Guild war pantheon onlin.., p.1
Guild War (Pantheon Online Book 3): a LitRPG adventure, page 1
GUILD WAR
BOOK THREE OF PANTHEON ONLINE
S.A. KLOPFENSTEIN
BOOKS BY S.A. KLOPFENSTEIN
THE SHADOW WATCH SAGA
The Shadow Watch
The Rage of Saints
The Darkling Queen
The Well of Shadows
PANTHEON ONLINE
Den of Thieves
Rogue Assassin
Guild War
Pantheon: Guild War © 2023 by S.A. Klopfenstein
Published by Guardian Grey Publishing
Cover Illustration by Ömer Burak Önal
Edited by Tamara Blain
ISBN: 9798862305890
All Rights Reserved
First Edition
For Alex, a true nerd
CONTENTS
What Happened Before
Prologue
I. Grand Master
1. Stakeout
2. Second Degree
3. The Hunt
4. Interrogation
5. Blood Lust
6. Fire in the Hole
Interlude
II. Star Runner
7. Spitfire
8. Flight
9. Shadow Drift
10. Common Enemy
11. Strays
12. Escapees
13. Blackmail
14. World Shaker
Interlude
III. Dark Mage
15. Night March
16. Dark Magic
17. Ley Line
18. Second Class
19. Hollow Run
20. Impressions
21. Contact
22. Awake
23. Recalibration
24. Second Line
25. Phase Three
26. Virtual Mortality
27. Fight and Flight
28. Inferno
29. Eye of the Storm
30. The Truth
31. A Plan
32. Calm Before the Shit
Interlude
IV. Launch
33. Battle Preparations
34. Parley
35. Countermoves
36. Oaths
37. Guild Moot
38. The Cost of Diplomacy
39. Countdown
40. Dark Companion
41. Primal Rage
42. Underbelly
43. In the Heat
Interlude
V. Guild War
44. Puma Check
45. Fouler Things Than Orcs
46. Through the Tract
47. BMFS
48. The Last Wave
49. One for Each
50. Glory
51. It All Comes Down to This
Interlude
VI. The Only Way Out
52. Crippling Fear
53. They Cheated First
54. Echoes Into Eternity
55. Imperial War
56. Final Flight
57. The Beginning of the End
58. The End of the Beginning
Interlude
Epilogue
From the Author
Acknowledgments
Also by S.A. Klopfenstein
More LitRPG
About the Author
WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE
Book One - Den of Thieves
Imprisoned for a crime he barely remembers, Jake Darrow receives an offer he can’t refuse—a chance to beta test the first fully immersive online RPG, Pantheon Online.
But this is not just any beta. It involves having highly sophisticated technology embedded into his body, which allows him to be intravenously fed while his entire nervous system is “plugged in” to the Virtuality Core integration system. Pantheon Online is unlike any VR game Jake has ever experienced. Every detail is nearly as realistic as his real body and his actual life.
His character, a dusk elf named Gunnar Ashwood, can smell, taste, and touch everything he interacts with. For better or worse. Even physical pain is a feature of the game, giving even more stakes to every quest and confrontation.
And his new purpose is to earn Glory for his goddess, Nymoria, and try not to be the brunt of the AI’s deprecating humor.
What begins as an entertaining distraction from his grim life as a prisoner, soon turns more serious as his performance in the game proves to impact his livelihood back in prison. Gunnar must advance to the satisfaction of the Suits and Ties that run the prison (and the beta), or face agonizing consequences IRL.
After a painful start in the cutthroat in-game city of Thailen, Gunnar makes friends—a barkeep named Sykes and a young thief named Kohli—who help him train on the path of a Rogue, with the hopes of gaining the attention of a thieves’ guild. Overcoming some early pitfalls, Gunnar quickly shows promise as a Rogue. He gains the favor of Nymoria, and even begins to form a new base of his own after he frees a crypt from the rule of a demented necromancer / bard.
But Gunnar finds himself torn about fully embracing his thief identity. When he is offered a trial quest with the Nighthawks—a different sort of guild, bent on righting the injustices of the city of Thailen—Gunnar seizes the opportunity.
His mission: infiltrate a nobleman’s party and swap an important letter from an imperial admiral.
But Sykes is secretly in league with city officials who do not want Gunnar to succeed. Sykes sends Kohli to try to stop Gunnar. But with the help of a young Nighthawk named Em, Gunnar manages to complete the quest.
However, the quest is more than it appears. His swapped letter is laced with a poison, and in an instant, Gunnar becomes an unintentional assassin, barely escaping the party alive.
Gunnar is displeased with the Nighthawks’ deception, and rather than joining their guild, he opts to go his own way, accepting a final quest to free some slaves from the city’s elite. During the quest, Gunnar encounters a dawn elf slave who looks almost identical to the woman he accidentally killed IRL—the crime that landed him in prison in the first place.
Is it all just the cruel joke of a twisted developer? Or is something more going on?
Gunnar does not have time to find out until he completes the rescue mission. Gunnar dies in-game in the attempt, but manages to complete the quest.
When he wakes back in prison, he discovers that the goddess he has been serving in-game is an actual woman in real life—a wealthy investor for Pantheon Online, who hopes to capitalize on his successes as the beta begins to stream live in preparation for the launch.
Nymoria offers him the chance to be her in-game champion. The higher he ascends, the wealthier and more powerful she becomes. She may even have the power to change his fate in prison.
Things are looking up and up.
Until Gunnar returns to Thailen. He immediately discovers that he has pissed off Sykes and a lot of other powerful people in the city. And Sykes knows where his new base is located.
Book One ends as Gunnar accepts a new quest to defend his crypt from Sykes and his cronies.
Book Two - Rogue Assassin
With help from Em and a valiant effort by Gunnar’s band of hobos and misfits, the crypt is saved and its entrances moved, so that none of their enemies may find their way back. Basking in the bond and triumph of battle, and the hope of a bright future in the game, Gunnar forms a new faction, punnily named the “Cryptids.”
But the victory did not come without a cost. Lex—the dawn elf who looked exactly like the woman he supposedly killed—was lost. Before she died, she managed to tell Gunnar enough to suspect that the crime that landed him in Grid Eight, and consequently in Pantheon Online, may not be what it seems.
For now, all he can do is keep trudging forward, and hope whoever was hacking the game can find him again.
Following his goddess’s wishes, Gunnar joins up with the Nighthawks guild. His first mission will be a small role in a large-scale assassination in a neighboring coastal city.
After gearing up and learning some basic magic—though not the dark magic he’d really like to learn—Gunnar and Em complete one more quest before leaving for Mavenport.
A mermaid princess has been rounded up to perform in Sykes’s infamous mermaid club, and they can’t resist the opportunity for another jab at their nemesis. The quest is nearly a disaster, but they manage, and garner favor among the merfolk. As a reward for his achievements, Gunnar receives a special boon from his goddess.
Upon setting out for their big Nighthawk quest, Gunnar and Em are split into separate teams. To Gunnar’s chagrin, he’s given charge of a group of low-level misfits. Their mission is to distract the Red Cloaks around the waterfront and decommission a watchtower along the harbor, so that the notorious Black Heart and his pirates can attack and distract the city watch while the assassinations take place.
The quest goes smoothly, and Gunnar is hopeful they’ll be able take a larger role soon. His wish is granted, but not because of his own merit. The assassinations go haywire. Someone alerted the Red Cloaks and lured the Nighthawks into a trap. Many of Black Heart’s pirates are captured.
Meanwhile back in Thailen, the masters of the Nighthawks have started dropping like flies.
Gunnar uses his boon to fast travel back to Thailen in order to help one of the last remaining masters—his benefactor, Leilani. Upon arrival at the Nighthawk headquarters, Gunnar finds one of their own—Master Zeda—leading Leilani out of the city.
He pursues them to the
She kills Zeda, leaving only one other Nighthawk master alive. Grand Master Faraday, who has gone AWOL. Gunnar narrowly escapes with his life, with help from the dusk elf, Sheira, and the direwolf, Nikita. They flee the Golden Hills, but stumble upon a fearsome sight. Leilani has not just betrayed the Nighthawks. She has formed an alliance with deadly monsters, and has her sights on changing Thailen forever.
Gunnar must fight off a ferocious wyvern, but manages to escape the Golden Hills. When he returns to real-world prison for the first time in days, he is greeted by a surprising figure—Luka, the second in-game deity he has encountered in real life.
Luka offers Gunnar to become his own champion.
Gunnar turns him down for now.
His return to the game only brings more trials.
Em has gone missing. Leilani has taken control of the Nighthawks. And she blames Gunnar for the assassinations.
With a bounty on his head, Book Two ends as Gunnar meets with Nymoria, resolving to defeat Leilani, and pry the city of Thailen from Luka’s control.
PROLOGUE
“What are you scheming, Nymoria?”
The goddess jolted at the unexpected voice and hastily dismissed the small portal window that had allowed her to narrow her spiritual focus to her own servants in Thailen.
Luka smiled, an obnoxious sneer, like a bully who thought he’d gained some new advantage in the schoolyard. The young god moved upon long legs with a cockish strut, his wavy blond hair swishing over his shoulders.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Nymoria murmured coolly, turning back to the luminescent Board of Realms—an auditorium-spanning topographical map set in three dimensions, populated with thousands of tiny Spirit Essences that floated to and fro amidst cities, mountains, and seas. The citizens of this particular realm looked like nothing more than ants swarming across distant fields. But even at a distance, she could feel the warmth of her servants’ Glory.
Nymoria ignored Luka, studying the board as though she still had some pressing detail to consider within its borders. Of the dozens of such boards in the halls of Elysium, and all the hundreds of halls he might strut around, why was he here right now?
Luka’s hip brushed against Nymoria’s side as he scooted closer to her. The goddess flinched at his nearness. It was just like a new-blood god. The young ones always mistook haughtiness for self-assurance, and power for charm.
She pushed back from the edge of the board and glared at him.
“No answers, then?” Luka asked in his aggravating drawl. He gave her a playful nudge. “Shall I be more direct in my queries? This is a new realm, and you are an ancient deity. Surely there’s some other you might vainly attempt to supplant. Why make moves in this realm where you hold so little sway? Is it me?”
She huffed. It was little secret that Nymoria sought to regain her standing in the Elysian Court, and this particular realm was hardly her only scheme. But it annoyed her that it was so clear to Luka that she sought his power specifically.
“Of course it’s you,” Nymoria said with a coy smile. “You were handed your seat.”
“Not without cause, surely you agree,” Luka said. “I am its founder. And I provided all the gods a fresh supply of Glory.”
“You could have bought your seat on the court by pleasuring the high mistress herself, for all I care. It’s all the same. I earned my seat.”
“And lost it,” Luka jabbed. “In spectacular fashion, I’m told.”
Nymoria crossed her arms over her chest and forced a smile. “I should be going.”
“No need, I’m leaving already.” Luka arched his lean, muscular back and pushed away from the board. A pair of women giggled from the pillared entrance to the hall, and the god grinned expectantly.
“This is all a game to you, isn’t it?” Nymoria said, giving him ample space to move past her. But he paused very near, so she could feel the radiance of his Glory.
“All life is a game, Nymoria. You’re just sour that I’m winning.”
Wrong. I’m sour that I’m losing, she thought.
Outwardly, she huffed. “Don’t fluff your ego. You’re of no consequence to me whatsoever.”
Luka flashed a toothy grin. “Ah, you cut me to the core.”
He gripped her elbow, a little too tight. She tensed, but did not pull away.
“Old money versus new money. It’s a tale old as the universe, isn’t it?”
Nymoria shrugged. “Whatever you say.”
“You see, the problem with you ancients is that you think you deserve something just for having been around for such a long gods-damned time. Too full of yourself to see that you are your own worst enemy.”
“And the problem with young gods is that you think I give a shit what you think.”
“Oh, I know you don’t. If you did, you wouldn’t be two steps behind me.”
The pompous ass released her and strode away, calling back over his shoulder, “Good luck with your scheming.”
PART 1
GRAND MASTER
1
STAKEOUT
In the moonless darkness, Gunnar Ashwood crested the narrow peak of a rooftop and peered out at the abandoned Nighthawk safehouse. Set in the heart of a Thailen business district, the place had remained hauntingly silent the past two nights.
The city itself was eerie enough since the riots broke out. When he first heard that the Red Cloaks were abandoning their posts, Gunnar had half expected a damn Purge to break out across the city. But the guilds of Thailen had more control over the workings of the city than he’d realized.
During the daytime, things carried on in an eerily normal manner. The markets didn’t miss a day of commerce, despite the debris still littering the streets. Within hours after the riots ended, the worst of it was cleaned up, and NPCs filled the streets peddling their wares. Mayhem did not run rampant. In fact, there was not a single act of violence the entire working day.
Night was a different story.
A well-known Marauders’ haunt was raided by a little-known faction called the Hood RatZ. The capital Z was the giveaway that player-formed guilds were rising up in the city, and it was then that Gunnar understood what was truly going on. As far as he could tell, Thailen had been run up until now by guilds native to the game. Everything had run like one big starter area.
But now…
A new world had formed overnight. It was open season in Thailen, and players now had their first real shot to make a name for themselves in the realms of Pantheon. It was a cutthroat environment perfectly constructed for the prisoners who populated the beta stages of the game. Gunnar could practically feel the shifted atmosphere in his bones. Everything felt heightened and vital, and he expected this was the final stages of the pre-launch era.
