Second Chance Swordsman 2 (A LitRPG Adventure), page 1
SECOND CHANCE SWORDSMAN 2
JAKOB TANNER
CONTENTS
Dedication
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
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
Chapter 115
Chapter 116
Chapter 117
Chapter 118
Chapter 119
Chapter 120
Chapter 121
Chapter 122
Chapter 123
Chapter 124
Chapter 125
Chapter 126
Chapter 127
Chapter 128
Chapter 129
Chapter 130
Chapter 131
Chapter 132
Chapter 133
Chapter 134
Chapter 135
Chapter 136
Chapter 137
Chapter 138
Chapter 139
Chapter 140
Chapter 141
Chapter 142
Chapter 143
Chapter 144
Free Bonus Epilogue
Author’s Note
Tower Climber Sample
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Dedicated:
To my mom and dad, who have encouraged and supported me in everything that I’ve done.
Special Thanks to:
Angela Marshall for assistance in too many things to count.
Nik Grantham for letting me be his “most read” author.
Andrew Smith for sage wisdom.
Thanks to my beta readers and their amazing feedback:
Amcn/Arya
Josh Cothran
Ben Graff
Sean Hall
Joshua Hoatland
Denny Johnson
Jeff Patrick
Carol Sherman
Erik Tanner
Lana Turner
This book wouldn’t be what it is today without you guys!
1
Sam awoke to the early morning sun flickering through the window of his dorm room in the Traveler’s Guild.
He blinked and rubbed his eyes and pulled himself up so that his back was leaning against the wall at the front of his bed.
He turned his head over to see his friends and fellow Travelers still asleep on their bunk beds.
First to rise again, Sam thought to himself cheerfully.
He picked himself up, got dressed, and headed down to the Traveler’s Guild dining hall.
All the windows were open in the guild hall in an attempt to keep the building as cool as possible.
It was currently the month of Joon and the hot summer days were beginning to take their toll on everyone. The heat wave meant that no one in the guild was currently getting a great night’s sleep and so everyone was constantly agitated and barking at each other.
It was for those reasons that the most peaceful time in the guild hall was typically early in the morning.
Sam entered the dining hall and made himself a plate of bacon, eggs, hash browns, and some strawberries. He also poured himself a big hot mug of black coffee.
As he ate breakfast, he contemplated the next steps of his mission.
It had been almost ten months ago now since Sam had mysteriously woken up five years in the past.
The goddess had sent Sam back in time right as he was about to die and all of Westria was about to be destroyed by the demon king and his horde.
The weight of history now rested firmly on Sam’s shoulders.
Whether they knew it or not, all of the innocent lives of Westria were counting on him to save them from absolute and utter oblivion.
For those reasons, it didn’t matter whether it was hot or cold, Sam would always make sure to rise early.
There was still so much to be done.
He finished the food on his plate and downed his coffee and stood up. He put his food tray away and headed towards the guild hall’s stables.
On his way to the stables, he walked right past the bulletin board where missions were on offer.
Today he didn’t need an official mission assignment—because nothing to precipitate there actually being a mission had even happened yet.
It’s just one of the few perks of having knowledge of the future, Sam thought to himself.
He signed out a horse in the stable and then handed a note to the stable hand.
“Do you mind passing this on to the guildmaster?” Sam asked. “It’s just a note saying I’ll be gone for a few days. An entire week probably.”
His friends and colleagues were used to him disappearing for days at a time, but if he could do anything to lessen their worries, he’d try his best to do so.
He led the horse out of the courtyard and left the Traveler’s Guild, entering the public streets of the city of Resfall, the capital of the great Volsungar nation.
The sky above was clear and blue and the streets were already brightly lit by the hot baking sun.
As Sam walked through the streets, he watched with happiness as he saw kids coming out to play games and kick a ball around, shopkeepers opening their doors and sweeping the pavement, and birds chirping and resting on the chimneys and rooftops.
For everyone else, it was just another hot boring day of Resfall in the summertime, but for Sam it was a sight to behold.
In Sam’s previous timeline at this exact moment, the stench of blood and death had wafted through the streets. People had hidden inside behind locked doors and shut windows. The new ruler of Resfall had his goons patrolling the streets, ending the lives of anyone deemed traitorous to the new regime.
It had been a dark and awful time in the history of Resfall—a period of time from Sam’s perspective that the nation had never truly ever recovered from.
But thanks to Sam, that horrific historical outcome in this new timeline had been averted.
It had been over a week now since the assassination of Princess Alice Grace had been thwarted and Sam felt the differences the most acutely.
He felt it on every smile he passed and every echo of laughter he heard in the distance.
Sam had achieved a lot in his first nine or so months of being sent back in time.
He had saved his best friends, Toby and Klara, from dying in the White Gate.
And he had saved both Princess Alice Grace and all of Resfall from the terrible hostile takeover.
Yet, despite all of Sam’s accomplishments so far, nothing would stop the threads of history from moving forward—and they all still led to the destruction of Westria by the demon king and his monstrous demon horde coming out from the black dungeon gates and wiping out all of existence.
Sam shook his head as the grim end to his previous timeline flashed through his mind.
He stepped through the western city gate and then got up onto his horse, and started galloping off into the distance.
There’s still time, he thought to himself as he considered the impending apocalypse of all of Westria that would occur in roughly just over four years’ time if Sam didn’t do what was necessary to stop it.
Before the final battle against the demon king, however, there were much closer historical catastrophes on the horizon.
Most notably was the upcoming Dwarven Cataclysm in roughly a year’s time.
The tragedy that befell the dwarves resulted in the utter obliteration of the dwarven race—an ally whose help humanity desperately needed in Sam’s previous timeline against the demon king.
A year was enough time for Sam to train and prepare—which was easier said than done, as there were two other upcoming events that would need to be dealt with prior to then.
First, there was the Crystal Sea Mermaid Crisis.
And then, there was the Secret Gate Affair.
The situation was growing even more challenging now as Sam had changed history significantly now. He had no doubt that bad things were still on the horizon—very bad people still existed both near and far away and they were definitely up to no good. What troubled Sam was that he didn’t know how his alterations to his previous timeline’s history would now affect those upcoming events. He’d have to leverage his knowledge of the future while employing some strategic guesswork as he continued forward on his mission from the goddess.
Sam held on tightly to the reins of the horse as he galloped across the countryside.
A few hours later he arrived on top of a large grassy hill.
The hill was nothing but an ordinary hill. No one would have ever pointed it out as anything special.
But then as Sam stood on the hill, he saw a green spark of energy form.
Right on time, Sam smirked.
The green energy grew in front of him—first just sparks and fluttering ashes—and then suddenly a raging fire of green magic formed in the air, growing and growing, until it stood tall and menacingly across the fields and valley below.
A portal to another world.
A green dungeon gate.
There was only one way for Sam to move forward against the heavy tide of history.
He needed to train.
He needed to get stronger.
He needed to solo clear a dungeon gate a whole tier level above him.
2
The glow of the green apprentice-tier dungeon gate stood out before Sam.
He felt his horse pull back and gesture with its head that it wanted to turn around and get as far away from the green dungeon gate as possible.
“Don’t worry, bud,” said Sam, patting the horse. “I’m not gonna make you go in there with me.”
Dungeon gates were incredibly dangerous for those who weren’t Travelers—people who had unlocked classes and special abilities in the irregular gate known as the White Gate.
Even for Travelers though, the dungeon gates were still deadly. They were just the only people who stood a fighting chance of surviving after entering one.
Sam got off his horse and then materialized a metal post and hammer from his inventory.
He then walked a few paces down the hill and hammered the post into the ground.
He dematerialized the hammer and then got a rope to tie the horse to it.
“You’ll be a good boy while I’m gone,” said Sam, petting the horse.
He then materialized two final things from his inventory.
They were two large magical bowls that would fill with water and food as the horse would need them. There was enough sustenance there to keep the horse content for over a week.
This was important because Sam couldn’t predict how long he was going to be in the dungeon. Most typically the time remained in parallel, but sometimes you could enter a gate and spend a few hours there and come out and a whole day would have passed in the outside world.
It was very difficult to predict, which made entering a dungeon gate a huge risk, especially for Sam.
He couldn’t afford to lose a whole month of time, not with the heavy weight of the mission resting on his shoulders.
Thankfully, though, when Sam hadn’t been training in his first timeline, he had been a dedicated scholar of all things Traveler-related. He had spent his recovery time and late evenings in the dusty stacks of libraries, going over ledger notes and scholarly catalogues of old dungeon gate reports, poring over every detail.
Sam knew even back then that being a great and powerful fighter wasn’t just about strength and incredible magical abilities. To be great, one needed immense amounts of knowledge as well.
So even before stepping into the glowing green dungeon gate in front of him, Sam already knew there would be no time discrepancy between the inner dungeon world and outside reality.
Alright, time to get to work, Sam thought.
He took a step forward and entered the dungeon gate.
The transition between worlds was instantaneous.
One second Sam was standing on a scorching hot hill in Westria, and a second later, he was in a cool breezy forest.
Sam breathed in the cool air through his nostrils.
The change in climate felt better than the coldest of showers.
It was just right.
Sam looked around, getting his bearings.
The forest was bright green and felt lush and ancient. The trees were thick and powerful. Their roots poked in and out of the ground, creating homes for purple-colored mushrooms. Sun flickered through the leaves.
The environment reminded Sam of the forests where the elves lived.
Sam took a deep breath.
He had come to this particular landscape to train, and with no immediate threat in his vicinity, he took a moment to go over his stats and see where he was and where he needed to get to.
