Underpowered Howard: A LitRPG Adventure Read online

  UNDERPOWERED HOWARD

  ©2021 JOHN L. MONK

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  Print and eBook formatting, and cover design by Steve Beaulieu. Artwork provided by Fernando Granea

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  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

  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

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  FROM THE PUBLISHER

  LitRPG

  The LitRPG Groups

  To sesquipedalians everywhere.

  Prologue

  Winding through the hellish wasteland of Ward 4—the most dangerous of Mythian’s square-shaped continents—is the Blood Road, so named for its blood-red pavers. It ropes across the land like exposed entrails, and on it you’ll battle every messed-up thing the game has to offer: demon lords, demigods, armies of undead, and interdimensional nightmares like nothing seen in the lower three. The air is laced with a poison that kills slowly, so you need a high poison resistance to survive it for very long—at least 1500. If you reach the end without straying, the magic of the road reveals the cave entrance to the Domination’s lair. Next to it, a binding stone. Beat the Domination and you’ll exit the virtual world into the physical one, born again in a skin-frame body so perfect no one will know it’s not real.

  This was the big prize dangled by Everlife, the government-chartered company that designed and maintained the various “retirement worlds.” For many seventy-year-olds, it’s why they’d chosen the game world over nicer places like “Untouched Earth” or “Roaring Twenties.” They wanted to live on Earth again, this time as a true immortal.

  Mythian’s wards numbered four, and were stacked south to north, each separated by a bridge spanning a narrow stretch of sea and defended by powerful guardians. Ward 1 was the easiest. Players there had infinite lives. Ward 2 was harder—tougher fights, better treasure, but you only got a thousand lives. Ward 3 was harder still. Lose one hundred lives and you were dead forever.

  I’d spent almost two hundred and fifty years leveling as a thief-warrior, most of that in Ward 3, with only the occasional desperate foray into Ward 4 with friends looking for high-powered gear. While in Ward 4, players only got ten lives. As a result, nobody spent much time there. When they went at all, they followed the Blood Road for lack of a good direction. Those who fought the Domination and limped out after losing usually did so with one life left. Often they’d say, “If I’d had more lives, I could have beaten it.” This, if they said anything at all. Most disappeared into obscurity, never to be heard from again.

  On one of my trips to Ward 4, somewhere in my 1300s, I lost a life. I should have shrugged it off, but it unnerved me. Everyone said you needed all ten lives to learn the fight, streamline it, and then win it. To that end, I’d chosen 1500 as a nice solid level to try. Higher than most who attempted it. Now, because of my screw-up, I’d have to do all that and win with a mere nine lives.

  Three minutes after dying that day, sitting on a Ward 3 binding stone in a noob tunic, I felt my mortality like never before. I still had fifty-seven lives in Ward 3—and friends, and a life of sorts. All Ward 4 offered was death, and so I stayed out of it.

  I had a camp carved into the side of a cliff, easily defended and hard to see. I’d built it using a pick and my mining skill and protected it with high-ranked traps. After my latest death, I leveled like a machine, amassing a staggering amount of treasure, which I buried in deep vaults dug into the mountain. No, I wasn’t a social outcast. I always had company—girlfriends, newcomers to Ward 3, nearby neighbors, that sort of thing. At least once a month, I’d visit Heroes’ Retreat for R&R with friends who lived farther out. But as the years passed, they’d peel off one by one to fight the Domination. Eventually, the only face I recognized at the Proficient Pilgrim was that of Bernard, the eternal innkeeper, who hosted all the special inns set aside for players in the first three wards.

  Lonelier than ever, feeling like a coward, I set my sights on a number—level 3000—after which I’d beat the pants off the Domination and leave the game for good. Later, if I got bored living in the real world, I’d re-retire to some luxury resort world where I didn’t have to fight anything.

  Ah, the fantasies I had: new friends, a palace in the sky, a wife… They said some worlds let you raise lucid children indistinguishable from actual humans. With so many worlds to choose from, the possibilities were limitless.

  But first I needed to get out of Mythian.

  The day I reached 3000, I took my nine lives and hit the Blood Road, determined to kill the Domination. I was immediately surprised by how easy the various monsters were to defeat and cursed myself for waiting so long. Briefly, I considered staying in Ward 4 a few years to hunt for artifacts. There was even a quest chain that let you design and build your own mini-world. But no, I didn’t do any of that. I was sick of the grind, lonelier than ever, and eager for the game to end.

  Before entering the Domination’s lair—a massive cavern—I buried a bag of spare gear next to the binding stone and then bound myself. If I lost all my stuff in the cave, I’d also lose my poison resistan
ce. If that happened, I’d die and resurrect repeatedly until all my lives were used up.

  I entered the cavern and strained to see the far end, but all I saw was blackness. For lack of a direction, I started walking. A few minutes in, a wide spotlight lit me from somewhere overhead. From out of the darkness walked a man who looked exactly like me, right down to the gear I was wearing.

  “Get a load of us two,” he said in a voice like mine. His smile was friendly, warm, and inviting. “We could be twins. Cut from the same mold! Or is it cloth? One of those… Go on, be honest: You expected a monster with fifty heads. Am I right?”

  Though I’d pulled my sword, I was so surprised by his manner that I didn’t attack. Instead, I crouched warily, ready to defend if needed.

  “I’d heard you were a doppelgänger,” I said. “But I’ll admit, I thought you’d be less chatty.”

  The Domination smiled and took a quick bow. “I love to talk—best part of a thankless job. I spend most of my time just waiting around. Speaking of which, I’m surprised you took so long. But for a minor technicality, you would have pushed the defeat horizon out farther than any other hero in Mythian since … oh hell, I can’t remember when. Long-ass time.” He sighed sadly. “I wish I could have gotten a message to you before you stacked up all those levels, because our fight won’t be like any you’ve ever had.”

  For the first time in years, I felt the faintest tendril of fear tickling my spine.

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “Your legendary skills got you here, but they won’t help you win. By now you’ve learned the closest battles are decided mostly by luck. In almost every way, I am your match. My skills are the same as yours, but I’m slightly stronger, slightly faster. Unlike you, I only have one life, whereas you have nine. Like a cat, eh? In theory, you should win about forty percent of our battles, which places the chance of eventually beating me and winning the game at…” He spread his hands wide. “Huge? Even if you die four times in a row, you’ll still have more than an eighty-five percent chance of eventually beating me. If you stick it out, the math is on your side.”

  I didn’t like this one bit. I’d hit 3000 in the hope of a sure thing. Now I’d learned I had to get lucky to win, and never mind that the odds seemed pretty good. That tendril of fear I’d felt told me I should back out now—leave and plan for a permanent life here in Mythian.

  And yet…

  I could also stay and try. Just once wouldn’t hurt. Even if he killed me, I’d still have eight lives left. More than enough to make it back to my cave or one of the lower wards if I wasn’t interested in leveling anymore. Which I wasn’t.

  “Come on,” the Domination said. “Don’t give up now. You’ve died before—barely hurts at all! Especially defender-specced as you are. Which makes me defender-specced too, by the way. It’s like I always say: double defender, double de-fun!”

  Evil Me was a real riot.

  A sudden thought: “Did my friends make it out?”

  He cocked his head curiously. “What do you mean?”

  “Jenny Travers? Marc Easton? Tony Cox? Do you even remember them?”

  The Domination scratched his head, then shook it slowly. “Can’t say I do. What I do know is they had an excellent chance of winning if they came here with more than four lives.” His voice dropped to a stage whisper. “I’m not really supposed to counsel players, but what the hell—forget the past and live in the present. That’s my advice. Way less heartache. So how about it? Ready for the big fight? Everything you’ve done has led you here. Be a shame to back out now. Take a look for yourself. The exit rune’s right back there…”

  He hiked a thumb over his shoulder, and a blue light flashed from off in the darkness. The way out of Mythian…

  “Okay, fine,” he said. “If you lose our fight, I promise to let you return and loot. How’s that for fair?”

  I didn’t answer him—I attacked with a Godlike 3 Onslaught that hadn’t failed to overpower any sword-wielding enemy in more than fifteen hundred levels. It sure failed now, though. He blocked it, though just barely.

  Howling in triumph, he returned the assault with an Onslaught of his own. I fended it off but absorbed a thief attack in the process—Godlike 2 Serpentine Toe Shiv, according to my game log. Like me, he’d poisoned his blade, which meant I was now draining 150 points a second. With over 70,000 health points after gear bonuses, I’d live, but my reflexes would suffer until I fixed the problem.

  Desperate for time, I vaulted away and Shade Stepped into invisibility. To my chagrin, the Domination did too.

  Quietly, I drank the only potion I’d get for three hours—Brew of Curity—and tried to control my breathing. The bastard was sleuthing around, trying to sniff me out with Nose of the Vagabond. I knew this because that’s what I would have done.

  In the quiet of my mind, I swore a Godlike 3 Oath of the Falcon—a powerful buff that left me vulnerable until my next attack, which would hit for ten times the damage. I never landed it, though, because the Domination murdered me with a Titanic Backstab.

  Three minutes later, I resurrected at the binding stone outside the lair—angry, humiliated, and ready to fight again.

  According to the Domination, I’d had a forty percent chance to win that fight. Which, provided we really were closely matched, meant my next fight also had a forty percent chance. Nine such fights gave me a ninety-eight percent chance of eventual victory.

  My enemy was waiting for me inside wearing a noob tunic just like mine. True to his word, he let me loot and reequip. As I did so, his gear reappeared as well. When we fought again, I lost that fight too, which dropped my chance of eventual victory to ninety-seven percent.

  “It was much closer that time,” he said when I returned from the stone. His tone was light and optimistic. “Who can tell the next toss of a random walk? Surely not me. The only way to know is to keep playing.”

  And so it went. My next loss was as close as the previous two. An inchworm’s inch, as my mother would have said. I should have quit, but for reasons I wouldn’t understand for a long time, I kept going until I had only one life left. Then it was as if I’d been splashed with cold water.

  “No,” I said finally, stopping myself a foot from reentering the cave for a final try.

  What the hell had I been thinking? My skills had failed me, though not as poorly as my judgment. I’d let the creature trick me—goad me, somehow—and in my pride, or maybe hopelessness, I’d nearly lost everything.

  After digging up my spare gear and leaving Ward 4, I moved all the treasure I’d amassed to a bottomless bag and migrated to Heroes’ Landing—the Sanctuary-flagged city in Ward 1. My plan was to start a shop and settle down. Instead of that, I spent every day scraping my game logs in search of a credible reason for losing those fights. This was done in debug—a setting anyone could toggle, though people rarely did. The result was hundreds of thousands of lines, nearly incomprehensible if you weren’t a former Q4 developer, like me.

  When I finally realized the truth—that the most important encounter in the game was glitched—I aborted my progress and formally Gave Up. This returned me to level 0 as an unclassed player and reset my lives in the upper wards.

  Sure, I might have lost fairly, but I didn’t think so. Too many people over the years had fled Ward 4 with only one life left. If the chance of eventual victory was ninety-eight percent, then the chance of so many people losing and limping out was so close to zero percent as to be almost impossible. And don’t forget those who didn’t limp out. The stubborn ones who went in for that last, hopeless fight. As my friends had done.

  As I’d almost done.

  From that day on, I told every high-level who’d listen that the Domination was broken. Some believed me, though most assumed I was justifying my loss with a made-up story. Or worse: that I was keeping people from winning because I was bitter—a sore loser. Understandable. In their shoes, I might have felt the same way.

  In time, people took to cal
ling me “Underpowered Howard.” I didn’t mind. In fact, I sort of liked it for the irony. What desire I’d had for gear and money had disappeared with my illusions. Now they were simply a means to an end.

  And what was that end? Quite simply, to fix the Domination. The thing was a deathtrap, and a particularly cruel one in that it rewarded crushing toil and good gameplay with certain death. Everlife’s promise to the retirees who’d come here had been a lie, but I planned to make them fulfill it.

  Over the next several years, I began playing different classes and cataloging Mythian’s countless bugs with one purpose in mind: to break the game and break it loudly. Once Everlife reached out to me, or so I imagined, I could hand them what I’d collected.

  No, I wasn’t naive. Ever at the back of my mind was a niggling worry they’d delete me instead, but I couldn’t just do nothing.

  The Domination had to be bugged. The designers wouldn’t have created such an amazing world, only to turn around and murder people whose only crime was enjoying their creation.

  Anything else was unthinkable.

  Chapter One

  In a departure from every other player in Mythian, the man’s outfit looked like something from a twentieth-century detective movie: white button-down shirt, loose tie, and a light-colored blazer with patches at the elbows. I’m sure under the desk I’d have found retro leather shoes, too. He was also on the large side—muscular in a way that said he could handle himself if things got rough. The detective’s office completed the anachronism: steel filing cabinet, beat-up oak desk, slowly turning electric fan, and a coffee machine tucked in the corner. Rune-powered, of course, and transmogrified to look like cheap plastic.