Hacked: A LitRPG Novel (Incipere Online Book 3) Read online

  Location accepted. Please prepare for transport.

  Chapter Four: Homestead

  For the next three days, Athos forgot all about his troubles.

  The green grasses and expanse of hills painted the landscape of the Sea of Grass that made up the majority of the frontier. Between Walter’s odd jobs and looking after his second-favorite Inciperian, Athos kept himself busy as best he could under a shady, gold leafed tree near the edge of the farmland…

  “Athos!”

  At least, he was until the pissed-off voice of a lovely young woman came calling.

  “Athos, are you really trying to sleep when you still owe me work?”

  Sally Queen, his rival in combat and the love of his life, was just another Inciperian cursed, thanks to that faithful day in the dryad’s grove. She had taken it much better status-wise than he had. Though she lacked the problems he had with interactions, it had taken her a lot longer to come to terms with her new skill set and the loss of what she saw as herself. Once she had taken on the subclass of a tinkerer, things sort of just fell into place for the woman, and she accepted her role as a factotum, the rare mimicker class that could copy any attack or support skill.

  Despite everything, the voice was as beckoning as it had always been, but he was still Athos, and she was still Sally. That meant he couldn’t resist ruffling her feathers once in a while. Her edge was just another part of her charm.

  Laying on the shade-cooled grass, Athos felt at peace and smiled at the young woman without bothering with things like opening his eyes to see her fluster. “Maybe.”

  From the way she spoke, he had the distinct impression she was glaring. “You aren’t really that stupid, are you?”

  He smiled a bit more in the shadows of the leaves. “Maybe.”

  The sound of a body landing next to him didn’t faze him, but her voice as it whispered in his ear started to break his cool. “Well, I’m sure I can figure something out to wake you up.”

  Athos did his best not to let his face betray his curiosity. “And what’s that?”

  “You really wanna know?” If only he had taken a moment to open his eyes, he would have seen the grin growing on Sally’s face as she leaned in closer. “Get the Hell up, Aramis! Even you aren’t this stupid!”

  In his comfortable state, he had forgotten how much she could press his buttons. He got himself up slowly, the same black coat and pants, blue shirt, and satchel keeping him company as his body pulled everything together to sit up properly. “What work do we have left anyways?” came the somewhat groggy question. Though he hadn’t been asleep, he would rather Sally think so than incur her full wrath from slacking off on some unknown task. Being stupid was sometimes better than being lazy.

  “Dad left to help one of the new farms set up their fields and boundaries,” Sally explained from her spot in the grass. “So, he figured it would be easier for the two of us to watch Emily than take her with him.”

  Of course Walter did, Athos thought to himself. Walter always had a way of making sure that the pair watched Emily, or as Athos liked to call her, Emma the Purple Ball of Unlimited Energy and Wonder.

  “Sandra isn’t home yet?” he asked absently, wondering how much time he had been under that tree. Maybe he had fallen asleep.

  “No,” Sally said saddened that he changed the topic. “Mom’s on the midday ticket again, so she won’t be back for a few hours.”

  The alchemical arm nodded and then looked around. “Where is the little one?”

  “Napping,” Sally stated as she laid back against the grass like he had been not a few moments before.

  “So, you came to tell me your sister was napping.”

  “Yep.”

  Athos laughed as Sally rolled over and took the spot he had gotten so comfortable in but held himself back as he thought through her list of possible meanings. “Is this part of some plan?”

  “You’ll have to wait to find out,” she said with a smile, “but…tag, you’re it.”

  For one reason or another, that was enough to frighten him as Sally dozed off. Opening his personal window, he was greeted with the same familiar blacked out tabs and jumbled error messages.

  Error: H-496e74656772697479202d31

  Error: H-4b65726e616c204572726f72

  Error: H-446563617920696e2070726f6772657373

  Error: H-46616c6c656e2057616c6c73

  Ever since the day he returned from the dead, he had lost so many things. Friends list, PvP protection, guild tab, and even his digital cat-knight Nekka had fallen victim to whatever glitch had given him life again. Not that he was complaining all that much but having Sally talk to others and send messages for him just didn’t feel right. Still, given the choice between being dead and missing a few features, he would choose life every time.

  A smile crossed his face as Sally started to snore, and he took a few steps back towards the Queen’s farmhouse. Emily would be awake soon and having passed the toddler milestone in a matter of months rather than the full year or two it should have taken, she was an endless source of energy, curiosity, and outright precociousness. The mere fact that Sally was able to get her to go to sleep was a feat in and of itself. In Athos’s experience in and out of Incipere, the toddler was no different than any other.

  “Uncle Athos!”

  Except she was more expertly skilled in sneaking up on him and about as fast as a lightning strike. With a death grip only equal to that of the jaws of life, the purple-haired toddler gripped around his leg and giggled like a mad creature.

  So much for her napping, Athos mused and ruffled her hair. “Hey, Grape.”

  The grape-haired girl giggled and shook her head, but Emily gripped all the harder as he tried to walk. “I’m Emily!”

  He shook his head and smiled as he took another labored step. “No, you’re a grape,” he said with a smile before continuing his labored walking, pretending that the young creature wasn’t even hobbling him. “Wanna tell me why your sister is exhausted?”

  The younger girl didn’t even need to think before the answer erupted in equal parts giggle and chide. “She’s too slow to tag me!”

  Well, that made sense. Even when she wasn’t a factotum, Sally’s classes didn't value dexterity or endurance like a gunner or an alchemical arm did. “Well, is that what you want to do then?”

  Emily nodded fanatically as if her words weren’t enough to properly convey her excitement at the prospect of another game. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

  He couldn’t help himself as he pulled her off his leg and onto his shoulders, “Why don’t we get a little further away from your sister so she can sleep. Okay?”

  “’Kay!” Emily replied as excited as a child on Christmas morning.

  Together, the pair made it to the first layer of the fields before a new message flashed across Athos’s vision.

  Warning!

  Error Code: 01000110 01100001 01101100 01101100 01100101 01101110 00100000 01010111 01100001 01101100 01101100 01110011

  Shit!

  His mind raced as his eyes scanned the terrain. In a quick motion, he set her back down and turned her towards the tree he had come from, “On second thought, why don’t you go get Sally?” Trying to keep his voice as level and happy as he could, he smiled. “She must have had an interesting dream to tell you about. Make sure to tell her I sent you, and don’t look back, okay?”

  Thankfully, the little grape-haired girl didn’t think anything of it as she ran off giggling between her screams for her sister. The thought of causing trouble for Sally was enough of a promised reward for the girl as Athos ran the other direction.

  As quick as his feet could carry him, he put as much distance between himself and the two as he could. All the while, the muscle memory of combat already had pulled Magus from his holster and loaded a lightening-laiden Fulrogis Sampus into the chamber from his ammo reticle. If his experience had been any indicator, he only had a few moments before the Nightmare compiled.

  Still dashing as fast as he could without a loss of Integrity, Athos made it past the house before the air began to shimmer and glow with the lights of countless pixels. Following it like a well-oiled machine, the sound of soil and air compressing, arrived so strongly that it was enough to make his ears pop if they still could.

  Light lurched from the ground and the heavens as it collided and took form. Long, gnarled arms broke from the orb of light, quickly followed by a second pair, then a third before the light receded and revealed something he knew. Despite the six arms, the only other body it could call its own was only a mask carved in the face of a snarling gray monster with misshapen teeth. With a sigh of relief, he pointed Magus at the creature.

  “Mr. Hands,” Athos said with some level of familiarity. “What brings you back?”

  As usual, the Nightmare only snarled and growled before it finally lunged at him with the help of its spider-like arms. Athos had enough experience with the nightmare by now to stand his ground and simply pull the trigger on his exotic ammo. The familiar whoosh of the compressed air shot the vial forward into the masked beast and exploded in a shower of yellow light and screams.

  A moment later, Mr. Hands was little more than pixels wafting on the afternoon breeze.

  With the beast’s defeat, a few bytes fell to the ground, and a small, glowing orb joined them a moment later. Walking over, he touched the fallen treasures and transferred them to his inventory.

  10 Bytes acquired.

  1x [Error 404: Item name not found] - 01010111 01101001 01101100 01100100

  00100000 01000011 01101111 01110010

  01100101 00100000 01110011

  Breathing a sigh of relief, Athos smiled. That could have been worse.

  Taking a deep breath, he returned Magus to his inventory, took one last look around for any more Nightmares, and began to walk back towards Sally and Emily. All he could hope was that he was far enough away from the two so that Emily wouldn’t notice the turn to combat. Athos turned around and began the trek back to the tree.

  Both were laying under the tree by the time he returned, but one of them wasn’t sleeping. Sally’s head was supported by her arms behind her head, and her eyes drilled into him even from that distance. If he could receive private messages, he was sure the cut of them would deal massive damage. He mouthed a sorry and kept coming, but a quiet talk wasn’t in the cards.

  Despite being as quiet as he could, Emily couldn’t be fooled by his poor attempts at stealth. Her ears were sharp enough to hear the grass bending under his feet. Like a bolt of purple lightning, she was at her feet and running his way with a toddler’s scream of, “Athos!”

  As Emily dashed past her and crashed into Athos’s leg, Sally only smiled for Emily’s sake. “What took you so long? Feels like we were waiting forever, and I believe I said you were it.”

  “You’re it!” Emily repeated, giggling as she bounced next to her second-favorite playmate.

  He smiled as he tried to pick the girl up, but she only clamped herself around his leg and laughed all the harder. He tried to shake off the clinging girl to no avail. “Just forgot that I needed to check on something over there.” Athos added a bit of a vague hand direction as he waved back towards the scene of the short fight.

  “Anything to worry about?” Sally asked knowingly as Emily finally bounced too hard, hit his thigh, and flew backwards into a giggling, squirrelly mass. It was enough to steal a smile from Sally’s pursed lips while she tried to figure out wondering who to tag next.

  “Nothing I couldn’t deal with,” he assured, wishing he could still use the private message system in some simple capacity.

  Sally hesitated, thinking about something before finally saying, “That’s good then.” The chill in her voice was an all-too-familiar way to tell him just how stupid he had been and they would be talking about it later. He figured as much but did his best to smile again as she added, “Someone wants to play tag until Mom gets home.”

  And that seemed to be exactly what Emily had been waiting for.

  “Tag!” Emily repeated excitedly, reaching out to tag Athos’s side. “You’re it!”

  With a defeated smile, Athos almost wished Mr. Hands had been something much worse. Tag with Emily was almost enough to make dungeon diving and living nightmares seem a welcomed change. “Alright, I guess I’m it then.”

  “You’re it!” she squealed again, and the grape was off running towards the greenhouse.

  As soon as she was out of earshot, Sally’s face took a turn from content to pissed in the blink of an eye. “What if it had been Mask or Sulk again? What would you have done, Athos?!”

  He tried to smile a bit, but he failed and just took a deep breath. “I’d have yelled for help and begged for my life?”

  Her face darkened, and Athos regretted the joke instantly. “We talked about this. If you have any respect for me and what we have, you can’t fight the Nightmares without backup.” Her voice saddened as the dark lines of anger bled from her face. “You need help, Athos, and I can’t help if I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “You always have a choice!” Sally asserted as she brought up her window and checked on her prepped attacks one more time that day. “If you don’t want to see Emily cry over losing her favorite person in the world, make the right one next time.”

  That one hit a little too close to home, and Athos winced. “I didn’t want to risk it compiling near Emily,”

  “You know they always target you first,” came the final strike to Athos’s defense. “Emily’s too young to take aggro while someone else is around. You know that.”

  “She doesn’t need to see them.” Sally’s face didn’t budge. With a sigh, he nodded, unwilling to debate when he knew he was on the wrong side. “I’ll send her to get you for help next time.”

  Sally nodded triumphantly without a hint of smug and made her way back to under the tree. Unceremoniously, she flopped to the ground and returned to looking up into the tree’s foliage. “Good. Now, you have a ballistic, grape-colored fireball to catch. Unless you like the extra chores for the damage she causes, that is.”

  His eyes shot open as he remembered the last time. “Walter and Sandra had me cleaning out your storage shed last time.”

  Sally grinned and waved him off before closing her eyes. “Then run, lover boy. She has a head start and a sugar buff.”

  “Why…”

  “You interrupted my nap,” she answered with a sly smile.

  Athos sighed as he opened his inventory and quickly drank a bottle of Leritate Potum. Even if his speed buff only took a moment to appear, a toddler like Emma could do a lot of damage in a moment. He had the feeling that he was going to need every second as he kicked up dust and a few grass blades in his wake. Despite the looming danger of chores on the Queen farm, he smiled.

  No, nothing was perfect, but there was nothing that said he couldn’t still be happy.

  Chapter Five: Ex Dei Optionem

  After nearly two years of playing tag with Emily, Athos honestly thought he would have seen everything the grape girl could do with the game. As he looked over the damage the small creature had caused, he decided that children should never be underestimated.

  Being the oldest back on Earth and with Sara being so well-behaved, he never had experience with their destructive potential, but here on Incipere, he was getting a crash course. As the hurricane that was Emily slept on the floor of the living room next to the fireplace, Athos had to admit just how cute she was despite the significant amount of damage she could inflict on the world at large.

  Picking her up, he cuddled the toddler into his arms on the way to Sally’s room. Despite all the room the Queen house had, Emily insisted on staying with her sister, and Sally was terrible at telling her no. A gentle smile crossed Athos’s face as he carefully put her into the smaller bed and got her settled.

  Quietly, he tip-toed through the door, closed it with the utmost care, and stepped gently down the stairs until he arrived back at the living room where Sally had already taken up residence on the couch.

  “I told you to be quicker,” she said simply as she heard Athos’s footfall on the hardwood floor.

  “And you could have helped,” Athos pointed out as he came around the couch and flopped down.

  “We’ve both seen how you accept help, Athos.”

  He winced at her words. Not that he didn’t deserve them, but all the same… “Still mad?”

  Sally sighed as she sat up and looked at him. “No, I stopped being mad after Emily put you through the ringer. Now, I’m just disappointed in you not trusting me.”

  “You know it wasn’t about that.”

  She pointed at him, poking him in the chest with a surprising amount of force. “No, that’s exactly what it’s about.”

  He let his weight sink into the couch as he thought about her words. “It’s not about trust. You know I trust you more than I do myself.”

  “Then what is it?”

  More demand than question, Athos picked his words carefully. “I know what you’ve told me, and I know it’s selfish, but I can’t lose you like you lost me.”

  Sally sighed as she inched closer and leaned against him. Her hair flowed like a landslide across his chest. It was an argument she couldn’t refuse. She had her family, her mom, her dad, and even Emily to help her through it. Who did he have? The thoughts danced through her head, but nothing came to attack. “Can’t you just stop trying to do this on your own?”

  He shook his head and sighed, opening his status screen so that they could both examine it.

  Error: H-496e74656772697479202d31

  Error: H-4b65726e616c204572726f72

  Error: H-446563617920696e2070726f6772657373

  Error: H-46616c6c656e2057616c6c73

  “This says I can’t, Sally. I can’t contact friends, send messages, join groups, or do anything that makes me feel productive. There has to be a reason for this.”

  “You could ask Unum,” Sally offered again, “or Rani. I’ve heard from Mom that they’re the most active of the gods.”