Fantasy Online_Hyperborea

by Harmon Cooper

  “Let’s go there.”

  Ryuk leaves little time for discussion.

  He treks down the hill and is instantly waist-deep in mist. The ground is moist, and he can sense smaller creatures moving away from his footsteps. Nothing worth gaining experience over, unless he wanted to add critter hunting to his repertoire. Hiccup catches up to him, and short as he is, the mist covers everything but the top of his bald head.

  Ryuk feels a leathery hand grab hold of his and squeeze tight.

  “Don’t say anything about this,” Hiccup hisses up at him. “And remember, I’m not your little goblin fickboy, got that?” An owl lifts out of the mist. Wisps of fog barely have a chance to leave its body as it dips back in. “What the fick was that!?”

  A mirror appears in FeeTwix’s hand and he holds it in front of his face. “My people. Just wanted to let everyone know that we’ve decided to check out the Paradise of the Insane. Pretty cool, huh? Remember, today’s sponsor is McStarbucks, and hey – great news! Cucumber Spice McWater is back for a limited time! Get a 50% off insta-coupon with purchase of any Frappe or Value Meal over eight euros at participating locations across the EU. Mention #FeeTwixRox for a free three-piece jumbo McNuggets with any one liter drink purchase. Offer not available in the UK. Sorry, Brexiteers! I’ll hook you up with something sweet next time!”

  This guy and his feed … Ryuk is just about to ask him to put a can on his advertising spiel when the mist parts. A clear strip, a pathway in a labyrinth, cuts through the fog. Hiccup is beside himself.

  “What the fick was that!? You fickholes can go by yourselves, I’m going back to Jatla.”

  “No, no,” FeeTwix slings a comradely arm around Hiccup’s shoulders. “You have to come with us, pal, everyone loves you.”

  “Who?”

  “Everyone watching through my feed.” FeeTwix taps the side of his skull. “Currently, nearly 395,000 people are live-streaming our adventure.”

  “Turn it off for a moment,” Ryuk says.

  “Really?”

  “Just a moment, please. I need to tell you something.”

  “Sorry, folks, I’ll be streaming again in a moment!” FeeTwix says to himself. “And … we’re off.”

  “How do I know again?” Ryuk asks.

  “Look into my eyes.”

  FeeTwix’s eyes flash Aryan blue. “When I’m streaming, they go solid black.”

  “That’s what I figured, I just wanted to double-check.”

  FeeTwix’s eyes flash solid black. “Hi everyone, be right back.” His eyes are blue again.

  “Got it. Here’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Ryuk says carefully, “and I don’t want to offend you by doing so.”

  “You are so Japanese!”

  “You can tell?”

  “Some of my fans did some research on your avatar origins,” FeeTwix explains, “they are useful like that. Their ability to research in real-time has saved my ass more times than you know.”

  “That’s fine, but I don’t want you recording anything … emotional. Got that?”

  “Ah, you are such a sweet little snowflake fickwit,” Hiccup laughs. “Oh boo-hoo! I don’t want anyone to see me cry, wah-wah-wah. Hey! Shit! Shit! What the hell is that!?” The goblin practically leaps into Ryuk’s arms. “Dragon ficks, did you guys hear that? I think it’s a ghost!”

  With a loud snort, two bulky creatures step out of the mist about twenty feet ahead of them. The stats of the creature closest to Ryuk appears:

  Nian Level 1

  HP: 39/39

  ATK: 11

  MATK: 15

  DEF: 18

  MDF: 22

  LUCK: 1

  Nian Level 2

  HP: 51/51

  ATK: 13

  MATK: 15

  DEF: 19

  MDF: 22

  LUCK: 1

  “A pair of nians,” Hiccup says with wonder in his voice. “Why, I thought these things were extinct! Aha!” He pulls a double-bladed ax out of thin air, and a wooden shield materializes in his other hand. “Some backassward daughter-fickin’ farmer bred these two – my guess. They’re supposed to have the body of a bull and the head of a lion; these dainty little fickers have the body of a cow and the head of an alley cat – how tough can they be?”

  The grouchy goblin smacks his ax against his shield. “All right, boys, who’s ready to christen the Mitherfickers as combat ready?”

  (0)__(x)

  The off-brand cat-cow lowers its head to meet Hiccup’s first attack, feints left and head butts the enthusiastic goblin into the air like a beanbag.

  The goblin lands hard and lets out a loud oomph! The knock-off nian takes to the air and Ryuk lets one fly from his slingshot.

  The black marble explodes on contact and knocks the nian into its compadre.

  -10 HP!

  “Chainsaw it is!” FeeTwix says to his unseen audience his eyes solid black. The weapon appears in his hand and he hits the thumb starter, locks the trigger, and the saw roars into life.

  With a flashy overhand toss that Ryuk has to grudgingly admit looked cool, FeeTwix lands the saw bar-first in the nearest nian’s shoulder. The creature howls and claws at the source of its torment.

  -13 HP! -2 HP!

  The uninjured nian roars, gnashes its teeth and paws the ground at Ryuk and crew. It hesitates to attack on its own.

  “I’ll finish the ficker off!” Hiccup runs towards the wounded nian, drops to the ground in a baseball slide and uses his shield as a boogie board with his feet kicked out in front of him.

  -12 HP!

  His attack connects and the nian dies. “Fick yeah!”

  The surviving nian roars in outrage and leaps teeth-first at the distracted Hiccup.

  Ryuk has another marble ready to go and zings it right down the cow-cat’s gullet. One muffled whumpf later and the critter’s neck is rags and tatters and its head flops to the side, even as it lands in a heap on top of Hiccup.

  -39 HP! Instakill!

  New skill learned!

  “Get it off me!” Hiccup cries. FeeTwix helps him move the carcass off his body as Ryuk quickly reviews his new skill:

  Skill: Tonsil Shot

  Level One: 1 in 15 chance of connecting.

  Damage: Damage: 20% damage if enemy is less than level 30; 10% damage if enemy is greater than level 30.

  Odds of instakill: 2%

  Requirements for instakill: LUCK > 3

  My first skill! Not bad. Twenty percent damage to any creature under level thirty and ten percent to any creature over level 30, and that’s at level one! As for the instakill, he did get lucky. With his LUCK at exactly three, his odds of landing the attack were astoundingly low.

  “New skill?” FeeTwix asks.

  “Tonsil Shot,” Ryuk says.

  Hiccup wipes a piece of nian off the front of his shirt. “That thing could have killed me!”

  Ryuk ignores the goblin as he goes over the spoils of battle. Not a lot of experience points and no rupees, but at least the EXP will compound.

  The Hills of Hillshire will be fine for auto-leveling, he thinks.

  Each avatar in Tritania can gain ten levels through auto-leveling, which allows a player to log out and keep their avatar fighting. A disadvantage is that a player won’t learn any new skills by auto-leveling, but they can improve upon skills already acquired.

  “Shall we continue?” he asks as he passes Hiccup and FeeTwix. “I want to take part in one more fight and then leave my character to auto-level. I have something to do in Tokyo.”

  “I wish I could auto-level,” Hiccup laments. “Go home, sleep, wake up a higher level.”

  “I’ll stay logged in,” FeeTwix says as they continue along the path cut into the mist, “I’ve got nothing on the agenda for the next few hours.”

  Hiccup calls after them. “You know, guys, I’m just saying, but it’s probably a good idea to send someone to Aramis to see what we can learn about the Shinigami. You know, leave you guys to the leveling.”


  FeeTwix waits for Hiccup to catch up and pats him on the shoulder. “Nah, you’re staying here with us. After all, what would the Mitherfickers be without Hiccup?” He stares at the goblin for a moment with his big black eyes, live-streaming everything. “Besides, it’s more entertaining this way.”

  (x)__(x)

  As they make their way deeper into the Hills of Hillshire, a ghost town slowly emerges from the mist. Bad things have happened here; buildings are burned and blasted; skeletons in rusting armor clutch broken swords and battered shields; and the decomposing carcasses of eldritch war-beasts litter the side streets and alleyways.

  “This fickin’ place gives me the willies,” Hiccup complains. “Let’s get the fick out of he – YOOOY!”

  A buffalo-sized mountain of angry muscle smashes into him from behind and sends him cartwheeling. The beast skids to a stop, reverses direction in its own length and glares at them with red, piggy eyes. It’s a mahoosive Chiup hog with slavering jaws, razor-sharp tusks, and Thulean script branded into its hide.

  Chiup Hog Level 3

  HP: 169/169

  ATK: 44

  MATK: 1

  DEF: 15

  MDF: 14

  LUCK: 0

  Ryuk zings a pair of black marbles against the critter’s hairy hide. They explode and knock the dust off, but don’t do much more.

  -2 HP!

  Pathetic.

  “Which weapon?” FeeTwix asks the fans livestreaming his feed. “Poll quickly!”

  The results appear in front of him and he swipes them away.

  “What, the Ma Bell treatment? Damn,” he grins, “you guys don’t make it easy for me!” The Swede stretches the cord between the handset and the phone body and charges at the Chiup Hog. He skips, flips, and lands astraddle the hog’s back, wraps the phone cord around its neck, and pulls his impromptu garrote tight.

  The war pig is barely inconvenienced; it bucks, jumps, thrashes and tosses FeeTwix around like a rodeo clown in a hurricane. He hangs on tight as he yells for Ryuk to take his shot.

  Black marble or clear marble? Ryuk loads a clear marble into the pouch of his slingshot. The bucking bronc-hog is more than stone’s throw distance, so a targeting reticle comes up on his viewing pane as he draws and looses.

  “Holy fick!”

  For once, Hiccup is right.

  The clear marble morphs midair into an ethereal phoenix. The legendary bird cries out and flaps its wings to speed itself along. -38 HP! It smashes into the hog dead on, knocks it out from under FeeTwix and tumbles it into an abandoned outhouse.

  The Chiup claws its way up out of the outhouse pit, and Ryuk pops off another pair of ineffectual black marbles. The shit-covered Chiup roars in disapproval and charges straight for Ryuk.

  The unmistakable sound of gunfire makes Ryuk pause in mid reload. Great gouts of blood and tissue blast from the enraged Baconator as it hits the ground hard and slides to a stop at Ryuk’s feet.

  Instakill!

  “What the hell is that thing?” Ryuk asks after the dust has settled. He takes a step back from the dead hog, afraid that it may come back to life and take his leg off.

  FeeTwix sports some crazy-looking amalgam of gun and sword; a wisp of smoke curls from the muzzle. “It’s called a slice bang.” He executes a raffish sword salute and then strikes a Captain Morgan pose. “I scored this in a Steampunk world. The barrel of the gun is right after the guard, alongside the blade. That way you can shoot and stab, or slice and bang, at the same time. Pretty cool, huh?”

  “Aside from the fact that you’ve taken a health bar penalty from using an outside weapon, it isn’t bad.”

  “It was worth it,” FeeTwix says, “and my fans seem to agree.”

  “Fickin’ groupies again? Is this all we’re ever going to hear about?” Hiccup limps over to the Chiup hog. Experience points appear in the air and are divvied up amongst the three. “Wait a fickin’ minute … ” A vicious-looking gut hook appears in the goblin’s grubby paw and he uses it to neatly slice the hog open from vent to sternum. He rummages around inside, makes one or two delicate cuts and extracts a small vial made of green glass. “Aha!”

  Having a Shield Thief in the party isn’t so bad after all, Ryuk thinks.

  While he has never partnered with someone whose main class was Shield with a subclass of thief, he is very familiar with the thief subclass, as he almost chose it less than a day ago. A thief isn’t as strong as other characters, but they are good at detecting rare and valuable items in places one wouldn’t expect.

  “Don’t say I never did nothing for ya, Marbles.” The goblin tosses the small, sticky vial to Ryuk.

  “What is it?” FeeTwix peers over Ryuk’s shoulder as he pops the top off the vial. Inside is a note scribbled on a scrap of parchment that reads: ‘To my grandson, I leave my dream armor. It won’t be easy to find, but if you’re as brave and strong as your grandfather, you’ll discover it in an abandoned cellar in the Hills of Hillshire.’

  Quest: Will you be as brave and as strong as the old hag’s husband?

  Rewards: Dream armor.

  Risks: You’ll end up in the belly of a Chiup hog.

  Without consulting the other two, Ryuk accepts the challenge and then reads the message aloud.

  “Ha! I guess the little ficktwerp wasn’t as brave and as strong as his grandfather,” Hiccup says, “But I do like a challenge, especially when it involves treasure.”

  Ryuk hands him the slip of parchment. “Good, this will keep you busy. I’m going to log out now and leave my avatar with you guys to level up. I’ll be back as soon as humanly possible. Please,” he turns to FeeTwix, “keep me alive.”

  “No problem. Say goodbye to everyone.” FeeTwix points to his eyes. “Where are you going anyway?”

  “To see my older brother.”

  Chapter 6: Brotherly love

  Dim red lights give the place an otherworldly feel.

  Everything is a shade of maroon, from the long leather sofas to the black tables, lit by a single tea candle floating in blood-red liquid. The column that runs in the center of the room decorated with tiny square mirror tiles casts reflections onto the flashy outfit of the gaijin hostess, who sits before Kodai and anxiously pours him his second glass of whiskey. The malt whiskey from Nikka is made exclusively for his club, produced by the single barrel, and ordered a bottle at a time due to the astronomical price.

  It is the only spirit he drinks.

  Everything is going to plan, Kodai reminds himself, and it is a glorious plan indeed.

  “What are you thinking about?’ Sarah asks.

  “Your Japanese. It has improved,” Kodai tells the Australian woman, Sarah, whom customers call Seera. The young mob boss tosses his oshibori on the table. It is the second hot towel he has cleaned his hands with in the last thirty minutes, and if he has to wait any longer for Ryuk, there will be a third.

  Sarah carefully finishes pouring his drink and returns her hands to her lap. “Arigato gozaimasu,” she says with a full bow of her head.

  “You should be more relaxed around me,” he tells her coldly, “I am your employer, after all.”

  “I understand.” Sarah scoots closer to Kodai.

  “You are not really my type,” he states in perfect idiomatic American English. “When I lived in New York, girls like you were a dime a dozen.”

  She bats her eyelashes at him. “Americans still use coins?”

  Kodai remembers now why he told the manager to hire her. Sarah was witty, and for the crown prince of a fairly large criminal empire, wit was something he didn’t often encounter. Still, it irked him when she spoke out of line.

  “Is something wrong, Kodai-san?”

  He sips his whiskey and enjoys the way it warms the back of his throat. Finally, he asks, “How have the other girls been? Anything out of the ordinary?”

  Her eyes dart left and right. “No, Kodai, of course not.”

  He switches back to English. “If you ever see anything o
r hear anything, I expect you to tell me. This is one of ten hostess bars that my father owned; it is the most successful and I plan to keep it that way. It’s also close to my home.”

  “You got it.”

  “Good.” He looks at her fondly and she offers him a rare smile. “Sarah, have you gained weight?”

  Her smile falters. “Not that I know of.”

  “I think you’ve gained at least half a kilo since the last time I saw you.” He pinches at her waist. There is nothing really to pinch; she squirms and he pinches her even harder.

  “Please, Kodai.” She tries to keep what’s left of the smile on her face. “Please.”

  “You should be more careful,” Kodai grits.

  A bell rings and the women at the other tables stand. Only then does Kodai let go. Sarah slides her ass out of the booth as quickly as she can manage. She adjusts her turquoise bra, smooths her hand over the pink pinch mark, and bows to him yet again.

  “Look better next time,” he tells her. Sarah apologizes and moves to the next table. Hitomi, a nineteen-year-old Japanese woman approaches his table.

  “Hello, Kodai-san,” she says with a long, drawn-out bow to cover her hesitation. “Your brother is here.”

  “It’s about time,” he says in English. Kodai takes another sip from his whiskey and savors the smoky taste. “Send him over.”

  (0)__(0)

  “Kodai.” Ryuk silently inhales through his nostrils as he chokes down the first rising tendrils of anxiety. Realizing he’s still in his hood, he quickly throws it off his head and returns his hands to his front pockets.

  “Are you going to sit?” Kodai eyes his brother with suspicion.

  “Yes … sure.”

  “Well then do it, idiot.”

  Hitomi the hostess bows again and silently backs away from the table.

  “Where’s Hajime?”

  “He’s outside out of sight, as you instructed.”

  “Good. Droids give people the wrong impression of this place.” Kodai takes a sip from his whiskey and says, “We don’t want that to happen.”