《Shoot on sight》Prologue
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Zone has no owner, it has its rules
It shows no mercy, to both wise and fools.
It has no God, it gives no hope
It gives to kind, last rites and rope.
It’s a Hell on Earth where demons thrive
But people kill, to get inside.
People kill, to leave this place
People die, for a chance to stay.
For those, outside, they dream of horrors
We live inside, horrific borders.
We live, we thrive, just like those demons.
Here, our lives, they have a meaning.
Zone has no God, it has no Devil
But it has us and its enough
We are in Hell or maybe Heaven
Gates are here, in front of us.
The Zone has many rules and none of them would make much sense to you, living on the Outside. For example here, you would never hear, “I’m sorry for your loss”. Only silence would be the answer. The most empathetic action you would receive is an open flask and a nod.
People here don’t expect to live long and happy lives and even the most optimistic person at most would hope to die inside of a blender. It's the most painless and quickest way to die in The Zone and the cleanest. Your body would be torn apart in a second by countless gravitational pulls, all centred on you, leaving nothing but a red circle outside of its perimeter.
You have nothing to worry about, the blender will not leave you alive and crippled. It has enough force to rip metal and concrete to shreds, nothing to say about your bag of bones and shit. It will be like a wet paper towel, so fragile and weak.
It hasn't always been that way. Sure, The Zone was harsh and unforgiving but it wasn’t outright murderous and hostile like it is right now. In the past Zone had some sense of order and life. We had our own settlements, some even big enough to house 3000 - 4000 people at a time. Such large places were few and far in between of course, but there were countless tiny villages scattered across The Zone. People in those villages would have conflicts with their neighbours one day and bartering sessions the next. So you could say there were politics and trade going even in this shithole. We had trade caravans going from village to village and from one town to the next, bringing people much-needed supplies in exchange for artifacts and mutant parts. On rare occasions, they would bring stuff from the outside and sell it for untold riches.
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With trade, we had an economy or at least some semblance of it. People living here would trade using shiny, the tiniest, most common and most insignificant artifact in exchange for food, weapons or any other things they might need. But even that artifact might cost some poor bastard his life. Something to think about the next time when I buy an extra banana clip.
With the economy, we had our own government. Gangs and different factions were that government. They would wage wars for the said artifacts or territory, sometimes for regular folk. It was like we had our own warped and twisted kingdom in the middle of 21st century Earth. Periodically, “kings, presidents and prime-ministers” would organize expeditions deep into The Zone hunting for valuables and pay a lot of money for some poor bastard to jump into anomalies fishing for them or pay with his life and freedom intact.
Life in the Zone wasn’t all doom and gloom in all honesty. Some people even managed to live a life there without firing a weapon even once and a lot of people didn’t have to risk their skin to afford the next meal. That job was for the stupid, for ambitious, for greedy or plain unlucky.
I was one of the unlucky and stupid. You see when you have money and not much time to spend it, you tend to do stupid shit. Some of it on such scale that you might as well read about Caligula and be informed. While Caligula has made his people fight against the ocean and ram the waves, I decided that I wanted a tour in The Zone. In hindsight all I could say, “thank you, whoever you are that brought me here before the Second Eruption.”
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Bloody Hell
Alan Maxwell has one exceptional talent. He can read peoples body language and micro expressions so well that, in many cases it's not hard for him to fake being psychic. When a foreign agency decides that said talent would make him an exceptional spy, events quickly begin to spiral out of control. With enemies on all sides, and friends that will as soon kill each other as his enemies, Alan will have to put his skills to the test in the ultimate game of cat and mouse. ===I came up with this story in response to a question. I once asked someone why there weren't really any Yandere harems. I realize that the answer to that is 'everyone dies' but thats boring so... here we are. A story I came up with explicitly as an excuse to create a harem entirely out of obsessive psychopathic axe murderers. Or in other words - "What happens to Bond girls when they disappear?"As a warning, there are sex scenes. Its tagged. I'll leave an authors note at the top of any chapter that has them if you'd prefer to skip it.
8 173Taken : New Beginnings
It is summer, 2016. On this fateful Sunday, the world is shook when an announcement - in the form of a blue screen, nothing less - appears in front of every human being on Earth. This announcement is both the ending of an era, and the beginning of a new one. Join our main charachter, James, on his induction into a whole new world and the wider universe. In the world of Terrae, there are infinite possibilities. Swords, bows, magic and more all exist on this world - complete with fantasy-esque races and monsters. In a RPG-like environment, James and the others from his world must grow and adapt fast or fall before the hordes of monsters infesting their new home. What path to power will James take, in a world of infinite possibilities? Who will he become? What has become of Earth and it's other inhabitants - His family? Follow James in his journey to discover these things himself, as he has no clue either. After all, he has just been Taken from his world, and is expected to adapt and thrive in a whole new place. Good luck to him, anyway! All credit for the awesome cover goes to ssddx, who did a brilliant job putting it together, as I'm sure you can all see! I will note that, as pretty much all LitRPG novels have, that, to a certain extent, I have taken inspiration from other works I have read. This, however, is an original fiction. I hope any and all of you who read this fiction enjoy reading it just as much as I enjoy writing it, and please feel free to comment - I recognice that this will need work and will have things like typos - please feel free to point out any obvious things I forget about or miss out, as well as any typos. Also, feel free to lob suggestions my way if you have any - while I may not use them, they could very well inspire me in some way or another and help me improve this fiction, even if just by a little bit.
8 154Descent: Resonant Core (Book 1 of the Chaos sworn series)
A young computer engineer/ mechanic is caught in a war between magic users known as "magi" and human agents of an alien hegemony known as the "Veldar." Kidnapped, tortured, kidnapped again and sent to another reality, William must find a way to protect his fellow human slaves, plan their escape and figure out how magic works in this new world. But first he has to get rid of the killer implant stuck in his head.
8 110The Mischief of Rats
Dru is being hunted. Hunted like a rat through the bowels of the space station. He needs to find out what Commander Goul has done to all the kids that have gone missing. Tired, cold and so terribly hungry, the inside of a decaying hulk is no place for a ten year old. But he has to go on. He has to find his best friend, Gar, or die trying.
8 117Truthful Transmigration
Schedule: 1 Chapter each of Tuesday/Friday John Miller was a fairly normal young man, working hard to support a family that had run into many financial difficulties. Unfortunately, his unexpected death ends his difficult but mundane life. He is quite surprised to find himself waking up alive… but not himself. Fortkran Tenebach is… or was… the young master of a cultivation clan in another world. John barely even knows anything about cultivation- even in the theory of something vaguely like it- but he has to make his way with the memories of his new body. His new family isn’t as close as his old one was… but he can’t help but want to be honest with them. He is quite certain that they notice his sudden change in personality among other things, and confesses what happened in a move that ultimately he expects to be fatal. Quite surprisingly, his family instead breathes a collective sigh of relief that the old Fortkran is dead. This leaves John to take over his duties… including cultivation, though he has to start from the beginning and isn’t sure he won’t make some massive mistake.
8 244Episode 2: SPAWN
A vampire was destroyed in the city of Two Rivers. Her second death points detectives Alton and Cook of the Unjust Existence Extermination Investigation Force in the direction of an agent of a foreign power, and suggests the existence of a greater vampiric plot that undermines the reputation of the city for fair treatment of living-impaired citizens. Set in the world of Manifest Destiny - a shared hombrew D&D 3.5/Pathfinder 1 campaign setting that has been in use since 2007, this is a fantasy police procedural similar in style to Law & Order. Retired player characters make cameo appearances. This work originally won NaNoWriMo in 2015, and will update every Saturday until complete.
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