Stolen Lives: A LitRPG/GameLit Novel (The Underhill Chronicles Book 1) Keith Ahrens (best e reader for epub txt) 📖

in its holster; and a black-powder revolver. I don't know a lot about black-powder pistols, but Jesse lights up like a 100-watt bulb when he sees it. The pistol is in an old canvas sack holding a large handful of bullets, primers, and a horn of powder.

Jesse has tears in his eyes as he turns it over in his hands and sees his initials engraved on the strike plate. He gets up and hugs Thorn. I honestly don't know who's more surprised.

Thorn can't or won't tell us where she got them, other than that her friend Osmanthus sent them. She says she's given out more 'items' to Colt, Olivia, the Berserkers, and a few other groups. She truly doesn't seem to understand what many of these things are (like my radio) and is almost dismissive of these ‘crude, heavy, iron tools.’ She tries, but her descriptions are vague and lacking useful detail. It’s not her fault, even in the modern world, most people refer to most handguns by their color, whether it’s a revolver or not. Her world has the versatility of magic; we've learned to simulate that with technology. She knows as much about guns as I know about magic.

Still, this is great news. Perhaps we've just gained an edge to even the odds a little.

Haynes claims the .45 before I can, and Jesse obviously isn't giving the black-powder revolver up, so that leaves Des and me with the other pistols. Both are a bit rusty and in desperate need of a cleaning, but that’s the beauty of a revolver—if the barrel is clear, it’ll never jam on you.

We take a few small sticks from the straw, bundle them together, and run scraps of rags through the barrels of each handgun. All, except Jesse's revolver, come up clean despite the surface rust. I guess he never got a chance to clean it before he lost it.

Des activates his character sheet. By this time, we've all seen each other’s stats, mainly to compare and sometimes for bragging rights, so this isn’t much of a surprise anymore.

“Damn boys. Slight problem here. The guns show up in our inventory.”

I pop mine open and see he is right. Under Weapons, I read:

Ranged Weapon Proficiencies: Firearms, Specialized

Weapon Group: Firearms, Specialized

.38 Revolver: +14/+10/+5 Attack, 2d6+2/2d6+2/2d6+2 Damage

The rest of my gear is listed in my ‘Equipment’ section as: Duty Belt, Trauma Pack (Morphine, Epinephrine, Hemostat x2, Scalpel, Various Bandages), Penlight, Two-Way Radio.

“All right, take ‘em off, and find a place to stow ‘em,” Haynes says, quickly thinking as he gives direct orders.

We wrap the guns and equipment in old rags and bury them in the shallow holes under our pallets. If these things are discovered, it would be a death sentence; the jailers have no sense of humor about things like this. The items disappear from our stat sheets as soon as they are off our person, so at least that works in our favor.

“I doubt it’ll make too much of a problem. Come game day, nobody’s gonna be checking through our inventory sheets. Y’all remember how hectic those days are,” Des says to us. Haynes nods in agreement. I take their word for it, having nothing to base it on.

Overall, having these modern weapons is making us feel a little better and more confident about our chances.

We've finally found a crack in the Highborn's plans. They picked us for our 'fighting abilities,' and now we have weapons they don't expect… to fight back against them. This could be a way to turn the tables on them. Their arrogance in their own superiority has led them to believe we could never revolt in any organized fashion. Now, if we can only survive this 'grand battle' of theirs.

For the next few days, we train a different way. We know from the others' experiences that the first few “rounds” of this battle will be pure magic attacks. They've designed these attacks to randomly thin our numbers. Our new training regimen is built around how we can survive these strikes. Haynes told us, upon his return from 'dinner,' that we will have a little offensive magic for each group but still no real defense from it. To combat that, we work on developing new tactics.

As best as we can tell from Thorn, magic is based on primal elements or combinations of them. A lightning bolt is just that, a bolt of lightning. Our goal is to ground it before it hits us. Again, like the square fighting stances, we take a page from the Spartans, or at least the Spartans we've all seen in movies.

Lightning travels like any other electricity, through the path of least resistance, just hotter and more violent. Using our shields, we kneel and form an overlapping umbrella of steel above us. This will help to catch the bolt of lightning and spread it around. At the same time, we touch the edge of one of the shields to a steel spear stuck deep into the ground. This allows the electricity to ground itself into the earth. The Gnolls have been working late into the nights, lining the inside of our shields with thick, dry leather. With luck, this will work as insulation because there sure ain’t a lot of rubber lying around this medieval-style dungeon. Of course, this is all guesswork, but the theory is sound, right?

Now, fireballs. These classics from every B-movie and D&D game are every bit as impressive as they sound. They are a combination of fire and air magic with some primal force thrown in. Primal force is just raw, unrefined magic, not shaped into any element. I'm told they can hit like a cannonball but explode once they reach their target. You know, to spread around the flames and destruction. Good times…

We figure the only counter to these is to hide behind our shields and hope the fire blows past us instead of wrapping inward around the edges. Thin plan here, I know, but there's not much more