Village of Noobtown: A LitRPG Adventure (Mayor of Noobtown Book 2)

by Ryan Rimmel

  “The Village of Windfall,” I stated. “I am the mayor of Windfall.”

  “Well of course you are,” barked Sir Dalton. “We can all see that. Just where the hell is Windfall?”

  “In the valley,” I said, gesturing in the direction of the Western Gate Fortress.

  Porle looked confused for a moment. Then, he looked directly at me. “Noobie Valley?”

  “Well, I mean, I guess you could call it that,” I started.

  “Noobtown,” stated Lord Dookie, cracking a smile. “You’re the mayor of Noobtown!”

  “I am,” I said. When I said it, it sounded cool. When he said it, it was derisive.

  “And your name is… Jim. Well, isn’t that a special kind of adorable,” Sir Dalton said. He was barely containing hysterical laughter. I considered leaving. Well, killing him on the spot also came to mind, but it was crowded in here.

  “Yes, my name is Jim. I am the mayor of Noobtown,” I said, icily.

  “So, the mayor of Noobtown has come calling on the lord of Narwal,” chuckled Lord Dookie. “Let me guess. You have no adventurers, and you need gold.”

  “We have a few,” I said flatly, “but we could use more gold.”

  Sir Dalton jeered, “The stories of Noobie Adventurers never impressed me much.” Stepping towards me, he looked very impressive in his armor. I just stood there, not letting him intimidate me.

  You have resisted an Intimidate check. You are Novice at Resist Fear.

  I’d moved from unskilled at Resist Fear all the way up to the edge of Initiate in the Fecking Puma Forest. I’d also learned that there were things worth being frightened of. That said, Sir Dalton was not one of those things.

  Badgelor was sitting on my shoulder, obviously in his smaller form. He turned his head to Sir Dalton and licked his lips. Dalton was unimpressed with my Pug sized companion and frowned at him dismissively. I placed my hand on the badger’s back. He settled, but still gazed longingly at Dalton.

  “That one is using Lore on you,” whispered Shart, pointing to Porle. I wondered if Dalton’s move had been a distraction. It had technically worked; I had been distracted. They couldn’t see, and therefore didn’t know about, the demon warning system on my shoulder.

  The chamberlain frowned as he examined me. Normally, if you had the Lore ability you could tell a great deal about a person, including their level and skills. There were some rogue talents I possessed, like Shadowmeld, that reduced the effectiveness of Lore. There were also some magical items that did the same, and I had one of those, too. With both of those working in tandem, most people couldn’t see much more than my title and name.

  In fact, most people couldn’t even see the number of hit points, Mana or Stamina I had. This led people to vastly overestimate my level. I had considerably more Health and Stamina than Sir Dalton, and he was 5 levels higher than I was in the Warrior class. However, I also had levels in 3 other classes. That gave me, in total, 20 class levels. Even when facing more skilled opponents, I had so many more hit points that I was normally able to win. Sometimes, those wins were painful, but they were wins.

  I didn’t move, and Sir Dalton didn’t back down. He just kept standing there, entirely too close to me. Ignoring him seemed best, so, I turned back to Lord Dookie. “Would you be interested in a trade mission with Windfall or not?”

  Porle cleared his throat. “I have reviewed your prompt already. You need not make it a second time.”

  Shart whispered, “When you first offered a trade mission, they got a prompt. Porle was reading through the particulars while you were talking. The second prompt was just rude.”

  Oh, I was prompt spamming him.

  Lord Dookie rolled his eyes, then glanced over to Porle who nodded. “Yes, we could use the supplies you’d like to trade, and I have sufficient gold from the king to be able to support this trade route.”

  Sir Dalton backed off after it became obvious that I wasn’t going to budge. He returned to stand next to his lord. The difference between the two knights was very apparent when you looked at them. Dalton was a fighting man, who focused on the arms and armor of knighthood, while Lord Dookie was a commander of men, who focused on leading the charge into battle.

  “I would be happy to offer you a trade route. You have supplies that would be useful. However, there is a problem,” stated Lord Dookie, after consulting with Porle.

  There was always a problem, I thought. “What is the issue? Perhaps, I might help resolve it.”

  “You resolve the issue?” chuckled Sir Dalton. “You are a simple mayor. I doubt you could find your pants without your clerk.”

  “I am an adventurer, as well as the mayor of Windfall,” I stated boldly. “I can handle any problem that might arise.”

  “Your spirit is admirable,” stated Lord Dookie, “but misplaced here. There are threats outside these walls that would be difficult for even Sir Dalton to overcome, if I could spare him.”

  “What are these threats?” I asked, trying not to grind my teeth. I was fairly confident I could handle most problems.

  “Pumas,” stated Lord Dookie, evenly.

  I glanced around, “Pumas? Where?” Shart was looking behind me, as was proper when the hellcats were mentioned. Meanwhile, Badgelor had leapt from my shoulder onto the ground.

  “Outside the walls, you daft fool,” stated Sir Dalton. “For the past several days, no caravans have gotten through. We had previously been inundated with refugees. I became curious as to why they suddenly stopped coming. I sent my men on a scouting mission, and they discovered a massive number of pumas out there. We’ve been cut off from the High Road, and, while we aren’t quite under siege, anything smaller than a royal caravan is being cut to pieces. Anything smaller, like a few wagons from a small noobie town.”

  “That does sound bad,” I said. The puma infestation we’d already encountered had spread to all the nearby forests. A brief mental image of hundreds of eyes chasing after us flashed before my eyes. Badgelor pulled tight against my leg and was trembling ever so slightly.

  “There must be fifty of them in the northern forest alone,” stated Sir Dalton.

  “Wait, only fifty?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said, oddly.

  “Oh, if it's only fifty, I can handle that. I’ll just go, deal with the pumas, and bring back my trade wagons!”

  “Like hell you can,” screamed Shart, digging his clawed hands into my neck.

  Porle was attempting to unobtrusively make small circling gestures with one finger at his temple. Lord Dookie seemed impressed, or something. He coughed.

  “Well,” stated the lord, after a moment, “If you think you can handle 50 pumas, then, I leave you to it.”

  “I survived what you call the Eastern Forest. This will be a piece of cake,” I replied, turning and leaving. A new quest prompt had appeared.

  Quest: Clear the Northern Forest of pumas. Pumas have taken control over the Northern Forest of Narwal. Clear them and bring your trade carts through to establish a trade route.

  As I was leaving, I thought I heard Porle ask, “How does getting through the Eastern Forest have anything to do with pumas?”

  Chapter 30: The Pumas

  We left town through the gate at the northern part of the city. I was still unarmored, but I had better weapons this time. I was never going to be able to afford the kind of armor that repelled the vicious felines, so, it was best to just get in, do the job, and get out. I could only imagine the state of the scouts Sir Dalton had sent out. Poor bastards. I had left Blots with two gold coins and instructions to watch out for Voan until my return. As he had nothing else to do but starve, he happily agreed.

  “Fifty pumas,” stated Badgelor, twitching.

  “I mean, 50 is less than we have already killed,” I said. “Windfall needs to get this trade route going, or we are going to have problems.”

  “I have been working on an improved puma detection spell,” stated Shart, as we walked through the fields, towards the forest
. The road was well traveled, but still dirt. Apparently, due to the pumas, it was starting to show slight amounts of growth.

  “So, it works better than it did in the Fecking Puma Forest?” I asked. Several times, Shart had detected no pumas, right before we were attacked by pumas. “I hope it works properly this time. I’d hate to have to use any handy object as a shield again.”

  “Yes. I had to use even more Mana this time, but now I’m certain I’ll find any pumas that are present when I run a spell check,” he glowered.

  “Okay, we can manage this,” I said with bravado, as we walked. I reached down to scratch my side, again missing my fingers. I looked at their stumps and imagined that they had grown slightly.

  I decided to check my character sheet.

  Dismembering Injury: Missing Fingers. You have lost 2 fingers. You can recover disabling injuries due to Badger Healing. Overhealing 1/100

  Wait. They were growing back?

  “Explain injuries to me again,” I ordered Shart, as I rubbed the now itchy nubs.

  “We’ve already gone through this,” sighed the demon.

  “Yes, but the first time, you explained it wrong. The second time, we were nearly killed by pumas in the middle of your explanation. Maybe now that we are in a field and have a moment, you could explain properly. If not, I can always ask the badger.”

  Badgelor chuckled, “If you don’t know, Demon Dog, I’d be happy to tell him.”

  “Fuck you both,” replied Shart. “Okay, there are several kinds of wounds. Damage is the most basic type. It's just hit points. Usually, if something can’t cause a more severe injury, it just causes Damage.”

  Then, you have the Lingering Injuries. These are worse. They include things like sprains or other impairments. They heal faster when treated, but generally recover on their own.”

  “Next, you have Permanent Injuries. These work much like Lingering Injuries, but almost never heal on their own. They include broken bones, torn muscles, and the like. They usually require someone with Medic skills to heal them.”

  “After Permanent Injuries, there are Disabling Injuries. They are sometimes called Maiming Injuries, but only by idiots. These occur when you’ve taken so much damage to a limb that it becomes unusable. A high level healer can sometimes turn a Disabling Injury into a Permanent Injury or a Lingering Injury, depending on their skills. Magic can also be used but is more specific. A high level Life Cleric can cure just about anything. A less experienced one only works on simpler injuries.

  “Finally, after Disabling Injuries, there are Dismembering Injuries. These are almost always caused by removing parts of a body, due to excessive injury. For example, a puma might try to eat you, but only manage to break themselves off a piece.”

  “That’s dirty pool,” I stated, glaring at Shart.

  Shart had the good grace to look chastised. “Typically, these are impossible for most people to heal, ever. A few races have an ability to repair a few kinds of Dismembering Injuries, but, for the most part, you are stuck with those.”

  “Unless, you enjoy a fortified bond with a War Badger,” stated Badgelor, proudly.

  Badgelor had been correct in the Fecking Puma Forest. I thought Improved Companion Bond would only stymie the blood flow and cause the nubby wounds to close sooner. Apparently, it would also regenerate the missing fingers.

  I have got to stop making assumptions here.

  Improved Companion Bond granted a boon, depending on your animal companion. Badgelor was a War Badger, so I’d gotten Badger Health. That gave me access to an Overhealing pool.

  “And Overhealing is...?” I asked, looking down at the happy badger.

  “It's great, is what it is!” exclaimed Badgelor, cutting off Shart, as he tried to interject. “As long as one of us is at full health, we can bank hit points. Then, we spend them to heal injuries as they happen. Now that our bond is stronger, we have a shared Overhealing pool. If we spend enough points, badgers can restore most wound types. Restoring a Dismembering Injury is the most expensive, though.”

  “One hundred to one, to be precise,” stated Shart, finally managing to get a word in. “You have to convert one hundred points of Overhealing to restore a single point of Health to a Dismembering Injury. Because Dismembering Injuries are so expensive, they take a very long time to recover from.

  “Plus, storing Overhealing isn’t 1:1, right?” I asked . I’d noticed that it took me 2 hit points’ worth of Regeneration to store a single point of Overhealing, and I could only do that when I was at full health to begin with.

  After doing some quick math, I thought I would be recovering 1.7 points towards my fingers, per day. That was assuming that either Badgelor or myself stayed uninjured to bank them, and I took no new injuries. I was looking at 2 months of healing to fully restore my fingers.

  Honestly, how likely is it that I won’t be injured again, though.

  I watched the tiny Overheal bar flash into existence. It vanished just as quickly, as that healing was applied to my missing fingers.

  We stopped just outside the forest to collect ourselves. Badgelor was shuffling to my right, my weakened side, due to the missing digits. He tended to unconsciously move towards the best spot to defend me. He settled down and peered apprehensively into the forest. Shart lodged himself more firmly into my shoulder, his claws digging in.

  I drew a shortsword experimentally. Losing my fingers had really been the last straw in the forest. After that fight, I’d had almost no hit points and was seriously concerned that my blade was going to break. I’d been fighting with just my left hand, which worked almost as well. I thanked the gods that I had taken Duel Welding at level 2.

  After waving the sword around for a bit, I decided that sword play with that hand was going to be dicey.

  “Problems?” asked Shart, unperturbed by my rapid slashing.

  “I can’t hold a sword properly in my right hand,” I stated. I hadn’t grabbed a shield while we were in town, and I regretted it now. That said, my other shield had been next to worthless against the fecking pumas, so, it wasn’t a huge oversight.

  Scanning the area around me before continuing, I spotted Shart out of the corner of my eye… doing something. Please, don’t be masturbating. Please, don’t be masturbating.

  “Shart, what are you doing?” I said, trying to block him from my field of vision. It was tricky, considering he was on my shoulder. It was when I saw the large rod growing out of his waist that I slapped him off.

  “The fuck?” cried the demon, as he landed in a heap on the ground. There was a small skulled rod poking out of his… belly button. His belly button? “I’m trying to help, you daft dolt.”

  “Is that the goblin’s staff?” I asked, as Shart continued pulling. The baseball bat sized rod came free from his body with a sickening plop. With Shart only being the size of a basketball, that wasn’t just impressive; it was physically impossible.

  “I’m full of extradimensional space,” he announced proudly, like that was something people went around boasting about. “I made an opening through my belly button.” This was far from the weirdest thing I’d heard since I got here, but still.

  “So…,” I started, before trailing off. This required gathering my thoughts. “Okay, two things: why didn’t you give me the staff sooner, and how do you do that, in the first place?”

  “Look, I’ve been trying to fix the extradimensional pocket for days now. I put the rod in there, and it kind of broke. I couldn’t get anything out. Goblin magic was sort of oozing out of it,” stated the demon. “I just fixed it to the point that you could reach in without losing an arm. You seem fond of your extremities.”

  I had no reference point as to how difficult maintaining extradimensional spaces were, so I couldn’t argue the point. I decided to ask another question. “Why did you spend all that effort, if it's so hard?”

  “Well,” stated Shart, “I was getting bored with my palace and decided that it might be useful to be able to store things.
You are always walking everywhere with that giant pack. I just figured “What the heck’ and made a storage space.”

  “That’s accessible through your belly button?” I asked.

  “I had to put the opening somewhere, and I already had a hole there,” he stated. I shuttered, considering the alternatives.

  “And you’re full of extradimensional space?” I asked.

  “Yes, my insides are entirely extradimensional space. My belly button is where I set up an inventory control,” replied the demon. I decided to drop it for now. My weirdness threshold had officially been met for the day.

  “Is there anything to eat in there?” called Badgelor, as he walked over to Shart. Before the demon had a chance to protest, Badgelor shoved his head, all the way up to his shoulders, into the demon’s belly button. As Shart lost his balance and tilted backward, Badgelor vanished into the extradimensional space. A disturbing slurping sound accompanied the disappearance of his paws.

  “Can he get out on his own?” I asked, after a moment of stunned silence.

  “Probably not,” replied Shart. “And he’s biting my insides. Get him out.”

  “So, what? Do I just reach in there?” I asked, sighing.

  “Pretty much.”

  Thus, I discovered the joy of penetrating a demon. An inventory prompt appeared.

  You have access to Shart’s inventory (limited). Contents: Badgelor, goblin skeleton, 204 assorted pebbles, book: My Inner Shart, barrel (condition destroyed)

  I selected Badgelor, and, suddenly, my hand found the nape of his neck. Pulling, the badger’s head soon popped out of the demon’s belly button. One quick tug later, Badgelor was free.

  “There was nothing to eat in there,” Badgelor grumbled. He twitched once and stomped off.

  “Odd,” stated Shart. “That place is an extradimensional horror show. Most mortal minds reel, if exposed to it.”