As far as small talk went, we were really nailing it.
Karian stopped in her tracks and looked skyward. A fresh copse of trees lay just ahead, and something moved in the high branches. I peered upward and found a large bird.
“Hmmm,” Thandroot said.
The bird stretched its wings and swooped out of the tree. A second one followed close behind.
“Those things are so gross,” I said.
“Harpies. To arms,” Thandroot unlimbered his maul and charged ahead.
I readied a spell but then reconsidered. These mobs were able to fly, so my new acid spell was out of the question unless they came to the ground and hung out together. I could try an ice blast, but the harpies were probably fast and would easily avoid the shots.
I considered my mace, but I would have to get close.
The lead harpy swept in and buzzed over Oz. Her face was a mess of boils, and she squawked like a bird but in a shrill voice. Oz leaped into the air and threw a kick, but she was gone in a flash.
The second harpy dropped low, and Karian slashed with her knife, but the beast was too high up.
“They’re testing us,” Thandroot said.
I concentrated on the first harpy, and her aura became apparent. Yellow. She would be a challenge to me, but not so much to the four of us together.
They came in for another pass, and Thandroot swung his maul upward. The long-hafted weapon smashed into the harpy’s wing and sent her spinning. Before he could deliver a follow-up blow, Karian was there and drove her long knives into the beast's back. The harpy thrashed as the blades sank into her, shrieked what I could only assume to be a curse, and then went still except one long set of talons that scratched at the ground.
The second harpy came right at me. I ducked and followed Thandroot’s lead by swinging the staff around. It struck her head, and she veered away as she also crashed to the ground. But she was back on her feet in a split second, wings flapping as she sought to leave the field. Oz followed up with an impressive forward kick that sent her reeling again. The harpy slashed at him with a claw as she kicked off the ground.
I was right in her path and swung the staff again, battering her wing. She turned and hissed at me, so I clocked her across the face with the staff. “You’re one ugly bitch, know that?”
A shudder of revulsion ripped through me because she smelled like she had bathed in urine and old vomit. Greasy wings, a body that was an amalgamation of breasts covered in feathers, and a sleek bird’s body that ended in long, powerful legs and claws. The harpy thoroughly grossed me out.
The harpy’s head shot forward as she tried to bite me. I hopped back, and Thandroot came in with his maul and crushed her head. Blood squirted as did pink brain matter, and one of her little beady eyes popped loose and dangled by its optic nerve.
Oz scanned the trees looking for more. I crossed my fingers that we had taken them both out. Chitterlings were gross. Bears were overpowered, and Junt had been a mountain, but none of them had grossed me out like this flying nightmare.
I glanced up, and my XP bar shimmered and then advanced a few ticks.
“Those things are disgusting,” Karian said as she nudged it with her foot.
“If we run into another nest, I say we take off and nuke it from space,” Oz shuddered. “It’s the only way to be sure.”
“I’ve no idea what a space nuking is, but I approve,” Thandroot said as he turned his back to us and reached for his breeches.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Pissing on these beasties,” he said.
I turned away just as a stream of urine hit one of the dead harpies.
“Wait. Leave the other for us,” Oz said.
“What? Why?” I asked in confusion.
“For the loot. We need to check the corpses for loot, duh,” Oz said like I was an idiot.
“You go right ahead and search that stinking corpse for treasure,” Karian said and turned away in disgust.
“Take that to hell with ya,” Thandroot said and let out a hearty laugh.
WE CAME to the hedgerows twenty minutes later and ran into our first real problem. They were thorny bushes that grew close together. Little red berries sat among the nightmare foliage and invited us to partake. I couldn’t remember this fruit from the old game and assumed just one would kill us.
“Damn sight, that is,” Thandroot stood before an impregnable ten-foot-tall bush.
He touched one of the berries, held it aloft, and studied it.
“Let me guess, instant death if you eat one,” I nodded thinking of the fern a few hundred yards back.
Thandroot popped one in his mouth and chewed, then he picked another, “No. These are quite good. They make a brandy out of them up in the Vale of Frostmouth, then they leave the caskets in the snow for a week. Pungent brew but it will do ya fine in the cold of winter.”
“Really? These bushes look so ugly,” I said and dug at one with the end of the staff in an attempt to figure out how we were going to break through.
“Can we hack past them?” Oz said and pulled his sword.
Oz swung it hard and a few pieces of branch fell. He tried again, and a couple of berries joined the little pile of debris. Through the pieces he had cleared I could make out thicker branches.
“You’re going to take forever,” Karian said. “Any ideas, Thandroot?”
“Not at this juncture. That is one bastard of shrubbery if I have ever seen one,” Thandroot said, but picked another berry and chomped on it.
I tried one and found it was a lot like a cranberry. Tart, but refreshing.
“Walt? You got anything?” Karian said.
“Maybe ice can make the branches brittle. If I had a fire spell I could burn through it but that might destroy the entire hedgerow, and if any enemies are on the other side they would be alerted.”
Karian sighed and walked fifteen or thirty yards along the plant’s perimeter.
I dug out the map again, but it offered no clues. While the hedgerow was marked, it seemed like the map-maker assumed someone would be able to find a way around it. From the look that wasn’t going to happen unless we started walking. The issue was a couple of steep hills rose to the west, and they featured a sheer drop that would be hell to climb without gear.
“Hey guys, look at this,” Karian called.
As we approached, I saw it as well. Part of the hedgerow looked different from the rest in that it was greener and lusher. She put her hand on a growth and pulled. The branch slid back, and something scraped the ground.
“It’s a bloody hidden path,” Thandroot grinned.
He grabbed a thick part of the branch, gave a grunt, and then pulled. The section of hedgerow came out in a square a little taller than Thandroot and wide enough for us to pass.
“Son of a bitch,” Oz said and grabbed hold as well. “I guess you get a bonus to perception, Karian. Good secret door find.”
Thandroot and Oz pulled together. Branches snapped, berries and debris rained down, and in a few seconds, the man-made, camouflaged entry way was revealed.
The only question was, who had created it, and what were they protecting?
21
IT’S A SMALL WORLD
When I began playing Realms of Th’loria, I didn’t care about how many points an individual kill got me or how many points it took to get to the next level. I was well aware that many players knew precisely how much XP they could gain for every action in the game. They kept notebooks and poured over forums to calculate the shortest route to every goal. These were the same guys who wanted to min/max their characters, a process I thought was stupid.
Min/Max players poured points into particular skills or attributes at the expense of others. So a warrior type might forego magic entirely and concentrate only on strength and dexterity. But a magic user who dumped all of his skills exclusively into intelligence and mana and forsook anything else had a hell of a time during the early hours of the game and were referred to as
glass cannons. Sure, they might become capable of lambasting mobs in the later game, but I didn’t think it was that great of a way to play.
What did I know? My entire world had literally been turned upside down, and I was stuck in a game for real. Which begged the question: How were we supposed to allocate our primary stats? Up until this point, I hadn’t seen a single reference to any of the major statistics.
Was there a way to put points into my intelligence or did it happen automatically? Honestly, I didn’t feel one bit smarter since I got here. In fact, I felt dumber much of the time.
The swamp lay a short distance away, and it was not a pretty sight. Bubbles rose from the noxious surface of the green standing water. Saw weed grew in thickets with long yellowed leaves sprouting out in clumps. A flower grew here, but a horsefly the size of my finger lighted on one and was snapped out by the purple- and yellow-striped nightmare.
My new chest piece itched like hell under my robe. I tried to shift it around, but the armor was a bit too small for me. I had sought to adjust the straps along the side but they were a too short. I probably could have worn it under my shirt, but the thought of having someone else’s sweat and grime all over my skin made me feel gross.
My sweet mana-increasing pendant swung and thumped against the piece, giving a hollow thump every time I stepped over a hole or stepped off a rise on the ground.
“Can I see that map?” Oz held out his hand.
“Sure,” I said and shifted my upper body to try and turn the chest piece around.
“If that armor bothers you so much, why are you still wearing it?” Oz asked.
“I don’t have any protection spells,” I said. “Besides, I might become a battlemage. I like the mace, and I like using magic.”
“That’s cool. I like kicking stuff. Plus those Calia Rai guys taught me a few other things that might come in handy in the catacombs,” Oz said.
“What kind of stuff?”
“I put a few points into trap finding and how to open stuff,” Oz said.
“Damn, dude. I didn’t know you were going to become a rogue,” I said with a grin.
“Why not? I think it would be a cool profession. Plus I can sneak around once I get a few more levels,” Oz said.
“Good skills to have when off chasing dungeons and saving the land,” I said.
Slinging my satchel off my back, I placed it on a section of ground that wasn’t completely overrun with slime and opened the flap. I handed over the map and then dug out a piece of hard, dry bread crap we had purchased as food.
Oz studied the sketch while I ate. Karian and Thandroot stood together and considered the mass before us. The water looked toxic, the plants all looked like assholes, and then the mobs were sure to come out to play at any minute.
The bread tasted like sawdust, but it was filling. I pulled out a small bota bag of the mage’s tea and took a few sips. It was cold, but that was okay. It punched me in the chest, and if I’d had an alertness bar in my HUD, it would have shot across the display.
As I repositioned a few things in my pack to make it more comfortable, something moved in the swamp ahead of us. Several shapes bobbed and then sank into the murk. I squinted to try and make out what they were, but they disappeared from view for several seconds before reappearing a few seconds later and closer to our position.
They blended in almost perfectly with the water. Masses that oozed from open sores, postures, and dripped slimy water. Like muddy pigs with no legs, they left a trail as they found solid ground. There had to be a dozen, and when they turned their nightmare gazes on us, mouths with razor sharp teeth at least six inches long dripped venom.
“This map is weird. It looks like we have to walk for days, but we’ve already traveled over halfway there. The field couldn’t have been more than a few miles long,” Oz scratched his head.
“Oz,” I said.
“Hang on.” He still hadn’t looked up. “According to this, we need to veer right up ahead. Appears to be a few miles but I’m betting it’s only a few hundred feet. Damndest thing. You know you don’t think about that when you’re playing a game. It’s like, okay, here’s this big world, but at least it only takes me about fifteen minutes, at the most, to get to the next city, dungeon, or whatever happy hell you’re chasing to gain XP. Strange to see it in real life.”
These things were nasty in the game, and they hadn’t changed much over the years. One or two could be a challenge. A dozen created an outright night-fucking-mare.
I focused, and their auras appeared. Yellows and blues, but there were so many of them. Four of us meant we would have to kill three apiece, and putridfangs did not go down easy. They might be small, and disgusting, but they were also almost impossible to chop open, and because they were like slugs, smashing one meant it might just reshape and continue attacking.
“So weird,” Oz said as he annoyingly continued to stare at the map.
Putridfangs had skin like leather reinforced with chainmail. The ooze they left as a trail was toxic. Their fangs dripped poison, and they could rip through plate mail like it was aluminum foil. They were a pushover when alone, just blast them, or repeatedly stab until they stopped moving, but get a few surrounding you and it was a slow death as they ate away your feet, legs, hips, and stuff (if you know what I mean), mid-section, arms… You get the idea.
Even at later levels, putridfangs could be a threat to seasoned adventurers.
“Oz!” I yelled.
“What? Jesus, man!” Oz shot me a surprised look then he followed my gaze. “Oh, holy shit balls. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all.”
“Let’s get out of here. Maybe if we circle to the east we can find a way around them,” I suggested.
“We can take this lot,” Thandroot grabbed his sling and pulled the maul off his back.
The weapon was heavy given that it was a huge lump of shiny metal on the end of a stick. White runes covered the surface, and one of the smacking ends had points like a giant meat tenderizer while the other end had a long and very sharp point.
“We can’t, not this many, not unless we have a way to get all them at once. They’re slow, like frigging zombies, but once they close in and have you in a corner, it’s all over but the melting,” I said in warning.
Karian pulled her knives and held them aloft as if judging how best to destroy the fangs.
“What color are they to you?” I turned to Karian.
“Lots of blues,” Karian said. “But a few are yellow.”
“That’s what I figured,” I groaned.
The slug-like mobs pulled themselves out of the water and lurched toward our small group. The four of us backed up until we were nearly touching the hedgerow. We could always make a run for it. Just head back through the passageway and call it a day.
“I’m going to try something. I have a new area of effect spell that will dump acid on most of them,” I said.
“Won’t kill them. Those things secrete a kind of toxic slime,” Karian said.
“An acid cloud you say?” Thadroot asked.
“Yeah, but I haven’t tested it yet,” I said sheepishly. “I just learned it back at the mage’s guild.”
Oz advanced with his sword on the lead putridfang. The creature opened its mouth, and a foul odor came forth in a cloud. Oz swung his short sword in an overhand, aiming for its head. The weapon struck and then peeled off the thick skin as it snaked across the mob's outer membrane. The putridfang opened its nightmare of a mouth and belched a cloud of gas as it squealed in pain.
“Like this, lad,” Thadroot said and swung the maul over his head.
The thick end crushed the mob’s skull into the ground with a sickening squish.
“I want one of those,” Oz said as he backed away from the exploding slug.
The putridfang’s lower body quivered and shook as it died. Then with a fresh sickening sound, it lifted its head out of the dark earth. The maul had done damage but only in the respect that it reshaped the mon
ster’s head into something lopsided.
“Okay, then. Time to try the other end,” Thadroot said.
He swung the maul again, but this time the pointed end cleaved through the putridfang’s head and smacked into the ground. Thandroot gave a tug, then one more, and the weapon came free. The putridfang’s lower body quivered, and then it went still.
I couldn’t agree more about running, but before we could move in the opposite direction, a figure materialized behind us. A chill arrived, and the area grew cold enough to remind me of how it felt to form a frost spell. When my eyes fell on the new mob, I just about jumped out of my freaking skin. She was ethereal and ugly as sin. Wisps of gossamer clothing floated around her as she floated at least a half-foot above the ground. Big black holes where her eyes, nose, and mouth should have been completed her visage. The bitch opened her maw and howled before advancing on us. I focused for a moment and found her to be another yellow. Great! We were facing at least a dozen putridfangs, and now a ghost.
“You can cast that acid spell?” Thandroot asked as he turned to face a new threat. “Because that’s a gray wraith and she’s going to be quite the handful.”
As if to punctuate his words, the gray wraith wailed as if in pain.
“Yeah, but it probably won’t even faze them. Maybe the phantom. I don’t know. I wish to hell I had a fire spell right about now,” I said in a panic.
“Oz. Take this,” Thandroot reached into a pouch at his side and pulled out a small clay ball with a white cord hanging out of a wax sealed cork.
“This is called thunder. You take it but for the love of Leefser be careful. There’s a cord on top. You pull that, and when it starts smoking, toss it right in the center of the fangs.”
“Where did you get that?” I said in shock. Since when did the Realms of Th’loria have explosives?
“Not now. You open up with the AOE and try to target all of them,” Thandroot ordered me.
“Is this going to work or is it going to get us all killed?” Karian asked as she backed away from the threats surrounding us.
“Like we have a choice in finding out?” Oz said in a flat voice.
SHARDS OF REALITY: A LitRPG novel (Enter the Realm Book 1) Page 22
