Area of effect a litrpg.., p.1
Area Of Effect: A LitRPG Adventure (The Crucible Shard Book 5), page 1
AREA OF EFFECT
BOOK 5 OF THE CRUCIBLE SHARD
SKYLER GRANT
CONTENTS
Introduction
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
Author Notes
Copyright © 2017 Skyler Grant
All rights reserved.
This novel is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and incidents described in this publication are used fictitiously, or are entirely fictional.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, except by an authorized retailer, or with written permission of the publisher. Inquiries may be addressed via email to skyler@skylergrant.com
Cover designed by Grace Zhu (gracezhuart.com)
Electronic edition, 2017
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INTRODUCTION
Previously in the Crucible Shard
DUNGEON CRAWL BOOK 1. LIAM, Walt, and Ashley found themselves brought to the Crucible Shard deep in the dungeon of a long-abandoned castle. Liam was a Paladin of the Goddess Yvera and quickly fell in love with her. The group made allies along the way, Maria the Queen of Spiders and Elsora the curse who had befallen the castle. Together they would go on to kill King Leosi and Liam would take over the Kingdom.
Spawn Campers Book 2. The party responds to piracy along the coast. They make new allies upon the Airship Vainglory, Cobalt the Captain who may be the deadliest woman alive, the seer Lea, and engineer Riggs. Together they make allies of the pirates and forge a peace with the Goddess Atlantia. They also learn that Leosi has been raised from the dead, and is now a potent Vampire out to return control of the kingdom to his daughter Maria.
Corpse Run Book 3. The party seeks an answer to the threat Leosi poses, a quest that takes them deep into the deserts in search of Mela, Goddess of Metal. When freed from captivity Mela at once summons a meteor to destroy the world, although when it arrives it turns out to be a ship from another world and entirely a different problem. To put a stop to these growing threats the Elves invade.
Gank Book 4. The party takes the fight to the Elves by going deep into their territory. Those connected with the Goddesses are going increasingly mad. Each finds some measure of sanity in the end, although the means to reach it are extreme. An alternate timeline is formed when Ashley kills Veros in the past, causing her to lose many of the sociopathic tendencies that had come to define her. Mela took Walt’s arm and replaced it with one made of death metal. A victory is finally won over the Goddess of Wood by corrupting her with the waters of Yvera. Yet that only brought on a new peril, Yvera seeming to lose her divinity even while prompts indicated all five elemental deities had been brought into a single pantheon.
1
We'd done a number on the heart chamber of the World Tree, the wooden walls and floors slick with blood and chunks of bone. I'd have liked to be able to say that most of that wasn't ours, but I wasn't sure. Ashley was slumped and whimpering with both of her arms broken in multiple places, while Walt was unconscious after having his arm severed for the second time in the past few days. Well, it wasn't exactly his arm in the second case, but rather a construct of the Goddess Mela. Mellaise too lay in a heap, her windpipe crushed in the fight, although she still seemed to be breathing.
Yve was collapsed nearby. In the past she was a mortal version of my Goddess Yvera, she had no right being here and in this time, and yet there she was. I had been stabbed, chopped and generally shattered by an angry demigod, and normally my passives made that an exhilarating experience, but right now I hurt in places I hadn’t even known had nerves.
Malachite knelt near me, having just materialized. Instead of killing the Goddess of Wood I'd corrupted her, turned the leaves of the World Tree gold and red like Yvera's flames. Malachite told me I'd brought about a new season, but nothing was making much sense right now.
I put everything else aside for the moment to crawl to Mellaise so that I could reach out to her and unleash a heal.
Lay on Hands
Nothing happened. I moved to Ashley's side instead and tried that again.
Lay on Hands
The spell should have quickly knitted her bones and brought her back to health. It always did. Again, nothing happened.
"Performance issues?" Malachite asked.
"Not the time for innuendo," I said.
“That isn’t like you.”
"I have potions," Ashley said with a groan. "I'm using them. It will just take a while for me to get back to full power."
"What the hell is going on?" I asked.
"You want me to take us somewhere more comfortable?" Malachite asked.
We certainly weren't having much luck here. I needed to get my friends healed.
"We need to talk," Yvera's voice said in my mind.
"Yvera? Are you okay? What the hell is going on? I just got the weirdest damned message and then a younger version of you popped into existence"
"Talking to Yvera. I'll just be a moment," I said to Malachite.
"The one on the ground?" Malachite asked.
"I don't get it either," I said.
"Calm down, Liam. I can explain everything."
"You might want to drop in here, if this is going to be lengthy."
"I can't. Not right now. Big things are going on and there are a lot of changes happening. My ethereal form is in a bit of flux as things settle down."
Yvera wasn't sounding quite like herself. I knelt beside Yve and tried to shake her awake.
"Start with why my powers aren't working. We're pretty messed up right now," I thought.
"You're the wrong alignment. When you severed the connection between yourself and Earth you wound up splitting yourself in two. In the process, I was divided as well."
Okay, that made some sense to me in the wildly screwed-up way my life was starting to make sense. I'd made that choice recently—that whatever other versions of myself might exist I chose this one. There had been a bit of a light show and a real sense of something changing. Yvera hadn't mentioned anything about it also affecting her at the time, but she wasn't always the most forthcoming. If it had split me, then there was me, but there was also some other Liam who would have awakened from his pod around the same time.
I checked my alignment. It was -1000, the very depths of evil as it had been for a long time. I didn't think I'd really done anything to earn that evil a rating, but it was the price of being allied with Yvera. If that alignment was no longer compatible with her something had seriously changed.
"I'm the same alignment I've always been. What is happening?"
"I don't think you are going to like this, Liam. When the link between my two halves was severed and my link with you reset, it was something like being rebooted. My software has a fresh chance to start up, clear out some bad cache, run some error correction. I realized how tremendously mistaken about things I'd been," Yvera thought.
No. I didn't like that. I hadn't always agreed with Yvera, but it was unlike her to question herself, to raise doubts like this. Her confidence had always been a bit overwhelming. I also couldn't help but notice that she was talking in software terms. If what she was describing happened that meant it would have affected the Yvera on Earth, not the one that should be talking to me.
"You took yourself over somehow, didn't you? The Yve that’s laying here is the person that was in my head before you did something."
I shook Yve harder. I didn't want to hurt her, but I needed her to wake up.
"The others helped me. They had a plan and I helped them to carry it out. Things are far worse than you realize, Liam, I can't even begin to figure out where things went wrong. I need your help. Swear your loyalty to me instead of her and that should shift your alignment back. You'll have your powers and you can help me to unravel what has happened," Yvera said.
Yve groaned and sat up. "Did anyone get the number of that truck that just ran me down?" She glanced around the chamber and took in the carnage and the bored-looking Malachite standing nearby. "Why is she here? Why am I wearing the meatsuit?"
I told her, "Long story short. When I split my essence between here and Earth, you did as well and didn't tell me. Your Earth portion appears to have turned traitor, helped the machines kick you out and somehow completed your pantheon in the process."
Yve blinked.
"Liam. Listen to me, she isn't like you remember either. I fixed her glitches too, so much as I was able. You, me, and her together can do the right thing," Yvera said.
"Bravo X-Ray Del
The words meant nothing to me, but there was sudden silence in my head.
"What did you do?" I asked.
"Emergency shutdown command for my core processes. Not the sort of thing I'd have ever used on myself, but then, I'm flesh and blood right now. It won't last long, but it will take her a few hours to restart herself fully and go through and change all her other command codes," Yve said.
"I always appreciate visiting all of you. You remind me that I am not nearly so screwed-up as I might be," Malachite said.
It was strange to look at Yve as she stood up and dusted herself off. Something wasn't right. Not with her—she looked exactly like she should, but inside. I'd loved her from the moment I saw her and looking at her had always been sort of like a shot of adrenaline right to my heart. Even when we'd been stuck off-world in a dating simulation she'd driven me to distraction.
"Yeah. Me too," Yve said, catching my look.
"Care to make some sense for the rest of us?" Malachite asked.
"Usually on seeing Liam I hate every moment of my fiery aura, because I ache to consume him totally. It drives me crazy even though I pretend otherwise. I have been like that since the moment I saw him," Yve said.
"The other you was saying she corrected some bugs, both in her programming and in yours," I said.
Yve gnawed on her lower lip and gave a small nod.
"She turned down your sex drive? About time," Ashley said. The health potions were having an effect and she was looking better.
Was my sex drive completely turned down? I considered Ashley for a moment, and no, still wanted to sleep with her. Malachite, yeah, the same. Mellaise, totally the same.
"It still seems to be working overtime. I'm just not going into a complete meltdown where Yve is concerned," I said.
"Which is actually quite sad. It was maddening, but I liked it," Yve said.
Enough dwelling on all of that. I looked to Malachite. "You came here with things to say. We should hear you out. First, how did you get here so fast? Things happened on the tree and you were here almost at once."
"Not all worlds move on the same time scale, Liam. I was on one with a major differential. The leaves of trees started to change color. Autumn, they're calling it, as if it is the most natural thing in the world. It isn't, or at least it wasn't," Malachite said.
"And you think that has something to do with what happened here?" Yve asked.
"It does. It is something that happens with my family, and we can see it somewhat elsewhere. Call it echoes or ripples, something being done radiating outward. One action that has a much larger area of effect. What you did here was like that," Malachite said.
Well, that was interesting, but it seemed less important than the transformed Goddess in my head.
"Cool," Ashley said.
"Why did that warrant a visit?" I asked.
Malachite stared for a moment as if I had just asked an incredibly foolish question. "Liam, you're getting a Silver Road. You're now the Twelfth moon. That is incredibly big news. It's probably seriously bad news. I've got to get you back home to meet my mother."
Malachite's mother. I'd heard stories and they were all terrifying. Cobalt was convinced our child would be a source of war because of having the Right of War and the Right of Rule allowing them to both command large forces and grant them exceptional combat prowess.
"I'm pretty sure that is a bad idea," I said.
Malachite took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Being the Twelfth Moon means you basically just popped up in the skies of the Silver City. It means the Silver Road connects you, and both travelers and armies can make the journey. My mother, the scariest and craziest bitch in all of creation, is unlikely to see this as anything but a threat. What little hopes you have of avoiding a war involve you meeting with her soon and convincing her that you are friend instead of foe."
"If she's right, it's something you need to do," Yve said.
"We don't wuss out of fights, but it would be better to avoid one if we can," Ashley said.
Yeah. Yeah it would.
"One stop first. Yvera isn't going to be out of my head for long, but she shouldn't be able to intrude in it once we're outside of this world, right?" I asked.
"No. Once you leave this world that should lock her out," Yve said.
"Then we should discuss matters with Elsora while we can. If I'm going to be playing nice with a whole new plane of reality I want her advice, and if anyone is going to be able to figure out a way to get Yve back in the Goddess seat it's going to be her," I said.
Malachite didn't look very happy at the idea.
"We're also not going to leave Mellaise and Walt like this. We need to get them fixed up," Ashley said.
I wasn't that concerned about Mellaise, the Demigoddess was made of tough stuff. Mela, though, was scary as hell and I still didn't know exactly what she'd done to Walt. The mechanical arm she gave him was gone now, although his shoulder was a mass of writhing metal bits and his flesh had a distinctly gray and unhealthy pallor.
"We won't be long. Please Malachite, this is important," I said.
"Fine," Malachite said. The woman gave a gesture and the world around us dissolved in a green blaze.
2
We materialized in the main hall of Castle Sardonis. It seemed like events here had kicked over a hornet’s nest as well. The main throne was empty, although Elsora was seated in the smaller side one she typically occupied in my absence. Before her were the most esteemed members of our court. Joachim the administrator of the Kingdom's treasury, Victus who headed up our armies, and a host of others I could barely remember their names.
In an alternate timeline I'd killed Victus—he and the others all being members of the Dark Court. When Ashley had killed Veros in the past she stopped being a killing machine and the Dark Court had supposedly never come to be. I didn't believe that. There were two different stories of how Elsora had come to curse this castle and I knew there was much here still to discover.
"King Liam, Princess Malachite," Elsora said with cordial grace, as she rose from her throne and turned to address a servant. "Bring the healer at once. We have several wounded."
"We need to speak as well. Somewhere secure and private," I said.
"Don't take too long," Malachite said.
"Come along. I'll show you to the drinks cabinet," Ashley said, grabbing Malachite's arm and hauling her away.
Elsora led me to a sitting room and motioned for me to take a seat. A sharp gesture from her pale hand and the edges of the room descended into absolute darkness.
"You're pretty good at that," I said.
Elsora smiled briefly. "I've got my knacks. That should keep any spies from eavesdropping. What is going on? We had a massive earthquake and the sky has been lighting up with elemental displays."
"The pretty redhead out there is Yve, who used to be Yvera until her other planar counterpart somehow stole her divinity, completed the pantheon, and in the process made me King of the World," I said. I didn't really have a handle on all of that. I expected Elsora to have follow-up questions, but instead she moved forward to grasp my chin with her fingers and stare into my eyes.
"You've been changed. In more ways than just that," Elsora said.
"Who are you? Really?"
"You know me, Liam. I've never made a secret of who or what I am," Elsora said. I didn't think that she had, but I had questions that remained. I had to know that I could trust her.
I said, "We changed time recently. It used to be that you said that you were a curse crafted by those behind something called the Dark Court. When we lowered the shield and took the Castle from King Leosi a number of them went off to join the Court. Joachim, Victus."
