Succubus: A LitRPG Series

by A. J. Markam

  “Seriously?” Alaria asked in a huff. “At a time like this, all you can think about is eating more of your damn fruit?”

  “It’s because it cools me down,” I said angrily. “I’m starting to sweat like a pig again.”

  Alaria gripped my arm. “Please don’t leave me,” she whispered. I could hear real fear in her voice.

  “He’s not going to get you, I promise.”

  She looked at me worriedly. “You don’t know that.”

  She was right – but I said it anyway: “It’s going to be okay. Don’t worry.”

  We stood around for a few more minutes while nothing happened. By now the sweat was pouring down my face in buckets.

  I wiped my brow with my hand – and immediately got sticky juices all over my face.

  “Yuck…”

  I bent down to the water –

  “What are you doing?” Alaria asked in alarm.

  “Just cleaning my hands – relax.”

  As I watched the bright red pulp wash off my fingers, I suddenly had an idea. I wasn’t sure if it would work, but seeing as we didn’t have a whole lot of options at the moment, I was okay with a little experimentation.

  “Stig,” I said in a deliberately loud voice, “we might be here for hours. I want you to go into the jungle and get me some more of those fruits – as many as you can carry at one time.”

  “What are you doing?” Alaria asked, alarmed.

  “Trust me,” I whispered.

  Stig looked doubtful. “What about the Rogue, boss?”

  “He hasn’t tried to attack you or me – we’re not the ones he’s interested in. If he does attack you, just run back here. I’ll keep an eye on you and do Self-Sacrifice to save you if necessary.”

  “Okay,” the imp said reluctantly, then moved slowly into the jungle, where he looked around in fright at every twitching blade of grass.

  “I don’t understand what you’re doing,” Alaria whispered.

  “Watch the water,” I said, “and I’ll explain.”

  She moved around behind me and we stood like that, back to back, with me watching the jungle like a hawk.

  “So why are we doing this?”

  “Because the stuff is sticky, and it doesn’t come off until you wash it,” I whispered.

  “So?”

  “So I’m going to try squishing a whole bunch of them into my bag, then flinging it out at him. If I can tag him, we’ll be able to see him even when he’s in cloaked form.”

  I felt her body shift behind me, and I glanced back at her.

  She was looking at me with something approaching respect.

  “Not bad, warlock boy.”

  “Well, let’s see if it works, first.”

  Stig came back in a few minutes with eight of the fruits piled in his arms.

  “Any problems?” I asked.

  “No, boss.”

  “Good. Get as many as you can, as ripe as you can find them. And just keep bringing them back here.”

  “Okay, boss,” he said, then left me with the pile.

  I took a bite of the first berry, and immediately felt the tingly cool spread throughout my body.

  Then I detached one of my bags from my belt, held it out, and smooshed the rest of the fruit into the bag. I was hoping that the juice and pulp would fill a single slot, and not just coat the contents of everything inside.

  Success! The ‘Bag Contents’ window showed a messy splotch with the number ‘1’ next to it.

  I didn’t want to give away the game plan in case the Rogue was watching us, so I just kept squishing fruits into the bag one by one, letting the pulp fill up the allocated slot.

  One by one the counter went up. Minute by minute, Stig kept bringing me more fruit, which I would then squish. Within 20 minutes I had built up 80 squished berries inside the bag.

  To test out my theory, I thought about what I wanted, put my hand in the bag, and pulled it back out.

  My cupped hand held a mass of pulpy flesh and red juice in it. Yes!

  Rather than put it back inside, though, I just slurped it out of my palm.

  “Seriously?!” Alaria snarled.

  “Sorry, I forgot.” I put the remains of the fruit back in the bag, then used my sticky fingers to hold onto the edge. “Now comes the hard part.”

  “Which is?”

  “We have to move apart and let you get far enough away that he’ll come after you like bait.”

  She looked at me with fear in her eyes. “Is that absolutely necessary?”

  “We’ve got to trick him into attacking us. Otherwise we could sit here for the next day or two. Or he might decide to attack us in the middle of the night when we can’t see anything.”

  Alaria sighed heavily. “All right… I’ll do it.”

  “Let’s form a triangle, about five feet between each of us, and slowly start heading down the riverbank. Alaria, you get closest to the jungle.”

  We moved into our triangular formation, with Alaria furthest from the water, and me and Stig right up against the river. Then we began to creep along the water’s edge.

  The tension began to build the longer that nothing happened. I kept watching the tree limbs for some indication that he might jump down on us, but I didn’t see any signs of movement.

  Had he moved on? Or had he decided to let us work ourselves into a suspicious frenzy and steep in our own paranoid juices?

  If so, it was a success on his part. The wait was nerve-racking.

  We walked quietly along the bank, peering out into the jungle, with only the sounds of frogs chirping and birds calling to keep us company.

  Suddenly the frogs and birds went silent.

  The Rogue was close – I would bet my life upon it.

  Unfortunately, I was kind of betting Alaria’s life on it.

  She stop moving. “It went quiet,” she whispered.

  “I know.”

  “Do you think he’s here?”

  “Yes.”

  “When’s he going to attack?”

  “I don’t know.”

  We stood there, waiting – but nothing happened.

  Finally, to break the tension, I whispered, “This is way too much like Predator.”

  “Predator?”

  Crap, I forgot she knew nothing about my pop-culture references.

  “It’s a story about a soldier in the jungle who gets hunted by a – ”

  I didn’t even have time to finish the sentence when we both heard whoooosh.

  Alaria screamed over that awful sound of knives squelching into meat.

  But rather than try to attack her assailant, I gripped the bottom of the bag and slung it in a circle all around me.

  An arc of bright red fluid shot out like a kid on a carnival ride puking a bunch of Twizzlers.

  Alaria got hit, but so did the Rogue. His entire back was covered with the red, goopy substance.

  He went back into stealth – but now there was a clear outline of red liquid splashed across his back, sort of like somebody had coated an ice sculpture with red wax, let the wax solidify, and then melted the ice.

  Now I had something to target.

  I don’t know if the Rogue realized what had happened, but I started to cast Darkfire.

  As soon as I did, he took off running.

  Stupid bastard didn’t realize he had a target on his back.

  I shot the fire at him, and black flames outlined a humanoid shape.

  The Rogue roared and immediately came out of stealth.

  Now it was on.

  “Get him!” I yelled, and the three of us started a coordinated attack.

  I hit him with Doomsday, which would nail him hard in 20 seconds. Stig threw a fireball, and Alaria brought out her Flaming Whip. The tip cracked right in front of the Rogue’s face, and he screamed as a burst of fire engulfed the right side of his head.

  I expected him to run – but he actually did exactly the opposite.

  He ran full tilt at Alaria, leapt up in the
air, and came down with both his knives aimed at her.

  I cast Self-Sacrifice to keep her hit points up, and she attacked him with the full force of her fireballs, but the guy was relentless. He didn’t care. He just kept slashing her faster and faster as she screamed in pain.

  My hit points were getting drained from trying to keep her alive. But the Rogue was losing dozens of hit points every second; now it was just a race to see who would last the longest.

  He changed tack right in the middle of the battle, and swung his knives towards me.

  Shit –

  He stabbed me once, twice, three times. My hit points were down to 25% –

  That’s when I pulled Soul Suck on him. His chest glowed blue as my light sucked his Health points directly into me.

  I was out of the danger zone – but he was sinking down into it.

  “Ian – back off!” Alaria yelled.

  “But I’m almost about to kill him!”

  “That’s the point – I don’t want you to kill him!”

  I took my hand away and stepped back. The Rogue was only 40 hit points from death – but I trusted that Alaria knew what she was doing.

  Did she ever.

  Her whip wrapped around the Rogue’s body, binding his arms directly to his torso. He screamed in pain as the cords of fire cut into him, but his mobility and balance were severely hampered. When she kicked the back of his knees, he went down on his face.

  She prodded him with her boot and forced him to roll over, then put the dagger-like tip of her stiletto heel right against his Adam’s apple.

  “Drop the knives,” Alaria snarled.

  One of the assassin’s eyes was gone, the socket burned to a black crisp. Apparently she had gotten him badly with her whip strike. The remaining eye glowed with absolute hatred – but I guess the Rogue realized he wasn’t going to be able to kill her by stabbing her calf, so he dropped the knives.

  “Stig, take off his mask,” she ordered.

  The imp looked over at me. We both knew it was a break in the chain of command, but I nodded. At this moment, I was way more interested in seeing who the hell this guy was than in quibbling over who told Stig what to do.

  Stig yanked off the mask.

  There wasn’t any big revelation, other than it was an elf. His long, pointy ears sprang up, freed from the tight mask, but that was the only surprise.

  “You recognize this guy?” I asked.

  “No,” she said, then turned back to the Rogue. “Who hired you.”

  He smiled grimly. “Wouldn’t you like to know, demoness.”

  “I think I already do – but I don’t mind waiting to hear it from you.”

  She held her hand above his head, then summoned some sort of liquid fire, which she let drip, drip, drip from her finger.

  Every couple of seconds a new droplet hit the elf’s forehead, and he would grunt in pain as it seared his skin. But still he said nothing.

  The fire did some damage, but his hit points were recovering second by second – so it was basically a long, slow form of torture. He wasn’t going to die anytime soon.

  “Tell me!” Alaria demanded.

  “If you kill me, it doesn’t matter. Others will follow.”

  “I have no intention of killing you,” she sneered. “Quite the opposite. I’m going to keep you alive for a very, very long time until you – ”

  Suddenly he did something neither of us had been anticipating.

  He jabbed his head up as hard and fast as he could, piercing his throat on the point of her stiletto heel.

  Suicide by succubus.

  His eyes grew wide, and he began to make horrific choking noises.

  Alaria pulled her heel out of his throat and stumbled backwards in horror – but it was too late. The elf’s hit points dropped to zero, and he collapsed on his back, dead.

  ‘1500 XP’ appeared in the air.

  Even though I hadn’t delivered the deathblow, I still got credit for the kill.

  “Son of a bitch,” she muttered.

  Faced with the prospect of being tortured for hours – and then dying – the Rogue had chosen the quick way out.

  “Are you okay?” I asked Alaria.

  She nodded somberly. “He’s far from the first man I’ve killed. Although he might just be the first one who used my boot to commit suicide,” she said, getting back some of her gallows humor.

  I walked over and started to loot the body.

  As promised by the quest, there were ten silver coins, which I transferred from his bag to mine.

  There was also a handwritten letter in one of his pockets, with an ink sketch of Alaria’s face. The drawing was good; I recognized it as her immediately.

  The succubus will be traveling with a warlock and an imp. Kill the other two if you like, but the female is the only target I care about. Bring back her collar, and you will receive the reward we discussed.

  I showed Alaria the hand-drawn picture.

  If it was possible for a woman with red skin to go pale, she gave it a good go.

  “I know that handwriting,” she whispered.

  “You do?” I asked, surprised.

  “One of my ex-masters. He was quite the artist, too.”

  “He hired the Rogue to take you out?”

  She nodded.

  “So that’s what you meant when you said you knew who had done it,” I realized.

  “I suspected strongly, but now I have confirmation.”

  “Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

  She looked at me hesitantly. “What?”

  “I said I would help you kill your ex-masters, but we’ve been traipsing through the jungle for the last couple of days and you haven’t mentioned it at all. Is there a reason?”

  She looked dejected. “I don’t know… I guess part of me was just putting it off. I suppose that I was enjoying being with you… and I didn’t necessarily want to jump right back into the devil’s mouth again. But now I see I have no choice. If I don’t end them, they’ll eventually end me.”

  My brain basically stopped functioning halfway through her speech, though.

  “Wait a second – you enjoy being with me?”

  She looked up, shocked to realize what she’d just said. “I just meant that – ”

  “So you do enjoy being with me!” I said, a little more hopefully than could reasonably be called cool.

  “Sometimes, yes.” She rolled her eyes. “Don’t make a big deal about it.”

  “It’s okay to enjoy my company, you know. Which you’ve been doing,” I pointed out.

  “Up until the slurping of the fruits.”

  “Yeah, okay, but before that – ”

  “Just drop it,” she snapped, and turned back towards the jungle. “We have a bunch of my ex-masters to kill. We should get going.”

  “Okay,” I agreed as I followed her, grinning like a fool.

  Once her guard came down, she’d admitted the truth: she liked being around me.

  That was a step in the right direction.

  29

  It took several days, but we made our way out of the jungle into a low-lying swampland.

  The game’s creators had always modeled OtherWorld on different regions and time periods in the real world. For instance, a lot of places looked like medieval Europe, with castles and walled cities and houses that wouldn’t have been out of place in 15th-century Paris or London.

  Other regions in the game were patterned after different parts of the real world, too. Some were inspired by Asian cultures, with pagodas and rice-paper sliding doors. Others resembled Native American habitats, with tepees and wigwams and burial grounds.

  Whatever the hell this swampland was, they were apparently basing it on Louisiana or Mississippi in the American antebellum South.

  The houses were made of wood with giant neoclassical columns out in front. Vast green plantations surrounded the houses, with crops being picked by laborers. And in the far distance were vast expanses of thin, le
afy trees half-submerged in water.

  In the past, the makers of the game had come under fire for some of their… shall we say, less than sensitive depictions and stereotypes. At least they had avoided the use of any humanoids as field hands. They were all elemental spirits – creatures made up of living water, with vaguely human forms that included a head, torso, and arms, but no actual eyes or mouth or features. They toiled by the hundreds amongst the rows of crops, picking small blueberries off shrub-like plants and dropping them into buckets by their sides.

  One thing that was problematic were the bronze manacles and collars around the creatures’ wrists and necks. It was quite evident that they were slaves, bound by some magical spell. They toiled ceaselessly under the noonday sun, their amorphous bodies shifting and flowing as they worked.

  As we walked past, the elementals would peer up at us from the fields, their eyeless faces watching as we passed.

  As another holdover from the slave era, they also had overseers – elemental fire creatures, also somewhat humanoid in appearance, whose only discernible features were red, scowling eyes set into fiery heads that flickered like a bonfire. These overseers had their own bronze manacles around their wrists, but they also had whips – which they cracked viciously at the water creatures, searing their backs and turning part of them into steam if they so much as paused for too long at their work.

  I knew what Alaria’s whip could do, and I winced every time I heard the crack of one of those fiery lashes.

  I wondered if the game creators had had complaints about their depiction of institutionalized slavery.

  And then I remembered that I was walking around with two creatures of my own, each trapped by a collar around their necks.

  I stopped thinking about the field hands and concentrated on the mission at hand. It was too uncomfortable to do anything else.

  “This is the place?” I asked Alaria.

  “This is it,” she said, looking around with an expression halfway between pain and hatred.

  I checked my quest log for the list of ex-masters and the experience points allotted for killing each.

  “Is this Odeon’s home?” I asked, reading the entry at the top of the list worth 10,000 XP.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know which house he lives in?”