“These are expensive as shit,” Popper said, holding the potion up to the light. “It must be good to be king.”
Once I’d hit level 30, I’d been able to add a third accessory slot. In addition to my watch—Hubrid’s Silver Watch of Horology, which added +3 to my dexterity and +1 to my magic ability—I wore a ring that allowed me to cast three Magic Protection shells a day. I also wore my newest addition, something that would probably be useless here: a pendant of Detect Undead. Popper had found and bought it for me. It let me know if any hidden undead were nearby. It marked them with a red circle on my minimap. Supposedly, once we finished Missing Maps, the Sandra the Learnt quest, I’d be able to call up a full-screen map, and I’d be able to see any undead within five square kilometers.
My curse already extended past that range. Currently I would summon any undead within a six and a half kilometer circle around me. But I felt much better wearing the pendant.
Next to me, Gretchen was also preparing her gear. She’d replaced her spear with a magical one with a lightning enchantment. She could smash the ground, and everything around her would be given a jolt. She didn’t like wearing gear on her head, but she wore a red leather jerkin that protected her against Fear spells. She’d fallen victim to the spell during our last battle, and she didn’t want that to happen again. She only had two accessory slots, and she wore her watch and a second ring of magic protection, identical to the one I wore. She had purchased both rings at great expense to help us win the tournament battle against the king.
Popper’s famous one-horned helmet had been destroyed in the tournament battle, but he’d somehow found himself another one just like it. The look was part of his “trademark,” as he called it. This one had a Feather Fall enchantment. He needed it, as he was constantly falling off Alice’s back as they trained. He’d sold his watch to pay for his armor and to bribe the emo-tong into letting us transport Raj to the city, but he’d found a new magical item: a necklace called Brandi’s Tear. It could only be worn by juvenile females and gave him +1 to his magic ability and +1 to his strength.
Popper complained that his beetle armor itched, so he only wore it when he absolutely had to. He pulled it on now. The armor, like my helmet, had a speed enhancement. It also reflected physical damage back to the attacker. He held FUD at the ready, his magical, Popper-sized battle axe. The axe’s Final Breath enchantment allowed him to complete one last action upon death.
“Would you look at us,” Popper said. “All geared up and ready to go into battle, just like the old days.”
“The ‘old days’ were just a couple weeks ago,” I said.
“Yeah, but it feels like it's been much longer,” he said. “Let’s roll.”
Jonah Note 5
Larissa wanted to surround us with 50 soldiers, but I made her choose six, plus herself, giving us a party of ten. They were to hold back and grab me if things went south. She voiced her displeasure multiple times until I had to order her to shut up.
We approached the fissure on the east end, where the scouts reported a crude walkway led into the depths. We had ropes just in case we needed to climb, but they weren’t necessary yet. Gretchen and Popper both held torches as we stepped into the muddy, dark cold.
“So, I was thinking,” Gretchen whispered as we cautiously crept down into the hole. “The point of this quest is to get the queen mother on our good side, right? Maybe we should avoid killing any of her children. Try to get to her without hurting any of the baby larvae.”
“Now, you come up with this,” Popper hissed. “How the hell are we going to do that?”
“Shit, I think you’re right,” I said. “Maybe we can use the invisibility potions?”
“Echolocation, remember?” Gretchen said. “They’re already blind. The potions won’t work.”
Twenty meters in, and the walls got tighter around us. I looked around nervously at the unsteady-looking rock and dirt walls. It felt as if the whole thing could collapse on us at any moment. There was no way either Alice or Bruce Bruce would ever fit in here. We had to walk single file. Gretchen took the lead, then me, then Popper. If I ever got a pet, I decided, I’d get something small. That way I could keep Jenny as a mount and still have something to fight by my side. Maybe I’d get a bird, like that lightning-shooting parrot that one jeweler in Constance had. Or one of those acid-spewing chinchillas.
“I’m not claustrophobic,” Popper whispered, his voice wavering. “I’m not scared of tight spaces. I’m not claustrophobic. I’m not claustrophobic.”
A small, round hole, leading to a dark tunnel, appeared half-buried near the bottom of the otherwise featureless fissure. The hole was large enough for Popper to walk through, but Gretchen and I had to stoop. Larissa called for us to wait. She had to remove the shoulder pauldrons off her massive armor for her to fit. Once inside, however, the dank passageway grew larger.
We stepped out of the tunnel into a room. A sudden, piercing light filled our vision, so bright it was painful. Red flashed, indicating I was taking damage. We shielded our eyes at the prismatic assault. Only after a moment did I realize what it was. Hundreds of crystals grew from the ceiling and floor, like the room was filled with teeth. Each crystal was about the size of a person, and it reflected off the torches in Popper and Gretchen’s hands.
“Put the torches out,” I said. I clenched my eyes shut, but I continued to take a small amount of damage. “Do it now.”
The white jackets behind us also extinguished their torches, and we were suddenly plunged into absolute darkness. The damage didn’t appear to be too serious, but my eyes stung. I only knew I wasn’t blind because I could see the faint outline of Gretchen’s spear and Popper’s axe.
“What are those things?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Gretchen said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Larissa clanged as she gingerly walked up behind us.
“This is a field of charge crystals, your majesty. The biggest I’ve ever seen. Even the smallest amount of fire or sunlight sets them off. They magnify light a hundredfold. I do not know how we can pass without destroying them, and they are difficult to harvest. They look as if they are glass, but they are not. They are hard like diamonds. This is a fortune of crystal. Weaponsmiths and jewelers and miners from around the kingdom will vie for the opportunity to harvest these.”
“Well, shit,” Popper said. “We can’t use light because it’ll blind us, but we can’t see shit, either. What do we do?”
“I didn’t notice how big this room was,” I said, “but I have the impression it’s big. The glow from our enchanted weapons doesn’t seem to set them off.”
“Hmm,” Gretchen said. “We need an infrared or an echolocation skill to get through this. We can try just to feel our way through, but I wouldn’t recommend it. It might be really dangerous.”
“Do you think the fire from my blades will set them off?” I asked.
“Let’s try it, but shut it off quick if they start to glow,” Gretchen said.
I unfurled Triple Fang from my waist, letting the blades fall to the ground. The Enflame enchantment activated, and for a solid second, the entire room glowed, bathed in a soft light. The room exploded in light, the hundreds of crystals humming as they activated. I instinctively switched off the flames, but not before I saw the terror descending upon us.
“Get back,” I yelled.
“Holy fuckballs!” Popper cried at the same time.
In that briefest of moments, I saw them. There were at least five of them, but there could be more. Hidden amongst the tall crystals they lurked: conical beasts with a large, single, milky-white eye and a massive, fanged mouth. They didn’t appear to have legs, but they each had at least six, maybe more, tentacles, and they pulled themselves toward us. Each tentacle was as long as my urumi blades, and the fleshy, green, cone-shaped beasts were each about eight feet tall.
My companions were on either side of me, and Larissa was just behind me. I had to attack, attack
now, but I had to make sure I didn’t hit any of my companions.
I whipped up my blade, pulling hard to give them as much momentum as I could force into a single, forward wave. I felt the three blades quiver as they found flesh.
The monster squealed as it dropped dead. Notifications started to fly by on my screen.
This is an unholy creature. A foul hunter of the numinous.
Yessss, a beast from another plane of existence.
This flesh transcends, master. More, please more.
I didn’t have time to parse what my sword just said, but it seemed important.
“What the hell are those things?” Popper asked.
“I don’t….ahhhh,” Gretchen called, crying out in pain.
I flicked my Enflame enchantment, causing it to flash like a camera bulb, and I had the briefest glimpse of Gretchen entangled in three tentacles, with one of those beasts pulling her towards its mouth. Its mouth was half the size of its body, easily big enough to swallow her whole. I flipped my blades, cutting the tentacles away. The beast squealed as Gretchen thudded to the floor.
“Keep strobing that light,” Larissa boomed, bounding into action. “Soldiers, on me!”
She pushed past us, swords and maces flashing in the quick pulses of light.
“No,” Popper cried. “She’s stealing our experience!”
Gretchen rose to her knees, gasping for air. I flashed my blades. Ahead, blood and white jacket limbs hurdled through the air, mixed in with the otherworldly squeal from the monsters.
“Fuck this, I’m getting some experience,” Popper said, rushing forward, screaming into the fray.
“I could see it,” Gretchen said. “I could see her insides, mixed with the outsides, all screaming and melting. I could taste the forever on her lips. Jason was her brother. All of them, even little Peyton. They bled for me, didn’t they? I’m a butcher. I killed her, I did. I’m not sorry. The color purple smells like lollipops and grape soda.”
“What the fuck?” I said, looking down at Gretchen as she gibbered. “Gretchen!”
Then, I saw it in the brief flash of light. By her name was an effect notification: Insane, followed by a timer that read two minutes and 43 seconds.
Shit. The monsters’ tentacles must cast Insanity on you. Gretchen had once described the spell to me, stating it made your head swim, disorienting you, and that your avatar would spout random things, samples from your stream of consciousness.
“Popper,” I yelled. “Be careful. Gretchen has insanity.”
Popper flew through the air, axe upraised as he threw himself at one of the monsters. Another flash, and he was continuing to hack, blood spraying like he was playing in a sprinkler, the crystals around him painted red.
“Talk her down,” Popper yelled. “It’s just like a bad trip. It won’t last long. Keep her on the ground.”
It appeared only Larissa and two other white jackets remained as they and Popper hacked at the last of the tentacle beasts. The room was huge, bigger even than I thought, so big that my light didn’t carry all the way to the other side, so there could be more of them deeper in.
“I felt bad for Snickers. The cat. She cared more about him than Peyton. They wouldn’t let me adopt. That bitch with the Unity pin. Fuck those pins. Fuck that bitch. RC Cola is good but the diet is shit.”
“Tell me about the cat,” I said, kneeling down next to Gretchen. I put my hand on her shoulder. She quivered, and she felt unnaturally tense, like an aluminum can about to burst from being shaken too much. We still had a minute to go before the insanity would wear off.
Larissa, Popper, and two white jackets stood around a third white jacket, who appeared to be alive, but also suffering from the insanity. The man was sobbing uncontrollably.
“Cat? Pussy? I’ll tell you about my pussy. I was nine years old. The first in my grade. My mom was mortified. I don’t know what happened to Snickers. Sometimes I took pictures of dead things. Baby skunks, all in a row. They’d been run over by a truck. Didn’t smell, but their mom was there, watching from the side of the road. She made a sad noise. He was bad, a bad kitty.”
“It’s okay,” I said. I continued to strobe the light, off and on, off and on. Nothing else seemed to be on the minimap, and I couldn’t see anything.
The timer ticked down to zero, and the notification went away, but Gretchen remained motionless for several moments. It took me a moment to realize she was crying.
“Hey,” I said. “It’s okay. It’s over.”
She looked up at me, her face wet. I watched her attempt to regain her composure. Of the three of us, she played her cards closest to her chest. I didn’t know which of those things was true and how much of it was just nonsense, but at least one of those names—Jason—was someone she’d mentioned before. It was the first time I’d heard that other name, Peyton. I assumed Snickers was a cat. I wasn’t going to ask, especially not now.
“It’s okay,” I repeated. “I think we got them.”
She pulled herself to her feet as Popper came strolling back, a swagger to his step. He was soaked head to toe in blood and gore. “Level 20, bitches,” he said. “You know what that means? Alice is now level 20, too! She can cast Heal now!”
“Good job,” Gretchen said, with only the slightest quaver in her voice. I watched her take a deep breath, and then I could see the composure fully take hold. “Jonah, keep up with the flashing. We gotta keep an eye out for more of these things. I’ve never seen them before. They’re not too strong, but they’re big, and that insanity skill is a real kicker.”
Captain Larissa and her three soldiers came trotting back. I couldn’t even tell which one had been afflicted.
“We must turn back,” she said. “I lost three soldiers. This is much too dangerous, your majesty. I cannot guarantee your safety past this point.”
“We had it under control, and you assholes just ran in. It’s no wonder you got all chopped up,” Popper said. “We had them right where we wanted them.”
Larissa glared and was about to say something before I cut her off.
“We continue. If you want, send one of your soldiers back to summon more white jackets, but we’re not waiting.”
“You can actually summon them yourself, I think,” Gretchen said. “You gotta use the War Events menu. I’ve never been a high enough rank to actually do it, so I’m not certain how it works.”
“I’d do it myself if you made me a general,” Popper muttered. “Just don’t summon too many. These assholes are too trigger happy.”
When I’d received access to the War Events menu, one of the first things I discovered was I had the ability to arrow people. That is, recruit them as conscripts in the army to defend the city. The system gave me the ability to arrow pretty much any NPC I came across, though we quickly learned if you arrowed too many people too quickly, the entire area would descend into a panic, and people would start to flee the city. It is what had happened in Valisa when they started arrowing people to defend against the burning fleet.
So instead, I’d arrowed a few people in each neighborhood of Harmony, promoted them to sergeant, which gave them the ability to arrow more people. I’d given them strict instructions to arrow a set number of people each day. Furthermore, I had white jacket scouts doing the same in villages all over Aberdeen. I’d even tried sending them further, to the nearby country of Crediton—the area of Canada around Vancouver—but it didn’t work. The same glitch that kept me from controlling other cities also disallowed me from controlling the white jackets outside of Aberdeen.
I could also promote people to much higher ranks. I had the ability to arrow both Popper and Gretchen and promote them to general, which would give them access to the War Events menu and almost all the same powers I had. But I refused to do it, much to Popper’s dismay. We’d argued about it for almost two days straight.
I feared that if I did arrow them, I wouldn’t be able to un-arrow them in case we had to flee the city. The War Events menu is always
tied to a specific quest or event. In this case, the menu was tied to two events: the impending invasion of Harmony by the Hobgoblin Riot and the looming threat of the burning fleet. Being arrowed was the same as granting a compulsory quest. Once granted, a person wouldn’t be allowed to leave the area until the event was done.
I popped open the menu now and found a list of quick action items, and one of them read Summon Reinforcements to Your Location. I clicked on it, and several menu items popped up. Most of them were grayed out. I had the ability to summon all 125,000 arrowed citizens to this place. I also had the ability to summon reinforcements from the closest white jacket camp, which was only 200 meters away. I assumed that was the temporary one from outside the crevice. I chose that and picked six more soldiers to come.
“I did it,” I said. “Six more soldiers.”
“Very well,” Larissa said. “But we must wait, or they won’t be able to reach us if we pass through this crystal field without them.”
It only took a few minutes for the six soldiers to arrive, all identical to the last guys. Their eyes boggled at the strobe-light of carnage.
“Let’s move,” Popper said. “Enough of this waiting.”
We continued, much more cautiously. I placed a hand on one of the crystals as we passed, and it felt warm to the touch. It hummed every time I turned on my light, but I switched it off before it could burst into utter brilliance. I tried to imagine what a sword made out of this stuff might be like. If it reflected all the light back at this rate, it would probably be more trouble than it was worth.
In order to keep the light on, I had to keep Triple Fang unfurled. They hovered inches off the ground, but they bounced off the uneven cavern floor, skittering and scraping as we walked. After a few minutes, my blades started bitching at me about being treated in such a fashion. I did my best to ignore them. I remembered what they’d said about the monsters we’d just fought.
The Hobgoblin Riot: Dominion of Blades Book 2: A LitRPG Adventure Page 6
