Zero to Hero: A High Fantasy Harem Romance LitRPG

We walked and walked and walked... and all we found was... a hallway.

An endless stone hallway.

With doors.

So.

Many.

Doors.

No matter how far we went, almost nothing about the hall changed. Stone walls. Stone frames. Stone floor. The only thing that indicated we were moving was that some of the infinite doors were open, and some were shut.

After about an hour of silent walking, Vral stopped and pressed her palm against the wall.

"I wasn't sure at first, but now I am. This is obsidian," she said, running her fingers along the smooth surface. "The Tu'vigh tribe's caves were filled with it."

I frowned and touched the same spot. Rough stone met my fingertips. "You sure? Because it feels like stone. Just regular stone."

"The hell it is!" Vral knocked on the wall. "I'm telling you, it's obsidian. You hear that clink?" She rattled her black fingernails on the wall. "Black glass."

Tristan reached out and touched it, too. "I see stone as well, Vral. Gray stone, like the temple."

Vral's ears twitched. "You're both fucking with me."

"We're not," I said.

"How can we be seeing different things?"

"No idea." Looked at her. "I heard you say it before, but it didn't click that everything was so different for you. What else are you seeing?"

She pointed at a nearby doorway. "I saw those doors you all were talking about at first, but I don't see them anymore. You see the tapestry in the opening over there?"

Tristan and I looked to where she pointed, but all that was there was a closed wooden door. The priestess and I exchanged glances. "You see a tapestry, Tris?"

"No. It's a door to me."

"Me too." Looking back at Vral, I said, "We see a door."

Vral's red eyes narrowed. "You're serious?"

"Dead serious."

"Is it open or closed?"

I looked back at the door. "It's definitely closed."

"What?" She rubbed her arms. "The tapestry's pulled to the side for me."

"It's open for me, too," Tristan whispered. "I see the grove."

"I see..." Vral's canines glinted in Tristan's light. "Fuck that place."

For a moment, none of us spoke.

"And fuck this place!" Vral bared her teeth. "I hate it."

"I don't love it either." It was spooky.

"Me neither." Tristan's voice was shaky.

"Okay, okay, let's figure it out. I'll walk ahead and point at some of the entryways. You tell me what you see."

"Okay," Tristan and I both answered.

Vral darted up the tunnel. Pointing at the next door on the left, she asked, "What about this one? It's open for me."

"Open," I answered.

"Closed," Tristan said at the same time.

Pointing to the right, Vral said, "Closed."

"Closed."

"Closed."

We did that for a long time. What we found was that there was no consistent pattern to which doors were open for us, and most of them weren't open for all three of us. The ones that were... didn't look great.

"We couldn't pick the same door if we wanted to." Tristan was shaking her head. "How many were there? Five out of a hundred?"

"Seven," Vral replied, holding up her fingers as she did. "I've been counting."

"Maybe that means we made all the right choices to end up together?" I offered. "It's kind of romantic, don't you think?"

"Softy..." Vral turned away and covered her face, but by the color of her ears, she was blushing.

"I'm happy with the choices we've made." Tristan kissed my cheek. "Even if they got us stuck down here. It might be a little scary, but it's exciting, too, don't you think?"

Her sapphire eyes had a fire in them that I loved. "I agree."

"I think I still want to get home so that we can... uh... sleep. In a bed." Vral ended her sentence with a cough.

"You're not thinking of sleeping right now," Tristan giggled. "I can feel it, remember?"

"You and your stupid roots," Vral snapped. "I'm not a whore like you are, girlie!"

"Not outwardly. But inside..."

"Time to go!" Vral sprinted down the hallway. "Make sure to call out your open doors as we go!"

***

After another hour of testing, we learned that Tristan and I shared the most open doors, with about half of them being open for us both. Tristan and Vral shared around a quarter, but Vral and I rarely saw the same open doors. Doors that were open for all three of us were particularly rare.

What was odd was that the scenes within the doors didn't always seem to correspond to moments in our lives. Especially when Vral and I shared open doors, it was a coin flip whether we'd see our old cells in the Pit or a scene that one of us had never seen before. That was more true for me than Vral. I never saw anything from my life back on Earth. It was like my timeline started a little over two years ago.

"What does it mean that we can see moments we didn't live?" Tristan asked quietly.

"Maybe we were there and didn't know it?" Vral mused.

"I don't... think that's it." I couldn't help but chuckle.

"Well, if you're so goddamned smart, what's your explanation, you big ass?!"

"No idea," I offered, being no help at all. "I couldn't tell you."

"Insightful," Tristan said with all the sass.

"I'm an insightful guy."

"You're lucky you have a big heart and pretty face, my veshkul'tha." Vral patted my back. "You need 'em."

"Ugh!" I clutched at my heart. "What about my bangin' body?"

"Fuck yeah. That too. I could climb that thing." She laughed. "Well, I guess I have. A couple times now. But not nearly enough!"

"It's like a statue..." Tristan whispered beside me.

"Much better." I grinned. "I'll walk ahead, give you girls a nice view." Strutting my stuff, I walked a dozen paces before switching back to a normal gait. I'd usually love to ham it up more, but my feet were starting to feel pretty sore, and my gut was telling me this was going to be a long walk.

"Hey. Boy toy. I didn't say you could stop that."

"Yeah, give us a show!"

***

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"This one's open for me." I pointed to the left.

"Me too."

"Me three."

"Let's look at it." Walking to the next door on the left, I peered inside. It was my room back at the temple again. "Looks pretty close."

"Yeah, but look at the wall." Tristan pointed above my bed. "That's not right."

Looking more closely at the room within, I saw that the only real differences between this room and mine were that the world outside the window was pitch black and the holy symbol on the wall was different. Instead of the familiar eight-pointed star, the symbol on the wall was a single, stylized eye. Where its pupil should be, there was a black pit that reflected no light.

And in the bed, buried under the heavy sheets... an emaciated figure, barely breathing. That figure was familiar.

He was me.

"That's new..."

Vral grabbed my hand and whispered, "Was that... you?"

"Yeah."

She squeezed my hand. "I can't... I don't..." She took a breath. "You looked like shit."

I couldn't help but bark out a laugh. "Felt like it, too. Once I woke up, it took me a year to gain my strength back." I took Tristan's hand. "I'm lucky Tristan found me when she did." And I was lucky the Dark Lord decided to give me a bit of His energy before she did. I didn't know if I felt guilty about that fact or grateful, but I felt some ambiguous feeling halfway between the two.

"I'm glad I did. You were so close to death... I prayed every day for you to survive."

"Thank you for that."

"Of course." She pulled my hand to her lips and kissed it.

With a final glance at my emaciated, dying self, I said, "No good," and turned away. "I don't think that's where we need to go." Stepping away from the doorway, I continued walking.

***

When the same image appeared again and again—of me clinging to life in my bed back at the temple—the hairs on my neck stood on end, my stomach churned, and my old, injured knee ached. I quickened my steps and hoped we'd get out of that section sooner rather than later.

But, after that, for a good hour, every doorway opened up into my old room at the temple, and I was lying half-dead in the sheets.

What was worse, for the first time, all three of us could consistently see into those doors.

For some reason, this hallway really wanted us to go there. But it didn't feel right. The rooms didn't feel right. There was no way I'd go back to that time.

***

After that section, there was another hour or so of closed doors. Some were chipped and scratched. Others were pristine. And still others rattled and shook as we walked by. What caused the shaking, I had no idea.

Like Faye had said, we made sure to avoid those doors entirely.

***

We'd reached a new section. Deciding to call it the "Return to the Pit" section, we found that, in most of the doorways in this section, our final fight either was playing out, or it had just played out. So, we watched the fights and critiqued.

"I killed you again!" Vral pointed to a door on the right. "Looks like I kicked your ass, too. I didn't have a scratch on me."

Looking into the door she pointed to, I watched as Vral removed a knife from my neck. Her eyes were feral, and she was giggling madly as flames appeared over her head. An instant later, the entire arena exploded in blood-red flames, her body melted, and the door slammed shut.

"I must have been a bitch in that life."

"A massive one. You didn't even have your fancy new armor."

I hadn't even thought of that. "Good catch." What could I have done to suck that badly? "I deserved what I got."

"You two are awful..." Tristan's face was pale, and she'd refused to look into any of the doors a good twenty doors back.

***

At first, it was fun to see our fight from the outside, but the longer we watched, the more I realized how absolutely brutal our fight had been. I couldn't believe I'd fought like that. I also realized how lucky it was we'd survived that mess. It almost felt like another life at this point.

In many of the doorways, to Vral's great irritation, it was me in the Pit winning our fight. In more than a few of those doors, I was actively roaring as I held her severed head up to the crowd. That seemed to be my favorite tactic to rile up the audience in these alternate worlds. I was absolutely sure I'd fallen to the Dark Lord's lies in them, because I could never have imagined doing something like that otherwise.

Sometimes, though far less often than I did, Vral won. She made a big point of lingering around those doors. I learned from those worlds that she was far more creative in her execution methods than I was. In each world, she'd disembowel me, or slit my throat, or gouge out my eyes with her thumbs. In one, she severed my hamstrings before forcing me to swallow one of her daggers. In one particularly gruesome doorway, she never stopped carving up my body until that mage's... until Devon's flames burned her alive.

I was confident the manic look on her face as she repeatedly plunged her daggers into my neck would haunt my dreams. I was also confident she fell to the Dark Lord's corruption in basically every world but this one.

In still other worlds, we were both breathing hard on the ground and bleeding from our everythings, slowly dying in the sand. The flames burned us away in every one of those. Really, the flames ended us in basically every world. I had no idea how we survived that in this one.

There was only one world where things played out like this one had. The only difference was that no one came for us. We managed to survive the fireball, but Devom carved us up like we were nothing immediately after the flames receded. It wasn't pretty.

"Hey! You're working me over something fierce in this one! I'm even missing an eye! It's hot! Come check it out!"

Tristan shook her head. "Can we keep moving?"

"In a bit. This is for science." With morbid curiosity, I walked to the next door and watched our fight play out again.

***

At first, the sheer brutality and morbidness of it all was fun. Vral and I even started taking bets.

However, after the hundredth scene like that, it made me feel hollow. Sick.

I was done with this.

"You okay?" Vral asked when, with barely a glance, I brushed past yet another door of me murdering her. Out of the corner of my eye, I could tell it was a particularly bloody one.

"No. I don't like what I did to you in those worlds. I don't want to see it anymore. I love you too much."

"I, um... I don't like it either." Her hand found mine. "I hate it, actually."

I stopped. "Really?"

"Yeah." She pressed her forehead to my hip. "It was funny at first, watching you go down like a bitch... and it was kind of hot watching you brutalizing me. You kicking my ass is what made me fall for you, after all..." She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "I thought it would be easy to not care, because it's not really you, and it's not really me. But... but I... I just..." She sniffled.

Tristan walked up and knelt beside her. Placing her hands on Vral's shoulders, she whispered, "It's okay."

I looked down to find Vral wiping tears from her eyes. "You just what?" I wanted to hear the rest.

She looked up at me, her eyes swimming in tears. Taking Tristan's hand, she sobbed and said, "I love you, okay?!" She shouted into my leg. "I love you, and I hated my old life. I hated it so much. And in those rooms... I did things... I would never... I don't want to live without either of you! Not ever again. I'm finally... finally happy..."

"We're happy too," Tristan dropped behind Vral and wrapped her in her arms. "And we love you just as much."

Vral turned and kissed Tristan. "I-I know."

I dropped to my knees and pulled both women into a big hug. "You won't have to. Not ever."

For a long time, the three of us sat there holding one another.

***

Past that section, around half of the doors were open, and most held different scenes we hadn't seen before.

Fires.

Caves.

Cages.

A castle.

The temple.

Khadrel's manor.

The Pit again. But the cells, not the arena.

Most visions were indistinct and difficult to assess. It's like they were breaking down as we watched. At least the locations were somewhat intelligible, though. I had a feeling these were the roads that were fading into the Abyss.

***

"Dad..." Tristan's eyes were locked on the scene happening behind one of the doors.

In it, it was night, and there was a large bonfire surround by small, primitive cages. Dozens of people were held within, screaming and crying for release. Bandits cackled in response.

A young Tristan was draped over a man who shared her face. A dagger was in his heart, and he was weakly caressing her face.

"Daddy!"

"It's... It's okay..."

"Tristan!" A younger Na-Ya was trying and failing to pull away from a couple men who were dragging her away. For a moment, she tore free, but one of the men grabbed her arm a second late. Wrenching her arm behind her back, a loud crack sounded from in, and Na-Ya screamed.

"This is when Ro found us..." Tristan was crying. "Right then, he and Renard charged into the field and saved us..."

As a young Tristan wept over her father's still body, I held my breath.

"They should be there..." Tristan was crying now. "They should have come."

The men threw Na-Ya back into one of the cages, and the bandit's leader, a grizzled man with one eye, walked up to the young Tristan.

"Yer father died for ye." The man pulled the dagger from her father's chest. "I'll honor his death." He handed the dagger to her. "But only for you. Elves fetch a good price in Velmire." He ripped Tristan onto her feet and pushed her away. "Go. And don't think of turning around. You won't like what'll happen if you do."

Sobbing, the young girl clutched the bloody dagger to her chest and ran into the forest. As she did, the door slammed shut.

"They came..." Tristan wiped her cheeks. "They came for us."

In response, Vral kissed her hand. I kissed her cheek.

She nodded, but she didn't speak. She simply stood looking at the door and wept.

***

A while later, we entered a section where nearly every door opened uo into a large, open cave. It's walls were made of black obsidian. In some doors, the cave was filled with laughter and life. In others, corpses were piled in the corners, and the smell of rot drifted through the doorway.

Vral grew quiet as those passed by. Especially the ones with the corpses.

Tristan spoke to the goblin when we passed those, soothing her with soft words. After the fifth door like that, I pulled Vral onto my shoulders and made sure she couldn't linger.

"Thanks." Vral ran her hands through my hair. I'd taken off my helmet just so she could do that. "I can't help but get stuck watching those ones."

"I know."

***

My throat was getting dry. My legs ached.

When had I last had water?

I reached into my inventory and pulled out my canteen. Taking a long pull, I said, "Water," before throwing it to Tristan.

***

We went through another section of closed doors. Those literally shook and rattled as we passed them, and I was ninety percent confident I saw eyes peering out at me through a crack in one. I didn't stick around long enough to find out if I was right, though.

***

After another hour of that horror, my feet were throbbing, and my knee, the one I'd hurt back on Earth, was aching for the first time in a long time.

***

We'd been going at it for hours. Days? Who knew down here? Did time even pass in the Depths?

Even with my [Grit] talent, which would technically allow me to march forever, I knew the girls, or my poor feet, wouldn't hold up to the punishment.

"Let's rest." I slumped against the nearest wall and fell onto my ass. "At least for an hour."

"I can keep going!" Vral's words echoed up the hallways as she continued limping forward.

"I... I can't..." Tristan was taking tiny steps now, doing her best to step lightly with every step. The soles of her feet had to be in tatters. She'd run out of mana over an hour before. "Let's rest. After, I'll heal everyone, and we can keep going."

"Ugh! Weaklings!" Vral whipped around, gasped as her knee buckled, teetered for a moment, then fell flat onto her face. Without moving, she grumbled into the stones, "Okay... I might need a break."

Resting my head against the cool stone wall, I began to wonder if Faye had been right about waiting to find the right doorway, or if we should just pick the next one and hope we picked well.