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

by Ryan Rimmel

  The sight of those refugees’ bodies haunted me.

  I shook my head. “This is what needs done. I’ll go in there for a day or so, get a few skill ranks, and get right back to the fortress. I will make it.”

  She said nothing, because there was nothing to be said. I turned toward her and smiled, before looking down at Badgelor. “It's time to go, friend!”

  “I am not going back inside that terrible place,” stated Badgelor. “You didn’t tell me this moronic plan of yours, and I am not going back there to be mauled to death by pumas.”

  “Why, yes, we sure are going to kill those pumas,” I said loudly to Badgelor in human speak. I followed that up in Badger, “You are making me look bad!”

  Badgelor harrumphed loudly and then took a massive dump as SueLeeta and I watched. “He’s getting down to battle weight,” I told her seriously. I inwardly thanked the gods that at least he wasn’t in War Form.

  “Do I have any say in this?” asked Shart. The little demon had been less than impressed, listening to my plan in the commander’s room. He may have yelled at spots and questioned my parentage. “Dum Dum, I mean Jim, seriously, we are going to get wrecked if we go back in there. We could come up with another plan.”

  “Shut up, Shart,” I thought. “We are going, Badgelor.”

  Meanwhile, Badgelor was standing by SueLeeta. He was on his hind legs. “Please tell that insufferable moron that we are going to be delicious fare for those pumas!”

  I started marching and didn’t look back. I started about 100 logs from the forest, yards, but by the time I was halfway there, I heard a badger scream. He quickly appeared behind me.

  “You are an idiot,” he stated conversationally. “An utter moron.”

  “Good luck and farewell to you too, Badgelor,” called SueLeeta.

  “Good to see you buddy,” I responded as we formed into our patented anti-puma formation, ‘Saucer 2’. We actually made it all the way into the forest and outside SueLeeta’s bow coverage before Shart spotted the first puma.

  “Three marks at 2-10,” he stated. While my Perception skill was always active to some degree, right now I was paying as much attention as humanly possible to the slight stirring in the underbrush nearby.

  “Stir the pot?” I asked. Badgelor grumbled but found a hiding spot and vanished. Shart kept his mental focus on the new spell he was casting. He signaled that there were three pumas. When neither companion complained, I gestured toward the bush I knew held a puma.

  “Hoopie,” I cast. The arcane force formed in my right hand, but I felt some resistance. I focused harder and poured more Mana into the spell. Suddenly, my Break Wind spell activated, sending forth a wave of arcane energy. Glancing at my Mana bar, I was shocked to see that the spell’s cost had doubled. I reviewed my combat log and discovered that casting while wearing metal armor doubled the cost of simple spells.

  Good to know.

  The puma in the bush loudly farted. It was enough to startle the big cat into action. He rushed toward me. Experience had shown that the cats came in staggered. If the one in front came in first, at least you didn’t start off the battle with one leaping on your rear.

  It was your garden variety, death stalking puma, the sneaky kind that liked to leap up on you or dive down from trees. I activated Lore, just to be safe, as it rushed toward me.

  Puma: Level 8

  Health: 130/130

  Stamina: 150/150

  Mana: 0

  Skills: Stealth Initiate

  As the animal charged, it took one almost faltering step, before springing toward me from nearly 20 feet away. I sidestepped, bringing my longsword across its flank as it swung past me. My blade was slightly longer than the creature’s reach, and I was able to avoid Damage. The cat, however, got a bloody cut carved into it for 22 points of Damage.

  Unfortunately, the cats did indeed come in staggered. The next cat was already moving in to pounce while I was distracted with the first one. I spun around, but my blade wasn’t in position. The second puma managed to slice into my armor with its claws, sending me sprawling. I landed and rolled back to my feet, just as the third puma was preparing for its attack.

  The third cat encountered the true nature of the ‘Saucer’ defensive formation. As it began to charge forward, Badgelor had been changing back into his War Form. The two creatures met in midair. The puma began clawing, even as Badgelor began working his own claws and jaws. Between the two, the puma should have been deadlier, but Badgelor was far tougher. Hurting the badger was something that few pumas had managed, even though Badgelor was seldom able to down them in turn.

  What that accomplished was to break up their formation, leaving me to deal with the other two. These pumas were pack hunters, but they tended to attack in smaller groups. The largest group we’d seen was only 5. I wasn’t sure how they fought with that many, mainly because we’d run from that many as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

  Here, there were only three; I could deal with three. One rushed forward snarling, claws out and swiping madly. I activated my Dodge skill and attempted to keep it off balance. The other puma chose that moment to strike from the side. It knocked me off balance, allowing the first one to bite down hard on my forearm. Unfortunately, that was my sword arm. The second puma used that moment to attempt to rip off my leg.

  Bite damage: 16 Crushing (18 Total X 2 pinned) - (Defense 19),

  Mitigate: -5 Crushing (15 Stamina) Convert 5 Crushing to 5 Damage.

  Final Damage: 6 Crushing, 5 Damage

  Injury: None, Crushing below Break Threshold (32).

  Well, that was too much detail really, but it was nice to know that my armor was working. I only really needed to pay attention to Final Damage and Injuries, now that I understood the damage system better.

  Those very sharp teeth were still tearing into my leg quite painfully. I started kicking that puma while I drew my dagger. I attempted to stab the one gnawing on my arm, but, without my fingers, I couldn’t grip the weapon well. I ended up barely damaging the cat.

  I glanced at my gauntlet and realized that the solid piece of metal came to a triangular point. Instead of anything fancy, I just punched the creature gnawing on my arm in the eye. It snarled, attempting to claw me away with its paws. I managed to punch it again, and it pulled free. I kicked wildly at the one still gnawing my leg. After several painful kicks to its nose, I was released. I got to my feet and realized I needed to reposition myself. Luckily, I had a trick for that as well.

  Using my Thrust attack, I picked the cat that was fighting with Badgelor and lunged toward it. The other two pumas didn’t react in time, and I crossed the distance between us in the blink of an eye. I jammed my longsword into its rear for over 50 points of Damage.

  The cat shrieked, but before it could turn around, Badgelor had locked his jaw onto the puma’s throat. He began chewing, making weird nom nom noises as he did so. Fountains of thick red blood started shooting everywhere, as the other two pumas attempted to close. One’s eye was a ruined mess, and the other had a large bloody gash on its side.

  I executed Hack and Slash at my two opponents, scoring a blow on each. They were attempting to position themselves around me. That was another mistake. Badgelor had excused himself from his meal and grabbed the one with the ruined eye by the leg. Both the puma and the badger began rolling around in the lush, thick grass.

  My final attacker attempted another pounce, but I sidestepped and slashed again. The cat finally had enough and collapsed. I walked over to the pile of Badgelor and the last remaining puma. They were both attempting to tear each other apart. With the cat’s attention focused on the badger, it was child’s play to impale the creature from behind.

  “See, this is much easier,” I said.

  “I have 3 more pumas incoming. ETA, 30 seconds,” stated Shart.

  Chapter 48: Jim Strikes Back

  With the proper planning and gear, this forest was challenging, instead of impossible. Sure, we got attacked by
pumas every few minutes, and there were way too many of them. Still, our combined might was enough to push through the pumas, until we finally ran into a second problem.

  “How the hell haven’t I advanced to Journeyman Swords yet?” I groaned, sitting down in a heap. My armor was battered and dented but still had Durability to spare. My sword was still in very good shape, despite all the battles, due to its Durability and my Sword Master perk.

  Badgelor plopped down next to me before bending around to gnaw at his rear. He came up with a few puma claws a moment later. Spitting each out in turn, he said, “We’ve fought over 60 of them.”

  I felt the familiar sense of nails on a chalkboard. It was the same feeling I experienced every time Shart examined my character sheet. It was like a demon invading your soul, or at least poking around in it. “I see the issue, my boy. We are running out of higher level mobs. “

  We’d been searching the forest for hours now, generally murdering any living creature we saw. Every living creature we saw was a puma, so that was okay. While not being on the receiving end of the puma beat down had been fun for a while, we eventually got to the point where this section of the forest was getting sparsely populated. I’d found a good spot to rest for a bit, and we’d taken a break.

  Running out of higher level mobs is what I had been afraid of. The pumas had all started between level 7 and 9. As we’d continued battling, we’d been seeing fewer 9th level pumas and more 7th level pumas. Hell, Badgelor had killed a 6th level puma by sneaking up on it. The badger had sliced and diced before the cat even knew it was in trouble. Sneaking up on a puma, it just didn’t make sense.

  “That’s another thing. Why are there so freaking many pumas?” I said finally. “There is absolutely no way there is enough food for them all here. I’ve seen precious few game animals and pumas are predators. Unless they are eating other pumas, I don’t see how they aren’t starving.”

  Team Jim had killed over 100 of the cats during both trips into this hellish forest. I didn’t think that there were even 150 wolves in the entire forest in Windfall Valley. There were certainly not 150 hostile man-seeking wolves in the valley. This forest wasn’t even that big. It was maybe a few dozen acres, as it stretched off to the south of Narwal.

  The forest wasn’t cleared out yet, not by a long shot. My Great Explorer talent let me look at a higher level overview of the forest; it showed that there were still hundreds of pumas here. In fact, as I reviewed the number of cats, it seemed their numbers had replenished. They were at the same levels now that they had been prior to my last trip. That meant that over 60 cats had been replaced in just a day. What the hell is up with this forest?

  Skill progression was based on a bunch of factors. The main one was your opponent’s level in regard to your own. With the levels of the pumas slowly dwindling, I was having trouble earning the skill points needed to push my Swords skill to the next rank. That mechanic seemed to prevent people from becoming master Swordsmen simply by killing the odd assortment of rats and goblins. To Power Level my skill, I was going to need to find tougher opponents.

  “We need to find the biggest, meanest puma,” said Badgelor. That was his constant suggestion. Find the biggest creature and kill it. Of course, that was starting to make sense.

  “Can you find the highest level puma?” I asked Shart. The demon fidgeted on my shoulder for a long moment. After casting several times, he shook his head.

  “Unfortunately, no, I don’t have that kind of fidelity on my spell. We’ve almost cleared out the pumas in this part of the forest, though. Maybe we’ll find a den closer to the center of the woods, wherever that is,” he said.

  That got me thinking. I had taken the Adventurer class mainly because it synergized with my Woodsman and Warrior classes. It was a generalist class for the most part, but it actually focused on exploration. In a game world with wiki’s and bulletin boards, that wouldn’t have been very useful. However, here there was a difference.

  While I didn’t know where the center of the woods was, I wondered if it was a point of interest. I concentrated, not on the map, like I had been doing, but on my immediate surroundings. I wasn’t standing there with my eyes closed or anything. I was just generally looking around and trying to get a feel for the place.

  Nothing happened. I was spinning around like an idiot and nothing happened. I brought up my menus to review my Adventurer class and noticed the Great Explorer icon. It was lit up, just like my Duelist talent. It was a talent tree. Grumbling to myself, I selected it and brought up the talent menu.

  I wonder why nothing happened with Beast Master at level 6.

  Great Explorer was a talent tree based on Travel and Exploring. The Adventurer class automatically got the talent. By default, it made mapping easier, providing a brief overview of places you had been or were going to. Now that I was looking at the tree, I could see that wasn’t all it did. There were multiple talents for faster travel, though not a ‘fast travel’ system. I could select a talent and gain +10% to travel speed, or I could select a different talent to ignore one kind of negative terrain.

  Neither of those looked tremendously useful, so I poked around at the other talents. Detailed Mapping allowed me to generate a local map with much more fidelity than normal. I assumed it would be like my town map, but out in the wild. The town map let me zoom in far enough to nearly see a blueprint sketch of the town. Not that I used that feature very much, nor did I see it as being broadly practical.

  Then, I saw it, Explorer’s Nose. It increased your detection range of significant Points of Interest from 1000 logs to 2000 logs. Since logs were really about a yard, that would mean I could be a little over a mile away from a Point of Interest and still detect it. Points of Interest gave me experience points and would probably be locations that we were looking for. Additionally, it allowed me to sniff out minor discoveries that were nearby, whatever that meant.

  If I could detect out to a mile, it made the search for the center of the forest much easier. Given that there were pumas everywhere, I was all about that. I selected the talent.

  “I found a talent that should help us find the center of the forest,” I said, bringing up my map. “We’ll go this way and see if I can find it.”

  “Okay,” stated Shart. “I can sense a few more pumas in the other direction, so it's as good a way to go as any.”

  “Alright, but what’s with your nose?” asked Badgelor.

  I realized it was itching, and I felt like I needed to sneeze. That was odd. I didn’t recall sneezing since I’d gotten to Ordinal. Of course, do you ever really remember sneezing? I fiddled with my nose a bit, grabbing it with both iron gauntlets and pinching it slightly. I sniffed again and caught an odor I didn’t recognize.

  Unsheathing my sword, I began our slow walk; it was our standard pace, even when Shart was confident that there were no pumas about. Badgelor went to the ground, breaking off to the side. Shart redoubled his spell checking.

  I covered several paces as the odor continued to get more pronounced. Finally, I stepped into it, literally. As my foot began to drop, I realized that what I was putting weight on wasn’t earth. Jerking my foot back, I pointed my sword low. Alas, it was only a very old piece of leather. My weight had caused the ancient leather to tear somewhat.

  It appeared to be a bag. I groaned, signaling for Badgelor to come over. Driving the tip of my blade into it, I pulled. The leather came apart like old wet cardboard. A hint of something golden glimmered in the sunlight.

  You have found a sack. The sack contains 22 gold, 119 silver and 419 copper. The sack contains 2 healing potions.

  Gold was always nice, and I might have missed it without my new talent. I wondered how many other treasures I’d missed that were hidden right next to me. Taking the vials, I confirmed by the color that there were intended for healing. They would also be useful. Still, I carefully examined both. The last healing potion I’d found had contained a rather vile poison that was actually far more harmful than the he
aling effect.

  You have found 2 Potions of Healing. They will restore 20 hit points over 10 seconds.

  That wasn’t bad at all. My new talent had some potential. Plus, I’d even gained 100 experience points for finding it. Each of my classes got the same amount of experience for finding the potions, but the experience meant far more for the lower level classes than the higher level ones.

  We resumed our journey. As we continued deeper into the forest, we encountered and dispatched two more pumas. Twice, we had to change directions due to terrain; there were parts that were just too overgrown for us to continue.

  Another time, my nose started twitching. We’d followed it to a large, dead tree. The tree was freshly dead; the leaves were still attached to the branches but had all turned brown. What was truly odd were the large knots that were located all over the trunk.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d say this tree had tumors,” I stated, looking at the withered husk. The knots located all over it looked very much like tumors or cysts. Not only that, but there were deep claw marks covering the entire trunk. They reached all the way up, to where the tree branched off into limbs.

  “How do you know better?” asked Badgelor, sniffing the tree.

  “I don’t think trees can get cancer,” I said, prodding one of the tumors with my sword. It was all hard wood. The bark was more like scar tissue than anything else.

  “What’s cancer?’ asked Badgelor. He sniffed the air for a moment, before stepping away from the dead tree.

  “So, cancer isn’t a thing here, or maybe you can’t detect it?” I asked. Ordinal was weird, but maybe a world without cancer would be worth it.