Viridian Gate Online- Vindication Read online

  Table of Contents

  Summary

  Shadow Alley Press Mailing List

  Eldgard

  Times of Crisis...

  Breaking Bone and Shattering Bond

  Leaving Well Enough Alone...

  In Blaze of Glory...

  Remembering to Forget

  Best Laid Plans

  Within Will of Change...

  Superior Tactics...

  Question of Quests...

  Journey of Fate...

  Black and white not so simple...

  Where walls meet road...

  Fate is Fickle Bitch

  In Days Gone By...

  You can’t plan this...

  Eventuality Always Reality...

  The Immovable Object...

  Reality always become Eventuality...

  And Winner Is...

  Behold that which dooms world...

  But Wait, Is More...

  Infinite Expanse of Mind...

  Not Everything can be Broken...

  Bond Stronger than Steel

  Insolence, Arrogance, and Fall of Mankind...

  The Abyss Stares Back...

  Shadows Are Strongest at Pinnacle of Light...

  Ounce of Preparation

  Fate’s Battlefield...

  Everything, Now...

  Karma is Bitch...

  There is Resentment in Purpose...

  When Means Justify End...

  Books, Mailing List, and Reviews

  Viridian Gate Online: Expanded Universe

  Books by Shadow Alley Press

  litRPG on Facebook

  GameLit on Facebook

  Copyright

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Summary

  THE END OF THE WORLD is not such a bad thing for Russian weapons engineer Vlad Nardoir.

  Really his world ended six months ago when his wife died, and ever since then, things have been downhill. Soul-crushing medical debt. Favors to the Russian mafia. Now, asteroid. For Vlad, this is life in a nutshell.

  But, in a wild twist of fate, he has found a way out. A chance to start fresh in a brand-new ultra-immersive MMORPG called Viridian Gate Online. Making the leap might kill him, but again, death is not such a bad thing for a man with nothing to live for. Even in the virtual world, however, old grudges burn true, and the past is not as far gone as it seems. He must use his quick wits, rugged persistence, and peculiar set of skills as a weapons engineer to make a place for himself in this new world, or be forcibly dragged back into the very life he fought so hard to escape.

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  Eldgard

  Times of Crisis...

  Timeline - 4 days before Astraea, 09:45

  “INA, IT HAS BEEN TOO long.” I sat with my legs crossed at the grave of my beloved. The grass, what little remained in my small backyard, was overgrown and dying. There had once been flower beds under the windows of our home; they were a riot of colors, all shapes and sizes. Flowers I could never keep, but Ina was different. Plants thrived under her eyes, they flourished under her care. Sadly, those were also dead. I’d had a friend who worked in stone masonry carve Ina’s headstone, made of a dark black marble.

  It was truly gorgeous.

  He had done a fine job—it looked like her, even down to the way her auburn hair flowed in the wind. He had captured every detail I could remember, everything she was in the picture I had given him to recreate. It was a simple scene: we were at a festival in the Saint Petersburg Plaza, she was looking at the statue of Catherine the Great, the wind blew, her hair billowed in the wind, and the picture was perfect. She was my own personal Catherine.

  “I regret that we cannot be together any longer.” I choked back a tear—no, I did not have time to cry. There was much work to be done yet. The entirety of Earth was doomed. An asteroid, named 213 Astraea, was on a collision course with the planet, and there was nothing we could do to stop it. Many attempts to redirect the asteroid had failed, as had missions to destroy it. Some of those mission has been directed to my employer, Almaz-Antev. Being a super-power in the weapons design and production industry, they were a forerunner for the possibilities of saving the world. Those missions, one of which was work of my own design, had failed. The mass of rock and ice measured fourteen-and-a-half kilometers. The impact was expected to be cataclysmic. Many organizations had attempted to predict the asteroid impact site, giving it a rough estimate of landing in the North Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Greenland.

  I stood from the grass and laid a small bundle of flowers at the grave. She wasn’t buried here, of course. She was buried in the National Cemetery, for her work to advance the science of chemistry in Russia. It was the one thing that Mother Russia had given her. The flowers were purchased from one of the small flower stalls nearby, one of the last bundles they had. I was late leaving work again, and it was shameful for me. Bah, regrets are a powerful thing. I needed to get my mind off of her. It had been six months since she passed away, and the pain was still too fresh. Perhaps having her memorial in the backyard was not such a smart thing after all, but I wanted to keep her close, and the graveyard where they buried her was too far away for frequent visits.

  I went back inside and shook my head at all I saw. The house was a mess, as I hated cleaning. Ina was always so good at keeping after that. I would make a mess, she would clean it up. We had an understanding. We also had grumbling. But we made it work. I took a sip from the coffee I had made earlier in the morning before leaving for work and subsequently forgotten about.

  “Shit, tastes like week-old engine oil. And not even high test.” I tossed the coffee cup into the sink harder than I intended. It shattered on impact, little chips flying in every direction.

  “Ina, your coffee was always perfect.” I looked down and clenched my fists, caked with years of work, grime, and oil. “This was not what was in my head. It is not what I intended.” The smell of multi-part oil and degreaser invaded my nostrils, and I was taken back to another time.

  Ina had just started working for the National Laboratory’s Saint Petersburg branch shortly after attaining her doctorate in chemistry. She started as a basic research assistant, working on a new type of oil that would last until the end of time. She quickly advanced through the ranks, working harder and faster than anyone else, until she had taken a position as a head chemist in the Chemical Manipulation Department. It was a research facility that was dedicated to the development of new, completely unique compounds, often using dangerous chemical components. Ina had always told me that working in the chemical plant would kill her; I had thought she was talking about it being the end of her career path, though I often said her genius would last forever. She once clarified that it would be due to the vials that were left open absentmindedly or the frequent spills due to careless laboratory technicians. I had not expected her to be so right.

  The cancer took her within a year’s time. I watched my beloved Ina devolve from a gorgeous, intelligent woman into a bedridden husk of what she once was. There was nothing I could do. All of my knowledge and expertise, my genius, was useless. Russia had withheld treatment toward the end, as a result of some perceived debt to society. After all, socialized medicine paid for Ina’s expensive chemo treatments—well, some of them. The medicine was too expensive for the insurance to pay for, and about halfway through, the medication was not covered at all.

  There were some situations where we had to seek alternative funding, and Ina no longer could work to cover the costs. More regrets on my behalf, and
the decisions I made will follow me forever, but wasn’t the cost of having Ina for just a little longer in my life worth absolutely anything I could pay? Mother Russia, in her “infinite wisdom,” had taken Ina from me. One day, I knew I would get back at the motherland. Perhaps not in this lifetime, and perhaps not Russia herself, but I would fight back.

  As luck would have it, or fate, or whatever you want to call the fickle bitch, Almaz-Antev, the weapons developers I worked for, had connections and ins with Osmark Technologies. I pulled a few strings, made a few promises that I knew I would never be able to keep, and suddenly I was admitted to the Viridian Gate Online program, the one hope for mankind to survive after Astraea. Ina was disqualified due to her cancer, which could potentially cause major issues with the transition, according to the information I received. At the end, she held my hand, gave me the best smile she could afford, and told me she would see me in paradise. She told me she wasn’t upset that I was going into V.G.O. alone, that her spirit would always be with me. I had never believed in heaven, hell, or any kind of afterlife, but I believed her.

  I regretted making those promises, especially since I was expected to contribute to any future war effort within V.G.O. on behalf of the bigwigs. Almaz-Antev had helped to fund Osmark’s work to make V.G.O. the product it was. It felt like a waste, all of the work I had done to renovate the basement to admit a pair of V.G.O. capsules, and I had spent weeks working on it. I ran electrical wiring and conduit, I adjusted network propensities, and I improved the layout. I even did some off-the-books excavation to expand our room.

  I looked at the watch on my wrist, at its hands moving with flawless precision. It was one of my own designs, and a small twinge of pride hit my heart but bounced off the cold exterior. I had a few hours before I needed to meet the deadline for my transition into V.G.O., giving me enough time to transition before impact, and there was still that project for Almaz-Antev that needed finalizing. Namely the nuclear automata that would usher in the new age of people on Earth, tasked with cleaning, demolishing, and rebuilding after the impact.

  At one time, Almaz-Antev was the premier weapons manufacturing company for all of Russia. They had colluded with other nations, of course. There was nothing to be done for that. My weapons killed a lot of people, and with that came regrets I will never be able to put aside. But it was not the time for regrets. It was the time for action.

  “There is still time,” I said absentmindedly. “I will fix some of the mistakes I’ve made. First though, I must wash this mountain of dishes.” I set about working on the broken coffee cup, gently placing the pieces in the waste bin. The noise from the city street outside my small house filtered through the cracked window, stuck open from the years of Saint Petersburg winters. I had promised Ina I would fix it, but always there was another important thing to be done. It got pushed back further and further, until there was no time left to fix the small things. “Ina, I am so sorry. I will fix the things that I can soon.” I pushed the anger and the pain back into their space and finished the dishes.

  The six months since Ina had passed had been very challenging, and there was more than one time where I had completely fallen apart. I had lost considerable weight, simply from forgetting to eat, forgetting to sleep. I threw myself into my work, and Almaz-Antev was happy to see the improved work ethic. While Ina was sick, I was almost fired. That would have endangered everything Ina and I had worked so hard for. It would have voided our passes into V.G.O. Now hers was gone, and so was she. “No, I cannot fall back to this, the anger, the sadness. Always, it comes back to her being gone. I cannot focus on that now, there is so much to do before the morning.” I needed to work, I needed to get my mind off her.

  Timeline - 4 days before Astraea, 16:52

  In the evening, I retired to my basement workspace. I neglected to eat dinner, and as a result, found myself getting easily irritated. “Two more screws here,” I said. Talking to myself while working helped me to focus. It allowed me to make sure I didn’t miss any steps while making things. And this project was important. The radiation shielding needed to be perfect, both inside and outside. “Will check the Geiger counter later; I don’t have time for this shit.” I set the machine core to the side and changed my focus to another portion of the machinery: the converter. “This will need sturdier wiring. Perhaps dioxymethylene coating will suffice? No, too caustic. That definitely will eat through cables in a few decades. Something stronger, a polycarbon wrap?” I leaned against the table, both palms flat against it. “Ina would know what was best. She was the best chemical engineer in all of Russia.” I slapped my hands down hard, harder than I had thought, rattling the pieces all over the table. The machine core bounced off the table and smacked against the ground. The sound of crunching metal greeted my ears.

  “Goddammit! Everything is going wrong!” I picked it up from the floor and cradled the broken core in my hands. “Well, it clearly isn’t strong enough yet.” I chuckled as I stared at the cracked and broken core. “Back to the drawing board.” I shrugged as I tossed the prototype core into a pile of other garbage.

  Several hours later, I ended up with a much-improved core. It had significant resistance, and I was working on the last bolts. They needed to be sealed with a specific corrosion-resistant material, which I also had manufactured with Ina’s help. “Only last bolts, now. Then I can scan and send the schematics to Almaz-Antev, easy as cake. Is that how that goes? No, no, that is not the adage. English is ignorant.” I rolled my eyes as I picked up my wrench, hefting it in my hand.

  The weight felt good, it felt real. It kept my mind focused as I worked.

  Halfway through fastening the last bolt, which required a considerable amount of force, my hand slipped off the spanner, and my palm raked across the now-stripped bolt head. “Ahhh!” I shouted in agony as blood poured from my hand, my tool falling to the floor. “You stupid piece of shit!” I picked up the machine core and hurled it as hard as possible against one of the block walls in the basement. It smacked against the wall and fell to the floor. The clang of heavy metal resounded around the small room. “Goddammit all!” I stepped over to the medkit I kept in the basement and wrapped up my hand. “Another setback.” I headed over to the core on the ground and picked it up. I turned it about in my hands and noticed that everything was still intact. “Huh, is much stronger. Eh, bolt is not in perfect position, but Almaz-Antev will not care, I am thinking. Project complete.”

  I spent a few moments scanning the project blueprint into my computer, using my 3-D scanner, and emailed it off to Almaz-Antev. Within seconds, I received a confirmation email. Along with a short note at the end: “Godspeed, Vlad Nardoir.” That was it, then. The only job remaining was to begin my transition into V.G.O. Well, that and to see the grave of my lost beloved one last time.

  Breaking Bone and Shattering Bond

  I HEADED BACK UP TO the house and found a guest in my kitchen. The man stood a head and shoulders above me, with a slightly bulging belly that strained against the buttons of his well-tailored black suit. The rest of him was nearly all muscle. I recognized him immediately as my old childhood friend, Bruno. He was standing in the kitchen, looking through some of the cupboards, making himself at home. “Well, this is unexpected, to say the least.” I raised my hands to show no hostility toward him. I had not expected to see a member of the Russian Mafia in my home.

  “Vlad, it is good to see you have not fled.” Bruno was imposing, as he always was. Today, though, he was even more so, easily outweighing me by a solid fifty kilos. “It would not do Almaz-Antev, or my fine employers, any good if you were to disappear before your debts were paid.”

  “Ah, Bruno.” I backed up a little bit and found myself against a wall. “I do not know of what debt you speak. I have paid off what I owed.” I wrinkled my forehead, trying to think of what I still owed, but nothing came to mind.

  “You see, Vlad, Viktor is looking for the blood price you owe. We spent a lot of money getting medication for your Ina
, and now we are owed a debt. The motherland is more forgiving than we are.” Bruno sat heavily into a chair at the kitchen table. He shrugged his shoulders as though it weren’t a big deal. “But you see, there is not much time left, and Viktor, he does not like to wait. He said something about you moving to some kind of different world, the same place he is going. Vermillion Glands, or something?” Bruno pulled a pair of brass knuckles from his pocket and slipped them onto his fists. My heart was pounding like it would leap out of my chest and scamper across the floor. I looked around for any kind of exit from this situation. I remembered the V.G.O. pod in the basement. I remembered the smell of Ina’s hair. I remembered that I wasn’t going to die, not today.

  “Bruno, let us talk. I will make coffee, we can share vodka, yes?” It was a ploy to get him to relax, and I was hopeful it would work out.

  “Ah, so hospitable.” Bruno laid a heavy arm on the table, and the wood groaned under the weight. My heart skipped a beat as I heard the chair shifting, expecting him to get up, but he didn’t. “You know, Vlad, I don’t remember you ever making coffee. That was always Ina’s thing.” He plastered a hard smirk on his face, and I knew he was being an ass.

  “She was always better at it,” I said, hiding my anger at his comment. “But I can make it just fine. Might taste like mud or engine oil, but it works.” I set about making said coffee, and I pulled a bottle of my finest vodka from the shelf. I wasn’t going to need it where I was going or if I was going to die tonight.

  “How long have we known each other?” Bruno sighed as he slipped the brass knuckles off his hands and set them on the table. He was letting his guard down. Good. Sometimes Bruno asked stupid questions, sometimes he just forgot. He had received a nasty blow to the head shortly after he started working for that mobster, Viktor, as a bouncer at a Mafia-run club. Forty-three years ago, our mothers had given birth in the same hospital, and until he joined Viktor’s crew, we were close friends. Sometimes I liked to think we still were. He was present for Ina’s funeral, and he was there for me when we found out she was sick. He was actually the one who reached out to me when the chemo wasn’t covered any longer. He was still a good man inside somewhere, but he was better at following orders than he was at keeping his friends and jobs straight.