Apocalypse knights 1 a l.., p.1
Apocalypse Knights 1: A LitRPG Fantasy, page 1
Apocalypse Knights 1
A LitRPG Fantasy
DB King
Copyright © 2022 by DB King
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 author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
v002
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Contents
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Contents
Series by DB King
Prologue
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
Crafter’s Fate 1: Chapter 1
Crafter’s Fate 1: Chapter 2
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Free progression Fantasy Novel!
About the Author
Series by DB King
Apocalypse Knights
Dragon Magus
Dungeon of Evolution
Kensei
The Last Magus
Mage’s Path
Shinobi Rising
The Last Magus
War Wizard
Prologue
Maximo Strident sighed and shifted upon the seat of his steel-backed stool, trying to ease the tension in his shoulders from having his wrists shackled behind his back for so long.
He tapped his wrist. An amber screen flickered into view in front of him.
Maximo Strident
Classification: Arcanist
Level: 1
Health: 12/12
Mana: 10/10
Physical Attributes
Strength: 3
Dexterity: 3
Fortitude: 3
Perception: 3
Spells
Prowess: Level 1; Persistent, 30 minutes; 2 mana
Arcane Flux: Level 1; Instant, 0 seconds; 0 mana,
Temporal Equalization: Level 1; Active; 0 mana; 10 feet
Temporal Transcendence: Level 1; Instant, 0 seconds; 10 mana
Flux Spells: 3/4 readiness
Cloak: Level 1; Persistent, 1 hour; 8 mana; READY
Poison Dart: Level 1; Instant, 0 seconds; 2 mana; READY
Grave Cut: Level 1; Instant, 0 seconds; 0 mana; READY
Resources
Heroic Mosaic: 0 pieces attained
Victory Shards: 0.5
Enchanted Armaments: Brightened-Edge (Longsword +1; Soul-bound weapon)
Enchanted Items: none
Max only had the slightest idea what all of that meant. He tapped his wrist once more. The amber screen disappeared. Then he looked at his interrogator.
A lieutenant glared back at him, the man’s thin waxed mustache twitching furiously on his upper lip as he adjusted flimsy spectacles on the bridge of his nose. He sat across a thin steel desk from Max and wore a dark blue jacket with a bronze-trimmed collar, epaulets sporting rank bars in the administrative colors of faded olive. His felt hat had been placed on the corner of his desk. A goose feather, dyed in the official green hue of the Enforcers, jutted from the left side of the hat.
There was a white lanyard running from the lieutenant’s left breast pocket. His nametag read F. T. Bismuth.
Lieutenant F. T. Bismuth was one of the creeps from Internal Investigations, which was just what Max needed right now (he didn’t). Though, by any fair and reasonable estimations, the fiasco Max had gotten himself into called for exactly that: a paranoid, bug-eyed jackass putting everyone to the question.
Max didn’t mind answering those questions, by the way. He was also very keen to answer them truthfully, or at least, to the best of his knowledge. The only problem was that Max had already answered those very same questions three times already, over the span of 6 hours of interrogation.
“The facts once again, if you please,” Bismuth said, shuffling the papers upon his desk.
Max nodded, familiar with the process and knowing better than to protest. After all, he wore the same uniform as Bismuth, minus the rank bars and the ominous lanyard.
“Private-constable Maximo Strident. Eight hours ago, you were apprehended by Sergeant Vitar’s squad. The location of your arrest was outside Dungeon 5162-Tetra-Epsilon West,” Bismuth continued. The lieutenant’s eyes flickered to the clock mounted on the wall beside him and stifled a yawn. “Is that correct?”
“Yes, sir,” Max replied.
“At that point, you had been absent without official leave for nearly two days. Forty-five hours, to be exact.” Bismuth scrolled his finger down along one of the many sheets of paper littering his desk. The lieutenant squinted as he did so, and Max could understand why. The flickering amber lamp in interrogation chamber #15 had a dented oil reservoir. Max had been telling the bunglers in Utilities to get it replaced since a month ago.
Evidently, they never got around to doing so, which was why poor Lieutenant Bismuth was suffering a severe case of eyestrain as the lamplight danced erratically along the walls of the interrogation chamber, casting wild shadows across pitted stone and peeling green paint.
“Is that correct?” Bismuth asked.
It took a moment for Max to realize that Bismuth was asking him about his being AWOL.
“Yes, sir.” Max nodded.
“Private Tabis and Sergeant Fong are currently missing, AWOL. Eyewitnesses indicate that they were last seen in your company,” Bismuth said. “Is that correct?”
“Yes, sir.” Max sighed and bowed his head. “They’re dead, sir. I saw them die with my own eyes. I really don’t recommend trying to get their bodies back.”
“They died inside Dungeon 5162-Tetra-Epsilon-West, according to your statement.” Bismuth pointed at another sheet of paper. “Is that co...”
“Yes, sir. That’s where they died. A trap got Sergeant Viktor Fong. And then some monster got Private Hector Tabis, and it would have gotten me too, if not for...” Max began.
“Wait.” Bismuth shuffled his papers again and looked down. If the lieutenant squinted any more, Max thought, his eyes would pop out of their sockets, knocking his spectacles off the bridge of his nose. “This is where the largest segment of your statement begins.”
Max’s reflection flickered back at him across Bismuth’s glasses. Straw-hued hair, shaggier than regulations allowed, dark stubble garnered over a few days, lean jaw weighed down with fatigue, blue eyes tired with disappointment.
Max nodded. Bismuth wanted to hear the story again, checking to see if it changed across multiple retellings.
“I’m ready, sir,” Max said.
“Very well. What happened on Firs-Day, eleventh of Junas, in the sixteenth-hundred-and-twelfth year of Anno Dominas?” Bismuth asked. “Leave no detail omitted.”
Max took a deep breath.
Then he began to speak.
Chapter 1
The Crusty Clown was truly one of the most disgusting places Max had ever been, and he’d been to some rough joints in his time. The saw dust strewn across the wooden floors had absorbed strange fluids in such quantities and varieties that it had become solid, useless clumps that pinged across his steel-toed boots with every step.
The walls hadn’t been scrubbed in years, if not decades, and smears and stains of every kind marked them. As Max pushed its creaking doors open and walked in, he pointedly ignored the brown, streaking handprint across the eastern wall. He did the same for the seats and the tables. No amount of laundering would ever be sufficient if you sat down anywhere inside the Crusty Clown.
Perhaps the worst thing about the place was the owner. Grub Hansen, if that were indeed his real moniker, dressed as the name of his establishment was called: a clown, complete with peeling face paint and a bright red fake nose. And he was indeed crusty, in every horrid sense of the word.
“Ah, Officer Strident,” Hansen called as Max approached the bar. “The usual?”
Max nodded, wincing at yet another brown, streaking handprint across the glass display of the liquor cabinet behind Hansen.
“Very well t
Someone mumbled noncommittally in reply. Hansen turned back to Max and smiled, revealing a mouthful of yellow, rotting teeth.
“Take a seat. Greta will bring out your order soon,” he said.
“I’ll stand here,” Max replied, sliding a copper coin across the bar to Hansen and hanging his feathered cap from his belt.
The clown shrugged and returned his attention to an equally crusty cluster of his usual clientele: the gents working at the steel mill from across the street or the slaughterhouse a city block south. Two slaughterhouse workers, still in their gore and offal-covered coveralls, raised their filthy glasses to Max, who nodded in reply.
Max was here because the food at the Crusty Clown was cheap, and Greta, hideous though she might look, was a half decent cook.
His steak had just arrived when Viktor and Hector joined him. The latter pulled up a barstool and, much to Viktor’s evident horror and disgust, placed his feathered cap on the bar. Max shrugged. The rookie would learn, sooner or later, or he would catch one of the horrific skin diseases that sloughed off the walls and most of the surfaces of the Crusty Clown.
“Oh boy, Max, this is going to be great!” Hector rubbed his hands in glee. Recently transferred to this precinct and assigned to Viktor’s squad three months ago, the rookie was a pale man with the unpromising beginnings of a mustache across his upper lip. His uniform was two sizes too large, and his sword bounced and clattered across his thigh from his haphazard belt. How Hector ever made it past morning inspection Max could not fathom.
“The weekend?” Max nodded. “Sure it is. Got any plans, kid?”
“Damn right I do!” Hector replied, turning his gaze to Viktor. “Sarge, show him!”
“Hold up, soldier,” Viktor said, shaking his head and gesturing to Hansen for a pair of beers. “Let’s get some refreshment first. It’s been a hell of a week.”
Max shrugged. The weeklong patrol cycle had been a particularly nasty one. Sure, it had been uneventful for the most part, with Max apprehending a burglar and handing out tickets to a gang of delinquents painting genitalia over a street sign. But then there was that incident two days ago. Madness. Utter madness.
And Viktor’s term: soldier. Given the nature of his work, Max didn’t like it, but it was nevertheless correct, even if only in the technical sense. In the Valeris Dominion, the Enforcers served as both law enforcement and military. Max had started out in the latter, transitioned to and excelled in the former, and now here he was, serving as a private-constable in a backwater precinct in the southwest quadrant.
Max’s eyes narrowed as Viktor placed a cloth bundle on the bar. It was three feet long. A hint of steel glinted at one end.
“That better not be what I think it is,” he growled.
Greta arrived then, cross-eyed and obese, but imbecilely genial. Max thanked her with a slight nod and sideward glance from the glare he’d fixed on Viktor and Hector, who were both shivering in excitement.
The sergeant pulled back the top of the cloth bundle, revealing the battered, yet ornate hilt of a sword. He jumped as Max slammed his fist onto the bar, rattling his plate.
“Damn it!” Max yelled. “Are you insane?”
“Shush!” Viktor clapped a meaty hand on Max’s shoulder. The sergeant had been much more successful in cultivating the mustache so prevalent amongst Enforcers in this precinct. It now bristled, its brown tips scrubbing the air like an overused toothbrush. “You want us to end up in the brig?”
“That thing you have there. That’s what’s going to put us in the brig!” Max whispered fiercely, wrapping his fist around Viktor’s collar. The sergeant outranked him, but right now, rank was the last thing on Max’s mind. “You took it from the evidence room, didn’t you?”
“Corporal Fausta owed me a favor. Told him to take a walk for a few minutes.” Viktor shrugged.
“That’s dirty! I ought to turn you in!” Max clenched his jaw. He glanced over his shoulder. The Crusty Clown was mysteriously popular amongst Enforcers, and its tables would be filled soon by hordes of blue-jacketed men, all coming off duty from the evening shift.
“But you won’t.” Hector grinned and tapped the side of his nose. “You need coin, Max, and not the handful of coppers we get at the end of the week. Said so yourself.”
“I’m not going to commit a crime for money,” Max hissed at the rookie.
Hector flinched from his gaze.
His limbs and neck corded in muscle, Max stood a fair distance beyond six feet, while Hector barely crested half of five. He resisted the urge to grab the rookie’s collar now and shake, because doing so would literally rattle the diminutive man’s teeth out of his jaw.
“You’re not committing any crimes, and neither are we,” Viktor explained, leaning his bulk against the bar and nodding at the sword. “As Enforcers, we need to withdraw evidence for review. I withdrew evidence, and here it is.”
“We review evidence to write reports for a case.” Max jabbed his finger at the bundle. “This case is closed! Otherwise you wouldn’t have needed to call in that favor from Fausta.”
“Listen, Max.” Viktor sighed. “This blade isn’t going anywhere. The Knights-Errant are kicking up a fuss, but out of sheer petty spite, the Quadrant Commissioner is telling them to go kick sand and has buried the retrieval of this sword beneath enough red tape to stifle even an idiot savant for years. No one’s going to miss this, not for the short amount of time we’ll have it for.”
Max groaned inwardly. He knew what Viktor and Hector would say next. The two had been babbling about it all patrol.
“If we go into a Dungeon, we will die,” Max said. “That’s it. We’re not Knights-Errant. We can’t fight the monsters inside.”
“We can with this sword,” Hector insisted. “And with you.”
“Yeah, lad. You held off that crazy Knight-Errant wielding it for nearly ten minutes with your own blade,” Viktor said. “Darndest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Max shook his head. Two days ago, a crazed maniac in the strange, outlandish armor of the Knights-Errant had gone on a rampage in Hisktown’s eastern marketplace. He’d cut down three peddlers and was about to do the same to a child when Max deflected the downward swing of the ornate sword, attempted a futile riposte which literally bounced off the man’s face, and then spent the next few minutes running for his life. He’d only survived because three other Knights-Errant had appeared and subdued the maniac. Fortunately for the peddlers, one of the Knights-Errant had managed to heal their wounds, using something called a spell, for crying out loud.
“I did some digging into your service record.” Hector refreshed his grin. Max suppressed the urge to slap it off his face. “So much of it is redacted, but what I could find... oh boy.”
“Why didn’t you say you were a war hero, lad? Two Stars of Glory and an Ebon Heart. Those are decorations for valor.” Viktor stroked his mustache. “Two years patrolling with me and not a damned word about your past. All you’ve done is go on and on about your sick friend and his family. What’s his name now, Corvis, right? With that little wife and really snarky son. Yeah, Beatrice’s the wife. Aldo’s the kid. I remember them visiting you at the precinct.”
“Speaking of family, Maximo Strident. I only just realized that you’re that Strident, the family of swordmasters renowned throughout Valeris,” Hector said. “But what the hell are you doing here, being a dog soldier like the rest of us?”
“It’s none of your business,” Max growled. He sighed. “But yes, I do need coin, so Beatrice can buy another month’s worth of herbs for Corvis.”
“How can a Strident not afford anything?” Hector asked. “Ooh yes, I just remembered. The Strident school of swordsmanship has all these blade forms with fancy names, right? Lotus of the Moon, Howling Gale Wind, and stuff like that. Do you call out the names of your blade forms when you use them? I know that’s not very practical and all, but it’d be so impressive if you did, wouldn’t it?”
“And the current head-instructor! What was her name again? Sava something? The Gazette wrote an article about her a few weeks ago, with a daguerreotype image of her too,” the rookie babbled on. “I remember that because she’s so pretty! I cut out that picture, pinned it on my locker, and…”
