Excerpt, Rayas Colony Legacy
Rayas Colony Legacy, Rayas Time Travel Sci-Fi LitRPG Book 1.
Book Description:
While Gabe relives history, in virtual reality on a starship, what is real?
Young Gabe Oliveri leaves Earth to colonize last-chance planet Rayas. The colony is privately funded by Mexican descendants of California’s El Grande – the Big One.
Rayas bootstraps its terraforming talent from teenagers. Their plastic minds will spend the interstellar years of stasis in a virtual reality academy.
But Gabe’s a physical guy. Cast among genius, what can he aspire to?
The history role-playing game captures his heart. Air is breathable under a clear blue sky, as he relives the Ancient Pueblo culture of New Mexico.
In this game, archaic belief fuels real magic. Dreamer Gabe proves a natural mathemagician.
But what is the game’s agenda?
Next campaign, Gabe leads a team to experience El Grande itself, the California catastrophe that birthed his people. Can he reach safety in Mexico? Before the game AI drives him crazy?
Readers will recognize Gabe from Booth’s Thrive space colony scifi, and California’s demise from her Feral America dystopian series. This LitRPG time travel adventure features weak to strong progression, with gritty space colony and overpowered artificial intelligence.
Excerpt
Clock ticking due to venom poisoning, Gabe decided his goal was not to stab the rattlesnake, but rather hurl the creature away from him. He needed to control the biting head. Trying to pin the creature to the shelf, he whacked it overhand with the stick. His third blow struck the head and dazed it.
Taking a gamble, Gabe tucked the butt of the stick under the snake to flick it away.
Instead the animal regained its senses and started side-winding up the stick toward Gabe’s hands. The medical caduceus symbol made sense for the first time.
He dropped the stick. In two strong steps, he climbed onto the rock, and stomped on the rattler’s tail. The snake immediately coiled back toward him. Hopping back and forth, the teen managed to keep himself at the far end of the snake from the problem fangs. He delivered more stomping damage when coils swung away. Each stomp inflicted a point of damage.
But his injured leg was growing numb. He needed to finish this and deal with the poison. How did the locals deal with rattlesnakes?
Avoid them, came the immediate recall from his silver balloon briefing. Yeah, fat lot of help you are. Based on experience so far, the dratted beast could outrun him.
He tried kicking the snake off the orange sandstone. The creature was only a couple kilos, and a couple meters long. But it was pure muscle. It was agile, and kept curling in surprising ways. A loop of snake dangling off the rock simply inverted back onto support.
Wildlife in the slums of Guadalajara ran to feral dogs, rats, and monster cockroaches, creatures with legs.
“OW!” His moccasin barely protected his foot as he backstepped hard onto a loose rock, the size of his grandmother’s cast iron skillet. In exasperation, he grabbed up the rock – several kilos itself, this took two hands – and slammed it down on the snake’s back. Three points of damage brought the snake down to 9 hit points remaining.
Gabe cautiously retrieved his rock and hammered the snake again, and again. The rock began to disintegrate. But so did the snake, oozing dark red blood. With only a few hit points remaining, it tried to slither away. It didn’t move so fast anymore. A couple more good stomps, and a one-handed hammer of rock fragment, and Gabe killed it at last.
Pulverized snake meat lay splayed before him, its blood staining the sunny rock brown. Gabe’s pounding heart began to slow. He panted, and favored his good leg, as his bitten leg trembled. His health meter reappeared to throb red warning. He hastily retrieved his pottery canteen and rinsed his snakebite with a swallow’s worth of water. And he lost another point of health to the venom. He tried gulping some of the water himself. This restored a couple points of health, but failed to resolve the poison.
From his flash balloon briefing, he recalled stories told around the campfire, of sucking venom from a snakebite. This was a mistake – it infected the wound and spread venom to the mouth. The stories failed to mention a better option, however. He abruptly sat – ouch – cross-legged on the stone slab. He scooted to elevate the wounded leg on a higher stone, then recalled that wound elevation was for bleeding.
Eh, he didn’t want snake venom to speed its way to his heart. He considered his inventory again. The magic bangle might be worth a shot. He equipped it and shook his adorned fist at the puncture marks.
Correction, only one puncture mark, though his leg was swelling. Maybe he only got half a dose of venom? Keep a happy thought.
He tucked away the bangle and canteen into inventory, then thought to check the status of his quest. He’d accomplished only three of his ten inspections. But he lay on the cusp of experience to level up.
In most games, leveling up reset his status and health.