Ill be the red ranger a.., p.1
I'll Be The Red Ranger: A Sci-Fi LitRPG Progression: Book 2, page 1
I’LL BE THE
RED RANGER
VOLUME 2
G.C Lopes
1
The Diary
Fifth Entry
I had promised myself that I would stop keeping this log. Yet here I am again, writing in this diary, because writing feels easier then being alone with my thoughts. Out here, in the shadow of the orbital sieges, sanity is a fragile thing.
I can’t remember a time when we weren’t fighting. The war has become our way, beating beneath every sunrise, echoing through every transmission. My mother and father went to the front when I was barely walking, their faces now more memory than fact. I was raised by the remnants: neighbors, refugees, the souls who stayed behind to rebuild what was always meant to fall again.
But I swore I’d break the cycle. I would be better. I would not give my life to the war that eats generations whole.
I would live.
Seventh Entry
She said yes. She actually said yes.
It feels unreal ike a dream. Her name glows in my mind like the moons over the plains. She is everything this broken century is not: soft, bright, full of laughter.
I've never been so happy. They all tell me that marrying is foolish, especially while we're at war. That I should only worry about serving on the front line. That marriage is for those who believe in tomorrows, and tomorrows, they say, are a myth.
But I can’t help it. For the first time, I believe that peace might still be possible. Not in the world, perhaps, but at least on our home.
Ninth Entry
We’ve set the date. The wedding will be small, quiet. Just a handful of witnesses. I don’t know what it will look like, not really. The supply lines are broken, and even flowers have become rare. But it doesn’t matter. It will be quick, and it will be ours.
Afterward, we’ll leave this colony behind. I’ve found a small dome on the outskirts, far enough from the patrol routes. The soil there isn’t much, but I’ve learned how to work with it. I never imagined myself as a farmer, not in this lifetime. But the more I think about it, the more right it feels.
Eleventh Entry
She’s pregnant. Twins.
When she told me, I felt my heart stop. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. I looked at her and saw both hope and terror reflected in her eyes.
We have no one else. No family left, no neighbors. Just the two of us, trying to carve a quiet corner out of the chaos. I don’t know if I’m ready, but readiness feels like a luxury in times like these. You simply become what the world demands of you.
Twelfth Entry
They’re here. Two tiny lives. A girl and a boy, the perfect balance, they say. But I don’t care about symmetry or superstition. All I care about is that they’re alive.
The farm is thriving. The soil has begun to yield. For once, the local command has stopped trying to recruit me. They’ve realized that soldiers can’t eat bullets. The war machine, for all its hunger, still needs bread to run.
Sometimes, when I stand at the edge of the field, I imagine a future where my children don’t know the sound of sirens or the taste of fear.
I know it’s foolish to dream like that.
But dreams are the only things left that the war hasn’t taken.
Sixteenth Entry
The children are growing faster than I ever thought possible. My daughter absorbs knowledge like light through glass. Among the local children, she’s already known for her brilliance. My son is tall and strong. I never imagined raising a child like him, a boy who could one day move mountains, or worse, be asked to destroy them.
But I’m afraid. I see the lessons they feed him at the outpost school, the way the instructors speak of duty and honor and sacrifice. They’re teaching him to crave the battlefield, to see glory where there is only ash. I’ve done everything I can to shield them from the war’s reach, to give them a life of soil and sunlight instead of steel and blood. Yet every time I try to explain why we stay out of it, the others whisper coward.
They forget that without the food I grow, their soldiers would starve before they ever saw the front lines. They forget that courage comes in many forms and sometimes, the bravest thing a man can do is refuse to fight.
Twenty-First Entry
She’s gone.
The city was attacked again today. I told her not to go. Supplies, she said.
It’s just a quick trip, nothing more.
But when the bombardment started, the comms went silent. Hours later, I found her name among the casualty reports. A building had collapsed, crushing everything beneath it.
It doesn’t feel real. The farm is the same, the air smells the same, but everything sounds different now. Emptier, thinner. The children asked where she is. I couldn’t answer. I just held them and told them we would be all right, though I didn’t believe it.
If not for them, I think I would have followed her into the ruins.
Twenty-Second Entry
It’s taken me weeks to find the strength to write again. Words feel heavy, like stones pressing against my chest. But I promised myself I wouldn’t let grief stop me. She wouldn’t have wanted that.
The children and I… we’re surviving. That’s all I can say. My daughter still cries sometimes, quietly, when she thinks I can’t hear. My son stands taller now, trying to be strong for both of us. I see her in them, in the way they move, the way they laugh. The ache never leaves, but it’s softened by their presence.
The war still rages beyond the horizon. But here, on this small patch of land, life persists. Crops grow. The wind still carries the scent of soil and rain.
Twenty-Third Entry
It’s hard, harder than I ever imagined, to raise a daughter without her mother. The house feels colder without her warmth, and every day I try to fill the silence with stories, with laughter, with anything that keeps the emptiness away. My neighbors help when they can, bringing food, advice, and the occasional smile. But most of the time, I feel like I’m just guessing.
I look at my daughter and wonder if she’ll hate me one day for all the things I couldn’t give her.
My son, though… he’s doing well. Strong, clever, restless. Too restless. He’s been talking again about joining the army. Says he wants to “make a difference.” He doesn’t understand what the war takes. He only sees the medals, the stories, the hollow pride. I’ve seen the truth. I’ve buried it.
Thirty-First Entry
My daughter is getting married.
She met him last spring.
A soldier, of course. They always find a way into our lives. He wears the finest uniforms, polished boots, a smile full of promises he can’t possibly keep. She looks at him the way her mother once looked at me, like he’s the future.
She’s moving with him to a planet near the front. I tried to talk her out of it, but she’s in love. How do you fight love when you’ve spent your life fighting everything else?
At least… I still have my son.
Thirty-Third Entry
He heard. He had to hear.
Someone told him about the new enlistment round. The recruiters came through town again, whispering glory into young ears, poisoning them with patriotism.
Now he’s decided. Says it’s his duty. Says he wants to protect us. Protect me.
They’ve taken everything from me, and now they want him too. I begged, I shouted, I threatened. Yet nothing works. He’s already gone in spirit, chasing the same illusions that killed his grandparents, that killed his mother.
I don’t know what else to do but watch him walk away.
Thirty-Seventh Entry
This will be my last entry.
My son came home today.
After two long years, two years of silence, of prayers. He came back.
In a coffin.
They say he died a hero. I say he died a child. They draped him in the flag of the same army that stole him, told me to be proud. I spat on their medals. I cursed their cause. I cursed the aliens, the generals, the endless war that feeds on our sons and daughters like some cosmic beast that will never be full.
I buried him beside his mother. The ground was cold.
Forty-First Entry
I know what I have to do now.
Peace, they say, is found in forgiveness. But forgiveness is for those who still have something left to lose.
I don’t.
They took my wife. They took my son. They’ve taken every dream I ever had.
So I will take something back. I will find them, the ones who started this war. The aliens who shattered my world, and I will make them understand what loss feels like.
* * *
He closed the diary slowly, his hand lingering on the cracked leather cover as if it were the last piece of his soul that still felt warm. The pages carried the ghosts of his life. His love, his children, his promises. Now they were nothing but echoes of the past.
He tried to remember how many years he had been doing this, how long he had traded himself for duty, for vengeance, but the memories were too blurred.
I don’t even remember anymore
This was all that remained of him now. This dungeon, this profession, this final obsession. His son and daughter were gone, their names carved into the soil of a planet that no longer bore life. His great love had vanished long before, crushed beneath the ruins of a city that was reduced to dust.
“I will take every last drop of their blood before I leave this place,” he whispered. The words weren’t a vow, they were a curse.
He descended into the dungeons for the second time that day. The stairway was swallowed by shadow, the walls slick with the moisture of centuries. The air was heavy with despair and the scent of rusting metal. The deeper he went, the more the light thinned, until only faint beams from the surface reached him.
The stones were old, older than the war itself. They had seen empires rise and fall, had heard the screams of kings, rebels, and heretics. Now they bore witness to something worse.
Chains littered the floor, massive and ancient, their links scarred from centuries of use. Once, they had bound political prisoners and dissidents; now they held creatures from distant stars, aliens who had come not as conquerors, but as the latest scapegoats of his endless thirst for vengeance.
Execution is too easy, His eyes cold and distant. They must suffer. They must break. Only when they beg for death will they understand what they’ve done to us.
Each step down the worn staircase groaned beneath his weight. The path twisted through the earth leading him to the heart of the ruin.
At the bottom stretched a corridor with hundreds of metal gates lined the walls, their surfaces corroded by time and neglect. The locks were swollen with rust, the air thick with the stench of oil and old blood.
He stopped at the final cell, the one that still held life. The rest of his captives were gone, executed or transferred to other prisons. Only a few remained now, and even they were fading.
He stepped into the cell, his boots splashing in the stagnant water that pooled on the floor. The figure hanging from the chains was barely recognizable.
His jaw tightened. He drew closer and drove a fist into the alien’s ribs, feeling the brittle bones yield beneath his hand.
This female almost gone, he thought. If she dies now, I’ll have no one left to remind me why I’m still alive. Let’s bring the next one.
He leaned in, his voice low and sharp.
HUARK
2
Oliver: The First Day
First Day
He never expected to see the light again.
Not after the Red Ork.
The last thing he remembered was the crushing weight of its blow and the taste of blood. He had thought that was it. He’d finally cross the line between life and death. Maybe he’d see his mother again. Maybe his father. Maybe peace.
But instead, there was pain.
A deep, splitting agony that pulsed through his skull, dragging him back into the world of the living.
His head throbbed so hard it felt like it might split in two. When he tried to move, something coarse and damp pressed against his face. A cloth—no, a sack—was tied over his head, blocking out the light. It smelled of mildew and old blood.
He could hear metal clanging around him. Chains, footsteps, the distant echo of something heavy dragged across the floor. The air was thick with humidity, with the stench of rust and sweat.
He tried to lift his arms, but they didn’t move. His wrists were bound, locked in restraints that bit into his skin. The same went for his ankles.
When he finally managed to force his eyes open, the faintest slivers of light bled through the holes in the fabric. He could just make out shapes. The sound of guttural laughter filled the air, low and cruel.
Before he could ready himself, the sack was yanked from his head.
The sudden brightness stabbed into his eyes like knives. He blinked, his vision blurring until the world came into focus.
Standing before him was a monster.
An Ork, but not like the Red he’d fought. This one was yellow-skinned, its hide mottled with dark patches that looked almost diseased. Its horns were chipped and uneven, its eyes small and glinting with sadistic amusement.
It laughed, a rumbling sound that shook the air. Right before, shoving him.
Oliver stumbled forward, his bare feet scraping against the rough floor as he was pushed into another chamber.
Oliver tried to stay on his feet, using his arms to brace himself against the wall.
But the effort came to nothing. Where his right arm should have been, there was nothing—only a stump bound in filthy rags.
He hit the ground hard. The chains rattled.
The Ork followed him in, its massive shadow stretching across the orange walls. Without a word, it reached down and tore at his uniform. The sound of tearing fabric filled the air as the creature ripped the pieces away, one by one. Until even his gauntlet was torn from his wrist and tossed aside like scrap.
Cold air hit his skin, followed by something worse.
A bucket of icy water splashed over him, shocking his body into full awareness. He gasped, his muscles spasming from the cold. The water dripped from his hair, pooling beneath him, soaking into the stone.
Another bucket followed. And another.
He didn’t realize how thirsty he was until the first drops hit his lips. His mouth was cracked and burning. He tried to catch some of the water with his tongue, but most of it ran down his face, mixing with the grime and blood.
The Ork roared something in its guttural tongue.
“MO—ORKASH!”
The word, or whatever it was, echoed in Oliver’s skull. For a moment, he thought he understood it. The syllables twisted in his mind, trying to take shape.
The sound came first, a violent crack that cut through the air like lightning.
Pain followed a heartbeat later.
The whip tore across Oliver’s back, the impact searing through his skin and exploding into fire. He let out a strangled cry.
“You son of a whore!” he snarled, his words half a roar, half a gasp.
Another crack.
The second strike stole his breath. His vision blurred, his body arching involuntarily against the restraints. The pain was blinding, but beneath it, something else began to rise, rage.
It boiled inside him, molten and alive, pounding in rhythm with his heartbeat.
If he weren’t chained—if he still had both arms, if he still had his gauntlet—Oliver imagined he could finish that Ork.
But reality and imagination were drifting farther and farther apart.
The creature loomed over him, its grin filled with cruel satisfaction. It barked something else. Then it shoved him forward with one massive hand.
Oliver stumbled, barely catching his balance, the chains dragging against the ground as the Ork herded him deeper into the facility.
The walls around them were carved from rough orange stone. The air was thick and heavy, carrying the metallic tang of blood and the acrid scent of oil.
Step by step, Oliver burned the path into his memory.
Three staircases. Down the left corridor. Two turns. Other cells here.
He repeated the details over and over, forcing himself to remember. Every wall, every sound, every shift in the air.
Even in chains, he refused to be broken.
If there was a way out, he would find it.
The Ork barked another command and struck him again, not with the whip this time, but with the back of its hand. The blow sent him staggering into the wall, the impact rattling his teeth.
He forced himself upright, breathing hard, his muscles trembling with exhaustion.
Not yet, he told himself. Not like this.
As they descended deeper, the temperature dropped. The air grew colder, damper. The faint orange glow of the upper levels gave way to a dull, sickly green light seeping from the cracks in the stone.
He could hear more voices now, their guttural tones echoing through the tunnels. Some laughed. Others growled. The sound made his skin crawl.
He tried not to think about what they were doing down here.
His mind drifted to the others.
Katherine. Isabela.
He clenched his jaw. Please be alive.
Maybe they’d escaped. Maybe someone had helped them.
And Alan-
His chest tightened. The last image burned in his mind. The Red Ork cleaving through him.
Oliver shook his head violently, forcing the memory away. The move earned him a savage kick to the back.
The Ork’s heavy foot connected with his spine, sending him sprawling forward. His body hit the steps, sliding down several before landing hard on the stone floor.
Pain exploded through his ribs. He coughed, tasting blood.
