“Where’s the rest of your crew?” I asked Burp when I counted only four of his band.
“Gone,” Burp shrugged, then made chewing motions with his lipless mouth.
“Are you from our world, Burp?” I stared him in the eye.
Nothing but black pools met mine.
“World up there,” Burp pointed at the closed portal above us.
“I’ll try to get you out,” I said to Burp.
“Home good. Fight good,” Burp grunted.
“Oz,” I yelled. “Can you open the door again?”
“I don’t know. Probably, but I’ll need more time,” Oz called back.
“Dammit,” I groaned.
Oz drew his shiny new sword, took a few steps down the passageway and then broke into a run.
“I guess we’re doing this,” Karian said and took off after him.
“Guys,” I called. “Clear out of the way and I’ll try to melt them.”
They must not have heard me, idiots.
“Come on lad,” Thandroot said. “Let’s get ta killin’.”
I nodded at Thandroot, and we took off in pursuit. I guess Burp and his boys must have got the fighting bug as well because the four of them lifted their weapons, and turned to face the skeletons. With a howl, they surged forward, green and angry creatures the size of eight-year-olds with really sharp weapons.
“Fine. Let’s go do some damage,” I said.
With staff in one hand and mace in the other, I followed Thandroot into battle.
“That’s the spirit,” Thandroot unlimbered his massive maul and held it aloft with both hands.
“I want to go on record and state that this is a really bad plan,” I said.
“Noted,” Thandroot shot me a crazed smile.
Together we set out to do battle.
Oz leaped into the air and kicked the first skeleton in the chest.
The skelly meant business, but he was too slow with his sword. The ugly bastard slammed backward into a pair of partners, and they literally went down in a heap of bones. But there were at least half a dozen more behind them.
Karian swept in with her dual knives and slammed one of them into a skeleton’s head. He tried to back away and left her holding her blade, with the skull still attached. Karian shook off the remains of the head while Oz came back at the next skeleton up for an ass beating.
Thandroot waded into the mess and let out a whoop of a laugh before swinging his maul around. The heavy weapon crashed into a skeleton and slammed it into the wall, obliterating most of its midsection. Burp and his boys, although to be honest some of them may have been female, stood around with their eyes on the action. Then Burp must have gotten his courage up because he said something in his guttural goblin language to the little green fellow next to him. They nodded at each other, let out a howl, and then wove in between Karian, Oz, and Thandroot, to take out the downed skeletons.
I wanted to blast a few, but no one would get out of my way.
“Hey guys, while they're choking the passageway, back up. I have an idea,” I said.
Oz didn’t even look at me. He spun around and delivered a beautiful kick to another skeleton’s head. The rotter looked almost surprised as his head turned nearly 180 degrees to the left.
I summoned the frost spell and moved from left to right each time, almost touching the opposite wall as I tried to pick out a target.
Burp and one of his fellow goblins dragged a skeleton by the feet out of the melee, knocking him back over as it tried to get back on its feet. When they were clear of the battle, the goblins beat the ever living shit out of the undead guy with weapons, fists, and feet, then rifled through his belongings taking out coins, and a sweet looking dagger.
“Jesus,” I muttered as they finished off the skeleton and went back to drag down another one.
“Can I get a shot in?" I yelled to my companions.
“Swing that mace, lad,” Thandroot howled with glee before doing something with his hands that sent a blast of pure white against the horde. As a mass, the remaining dead staggered and bones flew down the hallway.
By the time I managed to wiggle between Thandroot’s maul, Karian with her knives, and Oz’s kicks and punches, there wasn’t much left. I couldn’t even count the number of newly dead—undead—but it had to be more than a dozen. One of them raised its head, and I would like to say it looked at me, but it didn’t even have eyeballs in its sockets. I smacked it in the head with the mace, and it stopped moving. My XP bar bounced up a fraction.
75/800
I was never going to make my level at this rate.
“What a mess,” I said as we gathered together.
A sheen of sweat covered Oz’s face. He dabbed at his forehead with the back of his sleeve, and then brushed skeletal remains off his armor.
“We owned those guys,” Oz said.
“Yep,” Karian agreed as she pulled someone’s hair and part of their face off her head and dropped it to splatter to the wet tiles.
The goblins didn’t waste any time and dug around the skeletal remains for treasure.
“Hey, save some for us,” Oz strode into the mass of bodies, leaned over, and looted a few coins. Then he let out a low whistle.
“Find anything good?” I asked trying to keep the disappointment out of my voice. I hadn’t been able to get a single kill in while my friends had blocked the entire hallway.
“Yeah,” Oz said from a kneeling position and held up a crossbow.
“Can you use that thing?” I asked.
“Don’t see why not,” Oz said and then pulled a small quiver of bolts off the belt of a skeleton whose body lay in a bunch like a pretzel made of flesh and bones.
Oz stood and looked over his prize.
Karian put her hand on the wall and took a few deep breaths.
“Are you okay?” I asked her.
“Of course. Just a little winded,” she said. “That’s the kind of workout that Pilates doesn’t prepare you for.”
“You do Pilates? I thought that was like medieval torture,” Oz said.
“No, Oz. Traipsing around this world with you dorks is medieval torture,” Karian replied.
“Hey,” I said, hurt.
“Just kidding,” Karian laughed. “You guys are alright I guess.”
That was something.
Thandroot lifted a skeleton by its ratty leather top and stared into its eyes. The creature’s mouth opened and closed so he crushed its forehead in with the sharp point of the maul.
“See you in hell,” Thandroot glared at the now stiff corpse.
“So, Kevin, or Thandroot,” I turned to Thandroot. “Mind telling us more about why we are here?”
“Walk and talk,” Thandroot said, and moved down the hallway. “I hear more creatures up ahead.”
Karian joined me as I followed the dwarf. She looked into my eyes, but I couldn’t read her expression.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she frowned. “No. It’s not nothing.”
“What’s nothing?” Oz asked as he joined us.
“Us being here. I had a feeling it was something to do with what I helped work on, but they didn’t tell me anything. They said we were revamping an old zone with some new AIs and art. But when I got to work on the area it was like they were making something new. That was almost a year ago, though. Then all of my work was yanked, and they forced me to sign a bullet proof NDA or lose my job, work, and all of my stock.”
“Sworn to secrecy? Do you work for the CIA or something?” Oz said.
“Those NDAs are not the kind of thing you want to break. Trust me,” Karian said.
“That’s true. When I was working on the VR interface, it was like that. But I never got a prototype or even saw one until the last day I was in our world,” Thandroot said.
“Wait a goddamn minute,” I stopped in my tracks. “You guys are acting like this is all old news, but it’s new to me.”
“And me,” Oz grumbled. “I didn’t a
sk to be here.”
“I did. Sort of. I didn’t believe that the technology was advanced enough, but here we are,” Thandroot smiled.
“You’re actually enjoying this,” Karian said.
“Of course I am, lass. This is what I’ve worked my entire professional life toward. A living, breathing world where I can be a dwarf if I want to. Or even a priest,” Thandroot said.
“Wait. How did you get to be a dwarf? We came into the world looking just like we look in the real world,” I said.
“It’s a game. You can become whoever ya like as long as you have the coin. There’s a fella in Glimmerdeep who can change your appearance.”
“That’s disconcerting,” Karian frowned.
“I don’t know. I like this form, and if I tire of it, I can change. Maybe an elf next time,” Thandroot said. “You’d be an easy upgrade to an elf.”
“Yeah. Not gonna happen,” Karian said.
“I’m not buying any of this,” Oz spat. “I want out. I want to go back to our world. Tell me how, Kevin… Thandroot… whatever the hell your name is.”
“That I can’t help you with,” Thandroot said sadly. “But I suspect there is one person who can.”
“Who might that be?” Karian asked.
“Falstace, of course. He’s one of the creators of the game, at least, I suspect he is. I don’t know what he’s up too exactly, but it’s some nefarious shit,” Thandroot said. “Why do ya think I tagged along?”
“I’m about two seconds from walking away from all of this bullshit,” Oz said.
“Me too,” Karian said.
“Falstace,” I whispered. If he was a player from our world making our life hell, then who was Leefser?
I shuddered as pieces started to fall into place again. But before I could voice my thoughts a sound roared from ahead of us.
“Who dares enter the catacombs?” a deep voice intoned from ahead.
We stood in a tight circle and as one turned to regard the issuer of the question.
“Who?” it asked again.
Thandroot hefted the maul and tightened his grip until his knuckles were white.
“I’ve got a bad…” Whatever Karian was about to say died on her lips as a fireball the size of a large watermelon lit the passageway ahead.
The frost spell was in my head before I even had time to think about a strategy. I held my hands aloft and shouted, “Everyone down!”
Hoping my aim was true, I unleashed the spell and the blast of ice. The two spells met, dueled it out in a flash, and then the fire splattered over the walls in a sizzle as the flame was snuffed out.
Whoever shot at us had ducked out of sight now. We moved quickly before he could shoot at us again and then spread out as we came to a large room.
Figures stood at the four corners. They wore dark robes that glistened with fierce blue and angry red runes that pulsed with energy. I tried to focus on one, get a read, but their auras weren’t visible. In the center of the room sat a pedestal with a chalice, a bunch of bright stones, and a shard of crystal much like we had seen at the binding stones. This one floated over a two-foot tall sculpture of a woman in flowing robes reaching for the heavens.
Thandroot grabbed my arm and held me back from unleashing another frost spell. The figures in the corners had not acknowledged us yet, so I planned to hit one before they became aware.
Oz crept toward the room, found a shadow, and disappeared from view.
Karian slid her daggers out of her sheaths and held them level to at her sides as she followed Oz.
“What?” I whispered to Thandroot.
“Hold on. This isn’t going to go any way we expect, lad. Just trust me,” he said and reached into his vest.
Thandroot withdrew a thick ring and handed it to me. I took the piece of jewelry without a word and studied the piece. The band was plain iron and appeared to be have been pounded almost flat by small hammers because indentations marked the surface. The main piece itself had a series of stones set around a star that had too many points. More than I could count and I tried, but every time I thought I had focused on one point my vision swam and it seemed to move to the side. The gems themselves were multi-faceted although some sparkled like diamonds. Set in the center was a black stone that seethed as if encased.
“What is this?” I asked.
“Just wear it. We don’t have time to go over why, but you’ll know when the time comes why I’ve given it to you,” Thandroot whispered back.
“This is some Star Wars force bullshit. Tell me what this is,” I shot Thandroot an imploring look.
“Let’s just say that Leefser wanted ya to have it,” he said, then spun away and yelled. “To battle.”
The last two words he roared and then surged forward with the maul held high. Whoever had unleashed the fireball came out from behind the wall and lifted his hands as he primed another spell. Thandroot ducked, and then surged forward and swept his maul up. The heavy weapon smashed into the robed figure’s legs and lifted the fallen cultist off the ground.
“For Leefser,” Thandroot yelled. The robed figure folded up around the blow, struck the wall hard enough to make a sound like a sack of meat dropped from a roof, and then crumpled up.
The figure near the back of the room spun, and his cowl fell open revealing a face adorned with small black stones that ran alongside his nose, around his eyes, and up his forehead. Tiny black and angry shapes that glistened and sucked the light away from the shard in the center of the room.
He lifted his hands, but I was way ahead of him. The acid spell triggered before the guy in the robe could get a spell off. Liquid hissed from the ceiling as it splattered the immediate area around him. He screamed in pain as his own spell triggered. A fireball formed and then exploded as it hit the noxious gas given off by my spell.
In the confined space, the boom was immense and heat rushed out. I hit the ground, as did Karian and Oz. He was the closest to the explosion, but he dove into a corner and put his hands on top of his head. The roof shook, and pieces of tile rained down to clatter across the ground and splatter in the muck and water.
I spun around and threw my hands over my head to prevent the expanding fire that licked the ceiling from burning my face off. Something hit me hard in the lower back, and I flew off my feet and splashed across the wet ground.
Burp and his buddies ran down the passageway in the opposite direction screaming and grunting in their peculiar language.
I lifted my head to take in the damage. There wasn't enough of the robed figure to piss on.
“I guess that takes care of the fallen cultists.” Thandroot shook his head and peered around the ritual chamber.
I checked my HUD and realized I had leveled up in the fracas. Holy hell, I had made not just one level but surfed well over to level 9.
435/1000
My mana pool surged and expanded as did my health but not to its maximum and that was odd.
Then the pain hit. I gasped and looked back to find, much to my horror, that a dagger had got me in the back. I reached for it, wheezed in pain, and then thought better of trying to dig the dagger out of my own flesh.
“Help,” I screamed in pain as my senses went into overdrive.
Thandroot rushed to my side and pushed down on my back. “Don’t move, lad. I’ll have you fixed up in a jiffy.”
“Gah!” I gasped as the agony raced around from my lower left quadrant.
“Hold steady,” Thandroot said.
Thandroot grasped the dagger, and I looked back with pleading eyes. Before I could protest, he yanked it out of my back and that set off new pain receptors I didn’t even know existed.
“Mother…” I didn’t get to finish because he pressed his hand over the wound.
Thandroot uttered words, and that soothed me, calmed my mind, and then the pain faded.
I shot out from under him, stumbled up to my knees, and yanked the robe up to find the wound. Somehow it had managed to locate the space directly below
my armor and just above my ass. I rubbed at the injury and was rewarded with a palm covered in blood. My blood! But the wound had sealed, and now there was a line marking a new scar.
“Oh my freaking god that hurts,” I gasped.
Karian came to my aid and offered a vial filled with red fluid. I pulled the cork and took half of it down in one long gulp. The pain faded but it still felt like I had slept wrong and the muscle wasn’t happy with me. But at least the dagger was out, and I wasn’t bleeding out.
“Where did the dagger come from?” Oz faded out of a shadow.
“That one,” Thandroot pointed at the figure I had flattened with the acid spell.
“I didn’t even see him throw it,” I said in disbelief.
“Because he didn’t. Must have been on his belt and the explosion drove it into your back as you spun away. So keep that in mind the next time you want to blow something to the bloody heavens,” Thandroot warned.
“Hey. I had my spell off before he did. I didn’t know it was going to take out everyone in the room,” I said defensively.
“Nearly got me. I hit the ground so fast the flames passed over my head. Not so much the guy I stabbed,” Oz said, and pointed at the charred figure of the pebbled faced cultist in the far corner. Smoke still rose from his robe, but he wasn’t going anywhere. His hair and most of his head resembled a ham left in the oven for about twelve hours.
The smell wasn’t much better.
“I got them all.”
“Guess so,” Oz frowned.
I grinned because they had killed a whole damn hallway of skeletons without my help. Taking out four of the fallen cultists had pushed me up a full level and then some.
Karian put her arm around me and helped me to my feet. I stood with one leg cocked and used her help to stay upright.
“Are you going to be able to walk?” she asked as she looked up at me.
“I think so,” I said unwilling to admit that I didn’t mind her help at all.
A piece of something from one of the skeletons marred her flawless complexion. I picked it off and then tossed it on the ground. Karian flushed and then wiped at the spot with the back of her hand.
“Thanks,” Karian said.
SHARDS OF REALITY: A LitRPG novel (Enter the Realm Book 1) Page 27
