Law of strength a litrpg.., p.1
Law of Strength: A Litrpg Portal Adventure (Four Laws Book 1), page 1
Law of Strength
License Notes: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this e-book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Law of Strength
Copyright © 2021
David Burke
Cover art copyright
David Burke
Contents
Chapter 1 - Traffic Stop
Chapter 2 - Something New
Chapter 3 - A Less than Warm Welcome
Chapter 4 - Sheriff?
Chapter 5 - Finding Out More
Chapter 6 - Training
Chapter 7 - First Morning
Chapter 8 - Say What?
Chapter 9 - New Connections
Chapter 10 - Shopping
Chapter 11 - Heavy
Chapter 12 - Handed to Me
Chapter 13 - Tearing Down
Chapter 14 - Breakfast and Advice
Chapter 15 - Stay Focused
Chapter 16 – The Power of Plants
Interlude 1
Chapter 17 - New Channels
Chapter 18 - New Training
Chapter 19 - This Could Be Good
Chapter 20 - Settling In
Interlude 2
Chapter 21 - Surprise
Chapter 22 - On the Hunt
Chapter 23 - Seeing Red
Chapter 24 - Into the Spider's Web
Chapter 25 - Cultivator?
Chapter 26 - My Hero
Chapter 27 - Next Steps
Interlude 3
Chapter 28 - Fire in the Morning
Chapter 29 - Restoring Families
Chapter 30 - Alchemy Part 2
Chapter 31 – Dinner, and…
Chapter 32 – Then… Dessert
Chapter 33 - Special Delivery
Chapter 34 - New Options
Chapter 35 - Fortification
Chapter 36 - Rematch
Chapter 37 - Unveiling the Course
Chapter 38 – To the Strong…
Chapter 39 - Go the Spoils
Epilogue
Index
Chapter 1 - Traffic Stop
Another sports car. I groaned inside. There was nothing worse than these spoiled rich girls. Santa Barbara was gorgeous, but the number of trust fund brats here was simply depressing.
At least it was depressing for me. I’d never been handed a thing in my life and had to work each step of the way. It wasn’t like I had a bad family growing up or anything, we just were poor. Eight brothers and sisters will do that to a family.
When I left for the police academy, they were proud of me. Got all those ‘stand with the blue’ bumper stickers and so on. I really didn’t care about the politics of it, though. I knew I didn’t want to work in a factory and ever since I’d been a kid, there was something romantic about the idea of being a cop, putting the bad guys away.
Three years into the job and the reality couldn’t have been more different from my childhood fantasies. As a deputy to the Sheriff of Santa Barbara County, I mostly got to stop speeding cars, arrested kids who were high, and responded to noise complaints. And all of those things typically centered around trust fund babies—kids with more money than sense, and none of it earned.
I was tempted to just let this car speed by, but then I realized that occasionally people out here rode their bikes. Driving 30 miles over the speed limit in a 45-mph zone was beyond reckless. So, I did my duty, turned on the lights, and raced to catch up.
At least they didn’t take long to pull over. Hopefully, that meant they weren’t high. I really didn’t want to have to fill out all the paperwork for an arrest today. Then, I’d likely hear from someone’s parents about how their baby could never have done what I’d arrested them for. The worst thing was that pretty much all of them knew someone with the clout to make my life miserable—if I didn’t leave their baby alone.
I called in the stop, made sure the dash cam was on, and then got out of my police cruiser. From the arm hanging out the window, I could tell I’d stopped a girl. Not really sure which was worse—the trust fund girls who thought they could bat their eyes out of trouble, or the guys who acted like they wanted to fight me just for pulling them over.
I walked in a wide arc to make sure I could see inside the vehicle before I was right up on the window. It was immediately obvious that this girl was gorgeous. Although, maybe girl was the wrong word. She looked like she was in her late twenties, but there was almost a glow to her. She was stunningly gorgeous, which was saying something out here amongst all the California girls.
Then I noticed the most bizarre of things. As she brushed her hair back with her hand, I could see that her ear was pointed—not like an oddly shaped ear, but like a full-on Lord of the Rings elf ear. I sighed. Apparently, the weirdness was not over for the day. She must be one of those crazy cosplay types.
Why was it that the hottest ones were always bat shit crazy?
She didn’t say a word as I walked up to her. Usually by this point, they were asking me what it was they’d done wrong, or demanding to know why I had pulled them over. Some even started out being flirty, but she didn’t say a word. Maybe she was gonna end up being a crier—jeez, they were the worst.
When she turned her head, I saw that her eyes were green. Not just green pupils, though. They were glowing green. I had no idea what kind of drug could cause that, but I must have jumped back involuntarily because she gave a melodic laugh.
“Is my appearance really that unpleasant?” she asked with a musical voice.
I had a hand on the grip of my pistol, but something about her both put me at ease and set me on edge at the same time. It was difficult to explain.
“Oh, now I see I’ve rendered you speechless. Don’t be worried, you are just the type I’m looking for.”
Regaining my composure, I finally replied. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just what I meant. I’m looking for some law-and-order types to bring to my world. Things have gotten out of hand there lately.”
I rolled my eyes. “What are you on?”
“Nothing but the bliss of pure mana, but you wouldn’t know what that is,” she replied with a completely straight face.
I sighed and said, “Never heard of that one. Do you have any weapons?”
“Not the kind you are talking about.”
My hand dipped back to my pistol. “You are just determined to do things the hard way, aren’t you? Keep your hands on the steering wheel where I can see them. I’m gonna open the door and I want you to get out very slowly.”
I wished I could pull my weapon, but there’d really been a crackdown on officers overreacting and escalating situations. I would just have to take the risk.
At least she complied and climbed slowly out of the car, like I’d asked. I wasn’t quite sure what she was wearing. It looked like vines wrapped all around her, though they didn’t cover much. No freaking way was I gonna be able to search her and not come off as a perv.
“Do you have any weapons on your person?”
She smiled, shrugged, and said, “You’re quite welcome to search.”
“I don’t wanna search you, I wanna know if you have any weapons on you.”
“Fine, maybe you aren’t the one. I want some law and order, but not boredom,” she replied.
“All right, since you are refusing to comply, put your hands behind your back.”
When she did, I took out my cuffs and called on my radio for backup. Once I had started to put the cuffs on her, she purred. Not like how a guy brags that he made his girlfriend purr—no, she freaking out and out purred like a cat.
When I snapped the cuff on her other wrist she said, “I take it back, maybe you will be popular.”
From there I walked her to the backseat of my patrol car. Opening the door, I put my hand on the back of her head and pushed down softly, so I could make sure she didn’t hit her head. “Watch your head.”
I almost jumped back again when I realized her hair felt more like mulch than hair. What the hell was going on? Backup couldn’t get here fast enough.
Once she was comfortably seated in the back of my police cruiser, I closed the door and turned around. I meant to search her vehicle while waiting for backup to arrive. It was surprising how often you found drugs just sitting in a cup holder with these rich brats. It was like they didn’t even think about hiding it.
I stopped and blinked. What the…?! Her car was simply gone. It had been a cherry-red Ferrari—a real beauty—but even a Ferrari couldn’t have disappeared on me that fast, especially without a driver or without making any noise.
I did a double take then spun to check on the woman in the backseat. I breathed a sigh of relief—she was still there. Or maybe I shouldn’t be relieved, because how the hell was, I going to explain why I’d picked her up and what had happened to her car?
Then I remembered the dash cam. Thank God for that. I climbed into the front seat of my patrol
“You know life doesn’t have to be like this,” she said.
I didn’t reply and focused on my radio, waiting for word of when backup would be here.
“They aren’t coming.”
I rolled my eyes again—she was starting to get annoying. It was like she was reading my mind. “Okay, so enlighten me… why isn’t backup coming?”
“Because we are in a pocket dimension.”
I’d played enough video games and seen enough sci-fi movies to know what a pocket dimension was. Or rather, enough to know that they weren’t real.
“What, just you and me?” I demanded.
“No, silly. Your car is here and enough atmosphere to keep you alive, along with a little terrain for your car to sit on.”
Her matter-of-fact way of responding was getting under my skin. “I can still see the trees out there, and the road.…” I snorted. “Whatever you took, must be really good stuff.”
“Oh, really? When was the last time that a car passed us? Or how about a bird? Seen any of them?” she quipped.
I glared at her over my shoulder, hesitant to take my eyes off of her, but then turned to look around. Dammit, she was right! Everything looked normal outside, until you realized that nothing was moving. Even the leaves on the trees alongside the road weren’t moving. I rolled down my car window and there was no noise. Now that I knew what to look for, or rather, to listen for, it was rather unnerving.
If I’d have been Dorothy, I would have said we weren’t in Kansas anymore.
Chapter 2 - Something New
I managed to stay calm as I asked, “Just who the hell are you?”
“Very good.” She winked at me. “I knew you had potential. Going straight to the source of the problem. I hope to be your new employer. You just have to decide if you want to leave your old life behind,” she replied.
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
Then I heard the sound of metal striking metal and she brought her hands out from behind her back, now holding my handcuffs in her right hand. She held them out to me. “Hang on to these, they might be fun.”
Seeing me still frowning at her she sighed. “Does it really matter who I am? Whatever name I give you is one you won’t have any frame of reference to understand. Suffice it to say, I’ve intervened in the normal events of your life to offer you an opportunity.”
“What normal events? And what opportunity?” I asked.
“In the normal order of your life, you will be dead in just about six hours. There is nothing I can do to prevent that. It is the way your life was supposed to end. You will tangle with some criminal element here in Santa Barbara and, during the ensuing firefight, you will be shot and killed.” She shook her head sadly.
“I can’t really say anything more about it and I’m sorry, but you only have a little less than six hours left to live,” she said.
I saw genuine sorrow in her eyes, which was rather unnerving. “Even assuming I believe your fortune-telling mumbo jumbo, then if you can’t do anything to prevent my death, what do you have to offer me?”
“Rob, you know you believe me. You are a smart boy. You know that there is more going on here than you can explain and, for all your attempts at cynicism, you are still a rather trusting soul.” She tilted her head to the side, regarding me steadily. “That is part of what I like about you.”
“As to what I can offer you…” she smirked, “it’s more than you can imagine.”
I frowned.
“The multi-verse is a large place,” she continued. “While there are rules that I can’t break, I can bend some of them. You now have exactly 5 hours and 56 minutes left to live. But I can take you to a dimension where time passes approximately 150,000 times more slowly.”
“Wait, so you want to take me to another world… one where I will be able to live a full life?”
“Yes, if you accept my job offer.”
“I could live like a hundred years there? And what is the job you are offering?” I asked. I thought briefly of all the old stories about fools who made deals with the devil—they never ended up very well.
Again, she did that mind-reading thing and she threw back her head and laughed. “No, I’m not the devil,” she said. “The being you think of like that is a great sower of mischief all across the multiverse. I prefer having my fun, but I do need just enough order for that fun to exist. As for what the job is…”
Her smile was glorious to behold. “I’m offering you a job as Sheriff of Yonderton. It is a growing frontier town in need of a firm hand.”
“Alright,” I drawled. “Color me interested enough to hear your pitch.”
“As for living 100 years. You might live that long. Well, you could if we don’t spend too many more of your remaining minutes here talking. Every minute here, months are flying by there.”
She arched her brows at me. “But no, you won’t be immortal. If you die there, I will just return you to your timeline here and you will have whatever allotted time is left to you. Remember,” she pursed her lips and blew a raspberry, “even I can’t break the rules.”
I thought about it for a minute. Either I had never gotten out of bed this morning, and was having one hell of a vivid dream, or this was the deal of a lifetime. “Okay, I just need to know a bit more about this world you are bringing me to.”
“Do you? Do you really? 5 hours and 53 minutes, Rob… Tick Tock... You are losing months of your potential new life. Oh, and if this sweetens the pot, you will stay young and vital on Olimero, much longer than you would here—so old age won’t be a problem for you.”
“Fine, I accept,” I said with a resigned sigh. What did I have to lose?
The world got dark for a minute and then I heard a cold, mechanical voice addressing me.
Integration into Olimero
Sponsor: Sativa, goddess of nature
Race: Human - no known examples of this race on Olimero. Unable to set appropriate racial stats. Physical stats will be set to the closest approximation. No racial caps will be set.
Strength: 44
Agility: 22
Durability: 12
Magic: N/A
Integrating inorganic materials into nearest Olimeran equivalents. Items are being fused with host to make up for lack of magic.
Integrating . . .
Flashlight: Night vision- see 80% as well in complete natural darkness.
Tear Gas: Alchemy Skill +10, Formula Granted
Signal Flare: Alchemy Skill +8, Formula Granted
Glow Stick: Alchemy Skill +8, Formula Granted
AED Defibrillator: Electrical Resistance: +80%
Fire Extinguisher: Fire Resistance: +50%
Alchemical Skill +6, Formula Granted
First Aid Kit: Olimeran equivalent Created
Bulletproof Vest: Enchanted Armor Created
Riot Helmet: Enchanted Helm Created
Pistol: Magical Short Sword Equivalent Created
