Umbra Online- Halgor's Horde Read online

  A Fantasy LitRPG Adventure

  KD Brand

  © 2019

  Cover art and design by Mario Robert

  Like what you see? Want some of Mario’s art for your book?

  Hit him up for a quote at: https://www.facebook.com/mario.robert

  Map designed with Inkarnate

  https://inkarnate.com/

  Created in the United States of America

  Worldwide Rights

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any form, including digital, electronic, or mechanical, to include photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the author, except for brief quotes used in reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  A

  MYRIAD ENTERTAINMENT

  Production

  Acknowledgements

  Special thanks to Dusty Anderson for the motivation to get this world rolling.

  (Look for Dusty’s series in the Umbra Online universe coming soon.)

  Thanks to JT Byrd for his knowledge and coordination.

  Thanks to Mario Robert for his time, patience, and talent. You and the clan rock.

  And most of all, thanks to you, the reader, for taking the time to join Ty in his adventure. This is just the beginning. We hope you’ll stick around.

  Want to find more LitRPG goodness? Check out the LitRPG Books group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/LitRPG.books/

  Follow KD Brand on Facebook and Twitter and the Official KD Brand Website.

  Umbra Online

  Halgor’s Horde

  Book One of the Invocation Series

  One minute, Ty’s lounging around, playing his favorite MMOPRPG, Umbra Online. The next, he’s being sucked through an interdimensional portal into the very game itself.

  Oh, and someone’s trying to chop his head off!

  Trapped in the game, Ty struggles being a PC with a very NPC-ish body and none of the skills or gear his level 50 character had. He’s got to start all over, and the people who summoned him aren’t making it easy, frustrated they got a scrawny fourteen-year-old kid instead of the monster-killing badass they expected.

  Now, he’s gotta step up and prove he can save their world from destruction or die trying…and he really, really doesn’t want to die, seeing how only the eternal emptiness of limbo awaits, caught in the game’s coding.

  Umbra Online

  Umbra Online is a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) set in the mystical world of Emerhant.

  Long had the realm been at war, wild, vicious creatures terrorizing the people and sowing destruction at every turn. Pushed to the verge of extinction, the civilized races, divided by their differences, were forced to discard their enmity and present a united face against the enemy. Soon after, the tide turned, and peace was returned to Emerhant. That peace lasted for eons.

  Then came Gorr Kura.

  A brutal warlord whose past is shrouded in mystery, Gorr rose through the ranks of the beasts to become their leader. Understanding the failures of his minions, the same mistakes that had nearly been the downfall of the civilized races, the warlord united the feral creatures and brought them together under a single banner in the dark recesses of the realm: Umbra, the Legion of Shadows.

  Now, war has returned to the land, and it’s up to YOU to save Emerhant from annihilation! Are your prepared?

  Umbra Online

  Book One of the Invocation Series

  Halgor’s Horde

  The Adventure Begins!

  The Starter Town of Altunn

  Table of Contents

  One – A Summoning on Rye

  Two – Respawn Revelation

  Three – Unsettled In

  Four – One Fit Shops All

  Five – The Untoward Horde

  Six – Hero the Zero

  Seven - Aftermathematical Algorithms

  Eight – To Wrest a Quest

  Nine – Rat-a-Pooey

  Ten – Whac-a-Troll

  Eleven – Ménage à Montage

  Twelve - Lesson and Distressin’

  Thirteen - E-I-E-I-Oh Crap!

  Fourteen – Daisy Duking It Out

  Fifteen – Aggrobatic Artifice

  Sixteen – Circle Murk

  Seventeen - Dungeons and Dismemberment

  Eighteen – Severance Package

  Nineteen – Which Craft

  Twenty – A Dash of Disappoint

  Twenty-One - A Tisket, a Tasket, Ty’s Head in a Basket

  Twenty-Two – a Gathering of Whoas

  Twenty-Three - The End of the Beginning of the End

  Twenty-Four – Explosive Trollarrhea

  Twenty-Five – Barely Ever After

  About the Author

  One

  A Summoning on Rye

  THE RHYTHMIC CLICK of mouse buttons and the clatter of fingers smacking keys drowned out the low rumble of thunder and the slow-building epic sweeps of classical music spilling from the speakers.

  “Wooo! Take that, Malisuck!” Tyler shouted as his character in the game stepped forward and delivered the fatal blow to Malicus Mor. His warrior’s shimmering sword, Soulreaver, cleaved the head from the necromancer’s broad shoulders.

  +666 slashing damage. Death blow!

  Malicus stumbled, his blackened robes flaring around him. Jaundiced eyes went wide as his skull toppled forward and fell away, glaring at Ty until it dropped to the dusty mausoleum floor with a wet thunk. Obsidian blood splattered in its wake but dried as quickly as it spilled, the whole of the necromancer’s flesh, now free of the unholy spells that had held it corporeal, turning into a fine mist of ash that sparkled as each mote faded away.

  Bright lights flashed in the background, illuminating the dim bedroom as explosions filled the screen. Damage pops went off in response to the area of affect spell Ty had triggered through his mystical amulet a moment ago. They slowly subsided, taking out Malicus’s remaining undead minions, a mixed army of wights and liches, fire raining down upon their heads. A moment later, none remained alive.

  Victory! You have defeated the foul necromancer plaguing the Olerit Province and completed the quest The Dead Undead. Congratulations!

  Again.

  “As if there was any other outcome,” Ty laughed, teasing the snarky AI the programmers had plugged into UO to oversee the day-to-day game operation. A grin on his face, he watched the chaos of the battle dissipate, the minions’ bodies dropping to the floor, ready to be looted. “That corpse-wrangler never stood a chance.”

  It helped that Ty had killed Malicus over thirty times in the last two years, returning over and over to participate in the quest.

  You have earned +22,348 XP!

  “Yeah, like that matters anymore,” he said with a grin.

  At level 50 for over the last year, the max his character could be in Umbra Online—until the programmers patched the game again and raised the level cap—all the experience points he gained were little more than a pat on the back, doing his character no good.

  Still, at least the drops were still worth it.

  He raided the corpses of the minions, clicking on each in turn, and collecting the coins and valuable items they possessed.

  You have looted 45,423 gold, 18 Soul Gems, and an unidentified item (an ebony dagger, whose wavy blade appears coated in a sheen of mercurial liquid.)

  Ty had a pretty good idea what the dagger was, but he had to identify it bef
ore it had any value for him. So, he brought up his inventory window and scrolled through the items he had on hand, looking for a specific ring he’d stored for just these sorts of occasions.

  As a warrior, Ty’s character was incapable of casting magic on his own. He needed amulets or rings or other warrior-allowed magical items in order to pull off some of his basic spellcasting needs.

  He was okay with that, though. At his level, he had pretty much everything he ever needed so he could coast through the game without having to drag a mage along to help him out. He’d never been a fan of parties, preferring to go his own way.

  Once he found the ring, on the last screen, of course, he slipped it on.

  You have equipped Ring of Mystical Identification. It has 4 remaining uses.

  Ty triggered the spell, double-clicking on the ring, and then dragging his mouse pointer over to the dagger and clicking on it.

  Identify activated!

  Ring of Mystical Identification now has 3 remaining uses.

  “Good thing I have six of the things in my vault, right?” Ty laughed.

  The dagger glowed a bright blue for a moment, and then, when the shimmer faded, the system showed him the weapon’s name and stats.

  Blade of Orkam! +6 to surprise attack, Perpetual Shadow, Plague Seep. This is an assassin’s prized possession. With a perpetual gloom cast about the wielder, surprise is nearly assured, allowing the wielder to strike at almost any target without being seen. And should a hardy soul resist that stealthy blow, the pustulent sickness unleashed upon them, fouling their blood, and setting their organs alight with foul poisons, will ensure none but the most powerful of targets survive.

  “Meh, it’s all right.” Ty shrugged as he read the description. “Can’t use the darn thing, but at least I can pawn it at the shops for about 20k gold.”

  All in all, it wasn’t a bad haul for a few minutes’ work.

  After he stuffed the dagger deep into his inventory for when he was in town later, he leaned back in his seat, ignoring the crunchy squeak that sang out, a sign that it was about time to beg his mom for another computer chair. This one was on its last legs.

  Not that she would indulge him.

  He’d spent the entirety of his summer vacation sitting in that chair, eyes glued to the curved 43” extra widescreen monitor his mon bought for him the last year and dodging whatever chores she’d wanted him do, spending his days running through the circuit of UO quests and doing them over and over until he had the things memorized.

  Fortunately, she worked long shifts at night and spent the majority of the day sleeping, leaving Ty and his little brother, Jerrod (J as Ty called him), to their own devices most of the time.

  “Overtime pays the bills and keeps you two in Doritos and Mountain Dew,” she always said with a laugh, right before taking on another shift for some less dedicated ER nurse who’d decided to take the night off.

  It’d been that way since his mom kicked his dad out when Ty was just five, his father’s excuses for not contributing piling up until she couldn’t take it anymore. She said it was easier to support two kids than three and booted his butt to the curb.

  Ty hadn’t seen or heard from him since, not even a card on his birthday or at Christmas, but Mom had always been there.

  A guilty sigh slipping loose, Ty pulled his headset off and tossed it onto the desk, where it bumped against the monitor stand. “Guess it won’t hurt to take the trash out,” he muttered, stretching his legs to get the feeling back in them before he got up. “Maybe I’ll do the dishes, too.” He chuckled. “Well, some of them, at least. J can do the rest. No point getting carried away.”

  Right then, his monitor flickered, flashing a rainbow of colors before going dim, the backlighting seeming to drain of life, the screen going dark.

  “Aw, no way,” Ty shouted, reaching out and checked the inputs, begging, pleading, he’d just hit one of the cords with his headphones and knocked it loose. He groaned when he realized they were still plugged in snugly. “No, you can’t die on me now, dang it!”

  There was no way his mom would splurge on a new chair let alone a monitor. The stupid things were expensive.

  Hands shaking, Ty went to check the surge protector, hoping he’d just blown the fuse, and that was when the screen fluttered, coming back to life. He let out a loud sigh, glad to see it return to life, but the grin on his lips slipped away when he realized something was still wrong. It wasn’t his game he saw.

  Ty leaned back as an eerie white noise spilled from the computer speakers, ringing in his ears, the monitor showing static like one of the old, solid-state TVs set between stations.

  A splotch of purple appeared in the middle of the black and white snow, like a drop of ink splattered on the inside of the screen. It grew and grew, and swirls of green and orange danced in its depths, drawing Ty’s gaze. A flutter of weird symbols appeared around the edges of the screen, growing brighter and brighter. They burned tracers across his retinas before dimming. He had a strange sense of familiarity, and while it took a second for his brain to remember where he’d seen them before, he recognized them. It was the same runic script that adorned the crypt of a high-level monster lord he’d yet to defeat in the game.

  He gasped, struggling to catch his breath, only realizing then that he’d been holding it, and watched as the colors whirled ever faster, a whirlpool forming behind the screen.

  “What the…?”

  A subtle vibration ran through the room, prickling his skin with goosebumps. He stared at the monitor, transfixed by the weird display playing out before him, hands clasping the arms of his chair, knuckles white. A soft sound, a kind of whispered chant, rose up out of the static, a cacophony of twisted voices calling to him. He could hear his name carried on the sound.

  The colors enveloped the whole of the screen then, and there was sharp crack, dark spider webs of breaking glass spreading across the LCD display before the screen gave way, shards clattering across the desk with a jingling clatter.

  A purplish goo oozed from the edges of the screen, and Ty was bathed in an otherworldly glow that seemed to seek him out. He went to run, common sense finally winning out against curiosity and fear, but it was too late.

  His muscles stiffened, his body feeling as though some great hand had seized him and was crushing him in its palm. The voices grew, a warbling concoction of noise that sounded familiar and alien all at the same time.

  Then he felt a tug.

  Ty grunted, terror taking over, and he clasped at his chair, desperate for something to cling to, to keep him grounded, in place.

  It did him no good.

  A second tug pulled him to his feet. He stood there, frozen, unable to move, the pressure squeezing the breath from his lungs. Inch by inch, step by step, he was pulled forward, toward the maelstrom in his monitor. It threatened to devour him.

  Then he remembered he wasn’t alone.

  Both his mom and brother were home, just a few doors away, each asleep in their rooms. They’d hear him; they’d help.

  Ty gathered the last of his breath and went to scream.

  He never got a word out.

  His body folded in on itself, an origami jigsaw puzzle, agony shooting through him, setting his nerves alight. Then he was yanked forward, pulled into the very monitor itself. And as the purple whirl swallowed him whole, his last thought was:

  You have got to be…

  There was a bright flash, and Ty emerged from the swirling glow, dangling in midair.

  …twerking me!

  Gravity took hold then.

  “Oh…Shih Tzu!”

  Ty fell, crashing into a table a few feet below. He hit hard, stars dotting his vision as cards and mugs and coins erupted beneath him, exploding in every direction, and landing in a clatter. A warm wetness splattered him and stung his eyes.

  Bits of sandwiches rained down around him, peppering him with slices of stinky cheese and warm meat. A slab of bread smacked him right in the face and slid acro
ss his lips, leaving behind a sour aftertaste. Sadly enough, he recognized it immediately as rye.

  He hated rye bread.

  As he went to spit the taste out, there was a loud crack, and Ty felt the table give way under his weight, and he groaned as he hit the floor, his skull bouncing a couple of times before settling. His eyes rolled in their sockets as he fought to peel them open, staring up and trying to make sense of the cluster of chaotic voices rumbling around him.

  Nothing made any sense.

  Ty wasn’t at home anymore. He looked to be in a…medieval tavern?

  He shook his head to chase the cobwebs away and spied a bar. An older, gray-haired man wearing a stained apron loomed behind it, and a half-dozen patrons on the other side stood there staring, drinks in hand.

  Smoke billowed along the low roof, flitting through the rafters, and congregating above as if they were storm clouds. Tables and chairs surrounded him, people gathered about, forming a half-circle at his back. All of them looked on with amused expressions, their eyes focused on something in front of him. Still unsure as to what was going on, he followed their stares to see what they were looking at.

  And then he saw the ax.

  “Holy…!” he squeaked, throwing himself backward in a desperate flail of limbs.

  The ax slammed into the ground right where he’d just been, its massive blade hacking a deep furrow in the wooden floor, splinters flying.

  He glanced at the ax-wielder, taking in the hulk of a man snarling before him.

  Dressed in a leather breastplate that left the bowling ball muscles of his biceps bare, studded bracers on his forearms, the guy peeled the ax loose and lifted it again. A wild mop of dark hair partially covered his obsidian eyes, but there was no mistaking the murderous intent Ty saw gleaming in their depths.