Fantasy Online
Polynya
(Book Two)
By Harmon Cooper
Copyright © 2017 by Harmon Cooper
Copyright © 2017 Boycott Books
Edited by Andi Marlowe @ www.andromedaediting.com
Audiobook Narrated by Jeff Hays
Cover by MILB Art Studio
www.harmoncooper.com
writer.harmoncooper@gmail.com
Twitter: @_HarmonCooper
All rights reserved. All rights preserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
----Other works by Harmon Cooper---
The Feedback Loop – A LitRPG sci-fi series filled with action, humor, and cyberpunk musings.
Book One – The Feedback Loop
Book Two – Steampunk is Dead
Book Three – High Fantasy
Book Four – Reapers and Repercussions
Book Five – The Mechanical Heart
Book Six – Cyber Noir Redux
Book Seven – Proxima Riven
Three Book Box Set
Three Book Box Set (Volume 2)
The Last Warrior of Unigaea: A LitRPG about a Player Killer and his big bad wolf.
Life is a Beautiful Thing – A hallucinatory cyberpunk series. Book One Book Two Book Three Book Four Box Set
Dear NSA – A collection of 12 satirical stories about the troubled times we share.
The Zero Patient Trilogy – A literary dystopian thrill-ride that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Book One Book Two
Boy versus Self – A psychological, coming of age thriller about an Austin,Texas artist struggling with inner demons.
JOIN THE PROXIMA GALAXY
Reader,
Before you begin, you should know that most of my series are connected through the “Proxima Galaxy,” which is the name for the online galaxy in which works such as The Feedback Loop series, the Fantasy Online series, and The Last Warrior of Unigaea trilogy take splace.
You can join the Proxima Galaxy on Facebook here, or by clicking the image below. The group gets exclusive content, early previews of new works, advanced copies, free audiobooks, and eventually, we will work on a wiki that shows just how intertwined all these series are.
-Harmon Cooper
The Fantasy Online series is dedicated to the memory of Tom Shutt.
Table of Contents
JOIN THE PROXIMA GALAXY
Table of Contents
Map of Hyperborea
Map of Polynya
Chapter 1: A Digital Spider in the Land of the Rising Sun
Chapter 2: Choose a Quest
Chapter 3: Port of Corpses
Chapter 4: Special Delivery
Chapter 5: A Scar is a Success Story
Chapter 6: Chalupa vs. Churro
Chapter 7: The Bronze Crystal Super Package
Chapter 8: Pink Salon
Chapter 9: Relics ‘R’ Us
Chapter 10: Someone’s Little Blow-up Doll
Chapter 11: Surprise Attack
Chapter 12: Wolf Trap
Chapter 13: The Takeover
Chapter 14: Extreme Vetting (For Fick’s Sake)
Chapter 15: Doing Oric a Solid
Chapter 16: Poisoned by a Seagull
Chapter 17: The Empress Speaks
Chapter 18: Cave --> in
Chapter 19: Imp Melee
Chapter 20: Mark of the Beast
Chapter 21: Warm Hands
Chapter 22: FeeTwix “Turncoat” Fajer
Chapter 23: DJ Ride the Lightning Rides the Lightning
Chapter 24: After Party
Chapter 25: Mani-Pedi and a Royal Confession
Chapter 26: Repetition is a Form of Change
Chapter 27: Get Woke
Chapter 28: Friends in High Places
Chapter 29: House Call
Ryuk Matsuzaki’s Character Sheet
Back of the Book Shit
Get connected with other LitRPG readers!
The Last Warrior of Unigaea PREVIEW
Map of Hyperborea
Click to enlarge
Map of Polynya
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“Continents, three,
Float over the Endless Sea,
Hyperborea, Polynya, and Ultima Thule.”
--A famous Tritanian poem
“Takha bae bitakh novlaa rakh Aya Bortaetae,
Huborakha, Polonkhya, Hutamae Dulekh.”
--Written in Romanized Thulean
Chapter 1: A Digital Spider in the Land of the Rising Sun
Ryuk rips the NV Visor off, takes a deep breath, and collapses back onto his pillow. His anger does nothing to warm him; even with the blanket up to his chin he’s frigid, his teeth chattering, his blood cold. He closes his eyes, thinks back to the last thing he saw.
He gulps, swallows the thought of Tamana standing over him with her buster sword.
She killed me.
His doppelgänger is an entirely different issue, something he can theorize over later. What matters to him at the moment are Tamana and her terrible actions. As he lies in his bed, he tries to capture the moment that she changed. Was it in Kayi as they were engaging the zombie orcs? It couldn’t have been. Was it after, during their private conversation in the lobby of the Mondegreen?
It seemed authentic, it must have been authentic. But was it?
“Why did you do it?” he whispers.
Something in the upper corner of his bedroom catches his eye but he ignores it. Returning his focus to his iNet screen, Ryuk watches as his three guildmates pace around their room at the Mondegreen hostel trying to come to grips with what has just happened.
A light flashes into the room as Hajime peeks in.
“It’s too bright, Hajime.”
The humandroid reaches a hand up and turns off the headlamp strapped to his forehead.
“You’ve logged out earlier than I thought you would. Are you hungry?”
“I’m fine … ” He swallows his dismay, tries to bottle it as best he can.
“Is everything all right?”
“Why are you wearing a headlamp?” Ryuk asks.
“I was doing my weekly check of our earthquake supply kit.” The heater attached to the wall kicks on – Hajime’s doing. “You never answered my question. Why are you logged out? What happened?”
“It was Tamana.” The words are harder to push out than Ryuk anticipated they would be. “She betrayed me, us. She killed all of us. Just now.” He chokes on the words. “Stabbed each of us in the back.”
And Ryuk realizes then, saying it aloud in the real world, how stupid this sounds. Yet it was exactly what happened, and regardless of the location, real or digital, the act of betrayal cut just as deeply as her ironing board of a sword.
“I see. Was there anything you could have done to stop it?”
“I don’t know.” Again, the image of her standing over him flashes across his mind’s eye. “It happened suddenly, without warning.”
“You need to log back in and join your guildmates. I’m sure they want answers.”
“We all want answers but … ” Ryuk shudders. “But I don’t want to log back in. I don’t want to do anything. I just want to sit here, to … ”
Hajime is silent for a moment. In his silence Ryuk’s attention again floats over to the ceiling at the far corner of his room. Eight glowing red eyes flicker open, and from the shadows he sees two long, hairy legs dip out.
Attla Spider Level 8
HP: 187/187
ATK: 40
MATK: 8
DEF: 11
MDF: 26
LUCK: 1
“Hajime!” The spider is suddenly on Ryuk’s bed, charging him.
He kicks out of the covers, gets tangled, and falls to the floor, scraping his elbow. He scoots backwards and cracks the back of his head against Hajime’s knee.
The Attla spider drops to its haunches, as if its preparing to leap at him.
“It’s a hallucination,” Hajime reminds him in a calm voice. “Apparently, they’re back.”
“A hallucination.” Ryuk clenches his fists together and relaxes them. “A hallucination … ”
Hajime crouches behind him. “Face it. See what the hallucination is actually capable of. In this way, you will emphasize the difference between you and it.”
Taking a deep breath in, Ryuk turns his attention back to the spider on his bed. His vision blurs and refocuses on the creature’s two largest eyes.
“What’s it doing?”
“It’s not doing anything. It’s just … watching me.”
“Good, are you still afraid of it?”
He slowly nods. Ryuk never liked insects all that much and to see one on his bed that is the size of a bear cub has his skin crawling.
“Reach out for it. See what happens.”
“You’re joking.” Ryuk looks up at Hajime.
“No, see what happens.” To make a point, he clicks the button on the front of the headlamp and shines it onto the bed.
After settling his wits, Ryuk peels some of the tangled blanket off his body and scoots towards the bed. He doesn’t want to do it, can’t even imagine what will happen if he actually puts his hand close to the venomous Attla spider. As he presses his hand to the spider, the creature pulls back, displaying its grotesque fangs. Green liquid appears at the tip of its fangs, bubbling as it prepares to attack him.
“This is the worst idea ever,” Ryuk whispers as his hand passes right through the spider’s snapping fangs.
“What’s happening?” Hajime asks.
“It’s trying to bite me but … ” He looks down at his hand and sees the spider gnashing at his arm. “It’s not real. I know it isn’t.”
“Is it disappearing?”
He shakes his head. The spider eventually gives up. It crawls up the side of Ryuk’s wall and back to its darkened corner. Once there, its eyes flash red as it completely obscures its body in the shadow of the room.
“Well?” Hajime asks.
“It went back to its corner.”
“So it’s still here? That’s odd.”
He shines his headlamp over there.
“No, it’s gone,” Ryuk reports back.
“We can discuss this in detail later,” Hajime says after a moment of silence. “I’ll need to do some research regarding recurring digital hallucinations. For now, I think you should log back in. I’m sure your guildmates want answers. Also, I think you should eat something.”
“I’m not too interested in lying on my bed at the moment.”
“Then dive from the living room. Everything is clean now and you can lie on the couch. And I want you to eat something,” he says, his eyes clearly reading Ryuk’s vitals. “I made some onigiri for later, but since you are awake now … ”
Hajime approaches the single window in Ryuk’s bedroom and opens the drapes. Outside, Tokyo whisks by in a frenzy of light. Aeros move through the air in their appropriate skylanes and the lights of Shibuya, a beacon in the distance, flash and dance across the slick glass of tall buildings.
“Fine.”
Ryuk pushes himself off the floor. He grabs his NV Visor and his Somnium skipbox, and heads to the living room.
Chapter 2: Choose a Quest
While Ryuk’s hunger may be satiated by the two onigiri he swiftly wolfs down, his confusion at Tamana’s betrayal shows no signs of slowing down. With this on his mind – as if there is anything else he could think about, aside from the digital spider that was just in his room – Ryuk lies down on the couch and sets his NV Visor on his stomach. He still needs to order haptic gloves, and as he places the visor on, he quickly makes a purchase over iNet from Rakuten.
And just like that, a new pair of gloves is on the way.
In the carousel beneath his purchase, he sees a more slim-line version of the visor he is currently wearing. It is also possible to dive using a person’s life chip, the chip in the temple of every Japanese citizen at birth. To dive using one’s life chip, an over-the-ear apparatus is necessary, but most people, oddly enough, continue to use the visor as it is the classic way to dive.
The sine waves start up on the inside of Ryuk’s visor, and he closes his eyes, letting the instant neuro-hypnosis begin. Before Ryuk can say or do anything else, he’s given spawning options and, naturally, he selects the current location of his guildmates.
His stats appear and after a three-second check, he swipes them away.
Ryuk Matsuzaki Level 13 Ballistics Mage
HP: 378/378
ATK: 91
MATK: 120
DEF: 69
MDF: 42
LUCK: 10
HP: 600/600
ATK: 140
MATK: 28
DEF: 81
MDF: 40
LUCK: 13
Hiccup Level 12 Shield Thief
HP: 525/525
ATK: 76
MATK: 13
DEF: 156
MDF: 74
LUCK: 25
Zaena Morozon Level 16 Brawler Assassin
HP: 563/563
ATK: 165
MATK: 8
DEF: 93
MDF: 28
LUCK: 14
We’re all healed up?
FeeTwix notices the confused look on Ryuk’s face and says, “It was Jim the hostelier. He set the room as a healing space as soon as we respawned here. Another perk of staying at this hotel, or hostel, or maybe it’s a hotel. Who cares? It’s a nice place! How are you doing? You holding up all right?” The handsome Swede walks over to Ryuk and places his hand on his shoulder. “Seriously, how are you?”
“Where the fick have you been?” Hiccup pushes FeeTwix aside and rattles his metal finger at Ryuk. “Your fickin’ wet dream Tammy decided to backstab the hell out of us, and there you go, disappearing like a little emo princess poofter snowflake bed-wetting fickboy back to the shithole from whence you came!” The goblin has already started in on a platter of lemon pepper dragon wings, the sauce of which is smeared across his face. “I’m stress-eating, goddammit!”
“Your face is a mess, Hiccup.”
The goblin uses his brass arm to wipe his lips and somehow manages to transfer some of the lemon pepper sauce to his pink topknot.
Damn goblin.
Orange haired Zaena with her dragon features and slim physique is beside herself. She’s pacing, her shoulders tensing and untensing as she plots her revenge. “We can return now,” she says without greeting Ryuk. “We will kill Tamana. I will personally see to it that–”
“Ha! You already said that, Liz.” The goblin returns to his tray of food and greedily wolfs down another dragon wing. “From what I recall, you were the first one to die, or was it FeeTwix?”
She turns to him and her eyes narrow. “Choose your next words carefully.”
“Yeah? Well fick you too.” He waves his hands in the air, tossing lemon pepper sauce onto the wall. “Any-fickin’-hoo, Tammy will get hers, as soon as I get mine.” He pops another dragon wing in his mouth. “And boy fick, are these good! I’m telling you guys, this place has one helluva chef!”
“Riptak jatla blanktakh boomboom morrha.”
“My mother wasn’t a whore, at least on the weekdays, and a prerequisite for being a goblin is to be greedy and filthy, as I’ve told you. That said, I’m far from stupid, Liz, and seriously, if you’re that fickin’ mad at Tammy, why don’t you walk your scaly ass down to their guild, let yourself back in, and again have your ass handed to you by someone practically half your level
.”
Hiccup’s platter of dragon wings flips up into the air, scattering the sauce and the food onto the bed. A short ax appears in his hand and he points it at Zaena.
They hold each other’s gaze for a moment and she’s the first to look away.
Zaena huffs, her eyes turning to little slits. Hiccup starts picking his wings off the bed and eating them. “Got to eat them while they’re hot,” he reminds Ryuk.
FeeTwix: You want to take the lead or should I?
Ryuk: I got it.
Skill level up!
Skill: Inspire Others
Level Two: By inspiring others, you induce them to follow your orders. Higher levels allow for manipulation of enemies and random strangers.
Requirements: LUCK > 8
“There are a number of things that need to be discussed,” Ryuk tells his guildmates, “and before we get to Tamana, and what happened, I’d like to share with you what I witnessed in the basement of the Shinigami’s guildhall. I think it’d be best to start there.”
“I was going to ask about that,” FeeTwix says, his eyes blue as ever.
“It was a door.”
“A door?” Hiccup uses his clawed finger to scoop a hunk of lemon pepper sauce off his chest armor. He sticks the finger in his mouth and sucks on it for a moment. From there, his finger goes into his nose, where he digs around briefly, finds something worth examining, examines it, considers eating it, reconsiders, and flicks it in Zaena’s direction.
“It was a door to another dimension, a portal of sorts.”
“The room was?” Zaena asks.
“No, the room was empty; the door was in the center of the room. Imagine a door right here in front of us.” Ryuk points at an empty space. “The door was open, which is why I could sense so much algomagic. Inside was a completely empty void filled with stars. That’s not all … a voice spoke to me from inside this space.”
Hiccup’s eyes go wide. “Gee fick, Marbles, don’t scare me this late at night!”