Alpha Agent 2: A Cyberpunk LitRPG | Weak to Strong Progression Fantasy (A Progression Cyberpunk LitRPG Series), page 1
ALPHA AGENT 2
A CYBERPUNK LITRPG
Kevin Do
Alpha Agent 2 Copyright © 2025 by Kevin Do
All rights reserved. This book is protected by copyright. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including as photocopies or scanned-in or other electronic copies, or utilized by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the copyright owner.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organisations, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Warning: the unauthorised reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
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Printed in the United States of America.
ISBN: 978-1-7387681-8-9 (ebook)
ISBN: 978-1-7387681-9-6 (paperback)
Cover by Christian Ardila.
Edited by Motif Edits.
Contents
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Fullpage image
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
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Alpha Agent 3
THANK YOU
Acknowledgements
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Chapter 1
Dan
Dan soared through the air until a concrete pillar stopped him. His back ricocheted off the pillar and he flopped onto the cold metal floor. As a tier one agent, Dan’s resilience had been put through the test over the last three weeks since his most recent mission to investigate rebel activity in the desolate city of Amethyst.
Jane Sunheiser had promised him that she would build him up to be a hyper-competent agent of the Alpha Corporation, even promising that one day Dan would stand beside her as an equal.
Dan could certainly feel the love when she’d grabbed him by the neck and flung him across the training arena.
“Get your ass back up. An agent of your caliber should have gotten back up from that in less than a second,” Jane shouted.
If there was one thing Dan knew wasn’t going to change about Jane, it was her skills at motivational speech. He got on his knees and slowly got himself back on his feet, even with all the aches and pains that protested against him.
“Your Krav Maga leaves much to be desired, Dan,” Jane said. She pointed at him. “I know you’re better than this. You need to remember that this isn’t some training course for infants.”
All agents who reached tier one in rank were put through another mandatory set of difficult training to further prepare them for the harsh expectations of their shard. According to Jane, a tier one agent was the functional equivalent of a special forces soldier in a conventional military.
In the past few weeks, Dan had learned bomb disposal with live explosives, stealth takedowns with and without tools and many hand-to-hand fighting techniques. All under Jane’s drilling and rigid structure to build upon his flash training. As his squad leader, it was Jane's responsibility to put Dan through these exercises to better prepare him for the hard life of an agent.
As per Jane’s recommendation, Dan had spent his ten unallocated stat points to give him the best possible odds of surviving her training sessions.
Agent: Dan “Arctic” Orion
Age: 18 M
Shard: Alpha Corporation
Rank: Tier 1 | Level 15
Strength: 20
Agility: 20
Endurance: 21
Intelligence: 28
Supernatural: n/a
Healing Factor: n/a
Reflex: Average ++
Even with decent his endurance stat, Dan wondered how he was still alive after weeks of this brutal routine.
He took a few steps and faced Jane with raised fists, a basic combat stance. Jane had put him through training every day for fourteen hours a day without any days off. Outside of time in the combat simulators and training arenas within the Alpha facilities, Jane had assigned Dan reading material, texts on the basics of warfare and battle strategy dating as far back as The Art of War.
The only periods of sleep Dan had gotten in the past month were occasional two or three hour naps ordered by Jane. He learned the hard way what would happen if Jane caught him sleeping without her permission. Dan could still feel the stinging pains on the back of his head from Jane “politely” waking him up and getting him back on track.
Jane walked towards him in a slow and deliberate fashion. Even after nearly a month of this intense training, watching Jane’s confident, if not intimidating, stride always filled Dan with anxiety. The difference in power between them was so great that he doubted Jane was using even a fraction of her actual strength against him in these training sessions.
Dan did his damnedest to maintain his confidence against such a superior opponent. He was breathing heavily while the uncomfortable wheezing coming out of his lungs grated on his ears. His hands shook, even through his full body armor. Something warm flowed down the side of his face. Dan was sure it wasn’t sweat.
“In a real battle, an enemy agent wouldn’t give you this much time to get back on your feet,” Jane said. “Don’t forget that I’m still holding back against you.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Dan said with little enthusiasm. “Thank you for being so generous. I could really feel the love when you threw me across the arena.”
Jane wasn’t wrong, but this was insane. The last time he’d slept was ten days ago and all of the days since had blurred together into one constant loop. Train, get his ass kicked by Jane. Read and study theory, get lectured by Jane. Accidentally fall asleep? Get a hard slap to the back of the head.
By Jane, Dan thought, smiling beneath his mask.
Jane stopped a few meters in front of him, then she got to work. Dan's eyes didn’t have a chance to follow anything that happened in the next few seconds. Jane took one step and seemingly disappeared into thin air. One second she was there, and the next Dan was forcibly bent over with one arm folded behind him by an iron grip.
It all had happened so fast.
It took a bit before Dan’s brain caught up with what had just occurred. Jane had used her superior speed to circle around and get behind him and force him into a lock.
“You’re worn out,” Jane said, stating the obvious. “A week ago you would have at least had the speed to turn around and receive a gut punch for your efforts.”
Dan’s right arm was basically unusable so long as Jane held it. Her grip strength was insane. Her hand wrapped around his wrist felt like a metal chain binding him.
Jane narrowed his eyes at him. “It’s time for you to give up.”
“I don’t think so,” Dan said. “I know what this is. It’s another one of those trick situations you’ve been putting me through. You always love to trap me with this kind of shit. You put me in between a rock and a hard place, and no matter what I pick, I always get an earful from you. Am I wrong?”
Jane’s expression didn’t change. “Every decision has an outcome, whether that be good or bad. It’s simple, really.”
“I didn’t know you were a philosophy teacher.”
<
Dan stared into Jane’s eyes, attempting to match her resolve with his own. He grimly recalled the entire mess that was the mission to deal with a group of resistance members in one of the Alpha Corp’s lesser maintained cities. Dan had survived numerous scenarios that were considered “unwinnable.” He ultimately walked away, becoming a stronger agent, hardened by his experiences from that one mission alone.
He also walked away with two of his teammates dead and one being a traitor.
“Give up? Unwinnable scenario? Do you actually know me at all, Jane?”
His squad leader kept her steely expression on him. In just a mere moment, all of the emotions he experienced from that mission rushed through his mind, and he remembered the rage he felt towards Kate Razor, the former teammate that backstabbed him. The one who murdered Benjamin Colt, their team medic, and Hailey Monsoon, the team sniper. He recalled being chased around like prey by the Kodak agents on the dark, rain-soaked streets and narrowly surviving all of his encounters with those enemy agents.
Distant memories of his childhood, dealing with gangsters constantly stealing from him or hunting him down, came flooding back and fueled Dan’s defiance.
“Cut the bullshit and yield,” Jane said sternly. “That’s an order.”
Dan locked eyes with Jane and said, “Ben told me to run while he bought time for me to get away. He got his neck broken by Kate for that. I chased down Lola Odyssey, the Kodak bigshot that presumably killed you. There is no fucking way I’m giving in. You can chop my arm off if you want. But I ain’t folding.”
Dan wasn’t just having a staring contest with Jane. He made a split second glance down to determine where Jane’s feet were to get himself ready for his counterattack. He slowly inched his foot back to get ready to kick to Jane’s ankle to break himself free from the lock.
“You’re lucky to even be alive after an encounter with that woman. There’s no need for such false bravado,” Jane said. “I’m the one hosting this training exercise. I’m ordering you to stand down.”
Dan gave the hardest kick he could muster with his last bit of energy and felt the satisfying impact of his foot smashing into Jane’s ankle.
Jane grunted and was seemingly surprised at the brazen move. This was Dan’s chance to break the lock. Dan tried to run forward and shrug his shoulder to pull away from Jane’s grip.
When Jane’s hand didn’t loosen even a bit, Dan didn’t have time to realize how horribly he’d miscalculated. He looked back and saw that whatever shock Jane had experienced from his attempt to escape the lock had already run its course.
Jane looked at him with an emotionless expression and, in one quick motion, snapped his arm.
Dan’s body was more resilient to pain thanks to his enhancements. But it didn’t remove his ability to feel pain entirely.
“Shit!” Dan swore as he staggered. He wobbled a few more steps before collapsing to his knees.
Warning: Broken right ulna.
Dan slumped to the ground and couldn’t get back up after that. The pain dominated his senses and for a moment. It was the only thing he could feel. Weeks of the same rigorous routine had sapped his remaining willpower, and he remained on the floor in agony.
The pain distracted him and didn’t allow him to hear Jane’s footsteps as she walked up beside and crouched down. She grabbed him by the shoulder and jammed something into his arm.
Immediately an icy cold sensation flooded his entire arm and numbed and suppressed the sharp pain in his forearm. Another seven seconds passed and the pain had disappeared entirely.
Dan glanced over his shoulder and saw Jane looking at him. Her facial expression still remained mostly the same except her eyes were soft instead of the intense stare she gave him earlier.
“What the hell?” Dan asked, dumbfounded. “What are you doing?”
“I made a promise to you. Did you forget?”
Dan just stared blankly at his squad leader.
Jane sighed. “I was going to train you to be the best. But for that to happen, I need to break you and then build you back up. That’s the only way you’ll get better.”
The aches and pains throughout his body also faded as the icy cold spread beyond his arm. It didn’t magically give him his energy back, but at least he didn’t have back pain anymore. Dan touched his head and checked his fingers, confirming that the bleeding from hitting the pillar had stopped.
Jane’s lip curled upward. Not quite enough to be a smile, but Dan knew her well enough to know that was as good as it would get. “I have to admit,” she said, “I expected you to drop dead by the second week. The truth is that this mandatory tier one training I’ve been overseeing isn’t what you think it is.”
Dan adjusted his positioning and sat cross-legged on the floor. “Meaning?”
“I made some alterations to the training structure beyond the baselines that the Alpha Corp provided. What I’ve put you through the past month has been… substantially more challenging than what other tier ones would normally be facing.”
Dan blinked twice and wondered what the hell Jane was on about. Was Jane that influential within the shard that she could arbitrarily alter training guidelines given by the Alpha Corp?
“So in other words, the actual tier one training isn’t supposed to be this hard and you decided to make a few alterations to make my life hell,” Dan said.
Jane looked at him and gave him the same smile a receptionist would at the front desk. He had to admit that in this context, Jane smiling at him like that was creepy.
“Exactly, though within reason,” Jane said. Then she did something that Dan didn’t expect. She lowered herself down and sat on the floor in front of him.
Normally, she would always speak to him from a superior position, figuratively speaking. Whether that be standing straight and literally looking down at him or sometimes not even changing her stance or facial expression as she issued him orders or lectured him on proper conduct, Jane would maintain a consistent frame when addressing him as a subordinate. She made it no secret that their relationship was strictly professional.
Seeing her sit down with him was an odd and jarring sight.
“You began as level three when you were first recruited,” Jane said. “In just the span of two missions, you jumped from level three to level fifteen, easily transitioning from a tier zero to tier one in a short amount of time. Your rate of progress is abnormal by Alpha standards.”
“Is that good or bad?” Dan asked.
“I’m not sure, to be honest. It could mean you're some sort of prodigy. I’m still not entirely certain, as your family history doesn’t hint at anything special within your bloodline. I mean no offense, but you’re basically a nobody.”
“Two things. One, none taken,” Dan said. “Two, how do you know anything about my family?”
“Cracking U.S. security is no problem for the Alpha Corp. When you were recruited, the Corp’s algorithms got to work on performing as many background checks as it could. The process of recruiting you had to be sped up since Michael Cynosa made a snap decision to inject you with one of our serums. That’s another odd thing…”
“What is?”
Jane stretched one leg out and bent the other one to use as an armrest. “I tried checking if there was something up with the serum they injected you with. I was barred from certain records even with my current level of clearance. In the records and documents I did access on you, two-thirds of everything was redacted. So what can I possibly make of that? Well, you’re an anomaly. A complete nobody who got dropped in front of me who appears to be more competent and willing to learn compared than the average recruit.”
Dan wasn’t sure how to respond to all of this new info. Jane was implying that the Alpha Corp was hiding something about Dan.
“But while I have you under my wing, I want to work on your potential. It won’t take too long before you reach tier two. At that point, more opportunities open up for you as an agent. Trust me, tier zeros and ones are cannon fodder to the shards, no matter what PR they spew out. Tier two and above is where your career as an agent truly begins, in my opinion. And I would be doing you a disservice if you were unprepared for the difficulties of being an agent. Do you understand why my methods are this way?”
