Boar: Berserker Boys 3: Berserker Boys, #3

By Lulu M. Sylvian

It's no longer cosplay when the game gets real.

Maisie is feeling glum about her cosplay and her prospects with a certain cosplaying MinVid celebrity when she is kidnapped. Thinking it's a gym-bro gone too far, she realizes the game is very real when he steps through a portal and transports her to another realm.

 

Scottie isn't about to let a very real orc take off with Maisie. Shifting into his berserker form, he runs after her, only to get trapped inside a video game.

 

They have to work together to stay alive, and hope their friends can rescue them. Only Maisie doesn't want to return to the real world if it means losing Scottie's affection.

 

You don't choose the berserker life.

The berserker life chooses you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Moon Tan Press
• Release date: Jun 6, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224376179

Book preview

Chapter

One

W hat the hell is this? Wolf walked into the kitchen holding up a plastic soda bottle filled halfway with a yellow liquid.

Scottie was in the middle of setting up his light booth so that he could film a few of his latest cosplay creations that looked like food. The kitchen seemed like the logical place to film.

He smirked. That ain’t Mountain Dew.

Wolf rolled and then closed his eyes and held the bottle farther away from his body.

I swear you get more disgusting every day.

Scottie took the offending bottle. Well, I am a pig.

That excuse is getting old. I’m a wolf. You don’t see me peeing on every tree, do you? And Vik isn’t heading out into the woods for his daily shit. Find a new schtick. Preferably one that isn’t nasty.

What the fuck has crawled up your ass? Yeardley not putting out?

Wolf stopped moving.

Scottie shrugged off his friend’s mood and returned to adjusting the lampstands aimed at the booth.

Take her name out of your mouth. Wolf’s words were low and clipped. The threat was as blatant as if Wolf had slapped him.

Scottie sighed, he had crossed the line again. He was always fucking up friendships, pushing too far. He was pretty sure the only reason Vik and Wolf had stayed by his side was their mutual trauma. Scottie had plenty of friends, after all, he was a MinVid and GameWatch star. All he had to do was say, Hey let’s all go to the movies, and thirty to forty of his friends would show up. But those friends never stuck around too long. They usually wanted him to put them in his videos, or do a collaboration that would get them more followers. It sometimes felt as if there was a revolving door on the front of his house for those friends. They came in, took what they wanted, and left.

His longest relationships were with people he had met online, and never face-to-face. Those friends he met up with regularly to quest together. They didn’t get to see him being an idiot at the level Wolf and Vik did. If they had, they probably would have walked as well.

Wolf was one of his two best friends. He didn’t want to be a fuck up like this. He liked Yeardley, he liked that Wolf had a great girlfriend.

Sorry, man. I didn’t think.

You never think Scottie, and when you do, it’s like you’re some twelve-year-old trying to be a badass. When it comes out of your mouth, you’re just a fucking ass.

Scottie leaned against the kitchen counter. The entire kitchen was pristine. Not that he cleaned, but he didn’t use the kitchen either. And when Wolf did, he cleaned up after himself. He didn’t do stupid shit the way Scottie did.

What were you doing over by my computer?

Cleaning up, Wolf said as if it were the most obvious thing in existence.

Why are you cleaning? Scottie asked.

Did you forget? Yeardley is coming over. You’re making her armor and helmet. Today’s the fitting.

Shit, is that today? Crap, crap, crap. He began fumbling with his lights and tripped over a cord trying to get out of the photo setup he had created.

You forgot?

I forgot the same way something just slips your mind. I didn’t like forget-forget. I ordered all the supplies I didn’t already have. I’m ready, not prepared.

Story of your life.

Shut up, Scottie said as he skipped down the stairs from the kitchen into the mudroom that led to the garage that was his workshop.

Wolf followed behind him. He was glad that whatever it was he had done to piss Wolf off was already behind them.

Wolf had put up with his shit for years. So had Vik. Others had come and gone, but those two had stuck with him. At first, he knew it was because they had gotten caught in some magical surge while playing a multiplayer role-playing game. They were in the same Viking raiding party, had been for a good six months. When they found out they were local to each other, they agreed to meet up at a live multiplayer role-playing game event. That’s when everything had gone sideways.

Scottie began pulling the various supplies from the storage racks, rolls of butcher paper, and craft foam. He may be scattered when it came to being scheduled, but his maker supplies were always well organized.

I don’t get how you can keep your studio pristine and leave piss bottles in the living room, Wolf commented.

Priorities. Oh shit, the chairs are in the living room. We aren’t going to be in there very long, since I’ll need her back here for measurements and all that. Might as well go get them and bring them back now.

You need furniture, man.

Furniture only encourages the wrong people to stay.

Wolf snickered, You mean like Jessica? Whatever happened with her anyway? I thought she wanted to collab with you.

She wanted to collab with my audience, not my dick.

Jessica, beautiful, sexy, cruel. She had given him all the attention he thought he wanted from a woman like her. She was the type to run her hands over his newly acquired physique and purr seductive words about his muscles and ginger beard. And then when her numbers didn’t go viral, she blamed him, called him weird, and not in a fun way.

You know other people like to sit on couches too, not just people trying to leverage your success for their own.

Scottie stopped organizing the tools he was going to need to begin work on Yeardley’s Valkyrie and stared at Wolf. Name one.

Me, you, Vik. Scottie, this place is huge, and you have been fighting the furniture issue for a while. You know Vik and Aaliyah would come over more if we had more than plastic lawn chairs to sit in.

You are more than welcome to buy furniture, Scottie offered.

Yeah, but it’s your house, and when you kick me out, you won’t have any furniture again. You could hire a decorator.

That costs money.

Says the man who paid cash for his house because it made great content. Turn the whole thing into a series. Your viewers will eat it up.

That’s not a bad idea, Scottie said. He leaned against his workbench and began plotting out how he could leverage buying furniture into content. After all, content was king. If he did it right, he could probably even get some sponsorships and walk away without having to pay for everything. Not that cash flow was a problem.

Scottie, where’d you go, man?

Scottie blinked and Wolf was next to him with a hand on his shoulder.

You know what, that’s a brilliant idea.

Glad you liked it. Wolf turned and looked at his phone. Yeardley wants to know if she needs to stop and get snacks before they head over?

They? Who is they? I thought it was just Yeardley.

Wolf shrugged. Probably her and Maisie.

Not Maisie, Scottie sighed.

What’s wrong with Maisie?

She’ll judge me for not having furniture just like Yeardley did the first time she came over, just like Aaliyah did.

Maisie, judge you? Are we talking about the same woman? She is probably the one person you know who doesn’t judge you, no matter how stupid you are. You know she has a huge crush on you?

Scottie let out a heavy sigh, Yeah. Okay, maybe not judge me, but she’ll be disappointed, and I don’t want to disappoint her.

Dude, you need to get a couch for Maisie.

You think she’d want to go couch shopping with me?

Oh shit, you like her, don’t you?

Chapter

Two

S o I finally get to see this place, Maisie buzzed with excitement. She couldn’t believe it, all because she recognized her MinVid crush out at a random restaurant a few months ago, that she was now headed to his house. Of course, it bothered her that her best friends Aaliyah and Yeardley had been there before she ever had. But they had gone there because their now boyfriends were friends with Scottie.

As much as Maisie would love to be happily coupled up with Scottie— after all, how perfect would that be, three friends and three friends all happily dating— she was well aware that she was firmly in the acquaintance zone. They knew each other. They had even had a conversation or two, never about anything deep or important. But they weren’t friends. And there wasn’t any potential romantic spark, at least not from Scottie. Maisie was a freaking lit Roman candle when it came to sparking over Scottie.

Does he really not have any furniture?

He’s got a big TV and a gaming chair, and I think a bean bag. There’s stuff in the kitchen. But the house is really big and very empty. Yeardley watched the road in front of her as she turned into the gated entry to the subdivision. The gates weren’t closed or attached to a guardhouse. They were strictly for show.

Holy crap, these houses are bigger in person, Maisie said as she looked out the car window.

Scottie had filmed his house more than once. She had an idea of what it looked like, and that it was big. The scale and proportion had been lost on her when watching a short minute-long video clip.

Yeah, and I’m not gonna say, ‘oh you get used to it,’ because I haven’t yet. These houses are fucking huge.

Yeardley pulled into the drive and shut off her car. Okay, this is it. Now I suggest you get your fangirl squealing out of the way now. This isn’t Disneyland.

No, it’s Scottieland, Maisie was awe-struck.

Oh, my god, you did not. Please don’t tell him that. He’ll name the fucking house. He’ll get large white letters and mount them on the side of the house, and Wolf will never forgive me, and the homeowners association will kick them out…

Maisie twisted up her expression and looked at Yeardley. "And you say I have an overactive imagination. I