Zero derby a cultivati.., p.1
Zero Derby - A Cultivation LitRPG (Ocean Slayers Racing Book 2), page 1
Zero
Derby
Alex Knowles
Zero Derby
Copyright © 2021 by Alex Knowles
Published by Alex Knowles
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written consent from the author, except in the instance of quotes for reviews. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded, or distributed via the internet without the permission of the author and is a violation of the International copyright law, which subjects the violator to severe fines and imprisonment.
This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, incidents, and place are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real except where noted, and authorised. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or actual events are entirely coincidental. Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or names featured are assumed to be the property of their respective owners and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if any of these terms are used.
The author and editor have taken great effort in presenting a manuscript free of errors. However, editing errors are ultimately the responsibility of the author.
This book is written in American English and includes relative diction.
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
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
More from Alex
Cultivation/Litrpg/Gamelit Links
Litrpg
Other Recommended books
1
Wednesday, August 19th *Morning*
Year - 27514
“We have an incoming call,” Ivori disturbed Ezra and I as the sun stretched its gentle rays out onto our great city, Esrall.
“Who is it?” I asked, not wanting to move at all.
“Geo,” Ivori said, her engine rumbling beneath us.
I glanced at Ezra.
“We have been here most of the night,” she sighed, her breath a light mist in the cool morning skies.
I leaned over and tugged her closer. The heat of Ivori’s engine and Ezra kept me warm despite the early morning chill. “It’s been a wonderful day and night,” I whispered. “Thank you.”
Ezra gave me a light squeeze. “Seeing this with you, talking about our future—”
Her eyes met mine, and I leaned in for a kiss, but Ivori bumped us both off her hood.
“Okay, I’m coming,” I said.
Ezra laughed and slid into the passenger seat. “Being around you two is going to be hella fun.”
Geo’s face appeared on the center dash as I sat beside her. “Good morning,” he said, and gave Ezra a slight nod. “Report to my office as soon as you get in today, please Oto.”
“Yes, sir,” I replied. “We’re on our way in now.”
“I’d actually like a bit of sleep.” Ezra squeezed my hand over the gear stick. “If Oto will take me home first?”
“Okay.” I smiled at her. “I’ll drop Ezra off and report in.”
“That’s perfectly fine. See you in an hour,” Geo replied and cut the comms.
Ivori put herself in gear and reversed out, and then, shifting gears, took us down the mountainside, avoiding the potholes. Well, most of them. Her left front wheel hit one just a little deeper than she thought, and the knock jarred both Ezra and me.
Ivori’s dash lit up red, and I pulled my hand from Ezra’s. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Scanning ahead now,” Ivori said, and her engine revs dropped. She slowed to a crawl.
Both Ezra and I stared at the decline. “I don’t see anything,” she said.
“Me neither.”
The ground before us shifted, and one of the potholes in front of us moved. Ezra’s face fell. “What is it?” I asked.
“We need to—”
She was cut off as the rumbling ground turned into something else, and the trees around us shook.
“Tectonic tremor,” Ivori said.
Ivori cut her engine, and I took hold of Ezra’s hand once more. “We’ve not had a quake in years,” Ezra said.
I remembered the last time myself. They could be awful. The loss of life, the damage to the city.
A crack overhead, and Ezra flinched as a tree branch the size of Ivori broke free.
Ivori’s engine roared and with squealing tires she reversed just as the hunk of tree hit the ground.
“You got this?” I shouted over the noise at her, staring through the back window as she sped back where we came from.
“Shield!” she shouted.
I focused deep inside myself, drawing on the energy I had, forcing it out and around the chassis, strengthening everything I could.
Branches and rocks pounded the roof, and Ezra curled into a ball in her seat. I put a hand on her back, getting as much comfort from the contact as she might have.
The shaking stopped as suddenly as it started. Ivori’s engines cut out again, her brakes stopping us dead.
“Is it over?” Ezra panted, looking up at me. Her sparkling blue eyes filled with tears.
“I think so,” I said.
She moved fast and was over in my lap before I knew it, arms wrapped around me tight, trembling. I held onto her with one hand, gently kissing the top of her head. “We’re okay,” I said. I put my other hand to Ivori’s wheel, feeling her panic ebb too. “We’re okay,” I repeated.
Ezra calmed just a little when an incoming call came through. Alek, Ivori said internally to me.
Let him through, I replied.
“Oto?” Alek said. Ezra turned to see her brother’s stricken face. “Where are you?”
“We’re on our way in,” I replied. His face changed instantly as she put her palm to the screen. He reciprocated. “We’re okay. Is everyone good there?”
“We’re good. It was only a small one. Just broken plates, things fell off the walls.”
“I’ll get Ezra in. See you at the track later?”
“Yeah, we’re not sleeping now. I’ll see you soon.”
When he disconnected, Ezra clung to me again. It would be a little awkward driving down like this. “I’ve got it,” Ivori said. “Just don’t expect this treatment every time, I’m not your chauffeur.”
Ezra giggled and then so did I.
I took the time to change my clothes once home and settle Ezra for some sleep. It was a little later than an hour when I got to the track. I took the stairs two at a time, then stared at the large office door. In this light, it looked different. I steadied my sudden nerves and leaned on it.
Maybe it looked different because I was different. Being with Ezra at the top of the city’s mountain path did us both a world of wonder. Just to know she cared for me as much as I did for her.
I breathed in steadily and knocked.
The voice from within commanded, “Come.”
I opened the door and stepped inside.
Geo sat clearly watching over the races, his back to the door.
“Sir,” I said.
He held up a hand and carried on watching. I moved in to get a closer look at myself. When Ivori and I came out of the last bend and we hit our Azris, I swallowed. Seeing a video of the event hit my core hard. I took another step forward, the video playing so very different to ones they’d circulated over the TV’s and radio stations. Though I couldn’t see why, nor understand it.
Geo stopped the playback right at the point where we crossed the finish line. There were lines showing here, that was what they were: Azris lines.
He turned to face me. His eyes held that fire I’d seen after Amalia’s car, Etol, had been decimated.
No matter what he’d thought of me in the past, how he’d connected to me with Amalia’s car, he’d not seen anything like what was just on that screen.
It had laid me out in the open there.
Fuck.
“Please sit,” Geo said and pointed to the chair opposite.
The door opened behind me as I plonked myself down. The smartly dressed Luca Giannetta whirled in. “Sorry I’m late. Things took a little longer to get away from than I hoped, especially with the tremor.”
“Everything okay?” Geo asked his brother, deep worry lines now etched on his face.
Luca noticed me, and I ran my sweating hands down my trousers. He nodded and moved to stand beside Geo. I eyed the both of them carefully. Their behavior was so very different from what I w
Luca stared at the screen. “Rewind,” he said. Geo rewound and then hit play once more. Then stopped in the exact position again. Luca rubbed the stubble on his face, the scratchy noise drifting toward me. He looked my way, his eyes narrowing.
I worried about him. Why? That didn’t make sense to me.
He straightened his back, breathed in, and turned back to Geo. “Is that true?” he asked.
Geo nodded. “I’ve played it a dozen times. We’re not going to be the only ones that see this, and it won’t take long for it to get out.”
Luca stepped to the screen and traced the lines around the car. It looked as if he were counting, and I counted with him.
“Twelve,” he said and turned to stare directly at me. “You’ve twelve open and working meridians, and you’re what, only twenty-two?”
I didn’t know how to answer him, I just didn’t have the words. I remember Alex and Ezra saying when people found out, I’d become something of a target. I guess I hadn’t expected it to be so soon. Watching the replay, had we wrecked everything already?
“He’s more in sync with Ivori than any driver I’ve ever seen on any track the universe wide,” Geo said. “But she’s a wreck.”
“Hey,” I said. “She’s the best we could do with the time we had.”
“I’m not knocking her,” Geo smiled at me and ran a hand through his hair. “I’m just saying, she is a mess.”
I couldn’t really argue with him. The team had done everything they could to upgrade and help her, but the truth stared us back in the face. She still had rust spots, broken pieces we’d welded into place. I loved her for what she had on the inside, not on the outside.
Luca turned back to the screen with a deep sigh. “I don’t know how we got so unlucky and lucky at the same time.”
“Right?!” Geo agreed, his knee bouncing. He put a hand on it to stop it. “How do we manage this?”
Sitting here before the two of them felt like I was not only on trial, but that fundamentally there was something drastically wrong with me.
“No hope for that one.” Those words haunted me, always. I closed my eyes, trying to focus on something good. Ezra and Alek. They were good. Being here was good. Seeing the brothers’ concerned faces, though, I had to ask. “Am I that bad to be around?”
Silence.
There was no answer from either of them. That stung more than if they’d have both answered with a yes.
I opened my eyes once more and observed them as they had an internal conversation.
I waited.
My thoughts run rampant inside my head.
“No hope for that one.”
They were going to get rid of me. After everything I’d done, we’d done. I wasn’t good enough.
They both turned around to face me.
Luca’s eyes locked with mine, and I couldn’t stop myself from shrinking in the chair.
“Tell us the truth, Oto,” Geo said. “I know there’s been some secrets for whatever reasons. I never questioned you or them, but for your safety and that of those around you, we’re going to have to know the answers here.”
I swallowed. “Safety?”
Geo stared at me, and his eyes flickered. “I forget he’s clueless to politics on or off the track. He came from the scrubs. That much is obvious in his actions, and reactions.”
“We’ve had scrubs work here who knew politics before.” Luca brought up more details on the screen before me. It looked like system records, they’d tracked me, everything about me. Birth, early schooling. My parents?
Then there was a date before something changed.
I knew what date that was. My tenth birthday. Friday, 25th April, 27502.
When my internal system should have taken. When it should have showed me a new path… Instead, they discovered it was faulty. Broken. It broke me. The arguments I heard from my parents. Watching them pack, thinking I would be going somewhere with them. A new exciting planet maybe?
My parents left me, abandoned me.
“You know who my parents are?” my voice squeaked out.
Luca frowned. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have shown you that. Poor form on my part.”
“Why, because they left me?” I squeezed my hands together, my knuckles cracking. “Because they just abandoned me on the streets?” The venom in my voice even shocked me.
“Yes,” Luca said. “No one should have to see that, what they did to you. It was very wrong.”
“No, I’m glad I’ve seen that.” I stood, and risked moving forward to tap the screen, bringing up their names so I could memorize them. Burn them into my mind.
Alice Benes
Donoto Benes
“They’re both still alive, right?” I asked.
Luca nodded, tapping the screen again. “They got off the planet the first chance they could, it seemed. We tracked them out toward Copter Prime, but the trail goes cold there. They’ve probably erased everything they could and illegally moved into the undergrounds. They didn’t want anyone tracking you down, or stopping them from leaving you behind.”
“That must have been hard to do,” Geo said. “Not everyone is cut out to be anywhere near Copter.”
“I know,” Luca said.
“Then maybe they are dead then?” A little bit of hope fluttered there, that they’d perished on the run.
“If they are, it’s better for you. Because if you make something of yourself, you better believe they will come looking for you.”
“But he’s been totally off the grid. There’s no track record of him at all, other than he went out into the Wilds most days to scavenge for things to sell.”
“That was my life,” I said.
“Would you let us see who you are, inside?” Luca asked, his voice cautious. He really was worried?
I ran my hands down my trousers again. I’d only been getting used to seeing what made me, me. And I didn’t understand any of the basics, just the fact I was and could do as I had. It meant nothing to me, whereas to them, it seemed it meant a lot. “You’re not just asking for basic information here, like what flags up as you’d inspect me?”
“No,” Luca said. “It’s a little more intimate than that. Not something most people would share at all.”
“Why is that?” I questioned, curious.
“Because it lets them see all your weaknesses as well as your strengths. It tells the wrong people exactly what they need to destroy you, if they wanted.”
I looked at Geo. Held his eyes for a moment. “You’ve seen inside me, but you didn’t see what I am?”
“No, our connection was different.”
“Oh.” Luca raised an eyebrow at him. “What did you see?”
“Besides the information I passed to you about Raphael?” Luca’s nose twitched and his lip curled into a growl. “I also saw a scared young man who needs guidance, and a good place to grow. I believe we can provide that and more. If you’ll stick with us.”
If I’d stay with them? Was he joking?
“I want nothing else but to stay with you and the team,” I said honestly.
Though these men before me were powerful and terrified me, they hadn’t let me down yet. I stared at Geo, his eyes, his soul. My stomach twisted and then settled. He was a good man. I sensed that. I shook my head, though. “I don’t know how to share everything I am with you, as in what to do, but I’m willing.”
Luca and Geo exchanged a look, then Geo stood and took off his jacket. It almost made me laugh from nerves. Now he was serious. He wouldn’t risk his jacket getting messed up.
“His affinity for water is the strongest.” Geo’s eyes blazed fire once more. I could see it ripple down his neck to his arm. “Step to me,” he directed.
