Finding a Body (The Dark Herbalist Book #4) LitRPG series

by Michael Atamanov

  “Valerianna, go off with Gloom. I need you to bring me a map of the distant shore of Frigid Lake, then get a portal scroll to send our armies there and destroy the undying invasion. Try not to let the enemies see you either, so you don’t put them on guard. Take a look from afar and go right back.”

  I didn’t manage to finish that sentence before I heard another alarm bell, and another tall dark rider stood next to Gloom:

  Murk

  Emissary of the Dark Sovereign

  Level 250 Ghostly Rider

  Murk answered for the northern borders. And seemingly, there were now problems in his zone of responsibility as well.

  “Sovereign, invasion! A squadron of undying is coming over the snowy northern spur of the Border Hills and is nearing the Icy Mountains! They’re well prepared for wintry conditions, dressed warmly and carrying mountaineering equipment. The snow giants and mountain trolls couldn’t stop them and retreated, losing half their numbers. If the undying cross the mountains, they’ll reach the Ruins of Acheron and that will put them just half a day from the castle!”

  Seemingly, the situation was getting out of control and enemies were sneaking into my territory from all directions, not only up the black river of death. I decided against asking about the Ruins of Acheron, which were just half a day’s walk from my castle, but I mentally made a note to return to the intriguing topic at a better time. Then I turned to Valerianna Quickfoot:

  “I desperately need a big clear map that I can hang on the wall or spread out on a table and which will show enemy and allied armies in real time. The Sovereign’s Eye is not ideally suited to that, and holding this all in my head will just get harder and harder every day. After all, there are probably magical maps that can do that, whether in the corporation’s online store, or created by craftsmen. I can’t be the only player who might need this! Val, look for a map that fits my description. I don’t know how much it might cost, but without it we’re just gonna drown in a flood of information!”

  The fearsome sorceress gave a dignified bow, showing that she had taken the information into account and would try to help me solve the issue. Then she went to Gloom, preparing to go off with the ghostly rider to my eastern borderlands.

  “Yes, Valerianna, your task is the incursion in the east, go there. And don’t you worry about those mountain climbers to the north. I’ll handle them myself after the sun is down. And I hope the northern mountainous border can be closed off once and for all after I’m done with them. Soon our purchases will be coming in, and among them there are one thousand Drow scouts and archers at level one hundred. I’ll put those dark elves into mixed border divisions of rougarou, orcs, trolls and undead, which I will use to cover all mountain passes fit for crossing. And after that, as soon as the dam is finished, I’ll send cyclopes and giants under the leadership of the Ogre Fortifier to vulnerable passes. For a few days the enemies will meet stone guard towers wherever they go with lots of loopholes for archers and ballistae, and impregnable walls. And on the mountain ridges I’ll build a chain of frontier posts and defense brigades. Just try crawling up a sheer cliff while archers rain down arrows and huge giants chuck boulders!”

  Valerianna nodded and, chanting a materialization spell, went off with the Ghostly Rider Gloom. I then let Murk go and sat up wearily on my huge deadly throne.

  What a crazy day this was turning out to be! And this evening promised to be even more frenzied. Before nightfall, I would be getting the huge amount of stuff we ordered today. And among that was armor and weapons, alchemy ingredients and valuable plants, building materials and tools, furniture and decor, vials of blood and living creatures, coal for the smithies and wood to heat the castle on cold nights, along with lots and lots of other stuff. All that would have to be sorted and distributed, unpacked and issued to those in need, some of it locked up tight for the future and other stuff given to craftsmen or merchants. Without my Storekeeper, Keymaster, and Steward I would simply be drowning head first in the mountain of stuff. But even with my helpers, there was a titanic amount of work ahead of me.

  Also there was the NPC smiths and armorers, potters and woodworkers, coopers and leatherworkers... They all needed a place to stay in the castle or nearby, along with work, tools and materials. Plus the castle defenders. I would have to greet my elite goblin and orcish guard, explain the rules in the Dark Sovereign’s castle and delineate responsibilities, then provide necessary items and assign them to shifts. And there were also bodyguard teams for me and Valerianna Quickfoot, each of which contained fifty taciturn and watchful NPC’s.

  I had chosen myself a reliable guard of fearsome armor-bound orcs. Valerianna however was much more discerning and picked guards of the most inconceivable races: watchful elves, werebeasts with lightning-fast reflexes, and flittering winged pixies with their heightened instinct for magic. And my little sister’s guard team had more than just weapon-laden bruisers. She had healers, priests for blessing and removing curses, and poison and antivenom specialists. And all that future local color had to be received and given a place to sleep tonight in the castle. We were also expecting a thousand Drow elves, who would also need to be greeted, given housing and put to work...

  And as if all that wasn’t enough, we were going to have the rougarou scouts returning tonight with maps of the lands surrounding my castle. After that, Shaman Uvari-Dor-Shu was supposed to announce the new lands of the Clan of the White Lily. I as lord of these lands was supposed to officially allow them to settle there, and ideally be there for the festivities. Also the hunters led by Princess Chai-nee Shu were supposed to deliver their haul by evening, and I should ideally be there for that to make sure another scrap didn’t break out.

  Overall, I was expecting quite an entertaining evening, and I couldn’t even imagine how I’d survive it. But later it would only be getting more complicated. After all, that was when I was intending to fight back all the players coming to attack my territory!

  Day Three. A Rout in the Night

  I LEFT THE GAME sometime before twelve thirty AM. I couldn’t come any earlier because I had a huge amount of affairs in the castle that just had to be attended to. While I sorted through all the new purchases, I spoke with my subjects who wanted a reception with the Dark Sovereign, then the newcomers got sorted out. I extinguished the conflicts between my various regiments of cutthroats and... I was immeasurably tired and practically falling off my feet in exhaustion. Not long before exiting, at exactly midnight, I watched four skills tick up by one as promised by my blessing:

  Warchief skill increased to level 26!

  Diplomat skill increased to level 30!

  Foreman skill increased to level 79!

  Animal Control skill increased to level 66!

  What could I say? My plea to the gods had worked and, with every day, not only my skills were going to grow, but also my fame and attractiveness to all kinds of NPC. Given that there was no time limit to the blessing, my hardest task would be somehow holding out for the first and most gruesome days before new recruits and settlers started arriving in sufficient number.

  Also, at every convenient chance I drank blood, leveling Taste Tester. I had only drunk from alchemy vials so far. We’d bought lots of them for delivery by magical messenger. It hadn’t even come to the living creatures in cages and enclosures yet. Sure, this way I was not improving my Taste for Blood, which increased my damage in melee combat. But I figured the animals could wait, while the packaged blood might go bad. And there were just too many prying eyes around. For me, killing a victim with Vampire Bite and sucking out its blood was something of a secret, almost intimate process, not something to do around strangers. It may sound dumb, I won’t argue. But I was still ashamed to do it in front of my NPC servants.

  My Goblin Herbalist’s Taste Tester stat would gain an interesting perk at level two hundred, too. From then on, sunlight wouldn’t hurt him for the first three seconds. In other words, if the odd beam of sun touched my Amra, I had three seconds to find
shelter before it started to eat away my vampiric flesh. It wasn’t much, of course, but those three seconds could be the difference between life and death.

  I also decided to take advantage of the character modifications Amra earned at level seventy and eighty. I thought over possible options for a long time. I wanted to increase my hitpoints for better survival and resistance to physical damage. But the idea of raising poison resistance from its present 80% to an even greater 83% was also quite intriguing. But in the end I decided not to stay on my chosen path and bring down my character’s visibility. The Dark Sovereign was the most obvious priority target for enemy archers and all other ranged characters, so I wanted to make sure they couldn’t see me from afar. Another minus 6% or 7% to visibility distance would mean that, combined with my Stealth skill, which reduced discovery radius by 20%, I would now have a very respectable minus 48%.

  Another important task I was thinking about all evening was selecting a strike brigade of three hundred warriors for the upcoming attack. Why exactly three hundred soldiers, and not more? Well, the portal only stayed open for a minute, and we calculated in a training session that 300 was the maximum number of NPC’s that could get through an open portal before it slammed shut. Five soldiers per second, more simply wouldn’t fit. That brought us to a total of three hundred.

  And among that elite strike force I had fifty battle-tested orc pirates under the command of First Mate Ziabash Hardy who had already followed me through fire and water. I also took fifty elite rougarou warriors from the various clans, and placed the druid Uvari-Dor-Shu at their head. I also had one hundred Drow elf archers, all of them alike as peas in a pod and flawlessly obedient. As the elves didn’t have their own leader, I had Vaash the troll lead them. He was an experienced and reliable commander who enjoyed great respect as a hand-to-hand combat trainer.

  The last hundred were a bunch of high level minotaurs, giants, trolls, skeletons and ghosts, and I appointed my good friend Shrekson Bastard to lead them. The Ogre Fortifier had just finished building the mountain dam and came into the castle for new orders. After finding out about the night’s attack, Leon was very inspired and started asking to be taken with even just as a simple hand-to-hand fighter. I could understand Leon, too. Two days of uninterrupted boulder dragging and rock hauling... maybe all that was good for the Fortifier’s skills, but he must have been tired of such monotonous gameplay both physically, and above all emotionally.

  So I didn’t take him as a common soldier, because I was looking for a living leader for the difficult mixed squadron of NPC monsters. Actually, before Leon came into the castle, I was considering my sister to control the third hundred, but I ended up deciding not to bother Valeria again. Let her have a relaxing evening with her new friend, not worrying about the upcoming battle. Also, Valerianna already had plenty of other important missions.

  After hearing he’d been appointed commander of the third hundred of monsters, Leon spent a long time thanking me for my trust. Then he called his family and told them he was staying to work the night shift. So the enemies tracking our online activity (and many participants of the Dark Sovereign event likely had me and my friends in their tracking list and were watching our every coming and going) wouldn’t suspect anything, Leon and I agreed to leave the game. Then we would come in together just before the attack at three o’clock in the morning.

  To help the Ogre Fortifier, I initially wanted to reinforce his squadron with a couple powerful cyclopes. But the one-eyed giants were going to spend the whole night conducting a funeral ceremony for their deceased compatriot, and I didn’t have the gall to violate their norms. My relationship with the cyclopes was already strained, so I risked inciting a riot in their ranks. It wasn’t all so smooth with the minotaurs either. But after the public execution of the most impetuous and unmanageable horned titans, the others were at least keeping their dismay hidden better than the cyclopes, who openly trumpeted their frustrations.

  However I found another way to reinforce, adding ten ghosts to my night squad. These NPC fighters already weren’t the fastest or easiest to manage, and their undead nature also warranted consideration. For example, they would be unable to restore health with elixirs or healing magic, and were extremely vulnerable to enemy necromancers and holy magic. But at that, ghosts were nearly invisible at night, could fly, were not solid and could pass right through any fortification. If used correctly, all that overcame every downside.

  Among the ghosts, I intentionally chose a level-125 Grave Curse with an extremely striking ability to suck away stat points, experience and even whole levels. For living players that must have been the worst enemy imaginable, above all psychologically. After all, no one would like to see their dear character’s stat points go down! And adding to the rather nasty properties of this undead creature, it ignored armor and was totally immune to physical damage, poison, acid and elemental magic, which made the Grave Curse a simply ideal weapon against unwieldy armor-bound knights and their front-line shield-bearers. And using it against enemy pets and mounts would be especially effective. As a rule, their only big advantage was high hitpoints and thick hides. They could only attack with teeth and claws, and in rare cases poison. And although my huge army had a huge number and variety of ghosts and spirits with all kinds of abilities and properties, there was only one Grave Curse with this very specific combination, so I decided to make a concerted effort to level it up. I gave Leon a clear order to protect that undead warrior, not risk him without good reason and be sure to keep him alive until the end of the battle.

  So then, a brief moment of respite. I had just two and a half hours to eat a quick meal and sleep just a bit before my next entry into the game. I crawled out of the virtual reality capsule and, not even getting dressed, walked on shaky legs into the neighboring room. I was lured in by the intoxicating aroma of food. And there was indeed a beautifully set table with a bucket of half-melted ice containing a dewy bottle of champagne along with some dishes full of food. And under the candelabra, which was laden with still unlit candles, there was a note from Tina:

  “Timothy, I waited until midnight, but you never showed. It isn’t very nice to break a promise to spend a romantic evening with a person. And meanwhile, I have some important information for your ears only. Same place tomorrow at 8:30 PM. Don’t be late!

  P.S. The surveillance cameras in your room have been turned off by order of President Thomas Heywood.

  Tina”

  What??? When had I promised Tina a romantic evening? That just didn’t happen! I remembered my answer clearly. I merely said I didn’t object to her sometimes coming to visit me in my room after the work day ended. Could someone seriously take such neutral words as a specific invitation? Also there was some kind of “important information for my ears only...?” What, I wanted to know, had the director’s assistant come up with now? And finally, the “video surveillance was off.” Nice of course, but why draw my attention to that?

  Well, I would have to think it all over, but I was too tired after this endless day. I wasn’t going to fill my head with such difficult questions now. After a quick dinner, I fell back on the sofa and instantly went out like a light.

  * * *

  I FELT LIKE my head had barely touched the pillow when my alarm clock started clanging, telling me it was time to get up. Yes, it was five minutes to three AM. Time to go into battle and repel the enemy warriors attacking my territory from all directions. Doing that during the day was impossible for many reasons, above all because there were too many enemies online and the rays of the sun might kill me.

  So then, loading...

  Successful check for Cold Resistance!

  I gave a fitful shiver. What a deep freeze came over my lands at night! Flocks of snow were careening down from the dark and cloudy sky. At least it wasn’t that piercing wind that raged last night. I appeared on the square before the palace, where three hundred NPC soldiers were already finishing lining up into even rows. The commanders gave the last or
ders, the general mood was best described as martial.

  “Captain Amra, your orcs have grown bored and yearn for battle!” announced First Mate Ziabash Hardy, walking up to me.

  The huge scarred orc had refused all the new weapons and armor, still preferring the curved pirate saber and thick leather vest. Today he had reached level 120 and looked very fearsome. Not lagging a level behind though was the equally tremendous ten-foot-high mountain troll Vaash, whose disproportionately long and unbelievably powerful arms could snap my enemies in two. And Leon walked up too, yawning:

  “Everything is ready, Amra. My hundred is all here. Where are we headed?”

  I had not in fact shared my plans with anyone until the very last minute, even my friends. I had limited myself to general information like saying we would attack at night. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust my friends, it was just that we were probably being watched by many Boundless Realm Corporation employees, and I could no longer guarantee that they were neutral parties.

  Nevertheless, before revealing my plans, I asked Leon to apologize to Tina for me in the morning. I just felt awkward knowing that she waited for me all evening while I was just in the next room.

  Poor signal quality

  If connection problems persist, the Boundless Realm client will be forced to close