“Son, you mind if I come in and have a talk with Lamar? I haven’t been able to spend much time with him since I came back,” Ty asked.
“Be my guest, pops. He’s probably in there playing video games and not doing anything constructive. I swear that boy better learn some initiative; I won’t let him loaf around here all day without contributing. He’s nineteen and should be pulling his own weight,” Nathan started. Ty waved him down.
“Hold up, Nathan. Let me talk to the boy. I seem to recall another stubborn nineteen-year-old that didn’t have a lot of direction at that age,” Ty said, looking at Nathan, who squirmed a bit under his dad’s gaze. Ty hobbled slowly down the hallway. He still needed the wheelchair to go any long distances, but he liked to move under his own power with a cane inside the house.
“What!?” a voice barked out at him as Ty knocked on his grandson’s door.
“What? Is that any way to greet your granddad, Lamar?” Ty replied.
“Oh, sorry. Thought you were Dad. Come on in, Grandpa,” Lamar said sheepishly. Ty entered into chaos. Lamar’s bed was undone and likely hadn’t been made in months. Dirty and perhaps clean clothes were strewn about, and his trashcan overflowed with empty takeout containers and energy drink cans. The room was dark, the blinds closed and the drapes pulled. Lamar was getting up from a gaming recliner, one of them fancy chairs that you use for VR gaming for longer periods of time.
Removing his headset, Lamar looked up at his grandfather. Despite the ongoing conflict with his father, Lamar was always respectful to Ty. Clearing a corner of the bed to make room to sit, Ty lowered himself down with a grunt.
“Not so easy to move around anymore at my age, one of the downsides of getting old, Lamar. One of the good things about being old is that I don’t have to have any tact. When you don’t have much time left, you can’t waste it beating around the bush, so I won’t. Why are you and your father butting heads? Give me the truth now, son,” Ty said sternly. Lamar—to his credit—met his gaze before replying. It did Ty good to see that his progeny had some backbone.
“Dad just wants to force me into a life I don’t want to live! I’m good at it, Grandpa. I can make a living gaming. I know you built the family business, but it’s just not what I want to do for the rest of my life. Dad doesn’t get it and demands I do what he says,” Lamar said.
“I won’t claim to know much about gaming and whether or not you can make a living at it. But I do know you will regret it for the rest of your days if you and your father can’t come to terms. If you don’t want to work in the restaurants, that’s fine with me. You have my blessing, for what it’s worth, to do what you want with your life, Lamar,” Ty told the young man. His grandson must have expected him to come down on him like his father had. Instead, Ty had given him some support the boy didn’t likely expect to hear from him.
“What I won’t abide is laziness, Lamar. You want to pursue gaming as a career? Fine. But until you can support yourself with it, don’t you think you owe it to your father to pull your own weight? Is it too much to ask for you to put in some time at the restaurant to support yourself while you learn what you need to be a professional gamer?” Ty asked.
“No, I guess that’s a fair enough thing to ask for, Grandpa. I don’t mind working. It’s just that dad will accept nothing less than me running the business. I’m fine working in the place, but I don’t have any desire to learn how to run it. I love Dad and don’t want to fight all the time, but if I don’t stand up to him now, when will I ever get the life I want to live?” Lamar asked.
“Son, if you’re willing to at least help out and pay your own way, I can accept that taking over the family business isn’t for you,” Nathan said from the hallway, where he had been listening in. Ty was surprised to see Nathan there, and from the shocked expression on Lamar’s face, Ty supposed that he was as well.
“I just wanted what was best for you, son. If this is what you really want to do, so be it. Just help out and don’t lock yourself up in here all day . . . Deal?” Nathan asked.
“I’ll leave you two to work out the details,” Ty said as he stood, confident that father and son would find some common ground. As he stood, his grandson’s VR gear caught his eye.
“Lamar, you play Limitless Lands on that?” Ty asked.
“You can, Grandpa, but it’s not one of my games. I’m into first-person shooter VRs,” Lamar said.
“If I pay for the subscription, will you help me to start the game? I have a friend I’d like to check up on,” Ty said.
“Sure, Grandpa. Just let me know when . . . OUCH! What did you hit me for?” Lamar said as Ty smacked him in the shin with his cane.
“That’s for leaving this room a pigsty. I’ll be by soon to figure out the game. Make sure this room is up to regulation or I’ll whack you again. No discipline,” he grumbled as he hobbled out of the room. “Maybe I should send him off to the Corps?”
“Does Grandpa know the Marines aren’t like that anymore?” Lamar asked his father.
“No, and don’t remind him or he’ll whack us both. Now, before Grandpa comes back to make us do push-ups—and believe me, he will—let’s figure out how gaming and work are going to happen,” Nathan said.
Ty smiled as he left their house, confident his son and grandson would work things out together. If not . . . well, a little corrective physical training wouldn’t hurt either of them.
Chapter 19
Deacon stood atop the remnants of the roadblock, watching dust rise in the distance. He couldn’t be sure if the approaching force was his target, or if they were the friendly reinforcements he had been told were going to pass through. Either way, he still had a lot of work to do. Query had tasked him with delaying the enemy force that would be coming down this road. He had run nearly all the way from Hayden’s Knoll to the nearest transition point to make it in time. The soldiers at the eastern transition point almost attacked him when he first came through, then realized wasn’t hostile.
Query might have given him this quest, but he would have done it anyway. Serving in the Army as a drone maintenance tech, Deacon had found and watched the streams of Raytak in-game. He was fascinated that this old soldier was in-game and doing the things he was doing. There weren’t many combat veterans left, and to watch one in action was the coolest thing he could think of.
Deacon’s Army experience was fine, but not that exciting. His unit consisted of a few dozen men who maintained the old drones they stored at the base. Other than putting on the uniform each day—an act that he took pride in—his job wasn’t much different from a civilian working on the many drones delivering goods and services every day. He had grown up on stories from his grandfather about his time as a combat engineer. His grandfather had even earned the sapper badge: the elite of the engineers.
When the AI offered him the engineer class, he jumped at the chance. Then he ran into that crazy sphinx that offered him the opportunity to learn the Combat Engineer prestige class. Sure, he had to do a lot of quests to earn it, but now he was finally able to fulfill the last obligation for the class quest he had been given.
The other players he had met while delivering Query’s messages had been nice, but he was more of a solo player. After character creation, the AI had dropped him into a floundering village of npc’s that he had since grown fond of. The npc’s in the game were almost like real people, and he preferred to stick with the AI-generated people over the real ones. He had always been painfully shy; even his job in the Army hardly ever required him to interact with other people.
Creating new things in this game was his passion, things the approaching army would find none too pleasant. Going back to work, Deacon dug more emplacements alongside the road for his devices. The game gave him a skill called Prepare Ground, which let him dig almost instantly when working on an emplacement for an engineering device or trap.
He had stuffed his storage full of raw materials in Hayden’s Knoll—raw materials that he had crafted into devices on
the long run here. He was ready to transform this simple march to attack the transition point into a long, bloody slog the enemy would regret having ever started.
Pausing in his work, Deacon looked to the approaching figures. He could just make out individuals and get an idea of who they were. They were dressed like Imperium soldiers; these must be replacements or reinforcements for the transition point. Moving out past his growing number of traps, Deacon waited for the column to near and waved them down.
“Why are you flagging us down, citizen?” the lead soldier asked.
“Sir, I need to warn you to not leave the roadway. There are traps and weapons strewn about that I don’t want you stumbling into,” Deacon advised.
“Who do you want stumbling into them?” the soldier asked with a smirk.
“Not sure who they are. Whoever it is that intends to attack the transition point and take it from the Imperium,” Deacon added.
“Then carry on, though I should warn you that if you see any ogres, they are on our side . . . sort of. Captain Raytak would appreciate it if you didn’t start a war with them,” the soldier advised before moving down the road. The column took his warning seriously and kept tightly to the middle of the roadway.
Deacon spent several more hours preparing the road itself, then camouflaging all his devices. It would take a scout or rogue with high perception scores to reveal his work. To top it off, they would have to make a separate check for each and every device planted, and Deacon had placed a lot of devices.
The overall layout consisted of three layers of defense. The farthest defenses were thinly spread over a large area both on and off the roadway. These were the most mundane of his traps: simple pits with spikes in them, tripwires that caused the victim to fall onto a sharpened stake, and deep, narrow holes designed to break legs. The second line was around one hundred yards from the remnants of the barricade. Here was where the real killing would begin and where his own inventions came into play. The final line was sprinkled about the barricade and the roadway itself, containing fewer traps but some of the most powerful he could craft.
It grew late into the evening, and Deacon was surprised to find that he had more time on his hands than he had thought. He worked at first to expand the layer of simple traps farther to each side of the road before night fell. As a spectacular sunset glowed in the west, Deacon spotted a large dust cloud in the distance. His enemies—whoever they might be—were approaching. Before it got too dark to see, the dust cloud stopped, indicating the enemy forces were halting for the night.
Deacon took this opportunity to scout his enemies under the cover of darkness. Pulling his goggles from his inventory, Deacon placed them on his head and activated them; they might look strange, with different rotating lenses and an almost clockwork appearance. The goggles would function for just under an hour and gave him the ability to see in the dark nearly as well as in the daytime. This was true normal vision, not the green tint of the night-vision goggles he had seen the Army use in the old vids.
The open, rocky terrain didn’t provide much cover, so he wasn’t able to get too close to the surprisingly vigilant enemy. From as close as he dared to approach, Deacon tried to get a count. The main bulk of the enemy was comprised of elves. At first, Deacon thought he had found the wrong force; elves were generally considered a “good” race in this game. His illusions about the elves being part of the good guys were shattered when a pained scream erupted from the center of the camp.
A large bonfire was being lit in the middle of the camp, and staked to the ground near the flames was an ogre. The ogre was smaller than most . . . perhaps a teenager or older child. Elves surrounded the pitiful creature, occasionally bending down to do something that elicited yet more screams of pain and terror. Sharpened blades flashed in the firelight as knife-wielding elves went to work on their victim, the shouts reaching a new crescendo. The screams of pain from the ogre, and the laughter of the elves at their captive’s pain, confirmed to Deacon that these were the people he had been asked to stop.
And he would . . . gladly .
The final count was only approximate given his distance from the camp, but he estimated there were 350 elves and 200 humans. As far as he could tell, the elves were all level 12 and the humans accompanying them were level 16. This would be an interesting fight tomorrow.
The ogre finally stopped screaming and the elves walked away from their victim. Deacon wasn’t sure if the ogre was dead or had just passed out from the pain. The former was confirmed when the elves ordered a few of the humans to drag the body outside the camp. Nothing deserved the torture the elves had inflicted.
Deacon had wanted to try to save the ogre, but there was no way his level 10 character could fight his way past hundreds of higher-level opponents. To die here and now would leave these elves free to move about on the road as they pleased. The majority of the devices he had placed required him to activate them before they functioned, a failsafe to keep an area safe for travel by those not involved in the fighting. Deacon would exact retribution for the poor ogre tomorrow, creating terror and confusion among the elves and their allies with every step they took.
Deacon slowly moved from his vantage point when movement from the corner of his vision froze him in place.
Only twenty feet in front of him and just to the side waited a group of elves. The elves were spaced out, lying down in any depression in the ground they could find, preparing an ambush. The movement of one of the elves adjusting the dagger at his side had tipped him off to their presence. Had they spotted his approach somehow? With the utmost care, Deacon began to back away. He had a high stealth skill and wore gear that aided his camouflage score.
The elves gave no indication they had seen him, and after another twenty minutes, his agonizingly slow pace of withdrawal moved him another ten feet from his enemy. Deacon’s breath caught as the elves all unslung their bows and nocked arrows. He was going to die. He reached for his weapon, prepared to sell his life dearly, but instead of turning to fire at him, the elves all were looking in another direction.
The object of their attention soon became apparent as a half dozen ogres tried—and failed—to move quietly toward the elf encampment. The ogres were toast if they moved just a bit closer. Deacon wanted to warn the ogres, but he couldn’t fight thirty elves head to head. At most he could get one or two before they riddled him with arrows. Maybe he could help the ogres in another way. Without a moment to spare, Deacon dug through his pack and pulled out a one-foot-long tube. Just before the elves could spring their ambush, he aimed the tube just over the heads of the elves and whispered the activation word.
At his command, the tube spit a ball of light into the air with an uncomfortably loud pop .
Deacon broke into a run, trying to put as much distance between him and the elves as he could. A few arrows landed near him and two thudded into his back, dropping his health to half. Deacon felt a small tinge of pain, opting to have only the minimum one-percent pain feedback setting. The barrage halted as the ball of light from his device flared up to a blinding intensity. The elves covered their eyes in pain as their ambush was revealed to the nearby ogres. Seeing the numbers stacked against them, the ogres also took off, away from the elves, and ran in the other direction.
The Sun Flare burned out quickly and the area was bathed in darkness once more. Having their vision temporarily ruined by the flare, the elves didn’t notice Deacon fade away safely into the dark. Checking his goggles revealed he had about ten more minutes remaining of the improved night vision.
Thankfully, the goggles also protected his eyes from bright flashes like the flare. The goggles were one of the first things he had crafted, an item he had continually upgraded as he leveled. In addition to its other abilities, it acted as a targeting system and magnifier for his rifle. The only downside was that the device only worked for a limited amount of time each day . . . and his time was almost up.
Moving in the direction where the ogres had fled, he ha
d little trouble finding the giant creatures; their muffled voices still sounded boomingly loud to Deacon’s ears. Thankfully, there were no signs of pursuit from the elves.
“Hey, ogre guys. Can you hear me,” Deacon called from twenty feet away.
“Who’s saying that? Are you an elf?” an ogre replied, his head rapidly moving back and forth as he tried to spot who was talking in the darkness. The others gathered their weapons and prepared to defend themselves.
“No, I’m a gnome, of course. The very one who warned you about the ambush,” Deacon said.
“If that’s true, you should have helped us fight the Ikbose elves, not just throw lights in the sky like a weak wizard. We were sent to find a missing youngling when we cut the trail of those elves. We were going to try and raid their camp and free our kin when you revealed their ambush,” the ogre said.
“I’m sorry to tell you, but I think your youngling is dead. The elves did horrible things to him and I’m sorry I couldn’t do more to help. I came back to warn you to stay away from the road near the roadblock for the next few days. I’ve placed several traps for our friends back there, and I don’t want you blundering into them,” Deacon warned before heading back to the safety of his traps and defenses, not waiting for a thank-you he didn’t feel he deserved, even if it had been offered.
As a player, Deacon didn’t sleep in-game, but he did need to log out for a bit to run some errands in the real world. By the time he had hit the store, eaten a meal, and used the restroom, it was nearly morning in-game. As Deacon logged in, the eastern sky was just starting to lighten with the first hints of the day to come. Figuring he had the time, Deacon prepared his last few traps, spacing them out well past the roadblock. He had saved a few to scatter on the roadway with the intent of keeping the enemys’ movement slowed even after they had left the last belt of defenses.
Eventually his storage was empty of everything save for his individual weapons and gear. He had the ability to summon a few devices that weren’t premade, but his very limited mana pool only permitted a couple of casts before it was depleted. His class had a restriction that slowed his mana regen and pool, the AI’s way to offset the potential power his class possessed. The engineer class was deadly, but only if foes gave it time to prepare.
Limitless Lands Book 4: Opposition (A LitRPG Adventure) Page 19
