HADES ONLINE: SUCCUBUS (A Gamelit / LitRPG Harem Adventure) Read online

  HADES ONLINE: SUCCUBUS

  LITRPG HAREM SERIES, BOOK 1

  Authored by

  ALEX A. ITSIOS | A. A. ROI

  PROOFREADER: AZARA BELL

  Copyright © 2019, Alex A. Itsios

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Visit WWW.ALEXITSIOS.COM for more HADES ONLINE book releases, stories, artwork and more!

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  table of CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

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  CHAPTER 1

  I’m Zephyros and I’m pretty much fucked! I ruined my entire virtual life when I tried to hack the mainframe server of Elysium, the virtual game world where I have lived since birth. Now, Rhadamanthus the overseer of Elysium is banishing me to the real world, a place I’ve only heard of in stories and myths.

  “I appeal the verdict,” I demand, my base avatar standing in the place of the accused, stripped of all that I have built into it over my lifetime but for the clothes on my back.

  According to what I thought were the rules, I as a Level 21 player, have this right, or I thought I had.

  “Appeal denied,” my judge, jury and executioner booms across the vast empty grey judgment hall.

  Judgments like this are supposed to allow attendance, but that too has been denied. It seems I am more right than I imagined about what is wrong with Elysium. But none of that matters anymore.

  “Your sentence will commence immediately,” the great robed figure with a red glow for a face, stamps the floor with his staff of justice. Just like that, everything is taken away from me in an instant; my family, my friends, my rivals, my girlfriend…

  I am suddenly elsewhere and am forced to cry out.

  Punishment for my crime is starting out pretty harsh. I’ve only been just convicted and the Justice of Elysium has transferred me along with what appears to be many other offenders – both men and women – to the Mourning Fields. This is a place for those who committed great crimes or wasted their lives in Elysium. I, as well as the others I see around me have been further stripped, our avatars now naked, but for a timer fused to each of our wrists, ticking down.

  Around me screams echo, choking is forced out, cries of pain shriek, and I join in, and for good reason.

  It’s burning hot here, agonizing, in a way I’ve never felt before in my virtual life. The heat radiates down on us like the full breath of hell unleashed. Around me is a scorched, yellow desert, so hot the air shimmers in the harsh rays of as sun so intense even gazing up at all is blinding. The oven-hot air burns our lungs, while the penetrating heat roasts our avatar’s naked flesh to the point where I can hear mine sizzling already. The agony is intense, much worse than I’ve ever experienced before, and is definitely at no level allowed in Elysium. Command as I might, it cannot be turned off.

  “There, water, please!” come the cries of my fellow offenders, fellow victims.

  We now see before us a shallow river only a short crawl away. My fellow sufferers and I immediately scrabble there for the comfort it must be able to provide for our damned avatars. I hold back. I’m punished severely for my reticence, while the others slurp desperately at the water and splash it over their smoking bodies. The burning sensation in my throat grows ever worse as I stare down at the cool water flowing right beneath my eyes as I crouch on all fours over it, hearing the cries and sighs of relief all around me as everyone else partakes of it. My back now feels like it is on fire.

  No! Fuck them, fuck Elysium Oversight; I won’t drink a single drop of that water or dive in, no matter how much I know I will savor it, no matter if I am roasted alive. Let thick saliva build up inside my mouth, let my flesh shrivel. I will not take any false comfort or false compassion my torturers are teasing us with.

  My pain amplifies the countdown that now fills my swimming consciousness. The timer on my wrist ticks like it’s a bomb about to go off, louder and louder. Once it stops, I’ve been told I will be banished to a world called Earth and I can’t do anything to stop it or slow it down, or even speed it up to stop the agony I am experiencing. It is indestructible and fused to my Avatar’s wrist. Like the others now in the waters, I just have to wait here till our new avatars called ‘bodies’, are created. Once they’re ready, we’ll be sent from orbit and brought down to Earth, our new home. That’s all we have been told. I won’t lie. Dread owns me right now as much as pain. The clock stops ticking, ending my agony, but heightening my terror of what more is waiting. My time has come…

  I lose consciousness and everything goes black.

  I don’t how much time is passing now, I can no longer sense anything, but that does mean none of the pain from being burned alive, so it’s not all bad. A chill starts to seep through into my consciousness and then a raft of unfamiliar sensations. I open my eyes to find myself laying on a cool unyielding surface, but feel as though I’m now in emergency state. Something thumps fast and hard inside my chest and there’s a strange sensation in my head, hard to describe, an uncomfortable heaviness, like there are rocks in there. I think I’ve heard about this somewhere, maybe in a historical game. Yes, actual bodies, I’ve heard, feel different kinds of sensations and pain than we do in Elysium, suffer much more greatly, and that they feel other things much more deeply. What is in my chest must be my beating heart. The rocks in my skull must be a sensation that’s called a headache. I’m not completely sure as it’s the first time I’ve ever felt such a sensation. All around I start to hear moans.

  There is some light, although it does seem to flicker. I start to pull myself up to a sitting position, focus on my environment. It’s a medieval-style chamber of some sort, stone-clad walls, dimly lit by candle set along the walls. I realize where the moans are coming from. Several others are waking up around me as well, and like me, they are all dressed in short white tunics. Compared to the avatars we once wore in Elysium, even our base forms these ‘bodies’ we have are rather uniform in size and shape and even color, some a little bigger, some a little smaller, all pale to light brown in skin tone, hair ranging from white to black, with brown, red and blonde dominant. This is not even close to vast ranges of size and design that avatars are capable of.

  Boring.

  On the brighter side, there are a few women here among the men who I easily identify as hot. But I have no idea where we all have ended up now, in what I can tell are bodies as uncomfortable to everyone else as mine seems to me.

  I work on getting to my feet and do so unsteadily. The whole place gives off a vibe of visceral age, and the air smells dank and musty. It doesn’t belong in the virtual world which I am familiar with; the world I knew. The rough floor scrapes my skin when I pull myself up to my feet. There’s no vibrancy to anything, not even to my fellows. I meet the gaze of one of the women standing near me, but it’s blank, confused, like there’s hardly anyone in there.

  Is this it? Is this real world
we’re destined to live in for our entire lives from now on?

  First impression? This place sucks. And the people too, it seems.

  “Where am I?” the pretty and busty girl with long black hair standing beside me asks suddenly, holding herself now and shivering as she goes back to looking over herself and the chamber.

  Others are more aggressively vocal, afraid, worried.

  “What is this place? I can’t remember how I got here. What’s happening? The only thing I know is my name!” A man across the chamber shouts, his voice echoing off the walls.

  “I don’t remember anything. The last thing I remember is drinking water from a river,” a woman further in the crowd says.

  What? They don’t remember? Am I the only one who remembers, then, either Elysium, conviction, sentencing?

  “I remember drinking water from a river as well,” agrees another.

  More and more people wake up and get to their feet. I realize there are a lot of us, maybe fifty or so. All of them are in the same state of amnesia and the only thing they remember is drinking water from the river, which I realize now must have been the River Lethe. That means all these people are the other offenders, convicted criminals whose avatars were with me in the Mourning Fields. And their memories have been wiped clean by it. It becomes clearer that I might be the only one who remembers my past life, criminal conviction, Elysium, who I am, who I was. I realize I should hold my tongue about any of that until I know more. We aren’t supposed to remember who we are, where we came from, that I now understand.

  And I am again filled with dread as to the reason why.

  CHAPTER 2

  My dread is short-lived though. Instead of daydreaming and reminiscing the recent past, some of the amnesiacs found a way out.

  “There’s a corridor over here,” a young, muscular, silver-haired guy shouts.

  I look in that direction and clear enough is a gap in the wall I hadn’t noticed before, but then again, the room isn’t exactly well lit.

  “Should we follow it?” Wonders a young redheaded woman.

  She is a knockout, even considering most of the female bodies here are young and attractive. Well, everyone seems to have young, if not very differentiated basic bodies. I find myself aroused, although not that excited. The redhead might change my mind though.

  “What if we shouldn’t move? It… it could be dangerous!” Another guy whines, shrugging in frustration, trepidation. “I don’t wanna die! I don’t know who I even am!”

  “Who said you’re gonna die idiot?” the silver-haired guy scolds him. He’s a real take-charge kind of guy. “This is the only exit and it has candles everywhere. I’m going, if you want, follow me or stay here to whimper all you like. If we were supposed to die, we’d be dead already.”

  “I’m coming!” The redhead declares decisively.

  I decide I like her a lot, and the flame-like shade of her hair stands out among the drabness here.

  As the silver-haired guy marches out of the room, and the rest of the herd decides to follow him, some reluctant though, and since the corridor is relatively narrow, I have to wait my turn. So, partially, my effort to follow is slow, but it’s not just due to any desire to stay in this hole or the bottleneck of stumbling amnesiacs. I’m finding my steps to be kind of sloppy as it seems it’s taking me a bit longer to grasp the full potential of my body than many of my fellows, which could be because my mind is still behaving as if it’s an avatar I guess and it really isn't. The brunette near me isn’t fairing any better. I try to cheer her up.

  “You’re not the only one trying to figure out how this works,” I try. “What’s your name?”

  “India, I think,” she offers uncertainly, but eyes me a little suspiciously in response. “Where do you think we are?”

  “Somewhere we don’t deserve to be,” I tell her.

  She doesn’t respond well to that; puts a pout on her face, then turns to join the herd. I shrug and follow.

  The corridor is uniform, its walls and floor rough stone like the chamber even the candles are placed at the same distance every step of the way we all shuffle. The hard floor remains cold under my bare feet. Every block of stone and flickering light is so similar it's as if we are passing through a loop, the same length of corridor again and again. So, it is a bit surreal, and perhaps one definition of hell. I’m certain from the murmuring and grumbling it’s the same notion all of us have. It’s good that I’m not alone in that thinking.

  “I see light ahead,” our silver-haired leader shouts. “I think it’s daylight!”

  Several breaths of relief exclaim in unison around me and everyone decides to pick up their pace, so there’s plenty of jostling and bumping as those behind me push to get to the promised light. I try and hold my own and in time, that promised light does appear ahead.

  “Yes, thank you, wonderful, freedom!” Are some of the comments from those surrounding me.

  “Where are we now?” Says another

  Despite the comfortable and easy to grow accustomed to grey-white light greeting me, as I leave the corridor, a sinister feeling sends shivers up my spine. Soon enough we’re all outside now, or at least in some outside building, maybe an amphitheater of some kind, open to the cloudy sky overhead and with its broken columns reaching up into the grey light.

  We’re all now milling about on the floor of the theater, which stands in some kind of vast and ancient city. Buildings and towers of stone, raised walkways or aqueducts stretch into the distance, fading from view. It’s a primitive city, something reminiscent of the likes I used to kick about in when playing games that pit me or the teams I was a member of, battling against mythic monsters, evil gods and the like. The setting makes me feel a little more comfortable, although not for long.

  From my count, fifty-seven souls have also made this journey into an unknown world. I gaze around as well as up, and I spot something else, a new figure standing up at the top of the theatre before a darkened archway. He’s tall, stands still like a statue inside his gleaming armor, with a great sword scabbarded on his wide shoulders. At first impression, the figure reminds me of one of the Justicars back in Elysium. He looks like an avatar, given how ornate his red and gold armor is and how he has to be a head taller than the tallest we have among us.

  When the figure turns around, revealing a grey-bearded face, wizened appearance and piercing grey eyes, I decide maybe he’s not an avatar after all. Maybe he’s only human as the rest of us are now.

  “Welcome emissaries!” He booms at us in a harsh reverberating voice that again gives me flashbacks to my sentencing. “I am Amyndas, your trainer.” A girl off to my left attempts to ask a question, but he just carries on ignoring her and she gives up. “I know you have a lot of questions; fear not, I will answer them in time. What you need to know first, is that Hades, our lord and ruler who lives up in the sky has sent you on a holy crusade to free humanity from the monstrosities that plague it. You, just like me are the elite and chosen few who have been sent from the sky on a mission to cleanse this world of all evil!”

  “Enough of this,” the silver-haired guy barks at Amyndas. He’s got some serious balls. I wonder if he also remembers things as I do. “I have my own questions and I want them answered, now!”

  “You will address me as sir and you will only speak when I say so!” Amyndas demands in a steady and menacing tone. As he does so, he takes his great sword from his shoulder and places it in front of him with the point of the blade touching the stone floor and even penetrating it an inch or two.

  It certainly looks large enough to easily chop several of us in two with one swipe, and Amyndas wields with ease as though it maybe weighs about as much as a twig.

  Suddenly, something pops up in front of my line of vision that says: Hades Neural Control Unit Online. Numbers and letters appear above the heads of every person around me. Unexpected, all things considered. So... even though we used to probably be a lot more experienced, I observe that all of us have ‘Threa
t Level 1’ notification above our heads in these bodies we’ve been exiled into. Except for silver-haired guy and Amyndas. Their levels are 2 and 56 respectively. Wow. Does this mean that Amyndas is fifty-six times more dangerous or stronger than most of us? It would be that way in Elysium, and if so, anyone getting on his bad side will be screwed or skewered! Experience tells me I should be careful with this guy.

  Anyway, it looks as though we’ve carried some aspect of Elysium with us, even in these human bodies and from looking around, everyone seems to be seeing the data popup I’m seeing the way they are looking.

  And, what? Why does Silver-Haired guy get to be Level 2? That’s suspicious. His body certainly doesn’t look any more young, athletic and tough than any of the rest. What’s his deal?

  My attention is taken away when our Trainer speaks again. It’s like that voice is designed to capture our attention, or we are designed to be captured by it.

  “Now, pay attention to what I say, emissaries!” Amyndas orders, impatience in his tone as he spreads out an armored arm to draw attention to the vast ancient city stretching out into the grey. “This is Komana, a megacity in the realm of Anatolia. The city is divided between two factions. The Demon faction rules the west, while we, the Emissaries of Hades, rule the East. We have been sent on a holy mission by Lord Hades to free all of Komana from the evildoers that plague these lands. Young emissaries! Know that before us stands an ordeal of the most grievous kind. One that will last for many, many years of struggle and suffering yet glory. Each and every one of you is asking yourselves now – why am I here? I can tell you this. You are here to wage war with all your might, all that you will be taught, and all the strength of purpose that our Lord Hades will give you against the monstrous tyranny of the demons. That’s why you’re here, why we are here, that is why I will train you to deal slaughter unto our enemies and fight with all your heart’s blood to win!”