Resistance (Disgardium Book #4): LitRPG Series Read online

  Resistance

  a novel

  by Dan Sugralinov

  Disgardium

  Book#4

  Magic Dome Books

  Disgardium

  Book #4: Resistance

  Copyright © Dan Sugralinov 2020

  Cover Art © Ivan Khivrenko 2020

  Art Editor © Vladimir Manyukhin 2020

  English translation copyright © Alix Merlin Williamson 2020

  Published by Magic Dome Books, 2020

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN: 978-80-7619-140-2

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to the shop and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is entirely a work of fiction. Any correlation with real people or events is coincidental.

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  Table of Contents:

  Summary of Previous Books

  Prologue. Taranis

  Chapter 1. Beast God’s Legacy

  Chapter 2. Competitors

  Chapter 3. Mogwai’s Speech

  Chapter 4. No Good to Anyone

  Chapter 5. Pecheneg

  Chapter 6. The Goblin League

  Chapter 7. Auction for Special Sales

  Chapter 8. Fortune’s Call

  Interlude 1: Ian

  Chapter 9. Back in Action

  Chapter 10. The Ravager

  Chapter 11. Together Again… Almost

  Chapter 12. Three Days to the Invasion

  Chapter 13. Money Doesn’t Grow on Trees

  Interlude 2: Nicholas

  Chapter 14. The Craft of Inscription

  Chapter 15. The Short Life and Adventures of MonkeyWrench

  Chapter 16. Cold-Blooded Punisher

  Chapter 17. New Allies

  Interlude 3. Hung

  Chapter 18. Coldest Holdest

  Chapter 19. Stronghold of the Destroying Plague

  Chapter 20. Puppet

  Chapter 21. Bone-Gnawing God

  Chapter 22. Insiders

  Chapter 23. Good Hunting!

  Chapter 24. E2-E4

  Epilogue. Omar

  Afterword from the Author

  About the Author

  Summary of Previous Books

  EARTH, 2074. After World War III, a single world government rules the planet — the UN.

  The planet's population now exceeds 20 billion, at least a third of which are non-citizens, people declared useless to the community, which means they have no rights to the benefits of civilization. Citizenship is divided into categories; from A with the highest status, the social elite, to L — the lowest.

  At the recommendation of the UN Department of Education, every teenager between ages 14 and 16 must spend at least one hour per day in Disgardium. This is considered an important part of education that gives teenagers the social skills they need and prepares them for adult life.

  The student Alex Sheppard, after making his character wrong and running into problems while leveling up, quickly loses interest in the game, and for more than a year he just spends his mandatory hours at a stall by the sandbox tavern alongside a neighbor girl, Eve O'Sullivan, who had fallen in love with him.

  His parents are planning to divorce, which will lower their citizenship class. That will, in turn, lower their income, and they won't be able to pay for Alex's education to fulfill his dream of becoming a space guide. The colonization of Mars has begun, and plans are in the works to correct the orbit of Venus.

  Half a year before school ends, Alex is forced to start playing Disgardium for real to earn enough for his studies. He takes the in-game nickname Scyth.

  To maintain balance, the game’s developer company Snowstorm initially introduces the policy of ‘Threats’ to knock imbalanced players out of the game. Any player-threat identified by an artifact of the True Flame can be thrown out of the game permanently with the help of a simple ritual. In addition, the eliminator of the Threat receives rewards based on the Threat's potential, while the Threat itself is rewarded based on their current level. This means that the eliminators (or ‘preventers,’ as they call themselves) gain more by eliminating Threats before they power up.

  The Threats themselves need to hide and level up. Their reward after elimination comes not from their potential, but from their current Threat status level, where A is the highest and Z is the lowest.

  Scyth becomes a Threat with the highest possible potential A, after a range of unlikely events converge — the NPC Patrick O'Grady curses him (the first human whose consciousness was successfully transferred to the game), and another NPC, a lich dungeon boss, turns out to be under the control of the living non-citizen player Clayton. He was the pilot of an interstellar cargo shuttle before he crashed and lost his citizenship. Clayton, seeing the stubborn spirit of a player dying over and over again but not giving up, surrenders to Scyth and lets him kill him.

  Scyth gets Mark of the Destroying Plague from killing the final boss of the instance, who had now died his final death. The Mark allows him to withstand any damage without dying. Alongside Patrick’s curse, this gives Scyth the ability to reach uninhabitable territory in the Mire, home to the dying avatar of the Sleeping God Behemoth, one of five ancient gods.

  Scyth makes friends with the ‘Dementors’ — his classmates Ed ‘Crawler’ Rodriguez, Hung ‘Bomber’ Lee, Melissa ‘Tissa’ Schafer and Malik ‘Infect’ Abdualim. Scyth helps them win an argument against Big Po, the leader of Axiom, the top clan in the Tristad sandbox. The group creates its own clan — the Awoken.

  The Awoken achieves victory in the yearly Junior Arena. To do that, they have to build a temple dedicated to the Sleeping Gods on the deserted island of Kharinza. After achieving victory in the Arena, they draw the attention of recruiters in the Alliance of Preventers — ten of the strongest clans in Disgardium.

  After the Awoken win in the arena, the school bans the group from playing Dis for eight weeks, which makes Scyth fail a quest from the Nucleus of the Destroying Plague. In his absence, the Destroying Plague finds a new emissary — Big Po. When Scyth returns to the game, Big Po opens a portal for the Destroying Plague to capture Tristad. Scyth and his friends fight off the undead assault and eliminate the Threat Big Po.

  They’re joined by Crag the warrior, aka Tobias Asser, a former unsuccessful ganker turned chosen one of Nergal the Radiant. Crag’s status as a Threat is revealed, and the boy is forced to hide not only in the game, but in real life too.

  Tobias asks Scyth for help, and Scyth accepts him into the ranks of the Awoken.

  Scyth and Crag leave the sandbox together. In Darant, they run into a preventer checkpoint and Crag is identified as a Threat. Scyth manages to save his clanmate from the Modus clan castle and delivers him to the distant island of Kharinza, where the Awoken have built a fort.

  By using the portal key he got for eliminating Big Po the Threat, Scyth finds himself in the Treasury of the First Mage. There he acquires some allies — the treasury guardians: Flaygray the satyr, Nega the succubus, Ripta the raptor and Anf the insectoid. With their hel
p, Scyth, Crag, Crawler and Bomber repel an attack from the lich Shazz, an emissary of the Destroying Plague, but in the end they are defeated. Behemoth’s temple is destroyed and Scyth is transformed into an undead. Behemoth interferes to help Scyth resist control by the Nucleus of the Destroying Plague, which gives its legate a quest: to build a stronghold of the Destroying Plague in the Lakharian Desert. The Sleeping God himself stays behind in the lair of the Nucleus, to investigate the source of the Destroying Plague’s power.

  Scyth, using the abilities gifted by the Nucleus, turns his clanmates and non-citizen friends into the undead.

  The undead are immune to weather debuffs, which allows Scyth to quickly level up his character in the desert. There he learns a new ability — Plague Fury. Using it, Scyth reaches a place of power where he can begin to build a temple of the Sleeping Gods. The non-citizen builders help Scyth build a temple in the Lakharian Desert dedicated to Tiamat, one of the five Sleeping Gods. According to Behemoth, she is the only one that can remove Scyth’s curse of the Destroying Plague.

  Seeing the incarnation of the Sleeping Gods through Crag’s eyes, Nergal the Radiant, the god of light, declares a holy crusade to destroy Tiamat’s temple. The god promises full immunity from the heat of the Lakharian Desert to all his crusaders.

  The Awoken, as the winners of the Junior Arena, must now fly to the yearly Distival, but they’re unlikely to have much chance to enjoy it. After all, very soon they’ll have to fight against the whole world, and not only the game world — the real one too.

  Prologue. Taranis

  ALL OF VERMILLION could be seen from the tower roof. City of the brave and the stubborn, as the local councilor Westwood put it when he greeted Taranis.

  City! Taranis spat.

  His spit evaporated as soon as it touched the red-hot roof. Only an inwinova who had never seen the megapolises could call Fort Vermillion a city.

  Taranis, a level three hundred and thirty-six scout from the Children of Kratos preventer clan, had seen real cities. Not counting real life, he’d spent most of his time in Darant, performing a thorough investigation of the Commonwealth capital’s fleshpots. He’d had the chance to see the Empire’s Shak as well. But both capitals cowered before Kinema, the main city of the Goblin League on Bakabba. It would take more than one lifetime to sample all the forbidden pleasures there.

  The green-skinned little creatures were born traders. No trivial middlemen who knew where to buy and who to push their wares on, no. The goblins had a sixth sense for what any sentient needed, be they a dull-witted minotaur, an aristocratic vampire or a poor craftsman from the most distant pit of northern Latteria, and they offered them what they wanted. And if anyone had ever had a need for a type of object, then it could be found in Kinema.

  Like, for example, this Far-Seeing Visor, a unique dwarven spyglass bought on the private markets in Kinema. Using it, you could not only see everything within two miles in the very finest detail — you could also identify it. The system showed the names and levels of mobs, players and NPCs only if you focused your view on an object nearby. With the Far-Seeing Visor, everything far away was always nearby.

  Taranis took a swig of his flask of Leprechaun’s Vigor — a coffee with a generous share of the strongest dwarven liquor. His shift was ending. Darin, the clan’s other scout, should show up at any moment to take up his post.

  Yesterday, when Nergal the Radiant sent out his call to arms for war against the Sleeping Gods, preventer scouts like Taranis flooded into all the frontier settlements. True, they were making do without the leaders of the top clans — they were probably already sipping expensive cocktails on the beaches of Jumeirah in preparation for tomorrow’s Distival. There the fate of Dis players would be decided, alliances destroyed and created, deals for billions of gold made…

  Taranis had planned to go there at first too, but changed his mind. He couldn’t get into the closed events — he hadn’t achieved anything outstanding in the game yet, and nor did he have a personal invitation. And hanging around in the crowd with the trash fans? To Nether with that.

  Vermillion, a dusty Commonwealth fort full of narrow streets, ever covered in sand, was waking up. It was three or four hours after dawn — the best time for activity. The heat was at its least scorching, the debuff relatively merciful. Just the time for forays out into the Lakharian Desert. Groups of players — mostly raids, but occasionally there were small parties of resource collectors — moved out beyond the frontier. Individual points ranged out like a fan — clan scouts. Top players in gleaming legendaries sat astride fearsome mounts, their greeting roars and shrieks echoing throughout the locality.

  Taranis noticed that the groups were getting far more serious than they had been three days ago when he first got there. The instant the wave of notifications sped through Dis to declare the first kill against Sharkon, every self-respecting clan sent observers to the frontier.

  Yesterday, Vermillion even became the most popular spot in Dis as the fort closest to the temple of the Sleeping Gods. Clans were rushing to create a base for the coming assault. Private and group portals were too expensive to transport large numbers of people, so all the top clans were building stationary portals: workers swarmed around the fortress walls erecting clan portals. The rest had reason to stay awake too: herb collectors rooted through the desert under the protection of battle stars, stocking up on reagents for powerful potions; special hunting brigades roamed in search of prey; kitchen workers stayed up for their third day straight to feed so many visitors. Merchants filled the market to bursting and all the prices shot up, including for adult entertainment. Vermillion was too small for such an influx of visitors, and being there without a roof over your head was a death sentence.

  Taranis’s clan, the Children of Kratos, was considered the strongest in Dis not for its strength or achievement points. The Children could hardly compete in that regard with the Travelers, Azure Dragons, Modus, Excommunicado or Widowmakers. But if real-world influence was the metric, the Children had no equal. They were all citizens of at least class C, the cream of society, hand-picked aristocracy, members of the richest families, children of rulers of individual regions and of the global government alike.

  Twenty-nine-year-old Taranis Ward, named after the Celtic god of thunder, tried to live up to his name. His father led a department that dealt with non-citizen Zones, his mother managed black projects at the UN, his uncle… Almost everyone in Taranis’s family was in the ‘platinum hundred’ — thus were called the first hundred thousand of the planet’s most significant citizens.

  Taranis found his path in Dis. By the rule of blood unity, if someone in a family had particularly high status, some of their privileges extended to their closest relatives: parents and children. That suited Taranis.

  In the southeast, on the peak of a distant dune, a dust cloud was forming. Switching on his Far-Seeing Visor, the Children of Kratos scout gasped: an enormous pack of mobs was moving toward the fort. He couldn’t make out what kind of beasts they were; it was too far away even for the dwarven artifact. But even from his position, Taranis saw the sand flying up as if a titanic mega-bulldozer created to tear down old cities had suddenly appeared in Dis and was belting through the Lakharian Desert at full speed.

  The scout activated his comm amulet and spoke clearly, but quietly, so as not to draw attention from an Azure Dragons observer nearby.

  “Come in, Schindler. Taranis here.”

  “Go ahead, Taranis,” the clan’s watch officer answered a few seconds later.

  “I’m seeing some strange activity. Something is moving toward Vermillion.”

  “The Imperials?”

  “Hard to say for now. Looks like basilisks, only… Damn, I think they’re undead! Yeah, undead! One has a bone sticking out…”

  “Where’re they from?”

  “Identifying… Got it, my visor is giving me info. Confirmed undead. Tumbleweeds, basilisks, a herd of desert vultures, sand cobras, a hermit… The whole gr
oup is undead! Levels are four hundred plus. Oh, holy shit!”

  Taranis couldn’t hold back his shock, and cursed too loudly. Turning around, he grimaced — the Azure scout, until now lazing peacefully, looked in the same direction and immediately jumped up, pulling out his comm amulet. Paying him no more attention, Taranis summoned his Golden Pegasus mount, climbed up and zoomed toward the undead, commenting on what he saw:

  “Several dozen mobs, one is a super-elite, also a zombie. It’s Sharkon! Do you hear me? I repeat, it’s Sharkon himself! Wait… They’re all minions!”

  “Whose…”

  A ringing bell drowned out his clanmate’s words. Vermillion’s garrison had woken up.

  “Unknown. I see their leader! He’s riding a dragon. I’ve never seen anything like this. The profile is hidden, and it must be some kind of advanced incognito level. I can’t make anything out, just a shadow.”

  “What does he look like?” The voice on the other end of the comm amulet was no longer Schindler’s. The clan leader Joshua himself was getting involved. “Can you at least tell me if it’s a human? A dwarf? A troll?”