Defending Earth (In the System Book #3): LitRPG Series Read online

  Defending Earth

  by Peter Zhgulyov

  In the System

  Book 3

  Published by Magic Dome Books

  in collaboration with

  1C-Publishing

  In the System

  Book #3: Defending Earth

  Copyright © Peter Zhgulyov 2021

  English translation copyright © Sofia Gutkin 2021

  Cover Art © Vladimir Manyukhin 2021

  Published by Magic Dome Books in collaboration with 1C Publishing, 2021

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN: 978-80-7619-317-8

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to the shop and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is entirely a work of fiction. Any correlation with real people or events is coincidental.

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  Table of Contents:

  Chapter 1. The Lull

  Chapter 2. Family Matters

  Chapter 3. The Third Mission

  Chapter 4. The Bonus Card

  Chapter 5. The Contract

  Chapter 6. The Address

  Chapter 7. The Team

  Appendix No. 1. Personnel List

  Interlude. A New Wave

  Chapter 8. The Healer

  Chapter 9. The Fifth Mission (Part 1)

  Chapter 10. The Fifth Mission (Part 2)

  Chapter 11. The Fifth Mission (Part 3)

  Chapter 12. Sharing the Loot

  Chapter 13. A New Threat

  Appendix No. 2. Timing of the Past Day

  Appendix No. 3. Table of the Hero’s Stats and Achievements

  Chapter 14. The Pressure

  Chapter 15. The Japanese Monster

  Chapter 16. Foreboding

  Chapter 17. The Road

  Chapter 18. The Station

  Chapter 19. The Battle

  Interlude. Isida.

  Chapter 20. The Trap

  Interlude. The Evacuation

  Chapter 21. The End of the Mission (1/2)

  Chapter 22. The End of the Mission (2/2)

  Epilogue. The Cicada

  About Petr Zhgulyov

  Chapter 1. The Lull

  Attention! You are in a safe zone. Murdering the locals is forbidden and you will not receive a reward. If you insist on irking the gods, you will be punished.

  THIS WAS THE FIRST MESSAGE I’d seen on my return a week ago. Scrolling further back through the logs had been useless, with no clues to be found there. Taking a deep breath, I finally opened my eyes. It was nine o’clock in the morning. The interface made the wall clock practically useless, yet I didn’t take it down.

  Time until next mission: unknown.

  “You bastards,” I muttered lazily to the... new gods, I suppose? I hate gods. And the undead. And goblins. And... The list was endless, but I couldn’t be bothered. “I’d rather they killed Kenny.”

  The timer had initially displayed forty days, but the numbers kept increasing day by day. Two months, then three months. I was happy at first, but then the timer simply disappeared, leaving behind only uncertainty. Had the deadline been pushed back too far? Would there be no new missions in the near future? I wanted to believe that, but such optimism could end badly when it came to matters of life and death. There was a sword hanging over all the players’ heads that could come down at any moment. How long before the transfer would the timer switch on? Would we get any time to prepare?

  The gods could theoretically have the answers, but they stayed silent for now. I remained on edge for a couple of days, then just gave up. After all, I had a set of spare gear here, and if I was transported at the wrong time, then that was fate. What was I supposed to do, take a shower in full combat gear? Everything had its limit.

  That included laziness. I didn’t want to do anything, but I couldn’t laze around in bed forever. The body craved movement, the stomach demanded food, and the brain required new information. I sat up, untied the bag from my leg and laid it on the table, then pressed my hand to my side.

  Activate the Great Healing?

  Yes/No

  Sure thing. The flow of energy concentrated over the chosen point, then spread slowly through my body. As my experiments had shown, the more accurately I defined the problem area, the better the result. For example, by healing a wound on my arm, I’d increased my life expectancy by 0.20 of a year, but doing a ‘heart health check’ had earned me two extra years. A second session had given me another six months, but the third one had almost no effect. Nevertheless, I felt better and better with each passing day. Funnily enough, I hadn’t even noticed that something was wrong with my body before.

  Attention! Your Vitality parameter has increased by one!

  “Holy shit, it worked,” I muttered. If it wasn’t for the empty mana bar, I’d have reacted more enthusiastically, instead I got up and went to the bathroom. Truth be told, I’d expected such an effect. Let’s see...

  Forecast (intuition). Expected life expectancy based on the current state of the body is 84.2 years.

  This was cool, of course, but I’d had to use Healing fifteen times to reach this level. As far as I understood it, the skill didn’t increase the lifespan, but simply treated old diseases and pathologies. My Vitality was currently 7, which promised me over 84 years of life. Using math, it appeared that nature provided people with about 120 years. Unlike the average person, a player could well live to reach this age. If they weren’t killed, of course, which was a likely turn of events. However, considering the possibility of further leveling up, we were talking about conditional immortality.

  “I think I’m beginning to understand the elves.” I ran the razor down my neck, removing the stubble. This had been a very dangerous procedure in the goblin world. There were razors in the fortress, but few people had dared to use them. One wrong move and… “Son of a bitch!”

  A raven’s head poked out of the mirror. Lucky I used a safety razor, otherwise, this joke could have been the last one… For both of us.

  “Remember!” Legion croaked. “Remember!”

  “Crystals?” I asked, cocking my head questioningly.

  “Where?” The ghost perked up. “No, don’t interrupt me! Crystals are important but I’m talking about my physical body right now! You promised to find me a suitable one.”

  “Yes, yes,” I said, grimacing. “Wait in the room. We’ll search for a suitable captive as soon as I’ve finished shaving.”

  * * *

  A System mission was a pretty stressful event. In a classic story, I’d have gone on a bender for several days, especially since the Great Healing could neutralize the consequences, but I couldn’t afford such an indulgence. The same, albeit to a lesser extent, applied to the second tried and tested method, sex. Ladies of easy virtue did not entice me, and I had neither the desire nor, most importantly, the time to find new acquaintances or reconnect with old flames. It was simply irrational. Too many things demanded my attention, and every hour of delay meant missed opportunities.

&n
bsp; Nor did I feel a particular need to go all out. The idea that no one here would leap out from around the corner and try to kill me was a comfort in itself. In addition, the Calculating Mind was good for calming the nervous system. So good that it was a little addictive — being in a state where all problems could be solved with the help of logic was quite tempting. System gifts often had a catch. If not for the need to save mana for the Great Healing, which repeatedly led me to conclude that prolonged relaxation sessions were irrational, I wouldn’t have realized this threat. The other players were clearly having a harder time with the disappearance of the timer. Fear and time to brood could lead to stupidity at times.

  By the way, my Wisdom parameter had reached 6 points, plus the Heresy meant that I now had 700 mana units. Or was that “only” 700? It took me four hours to fully restore my mana, and I seemed to draw power from three places at once: my magical ability, the source of Heresy, and finally, the outside world. Heresy, despite its minimal value, turned out to be the most powerful and deepest source, giving the initially blue mana strip a slightly golden hue. The second most powerful source was magical ability, while I got only crumbs from the outside world. Mana collection required a well-developed skill, and my success was rather modest here, despite the looted books.

  Mana flows on Earth were much weaker than in the goblin world, but it was amazing that they existed at all. The world was changing, and we could soon see manifestations of what had previously been considered fairy tales. For example, magical abilities in ordinary people and not just players. Speaking of something more mundane, the presence of free mana meant that my ghosts wouldn’t starve to death. It was both a positive, since I had to spend less energy to sustain them, and a negative, since “food” was an additional leash to ensure they didn’t escape. For the raven, I also had the crystals. I very much doubted that Legion would abandon them.

  * * *

  After finishing my morning routine and having a bite to eat, I returned to my room. The raven appeared on top of the closet, reminding me of his existence, but I ignored the vile hint. Work came first.

  I sat down at my laptop. The PC was powerful and convenient, but I preferred to do all sorts of questionable things from something more... mobile. Something clean that held no personal information. The use of specific programs didn’t guarantee absolute security.

  I even considered temporarily changing my place of residence, but then decided that it wouldn’t be necessary. I had initially thought it would be a long time before the players became known to their respective governments, but the situation was developing rapidly and recruitment had already begun. Many, it seemed, had chosen to cooperate.

  Considering the commitments I’d made, I couldn’t hide forever. I needed a weapon and, legally, I could only buy a shotgun. Even that wasn’t easy or quick to do. Considering illegal methods only brought to mind cleaning out a military warehouse, which wouldn’t be the brightest idea. I immediately discarded any thoughts of military hot spots and links to organized crime.

  It was obvious that I’d have to cooperate with the authorities in one way or another, and if the state found me first… Well, good luck to them. What mattered most was to be found by my own people, and for recruitment, not elimination.

  “Doctor, I am well, I assure you. You don’t work for the lizard people, do you?”

  I first checked my main inbox. As a matter of fact, when I tried to register this email address immediately upon my return, I found that it was already taken. Considering that I was supposed to have returned six days ago, this wasn’t surprising, for the others may have assumed I was dead. The first players had come back much earlier, so someone had beaten me to it. The question was who?

  We’d assumed that the search for players would be at the state level, so our security measures were a little excessive. There was a backup email address, which only eight of us knew, and a set of code words. Once I wrote to the main email, I quickly gained access.

  “Oh, that’s nice.” Saud, who’d created the inbox, had not only read all the emails that had arrived during the week, but had also set up a redirect, “forgetting” to tell me about it. Well, at least he hadn’t linked it to a virtual phone, so it didn’t take me long to remove the bookmarks and change the password.

  At present, only Sulu was missing from our group of eight, but the Saudi had already sent people to look for him. If the African man had survived, he would be found sooner or later. The Brahmin had also turned up, and my testimony of his resurrection had been very useful, although it revealed my exploration of the goblin world. That was the official version anyway, right? They didn’t need to know about the beacon just yet.

  My delay also provided a small benefit since most of the Alliance’s documents already existed in electronic form, so I didn’t have to scan my copies. Among the received files was a report on what had taken place in the fortress. The decision to conduct the final slaughter seemed rather questionable, but I was no saint myself, and criticism would do nothing but damage the relationship. Fine. I was left with digitizing the goblin books and other unique materials. I eyed the brand-new scanner I’d bought specifically for this purpose. Later, later.

  I glanced through a couple of emails and forwarded them to other mailboxes. There was nothing important, just players indicating their presence or asking for money. In broken English or an even worse transliteration of the System language. I could do little to help them with money, since I had left most of the ‘treasury’ in the fortress, and what I had taken with me still needed to be converted into hard cash somehow. I could do with more funds myself, so I didn’t hesitate to ask Qing Long for the same.

  Ever since the first cryptocurrency had appeared on Earth fifteen years ago, anonymous transfers were no longer a problem. At first, the market grew at an insane pace, but after the first currency came the second, third, and eventually, the hundredth. Since cryptocurrency existed only thanks to a constant influx of funds, it wasn’t surprising that the main pyramid collapsed under its own weight one day, pulling the entire market down with it. This didn’t happen immediately, like the homegrown economists had predicted, but after many years, and the fall wasn’t complete, but rather the first in a series of similar ones… Nor did it end in complete ruination.

  The world had time to appreciate the advantages of phantom currency, so the market gradually stabilized. Growth almost stopped, the exchange rate was unstable, but cryptocurrency continued to fulfill its role as a way of transferring money instantly and without a trace across the world. I suppose that if governments could do so, they would have banned this money, but the temptation to make “money out of thin air” always won out. According to rumors, countries were the ones behind some of the largest currency pyramids. Even so, anonymity reigned in this market — or so it was claimed, no one had proven it to be otherwise.

  Approving the transfer didn’t take long, and a day later, I was fabulously rich. If I could say that about 100,000 Euros in three different types of cryptocurrency. After waiting a little, I converted that into 200,000 rubles. A larger amount would raise questions from both the bank and the tax authorities.

  Of course, even this was a trail that could be used to find me, but... everything had its limits. The only way to withdraw money completely anonymously was through the black market, including paying a considerable commission and running the risk of losing it all. Including my life, because the transfer of cash involved a personal meeting. Obtaining access keys and taking money that formally didn’t have an owner wasn’t the most difficult business plan. Such stories no longer surprised anyone and were widely used in advertising, calling for people to “pay the tax on crypto and sleep easy.”

  * * *

  I had been afraid that the Alliance would fall apart before the mission was completed or immediately upon our return, but so far, this hadn’t happened. Modern technology allowed most players to keep in touch. In addition to email, there were several chats in secure messengers where topical
issues were discussed. The main one currently included 1,342 people or almost half of the players. It was also worth remembering that not all the returned players were in the Alliance, some had been injured, and some lived in places with limited internet access.

  Certainly, news about the escape of a particularly dangerous prisoner somewhere in Australia, who was found in his cell three days later, spread all around the world. He was a player, no doubt about it. Prison management denied the rumors, of course, saying that there had been a bureaucratic error and the prisoner had been transferred to hospital without notifying the duty shift. It sounded ridiculous, but the media buzz quickly died down.

  There was also Africa, where internet was via satellite and cost an insane amount of money. I think most players from those parts would soon change their citizenship in one way or another. All in all, people were still pulling up.

  Of course, most chats were being actively monitored by various interested parties, and there were certainly stool pigeons among the players. Some of the player numbers definitely belonged to the deceased.

  After skimming through the chats and finding nothing interesting, I checked my former website. My antivirus flashed a warning that someone had tried to send me yet another Trojan. I grimaced. It was a trap for idiots, and they’d only scare away visitors from my bulletin board with such tricks.