Fermentation: A Fantasy LitRPG Adventure

FERMENTATION ©2023 SETH RING This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the authors. Aethon Books supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights. Aethon Books www.aethonbooks.com Print and eBook formatting by Josh Hayes. Artwork provided by Antti Hakosari. Published by Aethon Books LLC. Aethon Books is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead is coincidental. All rights reserved. ALSO IN SERIES Domestication Germination Cultivation Fermentation Transformation 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 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Thank you for reading Fermentation! Groups LitRPG CHAPTER 1 It’d be a lot easier to just burn it all down and start over. The ripe, golden wheat waving in the early summer breeze looked healthy, but John knew that appearances were deceiving. Half a year had passed since the nearly disastrous fight against Kythov the Eyeless, and the fallout from the Necromancer’s attack was still having effects on the valley. Legions of undead, many of them dragged from the very battlefields John had burned, had marched on the valley, tainting the land with their mana even after the enchantment that kept them alive had been destroyed. If we can train wheat to process mana, we should be able to train it to filter tainted mana as well, but this isn’t working at all. Unable to shake the frown on his lips, John turned away from the experimental field and looked at the rolling hills covered in ripening wheat. It was almost time for harvest, and the extra land they had cleared last fall had been put to good use, growing a healthy winter crop. As always, the sight of wind rippling across the golden wheat brought peace to his soul, and for a few minutes he just enjoyed the view. Until the peace was shattered by a loud squawking and a triumphant bellow. Rubbing his forehead in annoyance, John headed for the barn, where the sound was coming from. Seeing Thomas leaning against the fence with Ben, John walked over to join them. They were watching Sigvald and Ferdie face off in what might have been the most dramatic game of tic-tac-toe ever played. During a moment of boredom in the dead of winter, John had taught Ferdie how to play and had been regretting it ever since. The bull had, in turn, taught his greatest rival, the giant rooster Sigvald, and they had been playing game after game ever since. “It sounds like Ferdie is on a winning streak again.” “Four games in a row,” Ben replied, hanging over the fence’s top bar. With a mighty flap of his wings, Sigvald erased the previous game and scratched out new lines. Head held high, he glared at Ferdie from his uncovered eye. He was still wearing the eye patch Ellie had made for him like a badge of honor, despite being able to see perfectly well out of both eyes. Since becoming Ellie’s familiar, Sigvald had continued to grow and now stood a whopping six feet tall. The metallic glint his red and orange feathers carried had increased and occasionally faint sparks would dance across them, giving him a powerful appearance. His wingspan was nearly as large as he was tall, and when the rooster puffed himself up, he looked more like a prehistoric lightning bird than a chicken. As impressive as Sigvald was, it was Ferdie who John couldn’t believe. Waking up one morning, John found that the bull had suddenly shrunk down, appearing no bigger than a calf. Soon after he had returned to a normal size, and from then on didn’t grow a single inch no matter how much mana he consumed. That didn’t mean he wasn’t getting stronger, of course, just that he had somehow learned to control his size. At the drop of a hat, he could grow to more than double his normal size, transforming from a large bull to a flame-covered monster the size of a barn. The biggest change, however, were the scales that had started to grow on his skin. Though faint normally, they turned into hard, stone-like armor when he grew large, reminding John of the pictures of dragon scales from his time on Earth. With molten horns, iron-clad hooves, and the ability to breathe great gouts of flame, Ferdie was becoming more like a dragon than any bull John