The disciple a gamelit p.., p.1
The Disciple: A GameLit Progression Fantasy, page 1
The Disciple
A GameLit Progression Fantasy
Book 2 of The Forerunner Trilogy
By James Clay
Copyright 2023 James Clay
All rights reserved.
Cover art by MiblArt
Developmental Editing by Joel Brigham
I want to thank everyone who supported me and helped make this book better. In particular, Nathan Clay, Nate Weller, Lonnie Richards, and Sean Kiley for reading early drafts and providing feedback. Thank you, guys.
I especially want to thank my wife, Merilee Clay. Beta reading a book multiple times is real love. Her feedback was invaluable at every stage. Thanks, honey.
Table of Contents
Synopsis of “The Forerunner”
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
Notes on the Physics in the Story
Thank You!
GameLit / LitRPG
Synopsis of “The Forerunner”
Zed, a struggling MMA fighter in a dead-end job, meets a mysterious woman who claims that aliens will kick every human off of the Earth in two years. Although he is skeptical initially, she convinces him that she is both an alien and can do things that no one else on Earth can.
She gives him power, including physical regeneration and an enhanced mind, so he can go to humanity’s future planet, Nienor, and prepare the way. She also gives him a spatial storage ring with an AI named Iris.
Zed and his dog Brutus get stronger by killing creatures and taking their mana. They eventually unite with another forerunner, Dan. Together the trio travel to an elven (álfar) city called Formenos.
Zed and Dan get stronger and earn money by completing jobs for people and betting on Zed in pit fights. Zed ends up dating one of his pit fight opponents, Laurel, after healing her of an injury she received at his hands.
Zed and Dan ally with Laurel’s family to build a settlement for humans and spread advanced farming techniques. The goal is to have enough food so fewer people will die fighting over food and land. It is risky, though, because the martial sects that de facto rule the land forbid the spreading of knowledge from other worlds.
Seven months after coming to Nienor, powerful disciples of the Ever-Fruitful Tree martial arts sect arrive in Formenos, looking for Zed. They have heard of his pit fighting exploits and, more importantly, his spreading of forbidden off-planet knowledge.
Silwan, the group’s leader, decides to let Zed off, provided Zed agrees to work for him. Seeing no other choice besides death, Zed agrees.
Name: Ozymandias (Zed)
Attributes
Strength: 21
Speed: 17
Dexterity: 17
Toughness: 28
Comprehension: 12
Mental Speed: 12 (20)
Memory: 36
Mana: 843
Abilities: Cost
Regeneration: Max 520
Mental Enhancement: 100
Physical Enhancement (intermediate): Max 100
Fireball (advanced): Max 300
Magnetic Shield (advanced): Max 300
Sensor Field (intermediate): Max 150
Silence (intermediate): 5
Night Vision (intermediate): 5
Infrared Vision (intermediate): 5
Healing (novice): (special)
Laser (advanced): Max 600
Mass Shifting (advanced): Max 450
Body Tempering
Skin: 100%
Muscles: 100%
Bone: 90%
Organs: 80%
Chapter 1
Zed
Zed ran down the dirt road at a speed that would put marathon runners on Earth to shame. His skin and clothes were caked with dust from traveling at the tail of his group of five. He was literally eating their dust, and his dry mouth held the proof.
Zed didn’t run in the back because he was struggling to keep up. It was more of a pecking order thing. If he tried to move up, he would get swatted back. He was used to being a big fish in Formenos, and now he was a nobody. He couldn’t wait to return to Formenos to keep working with Dan on the new settlement, instead of dealing with this middle school crap.
‘I’m sorry I got you in trouble, Zed.’
‘It’s not your fault, Iris. I chose to use your knowledge and give it to others. And I would do it again.’
Once Zed had realized that 8 billion humans arriving on the planet would create a resource-starved hell that Malthus himself had never dreamed of, he had started spreading off-world farming information that could drastically increase food yields. It wasn’t much, but it was what he could do.
‘I’m glad that you don’t hate me.’
‘Of course not. Besides, you’re my only friend in this mess. I’ll need your help to get through it alive, and stronger.’
She made her avatar, a pretty brunette woman with sky-blue eyes, appear in his vision. She looked at Zed and nodded seriously, saying, “Yes!”
It was adorable, though Zed tried hard not to put the feeling into words so Iris wouldn’t “hear” them in his mind. He was afraid that he would embarrass her again like he did when her avatar made its only other appearance. Still, he smiled at her cuteness.
Having reassured Iris, Zed looked around at his travel companions. ‘Or maybe I should call them my jailors, or whatever indentured servants call their masters.’
Silwan, the group’s leader, called for a halt to drink and eat something quick. Zed took the opportunity to look at the four group members without a veil of dust in between them. The four were all different, but they did have something in common. They were all deadly. ‘More deadly than me, unfortunately.’
‘But that can change…’ Iris whispered. Zed knew it wouldn’t be wise to be free with the savage grin that fought to get out, so he did his best to freeze his expression. All that showed was a brief quirk in the corners of his lips, and an ambitious gleam in his eyes that he just couldn’t hide.
Silwan noticed. He seemed to notice everything.
Silwan smiled as he said, “You seem happy today, Zed. I’m glad. You’ve been such a moper lately.”
“Sorry for being a downer. This is my first time being forced into servitude,” Zed said with a heavy dose of sarcasm.
“Indeed? What an easy life you’ve led. Uncle Alain, how long have you served my family?” Silwan asked as he turned to his older bodyguard—the quiet one of the group whose every move spoke of leashed violence.
“817 years, young master.”
“And you, Zed, are working for me for what? A year and a half? That’s nothing. Even to a human.”
“Will I get the opportunity to learn sect techniques?”
“If you serve me well, yes. If not, you can forget it.”
Though Silwan smiled often, he could turn the warmth off instantly when he wanted to. He looked like a bit of an álfar dandy in a sect robe, but Zed wasn’t fooled. The man was a killer. Not the kind that would necessarily do it with his bare hands, though he could if he wanted to. No, he was a killer in the sense that he wouldn’t bat an eye at having you killed in any of several ways, from a duel, to a knife in the back, to ordering an underling to do it while he sipped on his wine, smiling all the while.
Zed was always on guard around Silwan, and he got the sense that was how Silwan wanted it. His cold moments were little reminders to not get too comfortable.
“All I need is knowledge. Knowledge isn’t lost when it’s shared.”
Silwan smiled again and said, “I haven’t known you very long, Zed, but I think that statement exemplifies you. True and forthright, but naïve. Knowledge isn’t lost when it is shared, but advantage is.
“More to the point, the sect carefully controls the dissemination of techniques. Even if I know a technique, I cannot simply teach it to you. There are controls in place, and even if I were to bypass them, I would be hunted down like that unfortunate Zed who gave out knowledge he should not have. You know, the other Zed,” he said with a mocking grin.
“Right, the ‘other’ Zed. Wouldn’t want to be him,” Zed muttered.
Silwan drank from a bottle that appeared in his hand. “All sect techniques cost sect contribution points, which can be used to buy many things from the sect. If you were to stay with me for a long time, I could see investing in you for the future. Since you are only staying for a year and a half, I have no incentive whatsoever to put an
“Oh yeah? What kind of jobs?”
“All in good time. For now, work on getting stronger, and be ready.” The bottle disappeared.
Zed wanted to grind his teeth, but worked on his poker face instead. To distract himself, he looked at his other companions. Annis the ogrum turned out to be the liveliest ogrum he’d met since Victoria, his patron that made him one of the human forerunners. Since then, all the ogrums he’d met had been a severe and surly bunch.
‘To be fair, you were fighting most of them at the time, which is probably not the best time to appraise their character,’ Iris said. ‘Heavens knows if people judged you by your fights, they would probably think you were insane.’
‘No, they wouldn’t…’ Zed stopped and thought about it for a moment, and with embarrassment thought, ‘Okay, yeah, they probably would.’
Annis turned out to be quite the prankster. His pranks ranged from the childish—he got Zed with an invisibly covered toilet bowl—to the more technically sophisticated. Their other travelmate, Leilani, was angry for a couple of days after Annis replaced her sword before a spar. It looked exactly like her sword until he told her at the beginning of the spar, “You look droopy today,” at which point the sword itself drooped down as if made out of rubber. Between not having a useful weapon and staring in shock at her “blade”, Annis easily defeated her, leaving her with wounded pride and a black eye. He laughed uproariously while walking away.
Needless to say, Zed was far more careful about the objects around him these days.
Annis wore a blue silk shirt that contrasted nicely with his green skin and was tight enough to show off his sleek muscles without being obvious about it. Zed had noticed that Annis seemed to be a little on the vain side, always taking care to look good. Even when they wore their sect robes, he usually did a little something to accessorize.
‘He could probably teach you a thing or two about style, Zed.’
‘I’m sure he could teach me a dozen ways to color coordinate with my green skin and ivory tusks, but I think I’ll pass.’
‘Hmph. It would be better than what you know now about color coordination, which is nothing.’
‘You wound me, Iris. I know that white and black go with everything, especially more white and black.’
‘I rest my case.’
Zed just smiled and turned his attention to Leilani. She was the most homely álfar he’d ever seen, but that wasn’t saying much, given her race’s attractiveness. She would have been considered plain but reasonably attractive on Earth. Today, as on all other days he’d seen her, she wore sect robes and no additional adornment. To call her “severe” would be an understatement. Her only concession to looks or femininity was to cut her mousy brown hair at shoulder length and use a hair clip to keep it out of her eyes.
“What are you looking at, human?” she said with a sneer.
“The most beautiful creature that I’ve ever laid eyes on, Leilani,” he said, with a mock enraptured expression. Annis laughed at the comment, and Silwan chuckled. Silwan lightly intervened with a “Now, now” and a hand gesture telling her to put her sword away—the real one this time—after she started to draw it.
“If you feel and act according to how the enemy wants you to feel and act, the battle is already half lost,” he told her.
“Yes, young master,” she said while bowing her head to him. “Though with this human I could turn a half-loss into a victory easily enough,” she said while looking at Zed with contempt.
“That’s true, which is why his value to you isn’t in sparring with weapons, but in learning to control your emotions.”
She considered this and said, more humbly this time, “Yes, young master. Thank you for teaching me.”
Silwan nodded at her and then told Zed, “And you would be wise to not antagonize people who could cut you in half before you moved a muscle.”
Zed smiled and nodded while inwardly thinking of more ways to needle her. Iris just sighed.
Chapter 2
It was hard for Zed to tell if the land they traveled through was scenic or not. For him, it was all a brown, dirty haze. The group traveled very quickly, running 100 miles a day or so. Zed could keep up fine with his tempered body and regeneration, but he was surprised that Annis and Leilani could do the same.
‘I hate to say it,’ Iris said, ‘but your regeneration is probably not unique. They may even have a superior version.’
‘Yeah, you’re probably right.’ Zed didn’t like to think he wasn’t as powerful or unique as he had thought, but he was enough of a realist to know that he couldn’t afford to fool himself. He was walking on too sharp of an edge to indulge in comforting lies.
‘All the more reason to get as many of their secrets as we can,’ Zed thought.
Each evening they stayed in the best inn in town when possible, and when roughing it they each set up their tent. The one exception was Silwan. Alain, his bodyguard, set up one tent for both of them.
Zed tried to bathe every night, but had given up on washing his clothes. No matter how much he scrubbed, the clothes never became truly clean. And every evening, after a full day of running in the group’s dust cloud, they were worse than ever.
Zed, Annis, and Leilani rotated cooking and cleanup duties. Though Zed did not like Leilani, and the feeling was very much mutual, he noted that she did not shirk her chores or try to push them onto him.
Annis, on the other hand…
“Hey, Zed. I’ll answer one question of yours if you do my chores for a month”, he said while washing off a plate in soapy water.
“That’s okay, Annis. I already know what your mom is like in bed,” Zed said while drying off a glass.
Annis made a strangled sound that sounded like a cross between a laugh and a growl. He turned to Zed with an ambiguous look and said, “I can appreciate a man who likes to live dangerously. Just make sure the jokes are funny, Zed, or it might end badly for you.”
After a pause, he continued. “Seriously though, I can help you.”
“What can you help me with, Annis? From what Silwan said, you can’t teach me sect techniques.”
“No, but when you have some contribution points and can start selecting techniques, I can help you.”
“Why would I need your help? Isn’t there information on the techniques that I can read?”
“Yes, but how in-depth do you think that information is? Not damn very, I can tell you that. There is nothing like having the guidance of someone who has experience with the techniques.”
While he dried dishes Zed thought about what Annis had said. He could definitely use some guidance. He found it hard to believe that Annis was the right person to give it to him though. Silwan or Alain would be far better.
“Thanks for the offer, Annis. I’ll think about it.”
After he finished his chores, he bedded down for the night in the tent that Silwan had given him. Though he had decided to forget Laurel and focus on his mission, he found himself often thinking about her. He was attracted to her, but he had also connected with her in a way that he hadn’t with many people.
Zed laughed at himself. ‘What kind of a dork has to go to a different planet and find someone of a different species to meet his boo?’ He wouldn’t call her his soulmate. He didn’t believe in the concept. But he missed her. He remembered the picnic they went on with Dan and Annabelle, when he had his head in Laurel’s lap and she had played with his hair. He’d give a lot to have that day back.
He thought about all that had happened in the last seven months and considered his decisions.
‘Should I have done anything differently?’
He wasn’t sure, other than wishing he hadn’t let go of Laurel so quickly. He sighed. If he got back, maybe he would get a second chance.
**
The next day the group stopped at the foot of a squat hill. Zed assumed it was a rest break, and pulled out some water to quench his thirst and wash the dust out of his throat.
“Zed,” Silwan said. “Attend me.”
