother Kelly has disappeared. Loch’s one goal is to get to their house and find a way to protect his girls. Through a series of lucky events, Loch is the first human on the planet to earn a Class. He chooses the Epic class Warbreaker.
The Bradys find themselves trapped in a Challenge Dungeon. They cannot escape without defeating the entire dungeon. They do so, with great difficulty. The two girls, not yet at the age of Maturity as determined by the Connection, both somehow gain Classes. Which they shouldn’t have. They defeat the dungeon and exit, only to find two humans being attacked by creatures called hobs.
A full synopsis of Book One can be found here.
Book Two:
The Bradys defeat the hobs, saving Peter and Davis Millman. The Millmans had come from a camp of survivors further west on Route 4. They had been sent out on a scavenging mission to find food and had come down to check out Northwood’s only grocery store. They enter the grocery store, only to find they are now part of a Resource Event, having to fight the Dark Mound clan of hobs for temporary control of the store.
They defeat the hobs, able to take what they can from the store. They pile carriages and bags full of everything they can take. The journey west to the survivors’ camp takes a couple of days. The world has somehow gotten bigger. The survivors’ camp is set up between two churches just down the road from the town’s high school, Coe-Brown.
Loch discovers the family’s friend Ed Turner, a former town selectman, is in charge. An Army Vet, Darren Holmberg, is in charge of the few fighters the survivors have. They have been attacked almost constantly by mutated beasts. Loch and Harper fight off an attack, showing off their increased power from their higher Levels.
The survivors start to gravitate toward Loch as their leader. Especially after he fights off a large creature called a Deep Shadow Fossa and gives the survivors all the swords and other items they had looted off the monsters in the dungeon and the hobs.
Loch just wants to go to his house with the girls, to try and find Kelly. Instead, he takes on the responsibility of finding the survivors’ lost scouting group that had gone to the local hardware store a couple of miles down the road. He sets out with Piper, leaving an angry Harper behind, along with two other survivors named Brian and Jenny. They encounter a humanoid creature called a gaunt as they make their way west. They realize that it’s taking longer than they should. Cerie confirms that the Worldcore is enlarging the world.
Back at the camp, Harper and Davis grow closer. Davis has now gotten a Class, Spearhead, one of the few along with Harper. Together, they help defend the camp from attacks.
The next morning, Loch and the others find a large tree across the road, with gaunts patrolling it. They fight the monsters, discovering a collection of bones and clothing. They realize the gaunts are a form of Undead and some are the bodies of dead humans reanimated and changed. More gaunts are discovered in the field behind the town’s brewery off Route 4. Somehow, there are more gaunts than there would be bodies. They ignore the monsters, Loch knowing they’ll have to deal with the gaunts at some point, heading for the hardware store. Once there, they raid it for what they can, spending the night. Overnight, they see a large loon, but massive, flying over the lake. It lets out a mournful cry that causes negative emotions in all of them.
On the way back to the camp, they fight more gaunts and raid the town’s police station. Brian and Jenny both agree to join Loch’s new Clan, which had just included him and the girls. As they pass the school, Cerie realizes there is a dungeon beneath them. Coe-Brown had buildings on both sides of Route 4, with a tunnel passing beneath the once-busy road. The tunnel appears to be home to the new dungeon.
Back at the camp, the decision is made to move to the more defensible school. Loch leads a team into the Painted Caves Dungeon, which Cerie assures them is low Ranked and a good training ground. Loch and the others fight their way through, encountering oddities due to the Level disparity between Loch and the others, making the dungeon far more dangerous than it should have been, making the delve a big risk. Julia, a healer they brought into the dungeon, ends up becoming the next member of Clan Brady.
While Loch was in the dungeon, Ed had tried to bring the survivors into the school but couldn’t enter. They discover that the school is meant to be a Clanhold and must be claimed first. Loch, as the strongest, enters the school. He defeats a creature called a Shadowstalker and claims the Clanhold, designating the school as Clan Brady’s Clanhold and creating an area called the Northwood Territory as the Clan’s lands.
When Loch was inside the school, a new group of survivors arrived. They, along with all the others, are sent to the school to get settled. The man in charge of the new group tells Loch that a wall has been built on the west side of Johnson’s Field. They had to go completely around the field, avoiding the monster s. Loch somehow creates a quest, sending Harper and a group west to scout out the situation with the gaunts.
With Harper leading the scout team, Loch and Ed Turner, along with a couple of others, start the long process of truly organizing the survivors and setting up the new community. Ed and his family join Clan Brady, with Ed becoming a Magistrate Class. He’s responsible for the day-to-day operation of the Clan and Clanhold. Darren Holmberg, joining Clan Brady, is granted the title of Watchcaptain and put in charge of the guards that the school and community will need.
Harper and her scout team learn more about the gaunts, finding the creatures in larger numbers than they had thought. They complete the first quest, getting another in the chain, ending with one about learning the origins of the gaunts. Harper saw an odd light in the field at the old cemetery and wants to investigate, the quest leading in that direction. Instead of the origin of the gaunts, they encounter Theodore Kincaid and a couple other survivors, saving them from a gaunt ambush. Together they return to the school.
Clan Brady starts forming a community in the walls of the school. Kristin is tasked as Ed’s assistant, given the job of creating a census to learn who is in the school, what skills they have that would be useful, and which of the few have gained Classes. They also discover that a Dragon Turtle is living in Harvey Lake, the body of water to the south. Unfey, the Ancient Chelydra Draconis, seems peaceful and is too strong for Loch to challenge. The decision is made to leave it alone.
Harper returns with the other group just as a team of hunters runs out of the woods. They are being chased by monsters. Loch and the others charge at the monsters, large cats called Lynxia. They fight the monsters, Loch defeating the alpha, saving the hunters. Just as the last Lynxia falls, a Connected System announcement fills their visions. They have been granted access to something called the Ranking Board.
In a series of interludes, Elora Seedspear is sent to scout on Lochlan Brady, the killer of Misheal Silver Bark. She is paired with another elf, who causes a monster to attack Lochlan and his group on the way from the grocery store to the survivor’s camp. Elora is not pleased to be paired with Terrial Barkcrown, but she is glad to be on the mission and be somewhat free of the rigid rules and culture of the Silver Bark elves. Later, she learns that Elder Hoskia, the elf in charge of the Silver Bark Clan on Earth, has unleashed the Crones. She feels pity for the humans. Theodore Kincaid, before meeting Harper, had joined up with a small group of survivors. He doesn’t like any of them, but the new voice in his head keeps telling him to wait and to follow. Soon, everything will go Theodore’s way; at least, that’s what the voice tells him.
The Divine Being Freyja appears before Thor in the base of operations he is using. She is upset with him, wanting to know why and how he is meddling with the newly Connected world of Earth. Thor denies doing anything. She wonders why Thor had already picked a Chosen in Lochlan Brady. Thor wonders why Freyja had taken Loch’s wife. Freyja leaves, appearing in her base of operations in Rome. She meets with Loki, who seems to be playing both against the other.
The Wendigo hunts the woods, feeding on everything it finds. It is always hungry. The Concept of Hunger drives it on, pushing it to grow stronger by feeding. Its hunger has no end and it will keep feeding on everything it finds.
Drew is at a survivor’s camp in Strafford, the next town up from Northwood. There are a lot of them and they are somewhat comfortable in tents spread out through a large field. That is until a group of giants attacks the camps, slaughtering everyone. Drew, as the highest Leveled there, is given command of a small group of people. He is to lead them away, to find somewhere safe. He takes all that he can save, running into the woods away from the giants and the slaughter.
Kelly Brady has arrived back on the mainland as a Valkyrie of Freyja, along with others. They gather other survivors, offering them protection, forming a long chain of people slowly making their way up north through Massachusetts. They fight monsters along the way, gaining more people and an Elven High Priestess of Freyja named Senora Barkfall. The elf knows Freyja as the Dawnmother. Kelly is invited to join the Clan of the Dawnmother but refuses, as she discovers she is still part of Clan Brady. It’s a sign that her family is still alive and Kelly will not give up that connection.
Chapter One
“What the hell is a Ranking Board?” Harper asked, standing in the middle of monster corpses in the fields outside the school.
“Harper,” Loch scolded.
She didn’t apologize and he didn’t say anything else. Loch was just as confused and surprised as she was. They all were. Eyes were unfocused as each of the people in the field looked at their notifications. Everyone seemed to forget the dozen or so Lynxia corpses.
“Cerie,” Loch said, a command, not a question.
“I was not expecting the Ranking Board to be initiated this early into Earth’s Connection,” the fairy said from where she was sitting on Piper’s shoulder.
Loch focused on the small green glowing fairy. She shook her head, not meeting his eyes.
“I would have mentioned it if I had known it was coming.” Her eyes glowed a brighter green as she accessed her data. “Typically, the Board does not become active until One Thousand Connected reach Level Twenty-Five. As far as we know, there are no Level Twenty-Five on Earth.”
“There’s one way to find out,” Harper suggested. “How do we access the Board?”
“The same way you do your Status.”
Loch thought the words Ranking Board. A new notification appeared in his vision, larger than normal, filled with columns and not paragraphs. The same fonts and general design. There were two columns. Connected and Clans. He looked at the Connected first, not really surprised to see his name at the top. There weren’t many that he recognized. Both girls were on the list but not near the top. It showed the top 100 Connected on Earth. He looked quickly but didn’t see Kelly’s name.
It would have been nice to see her name. A way to truly confirm that she was alive. He hadn’t, and wouldn’t, give up hope that they’d see her again. She was alive.
But having confirmation would have been great.
No Levels were shown. No other information beyond just a name.
LOCHLAN BRADY
DIANA BREKHOV
OROKU YOSHI
JAKOB VOLLMER
THOMAS BLEDSOE
KATE BARTON
ZACHARY GOOSEMAN
ILLYANA ROMANOFF
BRET BENOIT
KARL BEAN
The top ten. Loch had no idea how close they were to him. What was the Level gap between fifth and sixth? Fifth and a hundredth?
“Why doesn’t it show Levels?” Davis Millman asked.
“That is odd,” Cerie replied, knowing the question had been directed at her.
“Typically, it does.”
Loch sighed. That was happening too often. There were just too many things that were outside Cerie’s knowledge. Loch understood that each planet’s Connection was going to be different, but Cerie had the history of dozens, maybe hundreds, of Connections stored in her database. Not a true fairy, though she looked like one, Cerie was basically an AI database.
She shouldn’t have been as surprised as she was.
“That’s all Earth names,” Jenny said. “Shouldn’t there be some of these invaders on the list?”
“No,” Cerie answered. “It would serve no purpose to have the invaders in the Ranking Board, as most of them would be Level Ten and above. Some of the higher Leveled would be Twenty or even at the planet’s cap of Twenty-Five.”
Loch hated that Earth was designated a Resource Planet. As soon as it had been Connected, portals were opened to other planets in the Connected System or Connected Worlds. There were just too many uses of the word. It was driving Loch crazy. Those portals allowed alien Connected, beings like the humans of Earth who had their bodies Adapted to work in the Connection, to enter the planet. The difference was that the earthlings started at Level Zero while the aliens could be at any Level.
Except for Earth’s Level cap, which kept the highest Leveled invader at Twenty-Five. Loch wasn’t sure if that meant only beings that were Twenty-Five and below could enter or that the Connection would force them back down to Twenty-Five.
How would that be, he wondered, if he was forcibly deleveled? Would he notice the loss, or would the Connection just make him like he had been at the lower Level? Would the cap keep him from Leveling past Twenty-Five? His Leveling had slowed recently, mostly due to partying with lower Levels in the dungeons. Not that his progress had slowed to a complete crawl, but it was noticeably harder. Others wouldn’t catch up, but he wasn’t Advancing as fast as he had gotten used to. It felt slow. He shook his head, dismissing that thought.
