Dreadlord Wizard: A LitRPG Adventure (Badges of Dorkdom Book 1) Read online

  DREADLORD WIZARD

  ©2022 THEO HODGES

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the authors.

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  Print and eBook formatting by Steve Beaulieu. Artwork provided by Luciano Fleitas.

  Published by Aethon Books LLC.

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead is coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  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

  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

  Epilogue

  Thank you for reading Dreadlord Wizard

  From the Author

  Groups

  LitRPG

  To all those who love me despite my legendary dorkdomary. Your patience and support mean the world to me. And now, mmmmagic!

  one

  Kenny lobbed his cell phone at his bookshelf and kicked the box in front of his recliner. Despite his fury, he hardly nudged it. The clank of the pots he’d forgotten about within, and the resulting pain in his ankle, were his only rewards. A fact that made his anger burn deeper. He bent over to shove the box out of his way and bumped into the TV tray next to him. His stomach dropped and he jerked to the right, but it was too late. His bowl of ramen noodles spilled over onto the ugly gray carpet.

  “Crap freaking-tastic!”

  That was his last packet.

  Kenny hated that his apartment’s size required him to stack his belongings on top of one another, cluttered inside spaces they didn’t naturally belong. Catastrophes like this were surprisingly common.

  “Sir?” came the woman’s voice from his speakerphone, partially muffled where it lay on top of his Fantasy hardbacks.

  Kenny growled and flexed his hands into fists. He imagined picking up the phone, marching to the apartment manager’s office, and throwing it at point-blank range into the slumlord’s dingy door. The only way he could stop himself from fulfilling that fantasy was to drive his fingernails into his clenched palms and walk the three paces into the kitchen.

  The digital display of the clock on his stove read 11:47a.m. He hissed, realizing he’d spent three hours on the phone with various customer service reps and managers already, and Mary was taxing his last nerve. It had been a week since his internet went out. He was no closer to getting it back now than he had been on Saturday, when the customer service representative with the cracking voice unenthusiastically promised they were escalating his request.

  There was more mumbling from his phone.

  Kenny silently debated whether it was worth saying even one more word to the landlord, Mary. She wouldn’t care he’d already wasted precious rent money on the modem and router that hadn’t worked. He’d cursed the office manager and his convincing suggestion to buy the items in the first place. His unhelpful advice to call the tech support number just led to Mary explaining there was nothing she could do. The internet in the provided study room had no reported issues, so he should contact the apartment manager—who was on vacation. Unfortunately, the person he left in charge had even less of an idea than the manager on how to help him.

  Mary wouldn’t even care that he’d just quit his job stocking shelves at Hy-Vee or that he had two promising interviews with fast-food establishments nearby… Boy, he really could not wait for those. No, his landlord simply didn’t care about any of the difficulties that seemed to constantly be heaping on top of him—and it seemed no one else did, either.

  His C++ professor merely sighed and said, “okay,” when he’d called to inform him he was dropping the class. That brought the number of classes he was taking down to just two, and he wasn’t even close to the ‘B’ he’d been hoping to get in either of them.

  Why am I even bothering? he’d wondered. I could just play video games instead.

  Kenny walked back into his cramped living area and begrudgingly picked up his discarded phone. There was no one there. She’d disconnected.

  “Great.”

  He roughly cleared his throat from an irritating tickle, wincing as pain blossomed in his chest. He still hadn’t quite recovered from whatever bug he’d been suffering from for the last few weeks. Despite the copious amounts of noodles and broth he’d been consuming. So much for advice from the internet.

  Kenny eyed his laptop resting forlornly on the arm of his chair and frowned. His programming homework was due tomorrow, but it was thirty-two-degrees outside and there was no heat in the study room of his apartment building. He also couldn’t go back to the library to piggyback the Wi-Fi there. Not after the librarian scolded him—quite loudly—while explaining he wouldn’t be allowed back without showering first. Kenny ultimately decided it was better to freeze to death in the drafty public room than to see that hag again.

  He scooped up the ramen noodles and rinsed them off under the sink before depositing them in a plain bowl of water. Once he’d finished nuking his shamefully-unseasoned breakfast, he lugged his noodles, laptop, phone, and comforter out of his apartment. He nudged the door closed with his foot and shuffled carefully down the chilly stairwell leading to the building’s bottom floor where the study room was located.

  He reached the last step and a sharp blast of frigid air hit his exposed skin. He stopped with a grumble, turning toward the source of his annoyance. A girl stood in the open doorway of the front entrance to the building, the icy December wind roaring in behind her as she wrestled with an armful of groceries. Kenny recognized her as the avoidant girl who lived on the first floor. Another gust of winter breeze slapped him and the chill stabbed at his ears and nostrils. He fruitlessly shifted his comforter in an attempt to shield himself. If his hands hadn’t been full, he’d have at least been able to cinch up his hoodie.

 
The girl managed to wrangle the door closed—despite being over-encumbered—and looked up at Kenny, meeting his gaze just long enough to register who he was. Then, she zipped down the hall toward her apartment.

  Kenny remembered a few weeks ago when he’d passed her on the sidewalk, lugging a bulging garbage bag full of trash to the dumpster. She’d completely ignored his attempted hello then, too.

  Taking a deep breath, he thought he’d try a different approach.

  “Can I help you get any more bags from your car?” he offered.

  This time, rather than a blank stare, she gave him a cross look, as though annoyed he’d even asked. She hurried away without even a backwards glance in response. Kenny raised his brows. Okay… he thought.

  The study room was empty, which provided some relief. The last time he tried to use the room, the ridiculously muscular jock in 1C gave him the stink eye and shooed him out to keep his phone call private. Kenny had scoffed at what he deemed an unnecessary action. What did he care if the guy needed his mom to get a mustard stain out of his dress shirt? He’d have asked his mom to do the same. Having the room to himself this time at least spared him another encounter like that.

  He plugged in his computer and left it loading on the table while he snuggled up in the uncomfortable lounge chair. Kenny made to start digging into his now bland ramen when his phone buzzed. He picked it up and grimaced.

  MOM: Are you coming?

  His brother’s birthday party! He’d completely spaced it. Kenny sighed, trying to think of how to respond to his mother. She was an assertive woman. Through Kenny’s entire life, there’d never been an excuse valid enough for her to accept without a thousand questions. He hated to even think about breaking bad news to her. He was in a serious bind, considering he’d already skipped church because he’d been on the phone with tech support.

  Disappointing his brother was also not high on his list of fun activities. Still, he was staring down the barrel of at least one full day of homework, and that was if he’d already gotten started two hours ago. Even if he tried making the drive home in this weather, he wouldn’t be able to begin until much later. Which meant not sleeping tonight. Again.

  Kenny coughed once more and winced from the sharp jab in his lungs. He almost grinned. The wayward pain was pretty much the only thing he could rely on in his life. His phone buzzed again, reminding him he hadn’t opened his mother’s message yet. “Well, if I’m going to die, I should get this over with.”

  He opened the message and tapped out his response.

  Sry. Homework. I can’t.

  The outgoing chime hardly finished chirping before his mother’s return message arrived.

  MOM: FaceTime at least.

  It wasn’t a question.

  Okay, one second.

  As soon as his desktop finished loading, his homework flickered onto the screen, right where he’d left off. ‘Step 3’ beamed back at him and he shook his head dolefully. He still had so much further to go. Another window popped up on his display—an error. Failed to execute.

  Kenny closed the prompt. He clicked back to his Step 3, realizing with an increasing sense of dread that he’d practically have to start over again to see where he might have messed up his code.

  Incoming call: MOM, appeared on the screen.

  Kenny accepted and his mother’s disappointed face appeared, already in the process of scolding him.

  “You had all week to do your homework, Kenny,” she said, not even bothering to greet him before lowering her voice. “Patrick might not say it, but it’s gonna hurt him that you didn’t come. Are you sure you can’t make it?”

  Kenny knew his mother well enough to know her questions tended to be closer to warnings of interrogations than actual inquiries. Usually, there was a mild threat in the tone, often followed by bribery.

  “I made lemon cake,” she said.

  Kenny smirked. “Mom, you know I hate lemon cake.”

  She smiled wanly, but the skin around her eyes tightened as if she was concentrating hard on controlling the volume of her voice.

  “I know. But Patrick doesn’t. That’s not the point, Ken—”

  “Sorry, Mom,” Kenny said quickly.

  He was throwing himself to the wolves, but he didn’t have any other choice. He gave her his sob story—er—list of excuses as to why he hadn’t been able to do his homework. Starting with the cold a few weeks ago. Kenny hoped to soften his mother’s heart of stone with the trials of her helpless oldest child so close to the grips of death.

  Kenny moved on to the router and his horrible experience with the customer service. The girl mean-mugging him in the hallway. Even the bowl of ramen he’d knocked over. Everything terrible or inconvenient he’d remembered happening to him within the last two weeks was thrown at her in an ultimate display of pity. Maybe if he sounded pathetic enough, she’d understand why his schoolwork was incomplete. Or at the very least, she’d perhaps change the subject.

  His mother listened patiently, her trademark scowl of disappointment in constant vigilance. Eventually, Kenny finished weaving his tale of woe, ending it with Mary hanging up on him. A long silence stretched between Kenny and the iron-forged statue of visible displeasure he referred to as mom before she finally spoke.

  “Fine. I’m going to get your brother on the line. At least wish him a happy birthday.”

  Kenny thought of his homework and how behind he was already. He wished he had the courage—or perhaps, heartlessness—needed to just end the call and get back to Step 3. Plus, the idea of seeing his brother’s crestfallen face was about as appealing as a root canal. However, he didn’t say anything, and after a moment, Patrick took center stage on the screen.

  Kenny noticed right away his younger brother’s hair had grown out a lot since he’d last seen him. His straight brown bangs hung just over his eyes and more lay flat beneath his ears on the sides of his head. Unsurprising, Patrick wore a red and blue Mario sweater—the one Kenny bought for him at the consignment store for Christmas last year. His brother had worn it so much, Kenny could see holes starting to appear in the elbows, even on the grainy screen of the video chat.

  Patrick gave his older brother a small smile, looking unsure but also anxious to hear the bad news. He gave Kenny a wave.

  “Hi.”

  Kenny felt as though his heart splintered into a thousand shards. He hated his life. “Happy birthday, Patrick,” he said, trying to smile wide enough to lift his brother’s spirits and—improbably—his own.

  Patrick gave him another meek smile, but it faded against dawning realization. “Are you coming?”

  Patrick knew the answer would be no, it was in his eyes, but he was pleading for Kenny not to do what he feared. Kenny’s anger boiled in his soul. He couldn’t see any way around it. A tickle in his throat forced out another painful round of coughing. He hacked for a moment, only slightly relieved that it bought him some time.

  An extreme lack of sleep already contributed to his getting a cold, and even one more restless night would make his next week that much worse. Besides homework, he still had those interviews in the morning at nine and eleven. If he didn’t get to bed early enough, he might sleep through his alarms. He couldn’t afford to not get those jobs. Moving back home would be the worst-case scenario as far as endings to the first semester of college go.

  By the time his fit subsided, he was able to meet his brother’s gaze. Patrick still seemed to have a faint flicker of hope that perhaps Kenny could tell him what he wanted to hear. “Kenny?”

  Kenny didn’t say anything and Patrick looked away. Kenny’s answer was delivered in the silence, and the birthday boy didn’t want to be on the line any longer.

  “I’m sorry, Patrick,” Kenny mustered, and he uncomfortably ran a hand through his unwashed hair and scratched an itch on the back of his head. “I just have like, twelve hours of homework to do, and I can’t afford to fail this assignment.”

  Patrick bit his lip, his brows furrowed in disappointm
ent. “Okay… Bye.”

  Call ended. Rate the quality of your experience.

  Kenny cursed under his breath and closed out the message. He stabbed at his keypad to open his music player to the last album he’d been listening to. My Heart Is Broken by Evanescence began to play and Kenny almost punched his speakers to pieces over the irony. But, like always, he got himself under control and returned to Step 3.

  As soon as Patrick gets out of school tomorrow, Kenny vowed, I’m going to meet him at home and surprise him with the rest of the day playing whatever games he wants.

  Telling himself Patrick would get over it, Kenny returned to the instructions for Step 3. He opened the DOS screen and typed in the command for his project to open. When he hit ENTER, a strange sensation gripped his mind.

  Kenny almost screamed as what felt like hands reached into his brain through his face and tugged him forward. He slammed his palms down on the table, blinded by pain. Whatever this force that suddenly ensnared him was, it stretched its fingers around the back of his skull and pulled him toward his laptop screen.

  Kenny let out a roar, bucking backward. He clenched the edge of the tabletop so hard he was sure it would break.

  The force of the creature was unrelenting and growing in strength. With one last cry of desperation, Kenny lost his hold on the table and the brain-snatching hands dragged him forward into the dark screen.

  A cold pool of energy poured into Kenny’s eyes and over his face as he passed through the barrier. There was a strange popping sound and he landed with a tremendous thud that sent pain radiating into his shoulder. He rolled onto his back, blinking rapidly.