The Raid on Inferno (The Range Book #4): LitRPG Series Read online

  The Raid on Inferno

  a novel

  by Yuri Ulengov

  The Range

  Book#4

  Magic Dome Books

  The Range

  Book #4: The Raid on Inferno

  Copyright © Yuri Ulengov 2022

  English translation copyright © Ksenia Akulova 2022

  Cover Art © Ivan Khivrenko 2022

  Art Designer Vladimir Manyukhin

  Published by Magic Dome Books, 2022

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN: 978-80-7619-456-4

  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 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

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Earth Federation, Orion System

  Rhapsody

  The Orange Zone, a.k.a. the Verge

  AS I REACHED THE EDGE of the airfield, I looked around, trying to figure out how to get back to the fort. Thanks to Alice and the map, I knew where I was and I knew I had a long way to go. I needed to take a break and lay out a relatively safe route before heading out.

  It wasn’t until the tournament was over that I realized just how tired I really was, both physically and mentally. My energy levels were fine, but I was exhausted and the prospect of walking through a territory which wasn’t exactly the safest for over ten miles didn’t sound tempting. In theory, I was close to the clans’ area of responsibility and the creatures should have been forced out of here. But damn it, Diss and I had encountered morphs even in Limbo, so it’d be foolish to expect this to be an easy walk!

  After thinking about it, I decided I wasn’t going back today. I’d rather find a shelter and stay there until tomorrow. I’ll rest, recover and then hit the road.

  I climbed inside the wrecked fuselage of a large passenger aircraft, took off my backpack and weapons, and sat back in the surprisingly intact seat with a sigh of relief. Damn, it felt good! I didn’t even wanna think about going anywhere right now.

  All of a sudden, a priority message notification popped up on the dashboard—Sanders.

  Hey hero! Congratulations! You did great! Text me the coordinates, we’ll come get you.

  I grinned happily. Sanders, my good man. Had the clan leader been here right now, I’d have given him a hug, despite all the dislike I had for him. Man, how could I have forgotten that I was still a member of the clan and that instead of walking through the Verge, I could just ask him to pick me up? I was pretty sure I’d earned the Thunderbirds a decent amount of bonuses today, so sending a vehicle was the least they could do for me.

  I texted Sanders the coordinates, explained how to find me and relaxed. That was it. I could finally get some rest. And, in the meantime, scroll through the notifications, which, based on the blinking icons, there were a lot of.

  I opened the dashboard and started with the system messages, as always.

  Attention! New achievement received: Guardian of the Verge. You are now one of the twelve winners of the tournament. You received a reward from the Administration!

  XP received: 100,000.

  Credits received: 1,000,000.

  You unlocked a new level!

  You unlocked a new level!

  You unlocked a new level!

  You unlocked a new level!

  Current level: 41. XP to the next level: 26,500.

  Attention! You have reached level 40! You now have access to new implants and body modifications!

  Uh-huh, sure. As soon as I got into the medical pod, the system would find the centipede. And I wasn’t even sure how that would go for me. Probably not well. They’d snatch me up, lock me in a cage and start experimenting on me. And once they’d played with the biocomputer inside my head long enough, they’d probably remove it. I could, of course, assume that Viho had been lying when he said that in that case I’d die, but as long as there was the slightest chance that he was being honest, I’d have to be careful.

  So implants and mods were out of the question. My level would forever be just a number; the bonuses it gave me access to were, alas, out of my reach. Personally, I didn’t really care about stuffing my body full of hardware and electronics, but, as practice had shown, that was something you couldn’t survive without here on Rhapsody. Well, I guess I’d have to figure something out.

  Alright, what’s next?

  Attention! Your Green Zone visitation limit has been increased! You now have 7 48-hour visits available. The minimum interval between visits is 7 days.

  Damn, that was tempting! But I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to use any of the visits anytime soon. First of all, I didn’t think the rest of my team had any visits left, and secondly... I shouldn’t put my guard down just yet. My teammates had been spending most of their time in the relative safety of the fort, going on missions with Sanders’ men occasionally. I did’t think they needed to go to Elysium just yet, and I...I’d manage. I’d be fine.

  Attention! You have reached level 40! You now have access to new features:

  - Creating your own clan

  - Creating an outpost

  Hmm, now that was interesting. If the outpost was what I think it was...

  I clicked on the link and the description text appeared in front of me:

  The outpost is your clan’s home, fortress and headquarters. You can equip an outpost from scratch or link an existing one, provided that none of the members of the clan which the outpost belonged to previously appeared in its territory within one calendar month.

  When you equip an outpost, you receive a kit to deploy a small bio lab, a small tech lab, a regeneration chamber, a small power reactor, a small recycling reactor, a small harvester, and a small construction printer.

  By mining resources and helping to defend the sector, you receive progress points. Once you have accumulated enough progress points, you can upgrade your outpost to a full-fledged fort.

  I’d be damned! An outpost. A small bio lab. What had Alice been saying about changing the diagnostic module settings to cheat the system? In someone else’s fort, no one was gonna let me mess around with their equipment, but in my own fort... That seemed like something I should seriously consider!

  Okay, and what about the clan?

  Having your own clan doesn’t just mean having a community of like-minded people and making your survival at the Range easier, it also means clan assignments. By completing clan assignments, you receive extra credits and clan progress points. Part of the credits earned by clan members is automatically transferred to the clan treasury, and part of the experience, if necessary, is converted into clan progress points, which, in turn, can be converted into your fort or outpost progress points.

  Creating your own clan allows you to participate in the clan ranking and receive bonuses for advancing in it. To learn more about all the clan’s benefits and features, go to the relevant section of the quick-reference guide.

  Attention! Before you can create your own clan, you must leave the clan you currently belong to.

  Well, that made sense. I might need to think about it. After all, you only had two options at the Verge: join someone else’s clan or start your own. Without a roof over your head, you couldn’t survive here for long. Sure, you’d have to help defend the sector and complete clan assignments, but when you compared that to wandering around Limbo and spending the night in the open air or in an abandoned apartment, the decision became obvious.

  If I wanted to live long enough to be able to get out of Rhapsody—which, in theory, was quite possible since the system had started giving me special assignments—then I needed a safe place where I could stay without getting eaten or stabbed in my sleep. And I didn’t like dancing to someone else’s tune, especially when you don’t know what kind of clan leader you’ve got. As I understood it, Sanders wasn’t the worst option, but staying in his clan wasn’t gonna work for me. I needed to find out
how I could get my own outpost. I doubted they’d just give me one the second I asked.

  As I opened the donations tab from the notifications, I whistled in surprise. Over a thousand messages, wow! Sorry guys, but I wouldn’t be reading them. But thanks for the donations! Three hundred and seventy-six thousand credits. That’s nice.

  Not so long ago that seemed like a lot of money, but now... Now I knew it’d be enough to buy myself a nice gun, like the Hornet. That’s good, of course...but still, not a very significant amount. Especially when you thought about what I’d had to do to earn those credits. However, together with the million credits I’d got for winning the tournament... Not bad. There was also the money Blaise had won betting on me waiting for me at the base. All in all, not a bad start.

  Immersed in thought, I didn’t notice myself dozing off.

  A sound brought me back to reality. I rubbed my face with my hand and strained my ears. An engine. As I glanced at my watch, though, I frowned. Was that for me? How did they get here so fast?

  I climbed out of the fuselage, grabbed the edge of the wing and pulled myself up and out onto it.

  A cloud of dust could be seen in the distance—Sanders men were making their way across the wasteland behind the spaceport. I waited until I could see the outlines of the armored truck, making sure it was the same vehicle that had come to pick me up on my return from Inferno, and jumped down.

  Man, there was still something I didn’t like about this whole thing. I just didn’t understand. How could they have gotten here so quickly? And why were they coming from that side?

  I listened to my gut and decided to, once again, trust my intuition. Caution couldn’t hurt. Even though the tournament was over, too many people knew where I was, which meant I had to stay alert.

  I put my backpack and my helmet on, attached the Hornet behind my back and picked up my battle-ready Pulsar. After climbing out of the fuselage, I ran to the side, and, after looking around, crouched behind the hull of a light police aircraft.

  From my hiding place, I could clearly see the area in front of the fuselage. The armored truck drove up to my previous shelter and stopped. I narrowed my eyes. For some reason, no one was in a hurry to jump out of the truck and roll the red carpet out for the winner. I was starting to get even more suspicious.

  A message popped up on the dashboard. Unknown nickname.

  We’re here. Where are you? Come out.

  Man, I don’t like any of this. I don’t like it at all!

  Hold on. Just a sec. Need to get my gear together.

  After texting back, I found Sanders in my contacts and quickly typed a message:

  What’s the codename of the commander you sent to pick me up?

  Sanders didn’t take long to respond.

  What commander? Are you drunk or something? I’m coming to get you myself. Should be there in an hour.

  Crap! I released the safety catch on the Pulsar and huddled behind the aircraft. Apparently, my intuition was right again.

  Have someone come out to help. The gear’s heavy and my leg’s all messed up.

  Let’s see if this works. Usually, an injured leg wouldn’t be an issue for someone wearing a Steel Rat with its artificial muscles, but I didn’t think anyone in the truck was gonna ask any questions.

  One sec.

  The truck’s turret turned, the electric motor whirred, and then two twin machine guns opened a barrage of fire on the fuselage where I would have been if it wasn’t for my sudden onset of paranoia.

  The heavy bullets pierced the metal like cardboard, ripping through it and turning it into a sieve. The machine guns were rattling for at least a minute, firing an incredible amount of ammunition. The concrete of the airfield was carpeted with shiny casings, and I just sat there, looking at it, feeling rage rise from within. Freaking bastards!

  I activated the detectors and reached for the armored truck with my mental tentacle. Got ’em! There were six people in the truck: one in the turret, operating the machine guns, two in the front and three in the troop compartment. I was tempted to hit all six of them with a psi strike but held off. I didn’t know if I had enough energy to reach everyone and I didn’t want to waste it in case I missed because I was going to need it.

  The troop compartment opened and three fighters jumped out. They moved towards the battered fuselage, covering each other’s backs, guns at the ready. I gritted my teeth. Wait for it, guys. You’re in for a surprise.

  I rested the Pulsar’s barrel on the tail unit and held the trigger down, building up the charge. Holding the gun with one hand, I pulled one of the two plasma grenades from my pouch with my other hand and turned the ring on it to adjust the detonation level. After waiting for the fighters to get close to the hole in the fuselage, I swung my arm, giving Alice the command to adjust the trajectory, and tossed the grenade at them. Then I aimed and pulled the trigger all the way down, firing the accumulated charge at the truck’s turret.

  I purposely didn’t use Target Tracker and AIM Assistant to avoid being detected by the enemy’s implants, so the attack came as a complete surprise to them. Two explosions merged into one. I jumped up and rushed to the vehicle.

  One of the fighters hit by the blast was still alive. I hurried to finish him off with a short burst of fire. The clouds of fighters’ consciousnesses, detected by Psi Scanner and glowing red in the interface, went out—there were no survivors left there. Similarly, there didn’t appear to be any survivors in the truck where the turret had been completely torn off by the blast and was lying a dozen feet away. In the cabin, though, someone was still moving, albeit barely. The crew must have been concussed or maybe even burned by plasma.

  I rushed to the vehicle, slinging the Pulsar behind my back and grabbing the Hornet in its stead, jumped up to the armored truck and pulled the front passenger door handle.

  Well, well, well. Look who we’ve got here!

  In the passenger seat, shaking his head and trying to come to his senses, was...Red, Sanders’ deputy.

  Oh, you son of a bitch!

  Grabbing Red by the beard, I yanked him out of the truck, blowing the head off of the driver who had foregone his helmet at the same time, and turned back to the fat bastard.

  “Well hello, buddy,” I grinned, raising my visor and kicking the engineer in the teeth.

  There was a cracking and a squelching sound. The toe of my armored boot turned red. Red howled and pressed his hands to his bloody mouth.

  “Remember what I told you, you scum?” I bellowed, kicking him again. This time, in the ribs.

  Red howled again, rolled over, and, clearly oblivious to the fact that his monstrous revolver was hanging from his belt, started crawling away.

  “I told you”—I continued, kicking the engineer in the ass—“to never leave the fort, you piece of shit.” I gave him another kick. “You didn’t listen to me. Well, too bad for you.”

  I bent down, flipped the redhead over, ripped the revolver off his belt along with its holster and tossed it aside.

  “Who sent you? Sanders?” I yelled, pointing the Hornet at the engineer’s face. “Tell me, you scumbag!"