Outpost: A LitRPG Adventure (Monsters, Maces and Magic Book 1)

by Terry W. Ervin II

  Glenn added, “Trust him on this, he’s a druid.”

  “Okay, then. Jax, you bring them to me, but keep your eyes on the ground.”

  “Why does her trust reside in you?” Ron asked.

  Glenn shrugged, although he thought it had to do with his being a gnome. In game terms, people initially trusted gnomes. And, he was half her size.

  After the horse teams had been watered and hobbled a dozen yards away to graze on the lush meadow grass, and everyone had had their turn in the wood with Ron’s leaves, they sat huddled together next to the dirt road. The grass was soft and comfortable despite its dampness. A few clouds hovered in the early morning sky bereft of any wind or breeze.

  Kirby was the last to join them, having secured from the wagon a loaf of dark bread and a wedge of cheese. He tore off and handed an equal piece of bread to everyone, except for Stephi. He handed hers to Glenn, to hand to her. Using his dagger he did the same with the cheese and sat down between Glenn and Derek.

  All five were ravenous and tore into the meal. The bread was stale, the cheese was sharp, but no one complained.

  Stephi’s blue jay familiar landed on her left shoulder, and she offered him a piece of bread, which he readily devoured. She laughed.

  Glenn said, “Marigold, I think you owe Gurk an apology.”

  She turned and glared down at him. “Why?”

  “You’re blaming him for how things turned out. Do you think he’s the reason we’re here?”

  “Look at me—well, maybe for the millionth time for all of you.” She placed her hands under her chest and hefted it, then turned and pressed her massive boobs into Glenn’s face.

  Glenn fell back, embarrassed, doubly so because Stephi’s action had started to arouse him.

  “That’s what every one of you wants to do. That little pervert’s the one that made me this way.”

  Glenn sat back up. “That’s unfair and you know it. You encouraged him and went along to gather material for your sociology paper. It was you that did the rounding up of numbers, if I recall, so don’t blame him.”

  Stephi crossed her arms over her chest, which only managed to redirect attention to it. But even that wasn’t what continued to draw their gaze. It was her flawless face. Perfectly proportioned and symmetrical, without blemish.

  She glanced around the group. “Then who knows why we’re here?”

  “Gurk,” Glenn asked, “when Marigold was going out to the woods and asked me to watch out for her, what were you going to suggest?”

  Kirby raised his head. “Wha—oh.” He pointed at Stephi’s shoulder. “That she could have her familiar watch out and warn her of any danger.”

  That’s what Glenn suspected.

  “What?” she asked.

  “As it’s your familiar,” Ron said. “You are bound together, sharing a mental connection.”

  Derek said, “You should be able to talk to your bird, and if you concentrate, even see through its eyes if you’re within a mile of each other.”

  Stephi’s eyes widened before she ducked her head in embarrassment.

  “He’s what warned me of the danger last night,” Glenn added. “I took blue jay as one of my animal communication languages.”

  “You can understand my blue jay?”

  “Only basic communication. Nothing like you should be able to do.”

  “If it’s a familiar,” Ron said, “you might be surprised as to its communicative ability.”

  Gurk spoke up. “You should give him a name, other than Blue Jay.”

  Stephi sent Kirby a sparking smile. “You’re right, my little man. I’m sorry about calling you a pervert.” She let out a breath of exasperation. “But I’m freaking huge, with these.”

  “You’re also frikkin’ gorgeous,” Kirby replied. He probably was blushing, but his muddy, half-goblin skin concealed it. “You got an appearance score of nineteen point five. Eighteen is the normal max. Twenty is reserved for gods and demigods.”

  Stephi opened her mouth to say something, then decided otherwise.

  “Look at me,” Glenn said, pointing to his face. “I’ve got a major schnoz and I have to crane my neck to talk to every one of you, except for Gurk and even then…and I’d be lucky if I could run a ten-minute mile.”

  Ron frowned. “A few minutes ago, I was attempting to calculate our rate of travel on horseback and comparing it to our estimated travel on foot, according to the game rules as I recall them.” He balled his fists. “Simple addition, multiplication and division that I have been able to do in my head since fifth grade. I had to scratch the figures out in the dirt with a stick to derive the answer.”

  “Dude, what’s your character’s intelligence score?” Kirby asked. “Because in real life you must’ve had a seventeen or eighteen.”

  “A fourteen,” Ron said, “which is marginally above average.”

  “I only have an eight,” Derek said, pounding his fist into the grass. “I didn’t think it was worth taking reading as a skill.” He pulled up a fistful of grass and threw it down. “I can’t even read my crappy heirloom item, a book of poetry.”

  “That’s it,” Stephi said, turning back to Glenn. “Your automatic candle—”

  “Everlast candle,” Kirby interrupted.

  She dismissed Kirby with a wave of her hand. “Whatever it’s called. It’s magical, right?”

  Glenn nodded, as did everyone else in the circle.

  “Sell it for gold. Magic’s got to be worth something. We can use that for the Tethering Spell to keep Byeol’s spirit—”

  “Soul,” Ron corrected.

  “Whatever,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  The thought had never occurred to Glenn, but for some reason he said, “No.”

  “What?” Stephi leaned close to the gnome. “What do you mean, no?”

  “Selling one’s heirloom goes against the rules,” Ron said.

  “If you do it,” Kirby said, “you’ll be cursed with bad luck.”

  “A curse doesn’t sound good.” Stephi reached up and ran a finger along the blue jay’s feathers. “Somehow, I know I couldn’t sell Petie.”

  “Petie?” Kirby asked. “Are you serious?”

  “He’s my familiar and he likes it. He told me so.”

  “Crimony, of course he did.” Kirby threw his narrow-fingered hands up in the air. “You could’ve named him Cow Poo and he would’ve thought it’s wonderful.”

  The familar uttered a short set of bobs and warbles before flying off. Glenn interpreted it as something along the lines of, “Understood, Mistress, or Female Master, or something.”

  Stephi looked around the group. “I told Petie to fly around and watch out for danger.”

  “Astute notion,” Ron said, glancing over at the horses, still grazing.

  “Speaking of danger,” Stephi said. “Thank you, Jax, for charging that ogre all on your own, to give me a chance to be safe.”

  It was Glenn’s turn to blush.

  “He probably has a low wisdom score,” Derek said. “He had the least chance of stopping the ogre of any of us—besides you. Same deal asking for someone to guard you while you went into the woods. Even a thief fights better than a healer.”

  Ron spoke louder than normal. “What he means is, healers, like magic users, have the least advantageous ‘to hit’ chart.”

  “Whatever, Kalgore the Courageous,” Stephi said. “He’s the one who was willing, so I am thanking him, not you.”

  Derek leapt to his feet, fists balled. Kirby didn’t stand, but his hand went to his cutlass.

  Glenn stood up and held his hands out, and stepped to the middle of the circle. “First, thank you, Marigold. Maybe Kalgore is correct. Maybe not. The thing is, we all have to work together. And, before we get to arguing, we need to work together, to survive.” That said, he sensed the argument wasn’t over and for some reason, was stoked to get out of hand. He didn’t know why.

  Ron stood next to Derek, placing a hand on his friend’s muscula
r shoulder. “Let it go, Kalgore.”

  “Sure,” Glenn continued, “I may not be able to fight well, and maybe what I did last night was brave, but I’ll tell you what, I can heal. And you know what? That scares the hell out of me.”

  “Why?” Kirby asked.

  Glenn didn’t know why he’d admitted that, and looked away. He took a deep breath. “You all saw Byeol. You know what a healer does? I cast a Minor Healing Draw Spell, transferring her wounds and injuries to me, that I have to heal. While the rules say I can’t draw more hit point damage onto myself than I can physically survive, that means I could be left nearly as broken and bleeding until the next sunrise.”

  Kirby reached over and patted Glenn on the hip. “Dude, I was so scared I almost pissed my trousers while jumping on that ogre’s back.”

  Stephi drew Kirby close in a one-armed side hug. “I’ve been scared almost every other minute I’ve been here.”

  With a gesture, Ron got Derek to sit back down, and then did so himself.

  Kirby asked, “Why’d that GM dude send us here?”

  Ron replied, “If he sent us here, there is every possibility that he could return us to…our original reality.”

  Kirby shook his head. “That doesn’t say why.”

  “Determining ‘why’ may not be the foremost question for which we require an answer. How, might be more germane to our situation.”

  “He’s right,” Derek said. “What about a transport spell? They’re high rank, but not any higher than a Revive the Dead.”

  Kirby shook his head in disagreement. “The magic user would need to know where to send us. If it’s a different universe as Lysine thinks, then it’d be like a Plane Walk Spell, and they’d need to figure out our plane.” He scratched his head. “Even if either worked…” He gazed down at himself. “This is how we’ll return. Might be okay for you two,” he said to Derek and Ron, “except for the lower intelligence scores. I’m a half-goblin, which works here but won’t there. I’ll be in some sort of missing link freak show ten minutes after I get back.”

  He pointed to Glenn. “Jax might pass as a dwarf, if he wanted to. Marigold doesn’t like her body.” He grinned up at her. “Even though you’d probably get to play Wonder Woman’s sexier sister in the movies or something.”

  “Agreed,” Ron said. “As we are at the moment, we are better suited for this ‘world’ than our own. So, while we travel to Three Hills City, to accomplish our first priority mission…” He glanced at the wagon bearing Kim’s body. “Put some further thought into our second priority.”

  Kirby stepped around Glenn and offered a hand to help Stephi up. “What Lysine said, but not that we allow a Wandering Creatures Encounter to get the drop on us.”

  Chapter 6

  The road improved as they neared Three Hills City. The GM must’ve calculated the two day trip by foot since riding through part of the night and through most of the following day brought them to the city gates.

  After hurrying through, or riding around, a number of hamlets and villages, and passing more than a few orchards and fields still being plowed using mules and oxen, Three Hills City came into view. It was aptly named. Three tall towers, two square and one round, had been built atop three hills within the expansive city’s walls. Smaller buildings covered the hillsides beneath the towers. Many other towers and buildings were tall enough to be seen above the fifteen foot stone wall that surrounded the city.

  The city had a moat surrounding it, which was mostly dry except for maybe several feet of muddy sludge. The smell suggested deposits from more than a few chamber pots had found their way into the water. The drawbridge was down and the portcullis raised, so Ron encouraged the weary horses forward. It was about an hour until sunset and they wanted to get oriented and some business taken care of before dark.

  Ron had played Monsters, Maces and Magic for years. While his Charisma score was a little above average and appearance score was low, he had years of experience playing the game. Everyone figured that would count for more than Stephi’s initial reaction score, should the guards question them.

  While riding near the villages and hamlets, she’d kept the hood of her green cloak over her head. The garment largely hid both her face and build. She had it down now that they were approaching the city. Her sitting and being radiant might help, and Glenn crouched between the two on the wagon bench might, as well. Most people, according to Derek, Ron and Kirby, found gnomes inoffensive and looked on them favorably.

  Derek followed with his wagon, and Kirby, being a half-goblin, planned to stay out of sight. While his kind weren’t outlawed in most regions, initial reactions were rarely positive. Neutral was often the best to be hoped for. Everyone hoped for better than Neutral.

  Glenn wondered why Kirby chose to play a half-goblin. He thought about asking before approaching the city, but didn’t get the chance to do that.

  Two guards with spears stood on either side of the drawbridge, under the opening. Several with crossbows watched from the crenelated wall above. The sky was cloudy, otherwise there might’ve been sunlight in their eyes. A man, with dark hair whose curls looked like they had been dipped in oil sat on a padded stool behind the drawbridge guard on the left. A tall narrow table holding some sort of a ledger was next to him.

  Ron proceeded forward slowly, keeping the horses under control as they clomped across the wooden drawbridge.

  The guards signaled with their spears for Ron to stop, which he did.

  “Your business in Three Hills City?” the oily-haired man asked.

  “Sir,” Ron began, “I and my companions.” He gestured to Glenn, who politely waved once, and to Stephi, who flashed an engaging smile. It was obvious that her looks distracted both the guards and the questioner. “And those driving the wagon behind us, fell in with the merchants who owned these wagons, and the men-at-arms they hired to watch over them.”

  That unexpected answer snapped the questioning man back to what Ron was saying.

  “Unfortunately, last night, a band of goblins and an ogre attacked the camp. One of our companions, both merchants, and their men were slain. But together we defeated the foul group.

  “We have brought their bodies and their property to this, the nearest city, to turn over to the proper authorities, so that the bodies may be returned to families.” Ron’s eyes never flinched or looked away while he spoke. “As well as the wares they carried, returned to possession of the deceased’s next of kin, or whomever the rightful owner of the horses, wagons and property might be.”

  “Bodies? Did you bring the bodies of the goblins and ogres?” the questioning man asked, doubtfully.

  “We did not, but we did bring the foul band’s weapons in hopes of selling them ourselves, and to help pay for spell services in order to revive our party member the band killed.”

  “Adventurers?”

  Ron nodded. “Indeed, we are.”

  The questioning man signaled for one of the guards to look in the covered wagons and examine their contents, then asked, “Did you bring the heads of the goblins and ogre?”

  “Their heads?” Stephi began, but Glenn elbowed her in the side, shushing her. He then smiled innocently at the questioning man.

  With a look of concern, Ron answered, “That, we did not do.”

  The man gave Ron an ironic smile. “Where and when did this confrontation take place?”

  Ron provided time, estimated distance, and details of the area as best he remembered, which Glenn thought was pretty good. Better than he could’ve done.

  The guard returned and said, “Crates, barrels, seven bodies and a stack of goblin weapons and a five-foot morning star.”

  The questioning man nodded to the soldier and wrote something down with his quill and ink before tearing the page from his ledger. “Take this to Captain Green. Relay this man’s story so that he may verify it and the duke can be informed.”

  The questioning man turned his attention back to Ron, after his gaze lingered a few secon
ds on the tall elf maiden. “This band of goblin brigands, led by a foul ogre, is known to Duke Huelmer. He placed a bounty for their heads, which you neglected to take. Those would’ve been far more valuable to gather than their certain to be crude weapons.

  “Nevertheless, I shall take your names, and once Captain Green verifies your claim, a writ of appreciation will be issued to you and your adventuring companions.”

  Glenn thought, that and a fist full of iron coins will buy me a tankard of sour ale, but didn’t express it. Rather he continued to smile and listen.

  The questioner dipped his quill into the ink well. “May I have your names?”

  “No reward?” Ron asked.

  He shrugged. “As you are not in possession of the dead brigands’ heads, there is no definitive proof that it was you who slew them.”

  Ron scowled, Stephi huffed and crossed her arms, and Glenn frowned. The heads probably would’ve been enough pay for a Tether Spell. Probably a lot more. There was no way they’d beat the duke’s men to the spot, if someone hadn’t already taken them for the reward.

  Ron provided everyone’s names, and then received directions where to take the wagons and horses. The questioning man pulled a thin piece of wood about the size of a business card from his pocket. “When you reach the chief magistrate’s court, hand this to the bailiff and tell him what you know. He will see that the bodies and property are taken care of.”

  Ron glanced at the piece of wood before handing it to Glenn. Fine script carved into it identified the questioning man as Lieutenant Reginald Voss, Gate Observer in the Service of Duke Huelmer.

  The cobblestone road leading from Three Hills City’s main gate immediately forked, with one branch going left, one right and one straight toward the center of the city. It appeared the left and right forks would eventually lead to one of the large hills. The center road led to what was obviously a high-walled keep of some sort in the distance. It too was elevated above the main level of the city, but not as much as the hills, including the one that rose beyond the keep, as viewed from just inside the main gate.