Escape from Hell: A LITRPG Adventure (Kingdom of Heaven Book 2) Read online

  “Where are the others now?” I asked, jumping over a huge rock.

  “This place sucks,” Glimmer complained. “It’s weird as shit, and there are things I never knew about so I couldn’t have prepared. There are these twisters. Big tornadoes that come out of nowhere and if you get caught in them, they separate you from anyone you’re traveling with. What’s worse, if you’re not in the same place as someone in this damn realm, you can’t talk to them. So, when we got hit with one, I had no idea where everyone was. I had to actually call Ice to find out where he was. Like, on the phone. Which was weird as hell.”

  “Are you sure the merchant was telling you the truth? He could have been lying,” I asked, trying to dodge a smaller rock and getting hit by it, nicking a sliver out of my Energy bar. Damn, I was getting tired. That didn’t bode well for my future in this place.

  “Ice tapped him with the Mace of Truth. He was being for real, but not everyone in this place is. Take the Mountain, for example. That weird ass bitch obviously means us harm. That’s why she wants you to fight me. She wants me dead so none of the rest of you can leave.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Well, maybe not you. How did you get here anyway?”

  “I got was knocked down here from the Upper Levels,” I answered.

  “The Upper Levels?” she balked. “You got there? Damnit!”

  “Don’t feel bad. It’s kind of in ruins.” I swallowed hard. “Listen,” I started, feeling more tired than ever now. I realized I didn’t know exactly how long I had been down here, lost in my malaise as I had crossed the desert. “The person who sent me here assured me I’d never get back.”

  “He’s right,” Glimmer said. “The guy told us every soul is trapped here forever. You literally have to abandon your progress and create a new character.”

  She sounded like she thought that was the worst thing in the entire world, which it might have been if the alternative I was facing wasn’t to literally spend an eternity in hell.

  “The point I’m getting at is I don’t think the way I came is going to work to get back,” I explained, “and I obviously can’t trust the Mountain to get me there. So, my only option is-”

  “To help me get the guild back together and piggyback on our ride,” she finished for me. “Yeah. No. I got that like three minutes ago. Keep up.”

  “First, we need to get off this mountain though,” I said. “Luckily, I think I have a pl-”

  The Mountain must have heard me because the instant it became clear to her I wasn’t going to kill Glimmer, the ground opened beneath us and we fell.

  Glimmer and I plummeted through the darkness. I hit hard against the solid stone and felt something in my shoulder pop. Glimmer landed right beside me, and I watched her Energy bar dissipate a little more.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, pained and winded.

  “Yeah, dude, I’m fine,” she answered chirpily, and I remembered that she wasn’t actually feeling any of this.

  Lucky.

  I looked up to find that we were in a cavern and there, staring at us from the corner with glowing eyes and sharp fangs, was a rattlesnake the size of a building.

  “That sentence you started before we fell,” Glimmer said, sitting up next to me and spying the situation. “I hope it ended with the word plan.”

  4

  I looked at the massive, slithering thing. With glowing yellow eyes, dark-slit pupils, and venom sliding wet down its enormous fangs, this thing looked like the worst part of the Jungle Book brought to life and sat right in front of us.

  If I was going to have any chance of collecting the rest of the Avenging Angels and use them to piggyback my way up to the Surface realm, I was going to have to kill this thing. Of course, that would be easier said than done. I flipped through my Rolodex of creature intel only to find it as bare as the shelves of my refrigerator after Amanda and John got through with it.

  “Don’t bother,” Glimmer said, standing carefully and keeping her distance from the thing. “You won’t find information about any of the things down here. It’s like they don’t exist as far as the game is concerned. It’s like we slipped into a freaking whole new world or something.”

  All we had to go on was the name tag and Energy bar above its slithering body. Snake Guardian of the Mountain, it read, and the Energy bar had the familiar gold outline of a boss NPC. Definitely not good, no matter what else we did or did not know about it.

  “Imagine that,” I muttered, standing up beside her. “We’re good at this,” I said, keeping one eye on the slithering monster as I turned to Glimmer. “We can figure it out. We’ve danced with bigger baddies in the past, and we’ve always made it through.”

  “Yeah,” she balked. “Because we had a team with us because we each played our part. What do we have now? An Anchorite who’s down to half Energy and even less Essence herself.” She glared over at me. “Thanks for that, by the way, and a warrior who has nobody to back him up. We’re screwed.”

  She shook her head and sighed. “I’m going to have to create a whole new character. I’m going to have to start from scratch. Years of leveling up and gaining ground in this stupid game will have been for nothing.” She kicked the ground. “I literally cannot think of anything worse than that.”

  “I can,” I answered, thinking about the way my limbs would likely be torn from my body if this snake thing managed to get its fangs around them. “We have to make a plan.” I stared at the thing. It had started to move, but the damn creature was slow.

  That made me even more worried. The Guardian was being methodical. As we were sizing it up, it was doing the same thing to us. A sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach told me it would be better at it than me.

  Of course, it didn’t have a nagging healer to worry about.

  “What sort of plan do you have in mind, you moron?” she asked, and her tone of voice instantly set my teeth on edge. “I already told you I don’t have enough Essence left to heal you through an entire fight after trying to save my ass from your sword.” Essence was the resource used by Anchorites for their magical mojo, and if she had been through half of what she had said earlier, it wasn’t surprising she was low on juice. She looked over at me. “Thank you very much for that too. Also, I’m not a fighter. You know it’s not my strong suit. So, you don’t have any backup.”

  “I don’t need any backup!” I answered loud enough for her to know I meant business, but hopefully still quiet enough as to not to irk the giant beast before us. “I’m not the same as I was the last time you saw me, Glimmer.”

  Her eyes narrowed at me, and she giggled into her headset, nuzzled in the safety of her home. “That’s a laugh,” she said. “Your Level might be jacked up beyond any measure, but you let the Mountain fool your dumbass like the same Iron Jack I’ve always known!”

  Something about what she said pissed me off. It was like everything I had been through and accomplished didn’t mean anything. It was like maybe I hadn’t changed, maybe I wasn’t the person I had become.

  “Shut the fuck up, Glimmer,” I said, anger rushing through me as I decided I wasn’t going to let those words or the feeling they invoked within me have any Power over the way I acted in this situation. Sure, I might have made more mistakes than I could count, both in-game and out. I had let people trick me, manipulate me, and I had blood on my hands now because of it.

  What Glimmer didn’t realize was that I was learning, growing, no matter what she thought and so I was going to be Iron Jack, an Iron Jack that Glimmer and the rest of the Avenging Angels had never seen before. I was going to be the badass who Ori and Hecate thought could sit atop the Skull Throne. I was going to show Glimmer who I was now, who I’d become after everything I’d just been through.

  And I was going to start with this goddamn snake.

  “Stand back,” I said to Glimmer, motioning to the back wall of the cave we’d found ourselves in. “I’m going to-”

  “Get yourself killed?” Glimmer snarked, looking at me distasteful
ly.

  She thought I was the same person I’d been when we left, the same person she watched be the big, dumb fighter again and again over the many hours we had played together. I wasn’t though. I was a brand-new player, a brand-new man even. I had fought to save the world since then, like the actual world.

  “How about I save your ridiculous ass?” I muttered as I watched her do as I asked. She might have had a big mouth, but she wasn’t about to go down in flames going up against a creature neither of us had ever seen before. After all, as she said, she wasn’t a fighter. Glimmer was a healer, and I needed her on my side.

  Remembering what she had said about her spent supplies, I mentally pulled up my inventory and threw her a couple of vials. One was a good old-fashioned Healing Elixir to restore her Energy, the other was a Concentrated Restorative to replenish her Essence. I might not have always been the smartest player before, but we all kept some Restorative on hand, even if it did no good for our own personal resources, just in case one of our mages ran out.

  She grabbed them and drank them up greedily. Her Energy bar grew exponentially along with the Resource bar I couldn’t see, which was more for me than it was for her. With her Essence restored, she could heal me. Given that my death in this place meant my death for real, that was kind of a big deal for me.

  The Snake Guardian moved, slithering around towards me.

  I hoisted my sword, watching it crackle with energy and holy power. The snake moved, looking at me and baring fangs. Now, more than venom, energy pulsated from them.

  Snake Guardian of the Mountain uses Storm Venom! Its bite now inflicts additional Electrical damage!

  I was screwed, but as luck would have it, I had been screwed before and always came out stronger on the other end. Of course, I had Ori and Hecate to help me before. They were strong. They were wizened and, more important than any of that, they believed in me.

  To say that Glimmer did not share that sentiment was an oversimplification of epic proportions.

  I was on my own in this, at least as it came to fighting. Good thing I had my sword, and the nifty magic I’d bought and learned how to harness under Ori’s tutelage.

  “When it happens, you come and save me,” I said, looking over at Glimmer as the snake slithered my way.

  “When what happens?” she asked.

  I didn’t answer. If I had told her what I was about to do, the plan I’d just created to deal with this thing, she’d have run out of here screaming. It was that crazy.

  I ran toward the snake, screaming as I charge it with my glowing sword in hand and my heart pounding like a jackhammer against my avatar’s extremely in-shape chest.

  “What are you doing?” Glimmer asked from the corner as she saw that I was going to deal with this thing head on. It was basically a suicide mission. Even with the Angels all together, we’d have had to deal with this thing in a smart, slow manner.

  I didn’t have the Angels with me though, aside from Glimmer. So, I’d have to do it a different way and that way very well could have been a mistake.

  I could smell the snake as it neared me, the scent of rot and gaudy handbags. This thing didn’t just bring death, it was death.

  “What the hell are you doing, Jack?!” Glimmer asked, her voice cracking.

  “Saving the damn day,” I muttered without looking at her.

  The snake rushed toward me, and I jumped as I neared its gaping maw.

  I wouldn’t clear its massive and unhinging jaw. That was okay though. I never expected to.

  As I threw myself in the air, the snake’s head followed. I saw glowing yellow eyes and sharp fangs near me and I dove toward them, bringing my arm in and pressing my sword firmly against my side as I moved into the wide-open mouth of the snake.

  That’s right, I just got ate on purpose.

  5

  When you’re a kid, you pretty much think you can do anything you want. It’s not your fault. That’s not because you’re stupid or foolhardy or anything. No. They pretty much teach you that crap from an early age. As far back as I could remember, I had teachers, extended family, and even guidance counselors filling my head with nonsense about being able to do anything ‘so long as I put my mind to it.’

  I bought it all, hook, line, and sinker. When I was young, I thought the moon could be lassoed and pulled down to be my night light if only I wanted it enough. Yeah. I was kind of a tool.

  But even being such a giant douche, if my parents would have told me I was one day going to be diving headfirst into the open mouth of a giant snake monster to save a magical world from an evil, would-be ruler as they sat across from me at the dinner table, I’d have said, “The two of you are fucking insane. Pass the mashed potatoes, please”.

  I was a kid then, though, and I hadn’t yet learned that what was or was not insane was just a matter of perspective.

  I slid into the thing’s open mouth, twisting to deftly dodge the fangs crackling with energy. The monster’s insides were warm, wet, and slippery as I slammed against its throat and went winding through its lithe body toward what could only be its digestive system. I tried to remember the stuff about science and animals they always force fed me in school and during those educational programs they always snuck in between cartoons and Soul Train when I was a kid on Saturday Mornings.

  If they were to be believed, snakes had slower digestive systems. I’d likely sit in his belly all fully formed as an Iron-Jack-shaped lump for at least a few days. Of course, the bile and digestive fluids would kill me long before that, assuming this giant fantasy monster’s biology matched an Earth snake’s.

  Luckily (for me, not for the snake), I had a plan to stop all of that. I’d artfully dodged the fangs to get here, into the vulnerable innards of the thing, complete with my kickass sword, to take this bastard out from the inside.

  Glimmer almost certainly thought I was dead right now. This sort of backward, badass move wasn’t available with regular game play. If I had been sitting at my computer, I wouldn’t have even been able to try this crazy scheme. There wasn’t a command for ‘jump suicidally into the monster’s mouth’ and no Attunement had a Power called ‘Kill Monster from the Inside.’ I had a bit more flexibility now, actually living in this world, though I might have been starting to regret it.

  I slid through the snake’s throat and down through its body, surprised at how dark and tight the ride was.

  My original plan was to brandish my sword, lifting it and letting it slice through this bastard during my downward trip. With any luck, I’d cut my way out, walking out of the literal belly of the beast like a slime-covered, armor-clad John McClain. That wasn’t going to happen now. My sword was pressed against my side and given the fact that I couldn’t move my arms, it didn’t seem likely I was going to be able to pivot the sword in the direction I needed to.

  To make matters worse, I was beginning to slow down. The wet ‘n wild slip slide I’d found myself on was coming to a gradual halt, and that could only mean I was about to be met with some seriously destructive internal fluids.

  As if on cue, I felt a burning sensation start to nip at my feet. It was simply warm at first, like a heat lamp resting a little underfoot. Before long though, the warmth grew and shifted into something else. The burning became intense as a notice flashed red in the corner of my vision, accompanied by a training dummy-like representation of myself, the boots on said dummy flashing red.

  Snake Guardian of the Mountain’s Internal Acid damages your armor!

  Critical damage to Platinum Greaves of Justice! The affected equipment slot will be unusable until repaired!

  You will now begin to take damage from the Acid! This damage will increase for every part of your armor destroyed!

  I realized this bile had eaten through my armored footwear in less than a second. My feet were burning next, no doubt blistering as the acid began its quick work of dissolving what up until a little while ago would have been near meaningless digital flesh and bone.

  This w
asn’t a few days ago though, and the flesh and bone it was working through were certainly not meaningless. It was all I had, the house of my soul, and without it, I would be stuck in this hell dimension forever.

  Not to mention it hurt like a bitch. The only small comfort was that, despite my gruesome mental imagery, damage simply didn’t work like that, even now. My feet and legs would work totally fine up to the point I ran out of Energy, no matter how horrible they looked or felt. Still, the acid was already biting into my Energy with alarming speed.

  Snake Guardian of the Mountain’s Internal Acid burns you!

  You lose 32,082 Energy! 140,918/173,000 Energy remaining.

  My heart raced, and my mind sped up, reaching for some sort of answer. My body tensed as the burning sensation traveled up my legs. I needed to move my sword, to wield it and cut my way out of this before I was reduced to nothing but goo on the insides of a monster. My sister would never see me again. My nephew would think I’d bolted just like his good-for-nothing father.

  What could I do though? The confines were even tighter now, and I could barely think given the intense pain which was- at this very moment- pulsating through me with blinding regularity.

  “Think,” I said to myself as I tried (and failed) to pivot the sword once again to a useable angle.

  What would Ori tell me to do? She had been really big on making sure my skills were diversified. I had originally thought it was a waste of time, that all I needed was a pointy sword and something scary to point it at. Ori always knew there were some things you couldn’t stab your way out of. Because of my stupidity, I now found myself squarely inside one of those things.

  I thought about the angel, about what she might think of me right now. At first, a wave of shame ran through me and, surprisingly, that hurt nearly every bit as much as the acid. Then I remembered the way we spoke to each other before ascending to the Upper Levels. I remembered the way she believed in me, the way she bet everything she had on me, and the shame was replaced with solvent and determined warmth.