Lost in the Game: A LitRPG Adventure (Dream State Saga, Band 4) - Softcover

Keene, Christopher

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1950020002 ISBN 13: 9781950020003

Verlag: Future House Publishing, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

"Quests, battles, loot, upgrades and advancement. Everything you want in a LitRPG series is here, packed in a richly depicted game-world environment." —Conor Kostick, author of Epic

The Dream State continues to hold mysteries that even its creator doesn’t know the whole truth of. Noah is working hard to help Wona bring the game up from its dark past and make it something that gamers can safely enjoy again. After years of believing the original beta testers were dead, a clue leads Noah to believe that they are alive and in need of a rescue. It’s a chance for everyone to finally make things right. But in order to reunite the lost beta testers with their loved ones, Noah must first free them from the Ghost of the Dream State.

Everyone has lost someone to the Ghost’s enslavement: Brock’s coworkers, Siena’s long lost high school friend, Keri’s boyfriend, and Chloe’s brother. This fight is personal for all of them.

Noah must team up with old friends and enemies in order to find the real world location of the missing beta testers. But the Ghost is willing to kill in order to keep his captives. Can Noah and his friends survive a quest outside of the game?

____________________

What everyone is saying about Christopher Keene:

"Fans of LitRPG and video games need to be reading Christopher Keene." —Paul Mannering, President of SpecFicNZ, author of Engines of Empathy

"The only thing I didn't love about this series was that I didn't write it!" —G. R. Cooper, author of the Omegaverse Series

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

While studying for his Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand native Christopher Keene took the school’s creative writing course in the hopes of someday seeing his own books on the shelves of his favorite bookstores. He is now the published author of The Dream State Saga, as well as his new epic fantasy War of Kings and Monsters and the Super Dungeon novelization The Midnight Queen. In his spare time, he writes a blog to share his love of the fantasy and science fiction genres in novels, films, comics, games, and anime (fantasyandanime.wordpress.com).

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Chapter 1

The Gravesite

Here lies Susan Dharma
2043-2060

“Well, Sue, I finally came to see you. And this time I’m not an utter mess.”
Although I had been at the funeral, the drugs they had given me at the Wona asylum had numbed me to the grief and left me a bumbling, wheelchair-bound fool. This was the first time I had visited the grave while fully lucid, and the guilt that it had taken me this long to give her a proper farewell dug at my heart. I tried to come up with something to say, but it was hard knowing she wouldn’t be able to hear me.
My mother had driven me to the graveyard today. It was a warm day, and she had offered to come with me to the grave for moral support and physical support if I needed it. She had never really stopped worrying about me after my month-long paralysis, no matter how many times I showed her I was fine to walk on my own now, so I requested she wait in the car. I was now glad I had because I was doing this all wrong. My lips weren’t trembling, my forehead wasn’t creased, and tears weren’t spilling down my cheeks like they were supposed to. The grief was coming out in another way. Anger tightened the cords in my neck until I felt like my skull was going to pop off.
“You were just a pawn!” I spat in my sudden fury. “Just another piece that Malcolm could shift so he could have his revenge. Now I’m the leader of Catastrophe and trying to prevent that. And here I was, just a few weeks ago, trying to avenge you by taking them out! The irony makes me want to puke!”
I was panting now, trying to keep it contained, hoping that no one else could hear me. The graveyard had been empty when I had arrived, but no doubt there was some old widow here now, updating her deceased husband on the latest gossip, and here I was having a tantrum like a child.
It didn’t matter. I needed to get this out.
“Now it turns out he’s achieved immortality. No one knows how, and on the very game you were trying to get pulled! You call that fair?” I exhaled heavily and forced a smile. “But that’s what I’ve been doing for the last few months, working with Windsor and trying to figure out how he did it. And once I find out, I’m going to destroy whatever’s left of him.”
The sun went behind a cloud, leaving me in shadow.
“I’m also helping this girl, Chloe. Her brother went missing a few years back, and we’ve been trying to track him through the game, but we haven’t had much luck. After what I did to find you in there, I can understand how she feels. I don’t think she’s deluding herself like I was, though. We met him, heard his voice, and . . .”
How would Sue have felt if she knew that Chloe and I were in a relationship less than a year after she had passed on? Knowing Sue, the fact that I worked as a gamer for Wona would have been enough to make her upset. But I had been playing for her . . . at first, anyway. After Samuel—or Sirswift, as he had been known in-game—was given twenty years in prison for assisting in her murder, it no longer felt like I was playing it for her sake.
“Murders, betrayals, kidnappings, and a ghost in the game. That’s what my life’s been like since you died. After everything that’s changed, it kind of feels like I died myself in that crash, but then if I had I would be with you and, well . . .”
I shook my head and turned to leave.
Before I could enter the next row of graves, I stopped and ran back. “Oh, that’s right! Brock managed to spread the news of Wona’s disreputable past, just like you always wanted. Congratulations, I guess. After they found out about Malcolm stealing the video evidence of the beta testers dying, Windsor and Brock made a deal to release them to the public. I think Windsor didn’t want it being leaked. Finding out that his old friend was not only alive, but also trying to sabotage his life’s work, he had no hard feelings releasing the videos so long as the company could put their own spin on it. As a result, and if you’re not rolling over in your grave now, you’re about to be . . .”
My anger became mirth, my emotions needing some kind of outlet, even an inappropriate one. I raised my hand to hide my amusement, despite no one else being around to see it. I was really glad my mother hadn’t come with me for emotional support now. She would’ve thought I was a monster.
“Hearing there was the ghost of one of the game creators inside the game itself . . . only made the Dream State more popular. It was already the most popular game in the world, and revealing that Malcolm’s experiments led to the deaths of several people actually made it more popular! Can you believe that?”
I burst out laughing. Yes, I was well aware that I was standing in a graveyard in front of my dead girlfriend’s tombstone, keeled over with laughter. I must’ve looked absolutely insane, but considering what I had just told Sue, I was only fitting in with the rest of the world by this point.
I wiped a tear from my eye. “I tell ya, you’re the lucky one. I just hope that if there’s a heaven, it doesn’t have social media.”
I waved at the tombstone—not in goodbye, but as though it didn’t get the joke—and made my way back to the car. As soon as I saw my mother’s drawn face through the windshield, I tried to hide my smile from her. The drive back to the Wona facility—where I now lived—was nearly an hour away and I could only hope I could manage to hold down my rising mirth for that long.

***

We pulled up in front of the Wona facility—a big, rectangular, glass-paneled tower inside of a larger compound. Since the announcement of ‘Malcolm’s Ghost,’ as the issue had been dubbed, the entrance had been mobbed with paparazzi, and I was relieved that the journalists had thinned out to a few desperate conspiracy theorists and hippies holding up signs like “Wona is keeping the secret to immortality!”
Windsor had told us not to talk to anyone about it, not only because he didn’t know how Malcolm had done what he had, but also because he knew the mystery was a great marketing ploy, as people would now join the game in the hope of uncovering it. Even now there were gamers who were going into dungeon after dungeon looking for Malcolm. They called themselves Ghost Hunters. However, there were other professionals and companies that had bought into the immortality idea as well and wanted the secret for themselves.
For the Wona Company, these people were the most dangerous.
I wound down the window and used my I.D. to let us through the gates. As though trying to avoid the elephant in the room, Mom continued to try making up excuses for why my father hadn’t come this time. She didn’t need to explain it to me. It was the same reason he barely paid attention to me while I was stuck in the Dream State: workaholic, another residence, a new woman. He’d give me several reasons for why he neglected me and I’d match him. Like father, like son, I guess.
“He had to go on another trip and—”
I raised a hand to stop her. “I’m a Cat Stevens song, I get it. And I really don’t mind. I’m making more money working for Wona than he is as a financial advisor. If I really wanted to see him, I’d just get him to advise me on my finances, Mom.”
She gave me a cheeky smile. “Imagine his face.”
“That’s why I was smiling on the ride back,” I lied, and went to get out.
Before...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Future House Publishing
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2025
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1950020002
• ISBN 13: 9781950020003
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 292
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Manufactured by Amazon on behalf of the author; https://www.amazon.de/hz/contact-us; ; c/o Amazon Media EU S.à.r.l., 38 Avenue John F. Kennedy; Luxembourg; L-1855; Luxemburg