Chiwaukee nights a litrp.., p.1
Chiwaukee Nights: A LitRPG Adventure (Tower of Somnus Book 2), page 1
CHIWAUKEE NIGHTS
Tower of Somnus Book Two
CALE PLAMANN
Copyright © 2022 by Cale Plamann
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Newsletter
Previously on Tower of Somnus
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Afterword
About Cale Plamann
About Mountaindale Press
Mountaindale Press Titles
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For Marlo, Gage, Lola and Charlotte.
Also a big thank you to my wife for putting up with my antics during the writing and editing process. Also a big thank you to my patrons but especially Ari, James, and Sesharan.
Finally, but certainly not least, I want to thank the wonderful team at Mountaindale Press. Without their hard work over the course of months and months, none of this book would have been possible.
NEWSLETTER
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PREVIOUSLY ON TOWER OF SOMNUS
Katherine Debs is a young woman with a foot in three different worlds. Born as a hereditary employee and shackled to a lifetime of debt to Ike Holdings, a subsidiary of one of the megacorporations that took over the world after traditional countries collapsed. Her life should have been one of drudgery, working her hardest to maybe one day raise her station.
But she wasn’t satisfied with that life. Sinking into an underworld of crime and smuggling, she joined one of the crews of mercenary ‘independent contractors’ that ran the poverty-stricken slums of the Shell that surrounded the Schaumburg Arcology where she was born and raised.
Then, Kat got her big break. A childhood friend gave her a subscription to The Tower of Somnus, a massively multiplayer role playing game that people could play in their sleep with living beings across the galaxy. More importantly, the abilities earned from completing dungeons and leveling up in the Tower carried over into the waking world, making subscriptions expensive status symbols as well as a path to power.
After gaining the subscription and making friends amongst the aliens, Dorrik, a four-armed lizard person of the lokkel race, and Kaleek, a giant otter warrior, Kat began to run into real world troubles. Apparently, a data trove she’d smuggled into her mercenary crew’s base had vital information about the assassination of a corporate executive, Christopher Haupt.
The Tower provided Kat with a place where she could escape her oppressive day to day life, with beings she considered friends. While she bonded with them, Kat honed her fighting skills and earned paranormal powers, gradually becoming a force to be reckoned with.
Meanwhile, things became more serious in Kat’s waking life with hired, cybernetically enhanced samurai interfering with her mercenary jobs, all the while a mysterious force seemed to maneuver against her.
Unfortunately, everything in the Tower wasn’t as simple as it appeared. Before too long, Kat learned that an alien faction was looking to exploit humans and that they were willing to make deals to empower people in exchange for them cooperating with some sort of unknown plot against humanity as a whole.
Matters came to a head with Kat, her hacking support, Whippoorwill, and her boss, Xander, raiding the headquarters of Steel and Blood, a rival gang that the corporate interests were arming to eliminate them. In a pitched battle, they defeated Steel and Blood and obtained the evidence they needed to eliminate the executives that were seeking to destroy them.
Despite this, the likely mastermind behind the entire debacle, Belle Donnst, escaped. Rather than being punished for her misdeeds, she was promoted, in part for turning over ‘evidence’ implicating her own daughter in Christopher Haupt’s killing.
The good news is that Belle doesn’t hold a grudge against Kat. Her major promotion went a long way toward smoothing those ruffled feathers. The bad news is that Belle has a hold over Kat, sending her away to the megalopolis of Chiwaulkee for college, all the while explicitly hinting that she will have jobs for someone with Kat’s particular skillset…
CHAPTER ONE
“Let’s go over the plan one more time.” Dorrik stood next to Kat on the rock face overlooking the beach, the wind rustling the giant lizard’s crest.
She glanced at her companion. Her head only came up to the dusky scales of their upper shoulder, but the giant four-armed, muscle-bound lizard was more scholar than warrior. That didn’t mean that Dorrik couldn’t hold their own in a fight. Far from it. They were one of the most adept swords-beings that Kat had ever seen.
It was just that Kat suspected her companion thought their combat prowess secondary. At their heart, Dorrik was a scholar. History, anthropology, physics, the lizard devoured everything they could related to learning.
Dorrik was a skilled combatant almost without trying. Like her, they blended a casting class with combat prowess, but Kat wasn’t sure she’d ever seen the lokkel practice with their swords. Like many of Dorrik’s skills, swordplay was another thing that came to them with infuriating ease.
“We wade in and kill as many of the float fish as possible,” Kaleek responded, his whiskers twitching. “Once enough of them are down, the Deep Terror will come partially to shore. At that point, I head into the water to attack it directly while Kat and you do your best to deal with its tentacles and deflate it.”
Kaleek had been chosen for the direct attack for two reasons. First, he was a desoph, a semi-aquatic quasi-mammal that closely resembled a giant terrestrial otter. The three of them suspected that his experience swimming and fighting in the water would be useful in the coming battle.
Perhaps more importantly, Kaleek was the team’s frontline fighter. The huge two-handed sword on his back was only a little smaller than Kat herself, but Kaleek could use it with deceptive speed and dexterity. Of course, it didn’t hurt that he had stamina-based skills specifically to help him offset its weight and momentum.
“Just be careful,” Kat replied, frowning. “I might be able to heal you if you get hurt, but Dorrik said that the tentacles carry a paralytic agent too. If you’re waist deep in water and paralyzed, that sounds like a good way to drown.”
“Desoph don’t drown.” Kaleek snorted. “Even our cubs spend more time in water than they do on land. It’s unthinkable.”
“Unthinkable or not,” Kat crossed her arms as she stared him down sternly, “that’s the sort of attitude that will end with you paralyzed and dead face down in a puddle.”
“She is right, Kaleek,” Dorrik said over the desoph’s snort. “You won’t be wearing your heavy armor so that you can fight in the water. If the Deep Terror even brushes you with a tentacle, that should be enough to paralyze you unless your fortitude attribute can overcome the poison.”
“Come on.” Kaleek wrinkled his whiskers at them. “In the past two months, we’ve blazed through four dungeons here on the second floor. I’ve been careful that entire time. Nothing is going to change just because we’re challenging the floor guardian. Don’t worry about it, I’m not going to let this thing tag me.”
Kat just rolled her eyes. Kaleek could back his bold words up. Probably.
She called up her status.
Name: Katherine Debs
Class: Elementalist Initiate
Max Level: 2
425 Marks
HP: 22
MP: 29
STA: 24
Dodge: Insignificant
Damage Mitigation: Insignificant
Strength: 3
Agility: 4
Fortitude: 3
Endurance: 4
Mind: 3
Reaction: 5
Charisma: 4
Spirit: 3
Spells Known:
Gravity’s Grasp
&nb
sp; Levitation
Pseudopod
Dehydrate
Dazzle
Shadow
Water Jet
Gravity Spike
Skills Known:
Knife I - 8, 79%
Gravity I - 7, 42%
Water I - 8, 14%
Cat Step - 5, 61%
Light I - 5, 16%
Cure Wounds I - 2, 21%
Penetrate
Perks:
Nightvision
Leaping
Four dungeons worth of delving, and the awards had been a mixed bag. She’d only earned two attribute points, one in endurance and one in reaction. As for the other two dungeons? The three points in hit points and stamina she’d been awarded from their most recent adventure would be useful, but she was struggling to find a consistent use for the Leaping perk.
In theory, the perk was nice. It let her burn stamina to triple the force she put into a jump. Combined with Levitation, Leaping let her jump almost twenty feet into the air. A useful skill for climbing cliffs or buildings, but far too flashy for Kat.
“Are we ready?” Dorrik asked, pulling both of their swords free. Each blade was held casually in a two-handed grip consisting of each of the lizard-man’s vertical hand pairs. “I believe that everyone is as prepared as we can be.”
“Ready,” Kat nodded, drawing her knife.
“Ready for this.” Kaleek wrinkled his nose. “Not entirely ready for the third floor. The environment is a bit arid for me.”
“Your preferences have been noted,” Dorrik replied dryly as they began hopping from rock to rock to descend the ridge in front of them.
Kaleek and Kat joined them, scrambling down the boulders. Seconds later, the three of them were standing on the white sand of the beach. For a moment, the fake sun of The Tower of Somnus beat down on them as the water lapped gently at the shore.
Then they spread out and began walking toward the float fish. Kat wasn’t entirely sure about the translation software used by the Tower, because whatever float fish were, they didn’t look like any fish she’d ever seen.
Each of the creatures was about the size of a beach ball, their mottled and slimy skin stretched tight over an air bladder filled with buoyant gas. A quartet of fins around their circumference let them steer themselves through the air, while a pair of tentacles ending in venomous barbs allowed them to collect and eat prey.
One of the five throwing knives Kat kept in a bandoleer across her chest whirred through the air, slashing deep into the side of a float fish. It popped like a balloon, deflating and sinking to the white sand.
With a follow up throwing knife held in the palm of her left hand, Kat approached her immobile foe. One of its tentacles rose from the sand, coiling and lunging toward her.
Kat half turned, her enhanced reflexes throwing her into motion almost the split second the dark green tentacle moved from the sand. She spun, using the momentum of her rotation to help drive her combat knife through the rubbery appendage.
Whether it was her form or her eight ranks in Knife I enhancing the effectiveness of the strike, the blade cut cleanly through the float fish’s tentacle. A second later, her spare throwing knife was dropping to the sand as Kat grabbed the second tendril out of the air.
It struggled, slimy and writhing in her hand. Kat tried not to think about it as her knife flashed down, cutting off the venomous spike at its end.
After that, it was only a matter of stabbing the half-deflated orb of the float fish’s main body a couple of times and retrieving her throwing knives. Leaving behind the dead float fish, Kat glanced at her companions.
Dorrik had already defeated their first opponent, severing both tentacles before drawing an “X” with their swords through its body. Kaleek, on the other hand, was struggling. Each time he brought his sword up to handle one of the tentacles, the other would threaten him and force him back.
She shrugged, throwing her knife and popping another float fish. This time she didn’t even bother walking toward it, instead standing out of its tentacles’ range and throwing one knife after another into it.
Around four knives later, it stopped moving and she cautiously moved closer to retrieve her weapons. Neither of its tentacles stirred to stop her as she collected the daggers, and before long she found herself repeating the process.
A part of her felt bad for the floating blobs. She didn’t know whether they were constructs of The Tower of Somnus or actual animals somewhere, but they clearly didn’t know how to deal with a ranged opponent.
Her knife thwacked into yet another float fish, sending it sputtering to the sand. Really, they weren’t even as smart as most animals on Earth. Even wild dogs would have run away by now, and as far as Kat could tell, there wasn’t anything stopping the creatures from simply floating up into the sky and out of her reach.
Dagger after dagger followed it while the creature’s tentacles twitched and searched fruitlessly for their assailant. Once the fourth hit, the tentacles dropped to the sand. Kat jogged over to collect them, but before she could reach the dead float fish, the ocean began to churn.
“This is it!” Dorrik yelled, squaring their stance and facing the water even as the waves began to wash much further up on the shore. “The float fish should begin fleeing as the Deep Terror pulls itself up onto the shore. Get ready!”
Kaleek stabbed his sword into a float fish that he’d trapped against the sand with his foot, twisting the blade slightly before he withdrew it. He cracked his neck and turned to the ocean. The beginnings of a semi-transparent sphere began to push itself out of the water some twenty paces from the shore.
Kat quickly stowed her throwing knives in their bandoleer, locking her eyes on the water. More of the Deep Terror splashed into view as it moved toward the shore, pulling itself from the water with six white tentacles, each as big around as her waist, grasping the shore and dragging its bulk.
It was a translucent hemisphere, as big as a small building and filled with vaguely defined organs and structures that Kat couldn’t quite make sense of. The monster rippled slightly, its formless and pulpy flesh undulating rhythmically.
The second Kaleek touched the water, it seemed to sense him, the off-white tentacles pulling themselves off of the beach and curling backward toward the intrepid desoph as Kaleek splashed his way toward the creature’s main body.
“Hit it now, Dorrik!” Kat shouted, whipping a throwing knife into the side of one of the giant tentacles even as she concentrated on another. Her mana stirred as it began flowing out of her. “We need to keep the tentacles off of Kaleek long enough for him to do some damage.”
“Trying, Miss Kat,” Dorrik grunted in response as they sprinted toward one of the tentacles that they had been sneaking up on. “Nerve Lash.”
Dorrik’s eyes flashed purple a moment before the same glow appeared around a tentacle. The entire thing spasmed as Dorrik’s psi energy ran down its length, activating whatever passed for a pain reflex in the Deep Terror.
Kat didn’t envy the creature. After a fair amount of drunken coaxing and assurances that it wouldn’t deal permanent damage, Kat convinced Dorrik to use the ability on her. For an agonizing second, it filled her lower body with white-hot pain so strong that Kat almost blacked out.
