Harbinger of justice a l.., p.1
Harbinger of Justice: A LitRPG Adventure, page 1
ALSO IN SERIES
Harbinger of Destruction
Harbinger of Vengeance
Harbinger of Justice
HARBINGER OF JUSTICE
©2023 ROBERT S KEENE
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All rights reserved.
CONTENTS
1. Remember The Fallen
2. Dirty Deeds
3. Arcana Farming
4. Sideways Angle
5. Liar, Liar, Cart On Fire
6. Optimism
7. Selfish Intentions
8. All The Cards
9. A Little Push
10. Lives Unlived
11. The Things We Do For Love
12. An Attempt Was Made
13. Lambs To The Slaughter
14. Getting The Gang Back Together
15. Magnitude Of The Dilemma
16. Planning For Success
17. Is It Paranoia If Everyone’s Out To Get You?
18. Everyone Thinks They’re The Best
19. The “Find Out” Part
20. Overkill
21. Time To Go
22. You Miss 100% Of The Shots You Don’t Take
23. Respect Your Talent
24. Serpentine
25. Meep Meep
26. No Idle Threats
27. No Stone Unturned
28. Play Hard
29. Weapon That Walks Like A Man
30. Unmoving
31. Root Of Failure
32. Motherlode
33. A Bunch Of Cherries
34. Too Competent
35. Use What You Got
36. Motives Are Incidental
37. Wise Words, Wise Deeds
38. It’s A Joke, Bro
39. Through The Roads They Walk
40. Killing Would Be Easier
41. Careful What You Wish For
42. Confidence
43. Foul Ball
44. Finding Freedom
45. The Perfect Disguise
46. Uninvited Guests
47. Poking The Beast
48. All Coming Together
49. Testing 1, 2, 3
50. Hack The Planet!
51. Only Human
52. Their Stories
53. Walk Backwards Into Hell
54. Breaking And Entering
55. The Pledge, The Turn, And The Prestige
56. The Ghost In The Machine
57. Clash Of Titans
58. Unstoppable Force
59. Immovable Object
60. Nothing Left But The Crying
61. The Crying
Thank you for reading Harbinger of Justice
Acknowledgments
Before You Go…
Other Books by the Author
Other Places To Find Things
Groups
LitRPG
1
REMEMBER THE FALLEN
Hirrus dug a grave for his fallen friend. While doing so, he found himself thinking about a lot of big questions. He wasn’t the sort of man who spent a lot of time pondering the nature of his internal self. In the last handful of days, he’d had his entire view of reality challenged, and learned things about the nature of his world that he was never meant to know.
The implications hadn’t bothered him yet—he had been quite busy lately—but digging a grave was an introspective activity.
He realized that, first and foremost, he couldn’t necessarily trust his own memory. Every week or so, the world was reset. If he died, he was brought back to life. His memory was altered to cover the discrepancy, so he could never be sure of anything that had happened further back than last Tuesday.
It made the knowledge that Alric would return again bittersweet.
The man was not gone forever. His kind heart and quick wit were not lost to this world. But when he returned, Hirrus wasn’t sure if he would know him. He knew he wouldn’t be able to be the same sort of friend to the man—his reinstated decision tree would see to that—but would he recognize him in the first place? It had taken the better part of the week to get used to his yammering and singing, and if that tolerance didn’t carry over through the reset, he’d never build it up again.
What bothered him the most was the uncertainty.
Or, more accurately, the lack thereof.
When he’d buried his wife, he didn’t know she would come back. He had been able to stomach doing what needed to be done because if Julissa was watching over him, it was from the afterlife. Even now, if she was watching him, he knew her memory would be as fuzzy as his when she returned. It was the only way he could unleash such unspeakable violence. If she was witnessing the monster within him, it might not stick in her mind when the reset put things right.
Alric, though? When they’d met, the man had described—in detail—how he had died every week previously. His memory remained through whatever magic happened on the reset. If he was watching, then he was very much going to remember what Hirrus did.
So, was he watching? Did he know Hirrus was giving him a proper burial? Was it a meaningless gesture that his decision tree was screaming at him to stop doing because Alric was an adventurer and not native to this world?
Ultimately, it didn’t matter.
It was the right thing to do.
So he was going to do it.
He was glad to finish the job of digging. Once this was done, he could start properly moving on to the next task.
Though when he turned back to Alric’s body, he found himself facing a new challenge.
“Please put that back where it was,” Hirrus said with a scowl.
Nidra blinked at him in confusion. She had removed Alric’s helmet and was examining it.
The ex-assassin Awakened made no move to return the helmet to its proper place.
“Put it back,” he said again, firmly.
“Why?” Despite the question, she lifted Alric’s head and slid the open-faced helm back down into place. She took a moment to adjust it into position. “He doesn’t need it anymore.”
“He deserves his dignity,” Hirrus said.
He was glad she’d started with the helmet. Hirrus knew the man was wearing powerful legendary pants, and he didn’t know how he would have reacted if he’d turned around to see her peeling them off him.
There might have been blood spilt.
“He’ll be back,” Nidra said. She was trying to hide her irritation, but her red mask had been destroyed by her Merciless transformation, so he could see her face now. Without that extra cover, she was as bad at hiding her emotions as Hirrus was. “But his gear won’t. He won’t get to keep it if we bury him with it. Are you going to give up all of this for meaningless sentiment?”
“We buried an old man,” Hirrus said. “A stranger. He was just a simple farmer. Nothing to either of us. He was killed by Fire’s goons, and we did the right thing. Never once did Alric ask me that question about the old man.”
Nidra pressed her lips into a thin line.
He wasn’t quite used to being able to see her face, but it made her much easier to read.
Aggravated as she was, he was right. She could not argue his point.
“All he has are my castoffs,” Hirrus said. “None of it is going to be worthwhile for either of us.”
“There are more people than us in this fight,” Nidra said. Again, despite the protest, she scooped Alric’s body up and moved to the side of the grave, handing it down. “I am not looking for me. I am looking for them.”
Hirrus didn’t have a proper answer for that. He elected to ignore it.
If her intent was to raise an army, she should have said so earlier. Alric would likely have been happy to part with most of what he was carrying if it was for a good cause.
This was the cost of her secrecy, then. It was no longer asking. Now it was grave robbing.
That was an indignity Hirrus wouldn’t suffer for him.
Alr ic’s body felt so light in Hirrus’s arms. Despite the armor, the corpse felt like it was made of sticks and straw. He attributed it to his ridiculously inflated BUR stat, but standing in the man’s grave, lowering him down onto the dirt, he felt it was more than that.
Alric had always been so animated and full of life.
Now that he was still and cold, his body felt empty.
It was like holding an empty ceramic pot. With no dirt or flower inside, it was an entirely different object.
Hirrus put Alric in the dirt and carefully crossed his arms over his chest. He took a moment to press his hand to the man’s shoulder, leaving a big dirty handprint there.
“I’m unsure of what you would want me to say,” Hirrus said to the corpse. “We didn’t know each other long enough for me to know. But I know to say this: you did the right thing. Whenever there was an option, no matter how painful it was to you, you did what was right. You’re a good man and worthy of respect.”
He didn’t have anything else to say.
With a soft sigh, he clambered out of the grave and started to push the dirt back in.
Surprisingly, Nidra didn’t say anything. She stood by and bore witness to the burial, but remained silent. Hirrus had thought the two of them were closer than he had been. She might have had significant animosity towards him as an adventurer when they’d met, but they were very alike. Their tactics had been so similar when they’d been supporting him.
After the grave was refilled, Hirrus cast about for something to mark it. Unlike when a non-adventurer died, no headstone appeared for him. Or if it had, it wasn’t here. Among the pile of dirt he’d unearthed to dig the grave, there was a hunk of stone. It was a water-worn oval shape despite being so far from the nearest river. About a foot long and nine inches wide at the center.
It was a clumsy grave marker. But it would do.
Hirrus planted it at the head of the grave.
He didn’t have any way to carve an epitaph. No Arcana would do the job without turning the stone to gravel. Alric didn’t seem the sort to take such a thing personally. Considering he hadn’t been properly buried at all the previous times he had died in this world, this was a big step up, even if it felt inadequate to Hirrus.
“He will remember you,” Nidra said quietly. “I think they all will, but he will remember who you were, not what you did.”
“That’s not what worries me,” Hirrus said. “Will I remember him?”
Nidra was silent for a moment. “In a way,” she said after a time. “When you deal with adventurers all day, you don’t remember details. Surely you don’t remember the face of everyone who’s ever asked you for directions. They blend together. You can’t hold grudges or be swayed by repeated bribes or favors.”
“Hm.” Hirrus grunted. He’d never thought too carefully about it. It had never seemed that important to him until now.
“Our memories are fickle,” she continued. “But the friendship you shared with Alric was not normal. Just like the animosity I had for the men who took command of our king. You won’t know his name after just one week, but you might recognize his features. You might mistake him for a long-lost acquaintance. A childhood friend you lost touch with, or a lookalike for someone you used to know. Unless you see him again all week every week, he won’t stick. The members of the Shadow Council are clear in my mind because I’ve suffered under their yoke for weeks upon weeks. If you go all of next week without seeing Alric again, he might be erased from your mind altogether.”
Hirrus nodded.
Like the featureless uncarved headstone, it would have to be enough.
“You were right, though,” Nidra said unexpectedly. “He’s a good man. I wouldn’t be surprised if you see him again after the reset. And again the reset after that.” She shook her head. “In time, you might be as close as brothers, even immediately after a reset. If he cares for sentimentality as much as you do, I would stake my life on it.”
Hirrus bowed his head. It was true that Alric wasn’t like other adventurers. It seemed likely that when he returned to life, he would continue to act in unexpected ways. Perhaps this was the beginning of a lasting friendship.
“We have much to do, though,” she said at last, turning away from the grave. “I would love to let you grieve properly, but there isn’t time.”
Hirrus reflected on that for a second, letting her walk away as he stared at the grave. There was never time for grief.
After he buried Julissa, he’d needed to get Dahlia to safety.
And now that he’d buried Alric, he had to go on Nidra’s crusade.
As he trudged behind her, he surveyed the area. When that did nothing to assuage his worry or calm his raging thoughts, he took a moment to check his stats.
Level 25
HP (Hit Points): 71,800
BUR (Burliness): 1,633
SUP (Suppleness): 1,835
TEN (Tenacity): 2,340
ATT (Attenuation): 548
RES (Responsiveness): 1,224
GLE (Gleylike): 2,026
Hirrus's stats had become much more targeted since he began his journey. Some amount of his gear was chosen specifically because they were the strongest piece available, but wherever possible he had focused on increasing his physical stats. His high BUR and SUP would give him tremendous damage output both with his weapons and with physical-based Arcana.
More than that, with them so dramatically increased by gear, he felt stronger.
A Burliness stat of over 1,500 was reflected in his musculature, and his even higher Suppleness made him feel limber and quick—ready for any challenge that might arise unexpectedly.
Less important were his magical stats. ATT and RES governed his powerful magical Arcana, but any time he needed the output from them, he had a lot of Arcana to boost those stats. Not the least of those buffs was X’rhun’s Balance, which would swap his physical and mental stats. Being that they were magical and not mental, they didn't have a tremendous effect on his body, but Hirrus did recognize that when they were inflated, they affected his senses. Attenuation increased his awareness of his own magical output, helping him know just where and how to apply the powerful attacks, while he always seemed a little more capable of responding correctly to enemy Arcana when his Responsiveness was higher.
Despite all his stats being inflated by his peculiar status, his defensive stats were the most valuable. His HP, TEN, and GLE had carried him through the majority of his fights. He knew from experience that he had at least five times the Hit Points of any adventurer he had yet faced, and even without that, his Tenacity and Gleylike stats had reduced his incoming damage in comparison to what he was dishing out in return.
In particular, the physical attacks of lesser adventurers were almost laughable against his tremendous Tenacity stat. His skin seemed to deflect blades as well as any armor. Though from his previous encounters, he knew that Gleylike was just that: Gley-like. The crew of adventurers that had unleashed monsters against him had forced him to face down a Gley, and the strange thick-hided monster's defenses had rendered his magical attacks nearly useless.
He knew his own defenses were nowhere near that potent, even with the stat just over of 2,000.
By the time Hirrus caught up to Nidra, his thoughts had moved on from grief and anger, and instead were focused on the here and now. On the destruction that would lead way to vengeance, and finally to justice being served.
