His enemy made every weapon illegal. So he brought a form.
The harvest has begun. The county Ray Deacon survived in is an industrial site now, stripped on a schedule filed two hundred miles away, and every road belongs to the Houses.
Ray needs to climb. The only filing that ends his war needs a Standing he cannot reach without crossing the line where his own terminal broadcasts his position to the House that wants it back.
So the House does the patient thing. One order at a time, it makes each of his best moves illegal, in the exact order he would have used them. His eyes. His hands. His lawyer. Every road walled but two: accept service, or die.
There is a third road. It lives inside the first one, and the House cannot see it.
He offers them the thing they spent a year suing to recover. He tenders the terminal back. And they cannot take it, because taking it concedes he is a man who can hand them anything at all.
A surrender that wins by being refused.
To force the answer, he has to summon an officer who does not meet people, to a room where nothing works, on ground he chooses. The price is the ugliest thing he has ever done, and the only untrue part of it is who did it. He does not have to like the man he turns out to be to do it correctly.
Book 3 of KILL RATE, a grounded System Apocalypse LitRPG where every advantage has a price, every power decays, and the sharpest weapon in the county is two pages and a refusal.
No class. No levels. No destiny. A man, a form, and a price.
A dark LitRPG apocalypse for fans of grimdark progression fantasy: the weapon is a form, filed so it will be refused, and the refusal is the win.
Genre: GameLit
The harvest has begun. The county Ray Deacon survived in is an industrial site now, stripped on a schedule filed two hundred miles away, and every road belongs to the Houses.
Ray needs to climb. The only filing that ends his war needs a Standing he cannot reach without crossing the line where his own terminal broadcasts his position to the House that wants it back.
So the House does the patient thing. One order at a time, it makes each of his best moves illegal, in the exact order he would have used them. His eyes. His hands. His lawyer. Every road walled but two: accept service, or die.
There is a third road. It lives inside the first one, and the House cannot see it.
He offers them the thing they spent a year suing to recover. He tenders the terminal back. And they cannot take it, because taking it concedes he is a man who can hand them anything at all.
A surrender that wins by being refused.
To force the answer, he has to summon an officer who does not meet people, to a room where nothing works, on ground he chooses. The price is the ugliest thing he has ever done, and the only untrue part of it is who did it. He does not have to like the man he turns out to be to do it correctly.
Book 3 of KILL RATE, a grounded System Apocalypse LitRPG where every advantage has a price, every power decays, and the sharpest weapon in the county is two pages and a refusal.
No class. No levels. No destiny. A man, a form, and a price.
A dark LitRPG apocalypse for fans of grimdark progression fantasy: the weapon is a form, filed so it will be refused, and the refusal is the win.
Genre: GameLit
Used availability for Marko Duskborn's The Weapon Is a Form