Crystal Shards Online Omnibus 1 Read online

  Contents

  Title

  Chapter 1: My Sucky Life

  Chapter 2: Logging In

  Chapter 3: Gilly

  Chapter 4: The Journey Down

  Chapter 5: Noobs

  Chapter 6: Dodge Tank

  Chapter 7: Highs and Lows

  Chapter 8: Gimp

  Chapter 9: Reality Bites

  Chapter 10: Corpse Run

  Chapter 11: Decisions

  Chapter 12: Rebirth

  Chapter 13: Level 1 Warrior

  Chapter 14: Dungeon Date

  Chapter 15: First Boss

  Chapter 16: Uneasy

  Chapter 17: Thief

  Chapter 18: Ninja

  Chapter 19: Shadow Copy

  Chapter 20: Mike

  Chapter 21: Secrets

  Chapter 22: Aftermath

  Chapter 23: Insomnia

  Chapter 24: Solo

  Chapter 25: Sheeba

  Chapter 26: Taste of Victory

  Chapter 27: Shopping at Bloomingdales

  Chapter 28: Dinner

  Chapter 29: Grinding Gears

  Chapter 30: The Burning Sands

  Chapter 31: Underwater Raid

  Chapter 32: Beast King

  Chapter 33: Plains of Duality

  Chapter 34: Arena Race

  Chapter 35: World Boss

  Chapter 36: Citadel

  Chapter 37: Revelations

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: A New Reality

  Chapter 2: The Village

  Chapter 3 Town Hall

  Chapter 4: Karma

  Chapter 5: Ties that Bind

  Chapter 6: Redirection

  Chapter 7: Pitstop

  Chapter 8: Dungeon Dive

  Chapter 9: Goblin Queen

  Chapter 10: Falling

  Chapter 11: Friend or Foe

  Chapter 12: The Board

  Chapter 13: Greater Good

  Chapter 14: Lakota

  Chapter 15: Where’s the beef?

  Chapter 16: The Feast

  Chapter 17: Gina

  Chapter 18: Type_Unknown

  Chapter 19: Stormwall

  Chapter 20: Enemies at the Gates

  Chapter 21: Bathtime

  Chapter 22: King Braxus

  Chapter 23: Surf and Turf

  Chapter 24: Judge and Jury

  Chapter 25: Shinobi Shodown

  Chapter 26: Escape from Stormwall

  Chapter 27: The Short Straw

  Chapter 28: Rookie

  Chapter 29: The Silken Hollow

  Chapter 30: Witch Spider

  Chapter 31: Death.exe

  Chapter 32: Rest and Reconciliation

  Chapter 33: Wakeup call

  Chapter 34: Reunion

  Chapter 35: Level Up

  Chapter 36: Into the Wild

  Chapter 37: Escape

  Chapter 38: Secrets Told

  Chapter 39: House Call

  Chapter 40: Preparation

  Chapter 41: Shadow King

  Chapter 42: Guilt

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1: Onizoso

  Chapter 2: Hail Mary

  Chapter 3: Contingency

  Chapter 4: Near Miss

  Chapter 5: Enthalpy

  Chapter 6: Bait and Switch

  Chapter 7: Angel Farm

  Chapter 8: Binary

  Chapter 9: Rescue

  Chapter 10: Trapped

  Chapter 11: Weakness

  Chapter 12: Entry

  Chapter 13: Learning

  Chapter 14: Naked Truth

  Chapter 15: Incomprehension

  Chapter 16: The Monster in the Room

  Chapter 17: Race for Home

  Chapter 18: Time Crunch

  Chapter 19: Hope

  Chapter 20: Spare no Evil

  Chapter 21: Shard Wraith

  Chapter 22: Relief

  Chapter 23: Refuge

  Chapter 24: Ice Worm

  Chapter 25: Camp Star Fall

  Chapter 26: Worm Hole

  Chapter 27: Building

  Chapter 28: Change

  Chapter 29: Deliberations

  Chapter 30: Preparations

  Chapter 31: Motivations

  Chapter 32: Crazy

  Chapter 33: Snowblind

  Chapter 34: Frost Fire

  Chapter 35: High Gear

  Chapter 36: Puzzle Piece

  Chapter 37: The Crisis before the Storm

  Chapter 38: Riot

  Chapter 39: A Quick Think

  Chapter 40: Attack on Star Fall

  Chapter 41: By Slight or by Might

  Chapter 42: The Meeting

  Chapter 43: Siege War

  Chapter 44: Black Ops

  Chapter 45: Witgar

  Chapter 46: Complication

  Chapter 47: 360 Assault

  Chapter 48: No Escape

  Chapter 49: Last Stand

  Chapter 50: Final Delivery

  Chapter 51: Freedom

  Chapter 52: Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Crystal Shards Online

  Omnibus I

  Dodge Tank

  Shard Warrior

  Shard Wraith

  By

  Rick Scott

  Cover Art and Design by Alberto Besi

  Copyright © 2019 by Rick Scott

  All Rights Reserved.

  VER 1.00

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of very brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  * * *

  Acknowledgments

  My thanks goes out to my wife and kids for giving me countless hours of free time at the computer to punch this novel out. This one is for you guys!

  Special thanks to all my beta readers:

  Elias Dantas

  Ezben Gerardo

  Zach Goza

  Norman Meredith

  Tarcha Saleeba

  And to all my alpha readers and supporters on RRL who watched me bring this book together from scratch and helped me do it!

  You guys did wonders for the book!

  For more great GameLit/LitRPG reads, check out

  https://www.facebook.com/groups/GameLitSociety/

  https://www.facebook.com/groups/LitRPG.books/

  https://www.facebook.com/groups/LitRPGRebels/

  https://www.facebook.com/groups/litrpgforum/

  Will you leave me a review? Your feedback and thoughts really make a difference, especially for people who want to know what the book is about. If you can, please consider leaving a review on Amazon.com.

  My eternal thanks in advance if you do so!

  -Rick Scott

  * * *

  Dodge Tank

  A LitRPG Novel

  Crystal Shards Online Book 1

  By

  Rick Scott

  Cover Art and Design by Alberto Besi

  Copyright © 2017 by Rick Scott

  All Rights Reserved.

  VER 2.00

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of very brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.


  Chapter 1: My Sucky Life

  The best part of my sucky life is that I get to play Crystal Shards Online for a living.

  Not ‘a living’ as in, I make so much money playing that I don’t have to work in the real world. More like, playing Crystal Shards is the only work I can do.

  But I make the best of it.

  It’s not a great living, for sure, but I earn enough to help pay the rent, buy food, and hopefully one day save up enough money to pay for my mom’s operation. That’s one reason my life sucks right now. My mom has been ill for a while—radiation sickness from fallout debris, the doctors say. That’s the other reason my life sucks. Most of the world was made uninhabitable by a nuclear war a couple centuries ago. They say one day we might be able to live on the surface again, but it probably won’t happen in my lifetime.

  Now we live below ground, in cities carved out by giant automated boring machines called Builders. “City” is a bit of a generous term for it, though. It’s more like thousands of shipping containers linked together by tunnels. My home is one such shipping container, that I share with my mom and older brother Mike.

  Mike is kind of a dick, by the way. But he’s my brother, so what can I do?

  At least we have separate rooms now. When I turned seventeen last month, my mom let me splurge on a couple sheets of drywall and a door frame. We couldn’t afford the actual door, so I hung a shower curtain in the frame for privacy. Of course, Mike the jerk still barges in anytime he feels like it, but it gives me some small peace of mind when I jack into the network to play Crystal Shards. I can’t count the number of times Mike has yanked me offline in the middle of a session. It’s his idea of a prank, I think.

  Idiot.

  He spends more time out of the house now. I think he has a girlfriend or something, but I don’t really care. I’m just happy that it leaves me with more peace and quiet.

  And more time to mine in Crystal Shards.

  Just the thought of mining gets me out of my bed, which is a mattress on the floor that I’ve been sleeping on since I was six. I reach for Mutt and Jeff next. The two crutches are lying next to me as always. My “assistants,” Mom always calls them. I tell the lights to switch on and a bright LED glow illuminates the cement gray walls of my tiny room. My VR rig, my key to the world of the living, is in the corner, and I give a short prayer of thanks that Mike hasn’t messed with it while I was asleep.

  I prop myself up against the wall with the help of Mutt, and then head for the living room to check on my mom. She’s on the couch, as usual, a blanket covering her tiny frame, frailer even than my own.

  “What d’you want for breakfast, Ma?” I say as I hobble by, headed toward the food processor in the corner.

  “Pancakes with sausage, two eggs,” she says without missing a beat. “And black coffee. Make it strong this time.”

  “You got it.” I chuckle and key her breakfast order into the device. It’s a nano-processor that’s designed to make almost anything. It uses the same technology the Builders used to make the city from the earth they chew with their cavern-sized maws. The catch is that it takes a lot of credits—and a much better grade nano-machine—to make anything that tastes even remotely close to real food. I access the joint family account and check our balance.

  Your balance is ….. 1,217 Cr

  My stomach does a little flutter. The rent is due next week: 3,500 credits. It’s a lot to make up for, especially since I can never count on Mike to bring much home from whatever it is he does out on the streets. Half the time, I think he’s holding back, spending the credits on himself. The most he’s ever contributed is 1,000. That barely covers Mom’s medicine. I sigh, hoping Mom doesn’t hear. She hates it when I worry. It only stresses her out more.

  I spend 30 of our too few credits on breakfast. The processor buzzes a minute later and I remove two recyclable bowls of steaming oatmeal. At least, that’s what it tells me it is. I’ve never tasted the real thing, so I wouldn’t really know. I take our bowls back to the living room and sit on the couch with Mom to have breakfast with her. The “oatmeal” tastes as bland and mushy as it always does.

  “Have you seen Michael?” she asks. “I don’t think he came home last night.”

  I look at my Mom and fail to hide the eye roll. I know because she gives me a look of despair that makes her sunken face look even sadder. “He is your brother, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know. My older brother.”

  I shove down a few more spoonfuls of oatmeal, avoiding her eyes.

  “He’s fine, Mom,” I say eventually. “I saw him leave for work early this morning.”

  I can’t tell if she’s bought the lie. Her faded blue eyes finally leave mine, though, so she’s bought it for now, or maybe she’s just faking, too. “So, where you off to today, Ryan?”

  I perk up at the change in topic. “The Silvertooth Mines. I’ve been watching the market. Silver ore should be in high demand for the next couple days. There’s a big werewolf expansion pack coming out for Witch World this weekend. The PvPers are going to be looking for a lot of silver.”

  She laughs.

  That’s the coolest part about Crystal Shards Online. The developers made it a completely connected virtual world, where the same character can enter any number of Shards. Each Shard has its own world and setting, but everything within them is interchangeable—even the currency and items. Crystal Shards has an economy where items and materials can be exchanged for the same credits that can buy you stuff in the real world. Plus everyone connects to Crystal Shards for a break from the drudgery of reality. People go on vacations, explore, even have relationships. And thanks to the VR rig that connects directly to the nervous system, it all feels 100% real.

  Except for pain, unless you wanted it—and then there are mods for that, too.

  In fact, if they can afford to, most people live more online than in the real world.

  My ambitions however are much simpler than that.

  Enough to pay the rent would be a start. 500k to pay for my mom’s operation would be a dream.

  “Or you could finally level up something besides Miner and take out a world boss.” My mom grins at me as she says it. “A 20 million credit drop would be nice.”

  “Ha ha . . .” I say as I dump our empty breakfast bowls into the recycler. “Maybe once they make combat classes that don’t rely on your actual agility for controls.”

  But Mom is right. The pinnacle of the game worlds are the world bosses. Rarely was one ever defeated, and it normally took a team of high-level players to achieve. I’d only ever heard of one guild able to defeat the one in my particular Shard: the Silver Rangers. And that was like ten years ago. There are thousands of guilds like them now, all throughout the Crystal Shards, all vying for the same achievement.

  To defeat a world boss.

  The prize for defeating a world boss would not only pay for my mom’s operation, it would be enough to fix my legs, as well. We’d even have enough to move to the lower levels of the city, away from the radiation. Where real water exists in deep underground lakes and the processors are able to make real-tasting food.

  Unfortunately for me, Mutt and Jeff are also the reasons why I could never play a combat class, and could never go on a raid. The developers made the combat hyper realistic for full immersion, separate from the regular game stuff, but all that came with the entry fee of a normal nervous system. For me, swinging a pickaxe in a mine would be the extent of my combat ability.

  “You could always play a tank?” Mom jokes. “Don’t they just stand there and get hit?”

  I chuckle. “I think there’s a bit more to it than that, Mom.”

  I hobble over to help her with her own rig. “And where are you off to today?”

  “Shopping at Bloomingdale’s.”

  I force myself to smile at her rote response. It’s the same answer she’s given my brother and me since we were old enough to know she was “going” someplace else when she put on her rig. Tha
t was just around the same time she started getting sick from her job as an air scrubber technician and couldn’t go to work anymore. Now, I’m old enough to understand what she’s really doing in Crystal Shards to earn her share of our monthly income. It’s what a lot of women probably did. Enter a world where her avatar could be the object of any fantasy and guys would pay credits by the minute for her interaction.

  The thought makes me sick to my stomach and I can’t wait to escape to another world.

  A world far away from this one. A world where I might just hit a rare ore and free my mom from all her pain and suffering.

  A world called Crystal Shards Online.

  Chapter 2: Logging In

  I put Mutt and Jeff to the side as I pull on my VR rig. The buzz of electricity flows through my body as the neural jack connects to the implant at the base of my neck. It’s a standard implant for all citizens. Even gimps like me get one at birth, thankfully.

  As the system boots up, my vision and senses fade for a moment.

  Then, all at once, the main menu screen bursts to life. An all too familiar musical theme sends sparks of excitement and anticipation racing through my body. I’m all at once at work and at play, ready for my fourteen-hour shift in the virtual mines of Nasgar, one of the fantasy-based Shards. I check my access credits and top up my account to cover the fourteen-hour play time, paying 5 credits per hour. The daily and monthly passes work out cheaper, but mining is not a guaranteed profit maker, and going in the hole is a lot easier to swallow when you’re risking a week’s worth of food rations rather than a couple months’ worth of rent.

  I check my avatar next.

  He’s modeled to look like me, except cooler looking, of course: short black hair, a chiseled jaw, and a buff bod instead of my scrawny one, with legs thick like tree trunks, instead of thin like tree branches. I pull up my character stats.

  Name: Reece

  Sex: M

  Race: Human

  Class: Miner

  Level: 6

  Guild: Nasgar Labor Union

  Strength: 6

  Determines melee damage and requirements for heavy armor.