The Goblin's Shadow (A LitRPG Series)

by Kyle Vauss

  “So, you’re the chief now?” I said.

  He nodded. “Of the Hunchtail clan.” Then he looked up at the stairs. “And now I need to defeat Crawford and take back my own clan.”

  We were going to leave the vault, when I looked at the oval doors on the other side. I stared at the gems encrusted around it, and I wondered what lay behind it.

  “You can open the door now,” I said. “You’re the chief, so it should let you in.”

  Gabber nodded. He walked over to the oval doors. He stood in front of them, and then pressed his palms on the metal. The gems began to glow, and a red line of light shone from each one, then linked all the gems together. We heard a rumbling sound, and the slowly, the doors opened.

  The room was bare, save for another suit of armor in the center. This one was human-sized. It was made of metal, but it looked light at the same time. The metal seemed to glow gold one second, then turn dark the next. Carvings were etched into the breastplate.

  “This one’s yours,” said Gabber. His voice was different now; more commanding.

  I looked at the armor. It seemed like it would fit me, but I had no desire to go through a test and be suffocated inside it.

  “Don’t worry,” said Gabber. “It won’t harm you. You’re my Shadow, and that means you have to wear the armor. This is the armor of the Goblin’s Shadow, passed down for decades through generations of men.”

  If Gabber had the guts to undergo the test, then I wouldn’t back away from this. I stepped into the room. I felt nerves course through my arms and legs. I stood in front of the armor, and I felt a sense of cold radiate from it.

  “Put it on,” said Gabber.

  Slowly, piece by piece, I put on the armor. As soon as I fastened the chest plate, I felt it latch on to me. It became part of me somehow so that it wasn’t just a suit of armor, but an inseparable part of myself.

  As I stood in the room in my new armor, I felt cold spread through me. A message appeared on my screen.

  [Class Upgraded – You are now a Goblin Shadow].

  - Affinity with goblins gained

  - Defence points increased

  - Skill gained: Goblin speech

  - The Goblin Shadow is a sworn protector of the goblin chief. As such, he is at one with the chief and his kin. He can understand their language and their thoughts.

  “How does it feel?” said Gabber.

  I thought about it. My character wasn’t a shadow walker anymore, which meant that the order was ruined. The man wouldn’t want to buy it from me. Despite that, I couldn’t help but feel great. Somehow, it all seemed right. As if this was meant to happen.

  I checked the stats on my armor, and a smile spread across my face.

  [Goblin’s Shadow Armor]

  Value – 17250 GD

  Defence Points: 105

  Bonus:

  +10 defence points when fighting alongside goblins. Bonus is multiplied by number of goblins.

  +25 defence points when fighting alongside a goblin chief

  Weaknesses: Magic

  The weakness was worrying, since it meant that fire and ice spells could hurt me, as well as scrolls and cantrips. No item was perfect, though, and the defence bonuses that the armor gave me still made amazingly better than anything I’d worn before.

  Not only that, but the armor changed the way I felt. I felt stronger, yet lighter. I looked at Gabber and I felt a new understanding with him, as if by looking at his face I could read his emotions. I could see his rich goblin history in fleeting images.

  This changed everything. This was why people played games like Infarna. Through a chance encounter with a goblin, I’d discovered a game class few people had ever seen. I wondered if I was the first actual player to get it. Thinking about how much our journey had changed me made me smile.

  With that, we both left the vault and went up into the village. This time, when the goblins saw us, they fell silent. Loria was with them, and she dropped a trap she held in her hands and just stared, her mouth open.

  “What the hell happened to you two?” she said. “You were gone an hour, and you both come out looking like warriors. Gabber, you seem…different.”

  The goblins stared at Gabber and me in awe. All of them were in line now, except for one, who stood a few feet away from the rest. I looked at him and told him to get in line with the others. Without a second of protest, he joined his kin. Each and every one of them stared at us expectantly.

  “Err Tamos….” said Loria. “You know you just spoke goblin, right?”

  I nodded. I had seen Gabber use his animal tamer skill before, and I knew it changed the way he spoke. I guessed that my new Goblin Shadow class worked the same way.

  “I’ll explain later,” I said. “We’ve got some training to do.”

  We spent the next two hours training the goblins in combat. We taught them how to avoid attacks and how to put more damage into their own blows. We taught them tactics, formations and how to communicate in battle.

  The goblins proved themselves to be quick learners. We hadn’t been able to train a proper army in our limited timeframe, but we’d given them a boost to their combat modifiers.

  I looked around. We had our makeshift army in line, equipped and ready for the battle. We had traps set up on the outskirts of the village. Loria’s illusory guard towers rose into the sky, looking detailed enough to be real.

  This was it. The last stand.

  Almost on cue, I saw figures in the distance beyond the village. It was Crawford, on his mount. Flanking him were a dozen neeves, coated in battle armor, and a host of hired mercs.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Crawford and his army turned from blots in the landscape to fully formed figures. I could see him and his mount clearly now. He rode on top of it, a full ten feet off the ground. His mount had six monstrous legs that kicked up dirt as they pounded into the ground. I wouldn’t have like to get in the way of that thing.

  His army dwarfed ours in number, with a dozen neeves and the same amount of mercs. It didn’t inspire me with confidence.

  Shaking away my doubt, I ran a mental checklist, making sure I had enough healing and mana potions. Loria’s guard tower illusions loomed over us, looking every bit as impressive as I’d hoped. Illusory goblin archers paced around at the top. I hoped that when Crawford saw them, he would change his plan a little. Anything to stop a full-on assault.

  “Are we clear with the plan?” I said.

  Gabber nodded. “Wait for Loria to do her thing.”

  “I’ll cast a few illusion goblins outside the village,” said Loria. “That should draw Crawford’s attention. That way, we get him to fight where we want, rather than the other way around.”

  “I’ll be surprised if he falls for it,” I said. “But it’s worth a try. And if it all goes wrong and he makes it to the village?”

  “Then Multi Target will let me cast 2 copies of each of us. So, in close combat, they won’t know if they’re trying to hit our copies, or us.”

  “Good luck guys,” I said.

  Despite the confidence I forced into my voice, I couldn’t help but feel nervous. Although we’d had some time to prepare for him, we were facing an opponent with more resources than us. We needed everything to fall our way if we were going to win this.

  Crawford and his army were closer now. The nearer he got, the more humongous his mount seemed. Despite that, I knew that Crawford was the main danger, not the creature he rode on. I’d checked the Infarna wiki. I found that although Herecki mounts looked mean as hell, speed was their main asset. In the wild, the Herecki used their size to intimidate opponents, but when it came to a fight, they fled.

  For the next few minutes we could do nothing but wait. We had our plans, but they relied on watching Crawford get closer and then seeing what he did.

  Crawford was back in his dirty hunter clothes now. He held the reins of his mount and drove it on. He was close enough that I could hear the thud of his mount’s feet as they pounde
d into the ground. His neeves kept up with him at his side, mouths open, eyes narrow. His mercs – a mixture of mages, warriors and hunters - all had mounts of their own.

  It was crazy that Crawford could afford to not only buy the most expensive mount in the game, but also hire a host of mercs and furnish them with mounts too. And the number of neeves he had meant that he must have also bought a neeve or two for the hunters with him.

  Our odds were long. Probably the longest I’d ever seen. If I could float above my body and watch as an observer, I’d have given us little chance on face value. I just hoped our plans, and back-up plans, worked. If the worst came to worst, I’d fight Crawford myself and give Gabber a slim chance to escape.

  Crawford pulled on the reins of his mount and drew it to a stop. The Herecki stopped suddenly, and the hunter almost jerked out of his seat. He held a hand up, and the rest of his company halted.

  He stared up at the guard towers. They looked real enough, but I wondered whether Crawford was fooled by them. The idea was that he would divert some of his forces to flank the village to avoid a head-on clash with the guard towers.

  “How long will the towers hold?” I said, looking at Loria.

  “My mana’s dribbling out like snot,” said Loria. “The robe is helping, and I’ve got enough potions for now. When the plan kicks in and I need to cast other things, the towers will stay there but the realism will start to fade.”

  Crawford pointed to the left and then the right of the village fence. His mercs and neeves split up, with a group of each heading where the hunter pointed.

  “Okay,” I said. “This is what we wanted. Gabber - left, or right?”

  “I’ll go right,” said Gabber.

  I nodded. “Then I’ll take the left flank. Best of luck everyone.”

  We split up. Gabber went to the right of the village, taking ten goblins with him. We’d set up ambush points outside the fence, which relied on Crawford’s men walking into the traps we’d activated. Luckily, Loria’s towers had forced Crawford to play into our hands.

  I slipped left. I didn’t take any goblins with me, since my part would rely on stealth. As I crossed the village, my chest tightened. This was it. I couldn’t shake the feeling that Crawford and I would cross swords.

  I activated Shadow From and felt myself slip out of view. The battlefield took on a grey tint. The clouds loomed overhead and seemed to blot out the little light that reached me. With Shadow Form working and my mana bar warnings activated, I set out.

  Gabber was to take the right flank of the village and I’d take the left. Loria would stay in the center. With the help of some wooden boxes Gabber’s goblins had stacked, Loria climbed onto the chief’s shack. She had a view of the whole battlefield. With mana potions next to her – the caps unfastened for quick drinking – her job was to cast illusory monsters to draw the mercs where we needed them to be.

  I slipped through the fence at the left side of the village. There was a group of 8 mercs headed my way. There were four warriors at the front, a healer on the left, a destructive mage on the right, and two hunters at the back.

  The healer was the most dangerous one here. It seemed counterintuitive at first, but it was true. Whatever damage I did to the others would be useless if the healer cast her spells. It would mean I’d have to do double or triple the amount of attacks to kill the mercs. That would be a stamina drain, and pretty soon I’d find myself with no energy.

  I cut an arc around the mercs. Loria had cast two goblin illusions fifty yards in front of them. The warriors ran toward the creatures, while the rest of their group hung back.

  Great, I thought. This is exactly how we need it.

  As the hunters chased the goblins, I moved around until I was behind the group. Now this was the tricky part. This was the one thing in the plan that made my pulse race when I thought of it.

  Holding my breath, I walked up to the healer so that I stood behind her. The problem there was that in Shadow Form, I couldn’t touch anything. That meant that to kill the healer, I’d need to come out of the shadows, kill her, then go back in again. There was a risk that in the split seconds that I was visible, I’d get spotted.

  I waited for the right moment. One of the warriors took a swipe at an illusory goblin, but missed. The mage, standing back, gathered a fireball in his hands. Once he fired it, the illusions would disperse, so I didn’t have long.

  I drew my sword. With nerves running through me, I left Shadow Form. The daylight streamed in too quickly, stunning me for a second. Without further hesitation, I grabbed the shoulder of the healer. I lifted my sword to her neck and sliced.

  It was a sneak attack and a critical hit both rolled into one. The healer died instantly, without even making a sound. As her body fell to the ground, I slipped back into the shadows. Her corpse made a thumping sound. One of the hunters spun toward the noise, bow drawn, but it was too late. I was already gone.

  “What the hell?” said the hunter. “What happened to her?”

  Next up was the mage. The warriors would be kept busy as long as Loria cast her illusions. The hunters were a class geared toward long-range fighting. Their bows wouldn’t be as effective close-up. That meant the mage was the next threat to me.

  He unleashed a fireball. It rushed through the air and then hit the goblins. The illusions vanished, and the warriors looked around, confused.

  They turned around to look at the mage. I stared up at Loria. I needed another illusion. I couldn’t come out of Shadow Form if the warriors were staring at the mage and me.

  Come on, I thought.

  And then three more goblins climbed through the village fence and ran at the warriors. They held their axes above their heads.

  Great. Time to go. I moved up behind the wizard. I drew my sword and prepared to slip out of Shadow Form.

  The second I did, I heard Loria scream. I looked up to see that she had crossbow bolts sticking out of her chest and legs. She fell onto her back and then rolled off the roof of the village and landed out of view, with a thud. Crawford stood at the main village gates with his crossbow in his hand.

  Loria’s illusions disappeared. The guard towers with their archers, the creatures that diverted the mercs’ attention. The warriors in front of me turned around and looked at the mage.

  “He’s there,” said one of them, pointing at me.

  I’d slipped out of Shadow Form to get a sneak attack on the mage. Now, though, he turned around, and saw me. He lifted his hands and tried to cast a spell, probably a protective shell of some sort. Without giving him the chance, I ran my sword through his stomach.

  The mage stumbled back, wounded but alive. The warriors advanced on me, and the hunters drew their bows back and aimed at my head. It was five versus one. With the element of surprise gone, I had no chance.

  One of the hunters fired his bow. I tried to move out of the way but it was too damn fast, and the arrow dug into my bicep. I was surprised that it had even managed to penetrate my armor, and the only thing I could think was that the hunter had scored a rare critical hit.

  My health bar dropped. The mage, sensing an opportunity, grew a fireball in his hands and blasted it at me.

  I dived out of the way of this one, only to meet the tip of a warrior's sword as he swiped at me, cutting my shoulder. My health was halfway now.

  This was going wrong. I wondered how Gabber was doing on the other side of the village. Hopefully, he’d managed to lead the mercs over there into an ambush before Loria’s illusions failed.

  I had just seconds to decide my next move. There was no point staying here to fight, since they beat me in numbers. On top of that, Loria was hurt. We needed her. That would have to be my next move, then. Get back to the village and help Loria.

  I quickly drank back a mana potion. When my bar filled, I looked up. The two hunters had their bows tensed and ready to fire. Using Dark Magic, I cast a black cloud their way. It smothered their faces, blinding them. When they let loose their bows, the arrow
s missed me by far.

  One of the warriors swiped at me. I ducked under it, rolled, and then sprinted toward the village. I heard the warriors and the mage chasing after me, but I didn’t stop.

  When I reached the center of the village, I found Loria on the ground. Gabber was back. He had a cut on his face, and he was breathing heavily. Only ten goblins were with him.

  I stopped for a second and took a breath. My arm stung from where the arrow hit me, and my lungs ached. What I would have given for a class with more stamina.

  “The traps worked,” said Gabber. “But we lost 6 fighters.”