Fantasy Online_Hyperborea

by Harmon Cooper

  (x)__(x)

  A blast of dark blue energy washes over Hiccup’s shield. He drops it and curses as it blackens, shrivels, and disintegrates into dust. “Fick! That was Cousin Spew’s second-favorite shield!” With a flick of his wrist he launches a tomahawk and she zaps it to dust.

  Anne marshals her energy and releases a blast that strikes all five of them.

  -80 HP!

  The gnomes shriek in dismay; Chantrea starts praying in some unintelligible language.

  “I’ve got this.” Tamana grips her sword in both hands and strikes it against the ground. A nimbus of blinding white energy envelops the blade. She winds up, swings, and hurls the brilliant ball of incandescence at the un-zombie.

  Anne defends with a shield of necrotic energy, but Tamana’s attack is too strong, too bright.

  -183 HP!

  Bright light burns all around the zombie mage, but she recovers quickly, snarls as she charges more necrotic energy.

  “Fick yeah, Tammy! Jolt her ass again!”

  Tamana releases another bolt of blazing white energy.

  -221 HP! Critical hit!

  This one causes even more damage, and Ryuk doesn’t need the CliffsNotes to tell him that the Zombie Anne is susceptible to white magic. He holsters his marble gun, retrieves his slingshot, and fires a clear marble as he shouts, “Healing Light!”

  The marble connects and Anne turns bright orange. She coughs and a burst of flames comes out of her mangled maw. She coughs again, exhales deeply as she comes to understand her new fire-breathing ability.

  Anne turns to the three.

  Fuck! Simple Request didn’t work!

  A wall of hellfire scorches out of her mouth and blasts over them. Ryuk’s vision pane flashes red.

  - 90 HP!

  “For fick’s sake, Marbles!” Hiccup uses his mechanical hand to bat a fire out on his leg.

  “I’ll fix this!” A halo forms around Tamana’s head, and twinkling blips of white light heals the three Mitherfickers and the gnomes.

  +55 HP!

  The magic dissipates and she returns her free hand to the hilt of her buster sword.

  Anne rears back for another blast and Hiccup equips his biggest shield, protecting them from the blazing hellfire. “Someone kill this be-yotch already!”

  Ryuk pops up and zips a clear marble over Hiccup’s head. “Healing Light!”

  A Simple Request!

  -190 HP!

  An arc of pure light cuts the zombie teen down; Hiccup casts his shield aside and pitches another tomahawk.

  -34 HP!

  As undead Anne struggles to pull the tomahawk out of her forehead, Tamana darts in and neatly decapitates her.

  Instakill!

  Level up!

  Tamana leans on her sword and exhales loudly. “Whew!” EXP is doled out and everyone gains yet another level thanks to Dirty Dave’s magic.

  “Shit, that was a lot of assfickery just to get some treasure.”

  The cantankerous goblin approaches Anne’s decapitated head and nudges it with his boot. “Nope, not gonna make a necrophilia joke,” he mutters under his breath, “not today, anyway.” He brings his ax down onto the head, splitting it in two. “Well? Let’s get the treasure and get the fick out of here. This was supposed to be a fickin’ side quest, not an entire adventure unto itself.”

  As Ryuk reholsters his slingshot, he catches some murmuring over his shoulder. Arun is comforting his wife, who is upset and distraught by what’s transpired. Tamana slips her buster sword into its sheath and approaches Chantrea.

  “Are you going to be okay?” she asks the gnomette.

  “I’ll … ” the granny gnome wipes her nose on her rag of a dress. “I’ll be fine. Just a little shaken up. They, well, Anne, wanted to kill us – us! Can you believe that?” she asks Arun.

  “No,” he mumbles, but the serious look in his eyes says differently. “But let’s focus on what’s important right now. Did you feel it?” He shows her his ankles. “The cuffs are gone!”

  “They ... ” She lifts her dress and examines her ankles. “They’re gone!”

  “We can leave; we can go anywhere, anywhere, Chantrea!”

  FeeTwix: What is taking you guys so long!?

  Ryuk: Sorry! Zombie and looting issues. Coming now.

  He makes the ‘let’s wrap it up’ gesture to Hiccup, who gives Ryuk the thumbs up.

  “We have to join our friends and finish off the zombies outside,” Ryuk announces.

  “What Marbles means is take us to the treasure now.”

  “You stay here,” Arun tells his wife.

  “I’ll stay with her,” Tamana says.

  “But before we go … ” Arun unclasps a necklace from around his neck and hands it to Ryuk. A small silver circlet formed of superimposed characters hangs from a fine silver chain. “This necklace and pendant was made in Unigaea by Olivas, the renowned master silversmith.”

  “Thank you so much,” Ryuk says with a bow.

  “Yes, thank you.” Tamana chimes in.

  Before Ryuk can examine the necklace, Hiccup is on him like rats on rice.

  “Oooo! Shiny!” He snatches the necklace in a blur of motion. “I’ll just hold onto that.” He chortles as he sends it to inventory.

  Ryuk bristles but says nothing.

  “What? It’s for Twixy to give Liz. I’m just an old romantic at heart!”

  Arun steps in front of the two and waves them forward. “Please, follow me.”

  Once they reach the far end of crypt, the gnome gingerly kicks his tattered footwear against the thick wooden door. He fumbles around in his tunic for a moment and produces a key. “It’s not as easy as it seems,” Arun says as he starts fiddling with the lock, the face of which is shaped like a lion.

  “I think I could have cracked that,” says Hiccup.

  The gnome sighs. “This lock would have cracked you. Only authorized users can open it; if you tried, the lion face would have grown to full size and devoured you whole. I watched it happen once. I came down just in time to see it slurp up what was left of the thief. Some hobbit named Dildo Bugger or something.” The lock pops open and Arun waves them in. “Follow me.”

  The three enter a small, low-ceilinged room that forces Ryuk to crouch and bend his neck. Directly in front of them are two trunk-sized treasure boxes.

  “Now these I can crack!”

  “Not so fast, goblin.” Arun points to the chest on the left. “This one must be opened first. There’s nothing inside, but if you open the other one first, you and anyone in your party will die instantly. It’s a pretty powerful algospell; Mr. Bannon paid a dark mage in Valhalla a small fortune to create it.”

  “I was going to choose one on the left anyway.” Hiccup grumbles. He pops open the left chest and smoky red magic, thick as a river of blood slithers out forming a dragon’s head. It slides around the room, stops to examine the three men and turns to the exit.

  Ryuk returns his focus to the chests. “And Mr. Bannon told you all this, about the trap?”

  “I was the one who arranged the creation of the chest,” he explains. “He was banned from the city of Porthos, as I told you, and he sent me there to have them made. The lion lock and the key too.”

  “Why did you have a copy made?” Ryuk asks.

  Arun chews on his lip for a moment. “I knew my wife and I couldn’t escape, but I figured we could one day use it as collateral.”

  “Do you know what’s inside?” Hiccup asks.

  Arun places his hand on the closed chest. “Now that I don’t know,” he says nervously. “I do know that Mr. Bannon was fond of collecting rare things.”

  “Well, do you think it’s a trap?”

  Arun shrugs.

  “Whelp, today is an especially auspicious day to die.” Hiccup throws the chest open. Light blazes out of the chest and Ryuk steps up for a better look.

  “Fick! What the hell are we going to do with this thing?” Hiccup finally asks. “More importantly, why co
uldn’t I smell it?”

  Chapter 24: An egg for another day

  Ryuk, Hiccup, and Tamana stand in front of the Bannons’ toppled gate. There’s moisture in the air and a thick, gray fog has settled over the smoldering village of Kayi. Every now and then, he hears an occasional scream or a desperate shout, but there are considerably fewer than there were when the Mitherfickers first arrived.

  “Are you sure we don’t have time to hit any of the other McMansions?” Hiccup asks. “That, was most definitely not the type of treasure I was expecting. I’d see my aromachologist, but I’m pretty sure the dismal health plan coverage offered by our guild doesn’t have anyone in network, and if they did, the fickin’ deductible is so high that I’d probably have to rob the place after I got my prescription.”

  “You never shut up, do you?” Tamana asks playfully.

  The goblin lifts his helm and runs his mechanical hand through his tufty pink topknot. “I’m a think-out-loud type of goblin, like my father before me and my grandfather before him. Boy, those two never fickin’ shut up. But seriously, I should have smelled it.”

  Ryuk opens the Guu-Chee tote bag given to him by Chantrea and once again examines the egg. The size of a soccer ball but oblong, the egg is dark purple with icy blue veins spiraling around it.

  “We can deal with the egg later,” Tamana tells Ryuk, “let’s get to the others.”

  The egg and the tote dematerialize and appear in Ryuk’s inventory list. While his deet screen is up, he quickly checks the guild’s levels to find that FeeTwix and Zaena have really cleaned up while the three of them were off treasure hunting.

  Ryuk Matsuzaki Level 11 Ballistics Mage

  HP: 270/350

  ATK: 87

  MATK: 111

  DEF: 67

  MDF: 43

  LUCK: 10

  FeeTwix Fajer Level 15 Berserker Mystic

  HP: 228/539

  ATK: 119

  MATK: 28

  DEF: 74

  MDF: 38

  LUCK: 13

  Hiccup Level 11 Shield Thief

  HP: 453/475

  ATK: 73

  MATK: 13

  DEF: 141

  MDF: 68

  LUCK: 24

  Zaena Morozon Level 14 Brawler Assassin

  HP: 365/489

  ATK: 135

  MATK: 8

  DEF: 90

  MDF: 26

  LUCK: 14

  Tamana Nakamura Level 6 White Warrior

  HP: 186/252

  MANA: 105/119

  ATK: 68

  MATK: 12

  DEF: 49

  MDF: 93

  LUCK: 3

  “I just can’t believe that I couldn’t smell the dragon egg,” Hiccup waves his hand over his shoulder at the two gnomes, who now peer at them from the window in the parlor. “And these two gnomes … you’d fickin’ think that they’d blow that popsicle stand first thing and be over the horizon toot sweet, but no, Goblinholm Syndrome is a real thing, and these two plan to keep the place up and wait for their masters to respawn, which they will in a couple of days after their avatars wait out the zombie penalty.”

  A thought dawns on him. “Or-r-r-r they’re going to fickin’ steal everything that ain’t too hot or too heavy to lug off!” He peers back at them and gives them a big grin and a thumbs up. Arun responds in kind. “Those slick mitherfickers,” the goblins says under his breath.

  Hiccup takes the lead and Tamana follows behind as Ryuk reloads his magazines. A mag full of molten marbles was a good thing, and a combo of marbles may be even better. He loads two magazines with alternating black and molten marbles, another with strictly molten marbles, and another one with knife marbles. He fills the last one with clear marbles – his wild card mag.

  “I meant to compliment you on the marble gun,” Tamana says, “it is very, very cool, especially after seeing it in action.”

  “I’m starting to like being a Ballistics Mage,” he admits. “It was challenging at first, but with this weapon and some of my new skills, it isn’t as bad as I originally thought it would be.”

  “See? Like I told you, being a resetter isn’t as bad as you think.” She casts her eyes down. “Well, I guess that is debatable.”

  “Woe-is-me and Boo-Fickin’ Hoo,” says Hiccup, “think of it this way, Tammy, now, you’re like me and you don’t have to deal with real world shit. Job, school, taxes, et cetera.”

  “But you have to deal with all those things in here,” she reminds him as they pass the law office of Sloon Olson Nolos and Associates, which is on the outskirts of the town square.

  “Job? Pfft! What job? You mean being a guildhall security guard? That’s the easiest job I’ve ever had. Hell, half the time I’m gob-napping or checking out the latest issues of Goblin Holes. School? Yeah, but just Thulean grammar school, which was a breeze. Teacher was hot as fick too. Taxes? Like I pay those. You have to pay me for me to pay taxes. Speaking of which, where’s my four percent?”

  “You spent it in Sotla,” Ryuk tells him. “And it’s two percent.”

  “I thought it was three … ”

  The sounds of zombies moaning, followed by the percussive utterances of a submachine gun echo down the street.

  “That bloody Swede and his alien weapons,” Hiccup comments, “just kidding, the faster we kill the zulus, the faster we can get back to Aramis and get those nuru massages I was telling you about.”

  “The … what massages?” Ryuk knows exactly what a nuru massage is and he’s surprised to hear Hiccup call it by name.

  “I knew that would catch your attention! Kid, I know killing zomb-orcs is fun and all, but when you’re ready to let your hair down and see the other side of orcs, or the underside of orcs if you get my drift … ” He catches up to Ryuk and nudges him with his mechanical arm.

  An ASF zombie limps from an alley towards the three. A naked one-armed female orc zombie is right behind him.

  The black marble takes the fem-orc’s head right off.

  Instakill!

  Tamana has room to swing her ironing board sword and executes a very flashy spin-twirl-swoop-and-chop. The ASF zombie collapses in a well-partitioned heap; his detached head still glowers and grimaces even as she gives it the final chop.

  At the end of the street, Zaena wields her four blades like she’s both pairs in a doubles sabre fencing tournament. The undead are stacked around her in her own impromptu Hesco barrier.

  “Come on!” he tells the others, as he leads the charge. The shuffling dead claw their way up the corpse pile, and Zaena neatly lops heads as they stick them up. Ryuk unloads the magazine of black marbles and thins the crowd around her.

  “Ryuk,” she smiles as he joins her. With a flick of her wrists, she decapitates the next clambering corpse.

  He’s about to ask where FeeTwix is when the ripping snarl of a minigun moots his question. The Swede has a six-pack’s worth of empty, store brand healing potion bottles at his feet, and he sips yet another as he unleashes a storm of supersonic metal at an approaching cluster of the living impaired. -86 HP! -75 HP! -30 HP! -9 HP! An unmanned minigun mounted on a tripod fires short, economical bursts as it covers their backs.

  “He called it a remote sentry weapon system,” Zaena explains, slightly out of breath. “It is triggered by movement. I dislike many of the alien weapons he has brought to our world, but that one has been most useful.”

  “Liz!” Hiccup cries as he approaches. “We found one of your cousins.”

  Her eyes narrow on the goblin as she says, “Schloni tugtukh.”

  “A ghost ficker, eh? Well, hello to you too, darling! Marbles, show her the egg.”

  “Watch my back,” Ryuk tells Tamana.

  “Did you think I would let you die?” She holds her surfboard-sword at the ready and keeps her eyes on the avenues of approach. The designer tote bag takes shape in Ryuk’s hand, and Zaena gasps when he shows her the contents.

  “You found the egg of an ice dragon?”

 
“Found is … umm, yeah, we found it.”

  She touches it. “That’s really what it is! We need to get this to an incubator. We need to … ”

  “Incoming!” Tamana steadies her blade.

  As Ryuk raises his marble gun a message flashes on his viewing pane. “Fuck,” he gulps. “I need to log out. Now.”

  “What is it?”

  “Hajime just sent me a message.”

  “And?”

  “My brother is at my place.” Ryuk takes a deep breath.

  Concern flashes across Tamana’s eyes.

  “Don’t worry,” he assures her as he fires a molten marble at an approaching zombie, “I’ll be back in as soon as I can. For now, I’ll set my avatar to auto-level.” Ryuk lifts his finger and the option menu appears. After a quick bow, he makes the necessary adjustments and logs out.

  Chapter 25: Drop in, drop out

  Ryuk waits for his haptic chair to power down. As his vision blurs into focus, a bubbly advertisement for Mister Donut plays across his iNet screen. In the ad, a kawaii girl with pigtails and a schoolgirl outfit looks into the holes of a pair of donuts and says something in a high-pitched voice about two-for-one donuts this week only.

  He hardly pays attention.

  His nerves are jumping and the sense of impending doom relentlessly reverberates through him. Ryuk rubs his eyes and his ears prick up at a conversation in the living room. He’s suddenly hot, his temperature through the roof. Off goes his hooded black sweater, and after he finger combs his hair, he reluctantly exits his safe haven.

  “Glad you could join us. Glad I could finally get you out of that stupid fucking game of yours.” Kodai sits on the couch, behind the glass coffee table, sipping from a cup of green tea. Hajime is across from him, in the black sofa chair. No basket hat at the moment – the humandroid has his long hair pulled back into a tight manbun. He looks at Ryuk and smiles calmly.

  “Why are you here?” Ryuk’s shoulders tense and he clenches his fists. He relaxes them, but the tension in his shoulders remains.

  “Can’t I visit my own brother?” Kodai casually sets his tea down on the coffee table. He leans back for a moment and bares his teeth in a humorless grin.