Infinite Assassins: Daggerland Online Novel 2 A LITRPG Adventure

by Peter Meredith

  Now that he had free rein within the temple, he changed his plans. Instead of going for the head cleric, he decided to go after the peons first and like a movie monster, he stalked through the dark temple slaying at will(XP +200).

  The gallons of blood that drenched the blankets and beds of his victims tempered his rage and before he went to deal with the head cleric, he went to the bathroom and washed his hands and face. His black cloak was now wet with blood; he let it fall to the tiled floor.

  In the hour or so he’d been creeping from one room to room, there had been only one light burning in the building. It came from the offices on the first floor. Roan slunk down the stairs, his hand on the hilt of his sword. He was only a shadow as he moved down the hallway. As he got closer, he heard the tapping of a pen, the sound of parchment being unscrolled and the mumbled words of a man reading half aloud to himself.

  Roan knew the layout of the room the head priest was in. The desk was exactly twelve feet from the door—too far for a sneak attack to work. This left him with the options of either barging into the room and attacking without pretense, or waiting for the priest to finish up his work and stab him in the back as he went to bed.

  It could be hours before the man finished whatever he was doing and Roan didn’t have time to wait—he had more blood to spill before daybreak. And yet fighting a cleric of undetermined level on equal terms was trouble that he couldn’t afford.

  As he sat there stewing over the issue, a new option presented itself. The man didn’t know he was in danger; there was a chance he could be tricked. Clearing his throat, Roan tapped on the door.

  There was a creak of wood as the cleric sat back. “Come in, Ratchet.”

  Roan jerked in surprise. Moving slowly, he stepped into the room, ready to attack or to run. The cleric, middle-aged but robust, wore chainmail beneath his robes. His sword was unsheathed and leaning against the desk very close to his hand.

  “You knew I was here? For how long?” Roan guessed that it couldn’t have been too long, or he would have done something to stop him slaughtering his entire priestly crew.

  The cleric turned over the parchment he’d been reading before answering, “Both the Lady Amanda and the Archbishop told me to expect you. The one asked that I grant you every favor, while the other told me to run you out of here as fast as possible. I hoped you would take the hint when I had the guard tell you to go away but after today’s rude interruption, I figured that I hoped in vain.”

  “So, you’re saying you won’t help me?” When the man shook his head, Roan asked, “What if I gave a significant contribution to the Sun God?” He was about to bring out his pouch of gold, then a new idea struck him. He had a number of items on him of an unknown magical quality and this seemed like a good chance to get them identified.

  He pulled the wand he had taken from the corpse of the wizard he had backstabbed the night before and slid it across to the cleric who scratched his chin before touching it as if he were afraid that the wand itself was trapped in some manner.

  “Hmm,” he said when he finally picked it up and ran finger along its length. “An Inferno wand? That is considerable indeed, but…” He was hinting for more and so Roan took out the magic ring. It was unadorned silver and could have been a ring that kept soup hot for all he knew, but Roan acted as if it were precious and only reluctantly gave it to the cleric.

  When he took it, his brows shot up and a queer look swept his features. He would never be a poker player since Roan could read the expression plainly: he wanted to keep the ring for himself, however his “good” nature kept him from pocketing it.

  “You don’t know what this is, do you?”

  There was no sense lying to the man since he could probably detect a falsehood from a mile away. It was probably why he was so tense. Although Roan had yet to tell an actual lie in their short conversation, he was giving a false face.

  “I have no idea,” Roan answered.

  With even more reluctance than Roan had shown, the cleric gave back the ring. “It’s a hundred for me to identify items, but I will give you advice; don’t take it off.” Roan slid it on and waited for something to happen. Nothing did.

  The cleric kept the wand, placing it the top drawer of his desk. “The wand may be enough. What sort of help are you looking for? Healing potions?”

  “Before I answer, I do have a confession. I might have desecrated the temple a little.”

  “What did you do?” the cleric cried, jumping to his feet. Roan’s semi-truths and half-lies had him completely turned around and he was almost to the door before he realized that he had left his sword propped up against his desk. By then it was too late for him.

  Chapter 22

  The Temple of Apollo, K Street Territory

  Roan killed an unarmed man who had refused to take advantage of him. The cleric had not gone down easily and now standing over his butchered body, Roan felt his insides squirm as if they were packed in rancid oil.

  “Sorry,” he grunted and dropped to a knee to frisk the man. He almost pulled his hands back. The incriminating blood was everywhere. “Get over it,” he growled at himself, before dropping down and taking a handful of coins from a pouch and the gold disc of Apollo from around his neck.

  After that he went back to retrieve the Inferno wand. He was sure there were other items of value he had overlooked, but he didn’t need a few more coins. It was the worst sort of blood money is what he told himself but that didn’t stop him from picking up one of the magic spears—those were worth more than a few coins.

  It wasn’t quite midnight which meant he needed to get to killing. The spear wasn’t a weapon he was familiar with and it was also bulky so he searched around until he found one of the cluttered stores where adventurers and thieves sold their goods. He got eight hundred in gold for the spear and another thousand for the gems and jewels he had picked up.

  He was sure he was being ripped off, but he wanted to get rid of the excess weight. With his pouch stuffed with gold, he exchanged three thousand gold pieces for three thick wheels of gold, each worth a thousand and each weighing about half a pound.

  Finally, he bought a few items: fifty feet of rope, a grappling hook, a heavy crossbow and a new black cloak. He put the cloak on before exiting the store.

  “Twenty-five to go,” he said, heading to K Street. It wasn’t going to be easy. The streets were swarming with thugs in black and among them in groups of five or six were adventurers. Judging by them all, he suspected that the bounty on his head had jumped up.

  Trying to get his twenty-five kills on K Street was going to be impossible unless he could set things up properly. With an end in mind, he spent the next hour searching for the right place to set up one tremendous ambush. He found the right place, coincidentally enough, in a textile mill.

  This was a much smaller mill than the one Tarranon used as a mask for his headquarters. Still he was sure there was enough material within it to melt a hole in the city if only he could set it alight properly. He pulled out the Inferno wand and ran a finger along its length, feeling the power inside. Normally, only wizards could use wands but a thief with a high enough Use Magic Items score could use it.

  He had a +7 and could only hope it was good enough. There was no way for him to know how many charges were in the wand, so he couldn’t risk a practice shot.

  His best bet was to prepare the ambush as if the wand would work. To that end, he slunk about the outside of the mill testing the doors and finding them locked both inside and out. Perhaps after the fires from the night before, the owner had taken extra precautions. If so, there’d be guards inside that would have to be taken out before he could set his plan in place.

  Since the doors couldn’t be breached without making a hell of a lot of noise, Roan looked up and sighed. The warehouse was sixty feet tall and in this city of thieves its flat, sheet metal walls were almost sheer. Only along the west corner where the metal walls had been subject to years of abuse from the weather was
the seam not entirely as perfect as it once had been.

  The sheet metal was riveted to the frame of the building by four-inch long bolts. At that west corner, there was a gap of about two inches. Hooking his fingers into claws, he started scaling, hoping that his wall climbing skill of +8 would be enough to get him to the top. What was certain was that Roan wouldn’t have been able to pull off the climb even just three days before when he came into Daggerland as a first level noob.

  Up he went, the sheet metal creaking and groaning under his weight. In no way was it a quiet ascent and he had the sinking feeling that when he got to the top he’d find a dozen men with drawn swords ready to chuck him from the building. How long would it take to reach the last Potion of Flying in his pouch? It was all he could think about.

  But it wasn’t needed. There was no one on the roof for the simple reason there was no roof access. Almost no roof access. There were three vents, each with strange and unnerving scorch marks as if they vented flame from time to time which didn’t make any sense. One vent made sense, but three? He went to each and gave them a sniff. They all stank of a mixture of chemicals that he couldn’t name.

  Without a good option, he chose the largest of the vents and pulled the cover from it. The interior was completely black. He had no idea where it went but judging by the smell, he could end up in a furnace or a vat of dye. Just in case, he brought out the rope he had purchased and tied off one end over the cover, using it as an anchor.

  Then he lowered himself down the vent, his feet braced outward, whispering against the sides. Unlike the vents in the real world, this one wasn’t constructed of thin aluminum that clunked and echoed as he descended. It was sturdy and strong, absorbing the tiny sounds he made.

  Coming down the rope as he was, he felt somewhat like a giant spider. Strangely, the spider analogy in his mind was strengthened when he came to what felt like a side passage in a tunnel. Blindly, he groped along it until he came to barrier of fan blades that were sitting idle. Beyond them he could see the vast atrium of the mill which, in the dim light, looked as though it was strung with tremendous spider webs that could catch flies the size of a buffalo.

  Slipping through the blades, he found himself on a high platform standing next to what was essentially a stationary bicycle that was used to power the fan. Next to it was a four-story high ladder. He paused before going down it, trying to make out what it was hanging all over the interior of the mill.

  As his eyes adjusted to the feeble light coming from below, he saw that the “spider webs” were made of filaments of colored thread. Roan assumed that they had been dyed and had been stretched to facilitate drying. With that mystery wrapped up, he went on to the next: where were the guards?

  The only light in the structure was from a lantern burning far below in the exact center of the building. Within the aura of the light, nothing moved. Nothing moved outside of it either, but not for a second did he think the mill was empty. Along the walls, stacked on industrial-sized racks, were huge quantities of finished fabric the value of which had to be considerable.

  There had to be guards and Roan supposed that they were in some side office playing cards. Moving with all the stealth he could muster, he went down the ladder until he was standing on the dusty floor of the mill. From there he crept past the racks and the odd, multi-armed machines that turned the unworked cotton and silk into actual cloth.

  As he made his way through the cluttered building, he kept well out of the circle of light emanating from the lantern. It wasn’t easy in the dark and at one point the crossbow across his back clunked against a loom of epic proportions. It was sixty feet wide and double that in length. On it was a half-finished run of cloth that would be big enough to cover a house when it was done.

  Roan froze beside it, his ears pricked, the air in his lungs trapped as he listened. Something had heard him and was now coming closer, making a soft, undulating noise that was unlike anything he’d ever heard before. It was almost as if someone was whispering cloth along the ground. His eyes were wide and yet unseeing. Whatever was coming matched the dark.

  It was practically upon him when he remembered his magic sword. The light of from the Doom blade was shocking, but what was more so was the fifty-foot long snake slithering at him beneath the loom.

  2—

  Roan took one look at it, made a choking sound and ran. There was no way he could fight the monstrous thing and hope to win. Its triangular head had a mouth so large that it could swallow him whole and its body was a mass of muscle as thick around as a fifty-gallon drum.

  Despite its size, the snake was terrifyingly fast and caught up to Roan in seconds. He could hear its excited hiss growing louder and louder behind him and the only thing he could think to do was to throw himself into one of the strange machines.

  The closest was something that looked like it could double as either a torture device or a taffy puller. It was made of wood and spring and odd levers. Since it wasn’t exactly solid appearing, Roan leapt into it rather than onto it. One leg sunk through the cables, while the other found something firm enough to propel himself to a slightly higher level.

  The snake zigzagged under the machine and reared up on the other side. Roan slashed at it with the Doom blade and hacked four inches deep. If this hurt the snake, he couldn’t tell. It didn’t slow it, that was for certain. It lunged in, snapping five-inch long teeth onto Roan’s left arm(Damage -8HP).

  Before he knew it, Roan was being dragged from the machine and he could imagine being pulled down into some dark tunnel where he’d be slowly eaten alive by the creature. The frightening thought allowed him to overcome the intense fire-like pain and drive the sword into the snake’s left eye.

  It jerked its massive head and Roan was sent flying, landing in a bin of blue cotton that had been recently dyed. The stench of the chemicals was eye watering and strong enough to cover his odor. Forty feet away, the snake coiled itself over and over in little circles, looking for him with its one remaining eye and sniffing for him as snakes do with their flicking tongues.

  Hoping that the snake had the limited intelligence of its smaller cousins, Roan pulled a silver piece from his pouch and threw it across the mill. When it clinked and rolled, the snake shot away. Roan wasted no time. Hopping out of the bin, he ran for the ladder. Now that his sword was out in the open, its light was a beacon and the snake turned on the spot and came at the speed of a freight train.

  Roan saw he wasn’t going to make it. Near another loom was an iron girder that he hoped to use as a tactical shield against the creature; hiding behind it and leaping out to strike when he could. All he needed was to take out the snake’s right eye and it would be helpless.

  The snake did indeed have limited intelligence, but it made up for that with instinct. It wasn’t going to give Roan the chance of blinding it. Instead of attacking with its blood-dripping fangs, it threw a loop of its long body around the girder and Roan. Perhaps because it was partially blind, it also looped around the loom.

  With a ring of its body right in front of him, Roan put all of his strength behind his blows as he used the sword like an axe, looking to chop the snake in two. He drew blood and had a moment of excitement in which he actually thought he’d be able to kill the creature—then the snake squeezed.

  The loom, two thousand pounds of metal and wood, was pulled from its foundation and thrust at Roan with enough force to crush him. In the nick of time, he leapt up on it as splinters flew. The power in that coiled body was fantastic. In seconds, the constrictive power of the snake snapped the four-inch thick supports as if they had been twigs.

  Roan hacked and hacked at the snake with his magic sword until the loom came apart beneath him, forcing him to leap off. He landed on the back of the snake, but didn’t stop for one more strike. He jumped from the coils and ran for the ladder sixty feet away.

  This time he was going to make it. With its body entwined in the loom and wrapped around the girder, it took a few moments for it to get
itself unstuck. When it did, it came on so quickly that Roan was only just able to get high enough to avoid those awful teeth. The snake coiled and sprung at him, its fangs closing on the air just beneath him.

  When it landed back on the floor of the mill, Roan saw that it was gathering itself like a spring. He could only go so fast with the Doom blade in his hand and he didn’t have time to sheath it. He let it go and raced upwards as fast as he could. Thankfully, the falling blade with its white glow, distracted the snake and by the time it shot upwards, Roan was again just out of reach.

  He went up another ten feet as the snake bunched in an even tighter coil. As strong as it was, snakes were not made for jumping and Roan calmly unlimbered his crossbow and shot it in the mouth as it sprang upwards. The snake’s scales were not the scales of a dragon and its armor class was a rather unimpressive fifteen. The bolt sunk home and the snake fell grunting and hissing as it writhed uncomfortably with the bolt embedded deep within it.

  Roan barely watched. He was trying to wind the crossbow back, using only one hand. It was a slow process and by the time he was ready to fire again, he looked down to see the snake rearing upwards. Perhaps it was the shock of seeing the snake so close that fouled his aim, but when he fired, the bolt skipped harmlessly away.

  There wasn’t time to reload and Roan scampered up the ladder until he got to the platform with the stationary bicycle. With his feet firmly under him, he was able to load the weapon and fire it successfully, hitting the snake in one of its coils.

  Too late, the snake discovered that it wouldn’t be able to stretch high enough to get at Roan. “Sucker,” Roan said, loading the crossbow again. He fired as the snake seemed to condense in on itself and the bolt missed wide. Angrily, Roan started cranking back the winch.