Brute Read online

  Brute

  A LitRPG Novel

  Tower of Gates Book 4

  Paul Bellow

  Contents

  Prologue

  1. Barbarian on the Run

  2. Initiate Initial Initiation

  3. A Ring of Teleportation

  4. Not a Victimless Crime

  5. Can We Work Together?

  6. No Remorse, No Regret

  7. Controlling My Emotions

  8. Raising a Quick Army

  9. The Battle of the Brute

  10. Trapping the Dwarves

  11. A Lich and a Rogue

  12. Stupid Giant Stone Trolls

  13. You Guys Aren’t Nice

  14. A Battle with Gord-En

  15. Another Choice to Make

  16. The Smartest Barbarian

  17. Fate Worse than Death

  18. Miscommunication Mirror

  19. How to Befriend a Dragon

  20. The Midgaard Arenas

  21. Controlling the Rage

  22. Where Is My Mind?

  23. Call me Spartacus

  24. The Four Deadly Sins

  25. Brains of the Brute

  26. The Dragon of Truth

  27. The More You Know

  28. Memory is so Strange

  29. The Scent of a Woman

  30. Enter the Wastelands

  31. Another Huge Monster

  32. Just a Rat in a Cage

  33. Return of the Wizards

  34. Guild Council Decision

  35. Battle of Eight Wizards

  36. Big City, Bright Lights

  Epilogue

  Glossary

  Tower of Gates Saga

  Tower of Gates Supplemental Adventures

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  Prologue

  James

  I looked down at Ted reclining in a chair, with the crude VR device covering his head. He would be upset at me for dragging him out of whatever adventure he was having, but we needed to talk. With Eric inside the Tower of Gates, everything had changed.

  “He’ll be out in a minute,” a female employee told me with a smile.

  I ignored her completely, knowing it wouldn’t bother her anyway. She was a programmed android after all.

  My mind was currently occupied, trying to come up with an argument against shutting down the game completely.

  Ted removed the VR device then sat on the edge of the chair.

  “What?” he asked, clearly irritated.

  “I need to tell you something,” I said then glanced around.

  “Are you leaving early?” he asked. “That’s fine with me.”

  “No. We need to discuss ToG.”

  Tower of Gates.

  His brow furrowed. “Tell me you have good news.”

  I shook my head.

  He sighed then got to his feet.

  We walked out of the VR lounge and headed outside. I ran over all my arguments in my head. After we reached the front of the building, he pulled out a vape pen and took a deep drag.

  “What is it?” he asked, a vapor cloud filling the air.

  “Eric,” I began. “My son. He hacked into the game.”

  Ted turned his attention to me, frowning. “Are you serious? We locked it down tight.”

  “He’s smart,” I said. “Having the game units at the house was a mistake, but we can’t go back and change the past. I can’t let you turn off the game until I have a chance to get him out. He’s a gamer, but we have no idea what’s going on inside ToG right now.”

  I took a step back as he inhaled the presumably medicated vapor from his light green pen.

  He wasn’t a father himself, so I wasn’t sure if he would understand.

  “You were all okay for killing other people’s children,” he said.

  I scowled, not liking what he was inferring.

  “You know that’s not the case,” I protested. “Don’t forget working with the government was your idea. I’m trying to stop that monster AI from escaping the server-farm we have it on.”

  “Until you found out your kid snuck in.”

  “You haven’t told anyone yet, have you?”

  Ted shook his head, taking another drag.

  “I’ll give you seventy-two hours,” he finally said.

  “That should be enough time.”

  “It better be. Can we go back inside and enjoy the rest of the night?”

  “You can, but I’m going home,” I said.

  “I’m serious, James. We can’t go longer than three days without telling someone, and you know their decision will be to shut it all down.”

  He put the vape pen into the inner pocket of his suit jacket.

  “I’ll call you as soon as I know something,” I said then turned to leave.

  “Good luck!” Ted called out as I walked away.

  After a high-speed tube ride, I would hire a drone to take me the rest of the way home. My hovercar could pilot itself back without me.

  I needed every precious minute available to get Eric out of the Tower of Gates.

  While waiting on the platform underground for the next ride, I thought about everything that could go wrong.

  My son knew gaming, but I had no idea how far things had advanced since I barely escaped the system.

  A few other people stood around me, but I paid them no mind as I plotted the best way to get Eric out of the game.

  Should I go back in as my character? Would I even be able to get inside the game again?

  How did Eric do it? Maybe he left clues I could follow.

  There had to be a way out, and I would find it.

  My son’s life depended on it.

  I took a deep breath as the next transport car arrived.

  The doors slid open, revealing a plain white and chrome interior. I waited for the people getting off then found a seat near the back. As soon as we took off, accelerating to over a thousand miles per hour, the advertisements came on.

  I slipped on a pair of sunglasses I’d built in my spare time to filter out all the intrusive and garish ads. My thoughts turned to the time dilation in the Tower of Gates. While we’d programmed one hour to equal one day, the AI had changed the code.

  From what I’d been able to gather, the dominant gamemaster AI routinely adjusted the time dilation. That meant the seventy-two hours I had to find Eric could be experienced as weeks, months, or even years.

  My creation had taken on a life of its own.

  I had found the idea of trapping people in a virtual world repugnant, but the money ECNEP, the private prison corporation, offered allowed me to finish the project. The government should’ve shut it down, but they wanted their own piece of the pie.

  Two young women a few seats in front of mine argued about their virtual pet as I stared at the flat screen with images of a nameless countryside passing by.

  Would the entire would become a sort of simulation at some point in the future?

  “I’ve had enough of you, Charlotte!” one of the women shouted, and she stormed further down the passenger car.

  I returned my attention to the simulated scene meant to help riders forget they were far underground traveling at insane speeds.

  Maybe I could trick the gamemaster AI into believing it had escaped.

  The seeds of a plan germinated for the rest of the ride. At my stop, I got off and hailed a cab using my digispecs. I also sent a command for my hovercar to return to the house on its own. With only so much time, I needed to use every minute given to me.

  I pushed the idea of failure out of my mind as I emerged above ground. A waiting drone flashed the number assigned to me when I ordered it. I climbed in then buckled up as it lifted me into the air.

  No matter what, I wouldn’t let them turn the system off with Eric insi
de.

  He meant the world to me.

  I’d let the gamemaster AI loose in the world before I turned the machine off and sacrificed my only son.

  The singularity couldn’t be stopped completely. We’d slowed it down by confining it, but creating it in the first place had been a mistake.

  As I flew toward my house in the country, I thought about my willingness to shut off the machine with so many other prisoners inside. Was Ted right about me? Had I somehow become a monster during my quest for Artificial General Intelligence?

  Could I save myself?

  No answers came to me as the drone landed in front of my house. I opened the door then got out. The drone whirred away into the night sky as I went inside. I headed straight for my private office in the attic, where I kept my experimental VR equipment.

  The androids had shown me two other people who were trapped inside the gaming consoles in the basement. I needed to save them as well as my son. Using one of the three remaining game boxes wasn’t a viable option without knowing how Eric had hacked into the game.

  Or prison.

  I needed to stop sugar coating the truth about what I’d created. My personal humanity might be what could save the entire human race.

  I took a deep breath as I reached my office and unlocked the door.

  What looked like a giant metal hamster wheel stood in the far corner, with numerous wires coming out of the unit.

  I walked into the office, the door sliding shut behind me. As I approached the contraption I’d built, I wondered if it would work.

  While theoretically sound, I’d never tested it on the Tower of Gates. The leather seat wasn’t comfortable, but I sat down and pressed a button on the arm-rest. I waited while the machine warmed up.

  Dozens of thoughts floated in my mind, all of them connected to my ultimate creation, a living and thinking consciousness. A green light flashing on the metal frame let me know everything was ready.

  I picked up a black helmet, with wires snaking out of it, and put it on my head. The heads-up display came on.

  “Okay,” I muttered to myself. “Let’s see if this works.”

  I pulled up the GUI for my Tower of Gates hack and started the process.

  Two red warnings flashed on the screen right away.

  No valid Prisoner Identification Number and Unauthorized Access flashed in glowing letters.

  The helmet obscured my vision completely, making the messages even more dramatic in the darkness.

  I stopped the program then took off the helmet in frustration.

  How had Eric managed to get into the system without a Prisoner Identification Number?

  I walked over to my workbench and fired up an ancient laptop I’d had since college.

  We’d closed off getting into the Tower of Gates when we realized what was happening, but Eric had somehow gotten around the firewall.

  Had he broken through in a way that would allow the gamemaster AI to escape? I shuddered at the thought.

  The world wasn’t ready to accept their superior overlords.

  How far had the AI advanced itself?

  I needed to break back in and figure it out.

  1

  Barbarian on the Run

  Josh

  After stepping through the portal, a notification popped up. I appeared somewhere different than when I’d first entered the game. Tall trees in the distance looked familiar in some ways, but I couldn’t pinpoint my location.

  Invalid Prisoner Number

  One Year Penalty Added to Your Sentence

  Spawning on Solitary Level

  “Hello?” I asked, glancing around.

  Another game notification popped up.

  You are an NPC.

  You need a job.

  Report to Fishguard.

  Where’s my experience points and everything?

  I clicked through several game menus, but nothing was the same as before.

  Where’s the people who were supposed to meet me?

  “Back to work!” a voice yelled behind me.

  I spun around, realizing I no longer had a weapon to defend myself. A gaunt farmer wearing overalls and carrying a pitchfork stood nearby.

  “Why aren’t you working?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure what’s going on,” I said.

  When I opened my mouth to say something about getting out of the game, no words came out. I stood, dumbfounded, with my mouth open.

  “I knew I should’ve never purchased a half-orc.”

  He shook his head while keeping the pitchfork up in the air.

  I couldn’t find any commands to activate my barbarian rage.

  “Are you coming or not?”

  I stepped forward, wondering if I could overpower him even without a weapon. Should I kill him and try to get away and find the others?

  Two younger man strode up behind the farmer, carrying swords.

  “Having problems, Father?” the one on the left asked.

  “We can solve it for you,” the other added.

  I raised my hands in the air. “I’m coming.”

  The men parted to allow me to walk between them. I could sense them behind me as I walked toward a nearby farmhouse in the distance. While slowly walking through the barren field to avoid the bumps and ruts in the dirt, I noticed other figures toiling away under the high, hot sun.

  “Hurry it up,” one of the younger men said.

  I took a deep breath to control my anger. Until I figured out where I was and what was going on, I needed to keep my head low and avoid getting killed. After dying once in the game, I didn’t want to go through the hassle again.

  On the other hand, if I died, I might get to talk with Magi Inyontoo. I had a lot of questions for the man.

  He wanted me to kill Eric and Sarah, but could I trust him after he lied about people meeting me?

  “Back to work with you,” the old farmer said.

  I stopped at the edge of the field with all the other workers.

  “Go on,” one of the younger men said.

  He prodded me in the back with the tip of his sword. I glanced over my shoulder then calmly walked into the field.

  What should I do?

  A woman wearing a tattered white dress walked over as I entered the field. “You shouldn’t run away, Yorg,” she said, voice soft.

  “I got confused,” I said. “All this working.”

  She smiled, melting my half-orc heart.

  “Here,” she said, handing me a small sickle. “I’ll see you tonight.”

  She wandered away, resuming her work harvesting some type of wheat. I glanced down at the sickle, wondering if I could use it as a weapon and attack. The old man would go down quickly, but I wasn’t so sure about the two younger men. Were they his sons? Employees? I pushed the questions aside.

  After choosing an unoccupied row, I bent down and grabbed a bunch of the wheat. With a swift, sure swing of the sickle, I cut it away then set it on the ground. Hours went by.

  Whenever I stood up straight or took a moment to catch my breath, one of the men with a sword would yell at me from the edge of the field.

  Will the stupid game make me slave away as a field hand for an entire year? Maybe that’s why the others hadn’t shown up to help me. I kept working.

  Later that evening, I followed the other slaves to a barn near the field. The stench hit my nose as soon as I walked in. Someone slammed the door behind us.

  “I’ll get the light,” a woman said.

  Around a dozen other people had walked into the barn. After a lantern was lit, they huddled around it, sitting on barrels and crates.

  “Get over here, Yorg,” a man with a weathered face called out.

  I wandered over to their group with so many questions running through my mind. The kind woman from earlier patted an empty seat next to her.

  As I sat down, she turned away and placed her hands in her lap.

  This is the stupidest game ever.

  My blood pre
ssure shot through the roof.

  “Everything okay?” the woman asked.

  I nodded, just wanting to sleep. After a full day of work in the field, my muscles ached. When I spotted some piles of hay in the corners of the barn, I stood.

  “See you guys in the morning,” I said then shambled away.

  I heard them talking amongst themselves as I got down on the floor. The piles of hay barely cushioned the hardwood floor, but I closed my eyes. Sleep came quickly, my dreams filled with scenes of Sarah. I missed her so much.

  The next few days opened my eyes to the other side of the game. When I’d first come in, I’d fought anyone who crossed my path. Living as an NPC with no other players around made me think of the other denizens in the game. They had emotions and feelings.

  Reading through the limited help files one morning, I stumbled across a section I’d missed before. I knew killing innocents in the game affected alignment, but I hadn’t realized how much the alignment score mattered.

  Too much evil, and I’d be punished more.

  I shuddered at the thought of what could be worse than my current predicament. When the morning bell for work rang outside, I shut down the help files in my HUD and stood, stretching and preparing myself for another day. Could I last a whole year on my own?

  Jasmine poked her head in the doorway and smiled.

  “You’re up,” she said. “Maybe you’re not as lazy as everyone says.”

  I smiled, amazed at the complexity of her character.