Contested Stars Elsewhere Book 4 – Doug Lohse

“OK, let me see if I can…” Duke activated the control to separate the ships. The response was not instant, but it took less than a second to completely separate. He flew his ship back to its starting point and reluctantly debarked at Sar Borglyn’s insistence. OceanofPDF.com Chapter 40 As they moved on, Duke still heard leveling shouts echoing behind him. Each was met with cheering and encouragement, and he could tell that it had become a friendly competition that drove everyone towards higher achievement.

The rank-up shouts nearly brought things to a halt as others rushed over to congratulate their comrade. The enthusiasm of the work crews buoyed Duke’s spirits as much as the thrill ride of the ships’ combination giving him a sense of hope for what he knew was coming. The sense of existential dread that had crept into his consciousness had retreated, leaving him hopeful for the upcoming fights.

Sar Borglyn led Duke on whirlwind tour of the rest of the Foundry. People of all sorts had come and were still flocking to the facility, coming from all corners of Teldin. That, Sar Borglyn explained, limited the types of crafting that was available, but that corner was being turned as graduates from the Academy were filtering in with crafting capabilities beyond anything seen before in such a semi-public setting.

There were some problems, however, as not everyone got along in their rivalry in the more common crafts. In some areas, brewing in particular, fights had broken out over perceived theft of recipes or ingredients. The fights were broken up rather quickly but Sar Borglyn expressed some regret. “I would like to let those fights settle themselves, you know.” Duke Looked up at the minotaur and chuckled, “I bet you would. I bet you would like to set them up in an arena and allow them to fight to the death.”

It all began with death. Duke—ace pilot, arrogance incarnate—was snatched from the brink of oblivion by strange, cosmic forces and dropped into a world he didn’t understand. A summoning gone horribly wrong left his would-be rescuer a brainless corpse, and Duke wisely ran. Welcome to Teldin. Thrown into a reality ruled by game-like mechanics, Duke fumbled his way through early encounters while trying to make sense of his new “Abilities.”

TELEPORTATION and REGENERATION became his lifelines, and XENOGLOSSIA let him understand every language… but not speak them. Oh, and he sucked with swords—spectacularly. When he declined a classic “starter quest” from a pair of well-meaning druids (Grat and Elaine), he figured he’d dodged a tedious cliché. But fate had other plans. His journey led him to the tower of Baslin the Best, an Archmage stuck in magical limbo due to an unfulfilled vow. The source of Baslin’s woes? Petty squabbling between the twin heirs of a fallen friend.

Hoping to teach Duke a lesson, Baslin sent him to witness the chaos firsthand. Bad idea. Duke’s TELEPORTATION shorted mid-transport, and he landed in the capital—right into a mugging, an arrest, and a gladiator pit. Pitted against a bloodthirsty orc and armed with nothing but desperation and his fledgling LIGHTNING Ability, Duke barely survived. Rescued by the Leviathan sect, he was trained to fight.

But when the arena turned into a death trap orchestrated by a rival sect, only Duke crawled out alive. Barely. With TELEPORTATION back online, he reunited with Baslin, accepted the offer to become his apprentice, and dove into deeper trouble. Ironically, he ended up solving the druids’ quest he’d once rejected—just in time to save them from being eaten by subterranean monsters. Beneath the caves, Duke discovered the last functioning dungeon on Teldin—a dark, twisted place filled with trauma, pain, and literal dissection.

As his party suffered and nearly died, Duke pushed his REPAIR Ability to the breaking point, evolving it into RESTORE to save Grat’s life. He later restored Elaine’s youth as well, though both acts came at a steep cost. They beat the dungeon in the end. Barely. Baslin’s prison was shattered, his tower destroyed. But Duke gained more than he lost: the Dungeon Core, ownership of the entire structure, and control of a newly freed Legion— 30,000 souls who had been trapped inside along with the Legion’s General, Aurelia the Golden warrior.

He relocated the dungeon to a remote lakeshore and began to build something new. But peace didn’t last. A reward vision revealed a horrifying truth: King Chopie, one of Teldin’s rulers, had become a lich.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 5969b2d9a38984b7
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 3,409,428 bytes (3.251 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 513
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 869.5 minutes
• Total Words: 173,901
• Total Characters: 974,648
• Average Words per Page: 338.99
• Average Characters per Page: 1899.9

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