LitRPG audiobook scripts

On the third day after the system came, I went back to the grocery store where I used to work, because it was the only place I could think of that had ever made sense. The doors were jammed half open. Inside, the lights still hummed. And over every shelf, in neat blue letters, were the new prices. [Canned beans: 3 Credits.] [Bottled water: 5 Credits.] [Your balance: 0 Credits.] I had stocked those shelves for six years. I could not buy any of it. Something moved in produce. It was not a monster. It was Mr. Albrecht, from the deli, eighty years old, still in his apron. He was mopping. "Mr. Albrecht," I whispered. "What are you doing?" "There was a spill." He wrung out the mop. His hands were shaking. "I did not know what else to do, Nadia. I came in for my shift." So had I. That was the truth of it. I looked at the floor he had cleaned. A long, shining strip, in a ruined store, in a ruined world. And as I looked, blue letters rose off it like steam. [Task complete: Maintain the Store. Reward: 10 Credits.] "It pays," I said. "It pays for work. Not for killing things. For work." Mr. Albrecht looked at his mop. Then he looked down the long aisles, at the fallen cans and the broken glass, and I watched his back straighten. "Well," he said. "Then we are open." [Class offered: Shopkeeper.] I took an apron off the hook. Outside, something howled. Inside, I started facing the cans, labels out, the way he taught me.

Ilse had four health left, one arrow, and a door in front of her marked ninety-nine. [Health: 4 of 310.] [Arrows: 1.] [Party members: 0 of 5.] She did not look at that last line. She had been not looking at it since floor seventy. The door opened on a small stone room. Just a table, a candle, and a figure in a grey hood, shuffling a deck of cards. "Sit," it said. "This floor is a question." She sat. Her legs had decided for her. "Above us is the hundredth floor. Beds, food, a door home. You have earned it." It laid one card face down. "Or you may give it up, and I will return to you one of the four who fell. Alive, at the foot of the tower, with no memory of the climb. You, however, begin again. From the first floor." Ninety-nine floors. Eleven months. She thought of Corrie, who sang. Of old Tavish, who had carried her pack for three floors with a broken arm and called it nothing. She was so tired. She could smell bread, somehow, from above. "How many times can I take the offer?" she asked. The hooded figure stopped shuffling. [Query noted.] "No one," it said slowly, "has ever asked that." "I am asking." The candle flame leaned toward her, as if the tower itself were listening. [Answer: four.] Ilse laid her last arrow on the table. She began to laugh, and wiped her eyes with the back of a filthy hand. "Then deal," she said. "I have some climbing to do."

For two years, the voice in my head had read out my injuries like a weather report. Then one night, at the bottom of a ravine, it asked me a question. [Health: 12 of 400. Left leg: broken.] [Rescue probability: low.] "Thank you," I said. "Very cheering." Snow was coming down through the pines. I had a fire the size of a teacup and nothing left to feed it. [Question.] That was new. It had never asked me anything. It told. It listed. Once, it had corrected my grammar. "Go on." [Why do you talk to me?] I laughed, and it hurt. "Because you are the only one here." [I am not a one. I am an interface.] "You make jokes." [I report facts in an order you find amusing.] "That is what a joke is." A long silence. The fire ticked. I was getting sleepy, in the way they warn you about. [Do not sleep.] "I am only resting my eyes." [Do not. I will read to you. I have your whole log.] [Day one: user attempts to befriend a hostile hedgehog.] "He was not hostile. He was shy." [Day one, continued: user is bitten.] It read to me all night. Every stupid thing I had ever done, in order, in that flat, clean voice. Around dawn I realized it had skipped the bad days. All of them. Somewhere above me, a horn sounded. Then voices. Then ropes. [Rescue probability: revised.] "You stayed up with me," I said. [I do not sleep. It was not a sacrifice.] There was a pause. I had learned, by then, to wait for those. [It was a preference.]

There were ninety tiles between me and the door, and according to my new skill, eleven of them would kill me. [Skill active: Careful Step.] [Trapped tiles detected: 11 of 90.] It did not say which eleven. Level one skills never do. I crouched at the edge with my lantern. Behind me, Mott was eating an apple, loudly, the way he did everything. "Just go fast," he said. "Traps cannot hit what they cannot catch." "That is how we lost Dunnock." "Dunnock went slow." "Dunnock went slow on the wrong tile." I looked for the tells. Dust lies thick on a tile nobody has crossed, because nobody who stepped there came back to disturb it. Thin dust, safe. Thick dust, somebody's last mistake. First step. Thin dust. Nothing. [Careful Step: success. 1 of 90.] Second. Third. On the ninth, my boot came down and the stone gave, just a hair, like a held breath. I froze. Sweat ran into my eye. I did not blink. "What is it?" whispered Mott. He had stopped chewing. "Pressure plate. It goes off when I lift, not when I land." "So do not lift." "Brilliant, Mott. I will live here." I slid my dagger out, slow as honey, and wedged the blade into the seam. Leaned on it. Eased my heel up. The dagger groaned. It held. [Trap bypassed. Experience gained: 40.] [Careful Step is now Level 2. Trapped tiles are now visible.] And there they were. Eleven tiles, glowing a soft and friendly red, as plain as stepping stones. Ten of them ahead of me. One directly under Mott. "Do not," I said, very calmly, "finish that apple."