The Hobgoblin Riot: Dominion of Blades Book 2: A LitRPG Adventure

by Matt Dinniman

  War Party> Lightning Trap in D1 triggered.

  War Party Admin> Calculating casualties… 188 casualties. 675 invaders remain.

  “We’ll check it out, but not yet,” I said. I turned to Chauncey. “I need to get to some place called the defense cockpit. Do you know where that is?”

  The coypu puffed out his little chest. “Of course I do, Regent Poppy. Would you like me to show you?”

  “Yes. Do it now.”

  “Very well. I shall take you to the stables first where we can stow these…”

  “Fuck you,” Alice said.

  “I apologize mademoiselle, but the rules are very…”

  “Fuck you,” Alice repeated.

  “Are the passages wide enough to accommodate my hippocorn?” I asked.

  Chauncey hesitated. “Yes, I suppose, but we do not allow…”

  “She’s coming with us,” I said. “I don’t care what the rules say. The new rule is mounts are allowed in the castle, as long as they fit.”

  “Yeah,” Alice said.

  Chauncey sighed. “And they say humans are more civilized than hobgoblins.”

  The front of this castle was eerily similar to that of the Dominion castle. A wide moat surrounded the front gate, but the moat here lay empty. The drawbridge led to an imposing gateway, though the gate was raised. No guards stood present. It appeared the entire place was mostly abandoned, though just beyond the gate I saw a line of red, pink, and orange dots, indicating the royal stables. A single white dot of an NPC stood within.

  Entering Riot Castle.

  You have the ability to rename this castle. Do you wish to do so at this time? Y/N?

  “Oh fuck yeah,” I muttered.

  “What?” Gretchen asked.

  “Nothing,” I said. I’d have to think about this. I clicked No for now. The castle needed to be named something awesome, but we were in a hurry.

  We entered the courtyard. To our left stood the royal stables. We rushed by, but I caught sight of a strange, duck-billed NPC standing watch as we passed. Roars and trills emanated from the stables. The first, largest paddock contained a massive, gleaming black scorpion the size of a pickup truck. Its dot on the map was red, indicating it as a hostile enemy. It threw itself against the stable wall as we passed.

  “Was that a platypus?” Jonah asked, looking back at the NPC standing by the scorpion mount.

  “I don’t know,” Gretchen said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  We traversed a second bridge, crossing a second dry moat. We entered a giant, humid room with walls covered with vines and ivy. Multiple palm trees were planted within, their large fronds creating a canopy.

  “Jesus,” Jonah muttered. “It’s like a jungle-themed casino in here.”

  We rushed through the immense, abandoned room, turning down a wide, dark hallway. The map indicated no signs of life whatsoever. The next room was filled with more skeletal hobgoblins and Orochi demons. We passed outside and then back in again four times before we came to an enormous pair of double doors. One of the doors hung sideways on a single hinge, and the other lay on the ground, covered with axe markings.

  Several dozen hobgoblin skeletons lay scattered about the room. I did not see any demon skeletons at all. It appeared as if the hobgoblins had killed each other with their spears and large battle axes. I thought of Flaky the gorcupine, and how Akkorokamui had turned his corpse into a zombie. That’s what had happened here, I was sure.

  Entering Defensive Cockpit.

  A large table dominated the room. Upon this table stood a sprawling model of the city of Castellane and of the spiral’s defenses. This was similar to the ready room in the white jacket stronghold, but the table here glowed with a blue enchantment. Like in the white jacket headquarters, the towers were represented by wooden models, ranging in height from about six inches high to the largest, representing the Sentinel Tower, which was almost three feet tall.

  “Oh wow. Open up the Spiral Defense menu,” Gretchen said.

  I opened the War Party menu and switched to the Spiral Defenses tab. No new menus popped up, but the model before me lit up like a Christmas display. It was something out of a sci-fi immersion game, not a sword and sorcery game like this. The pieces of the models all now glowed, most of them yellow. Each tower had words hovering over them: Locked in Place and Unmanned.

  In addition to the towers, the six defensive castles had models. The last five castles glowed yellow with the words Locked in Place and Unmanned over them. The first—the castle at the base of the Sentinel Tower—glowed red. It read Occupied by Enemy Forces. I remembered the hobgoblin oracle, who I was originally supposed to meet. I guessed that meant she was still there, lounging on her couch in Castle 1.

  A large, red dot blinked on the map, about a quarter of the way through the spiral between the second and third castle. Hovering over the red dot was Prince Kankan (Hobgoblin Riot) 675 Hobgoblin warriors.

  Hundreds of other blue and yellow and reds dots covered the model of the city, representing traps and other odds and ends. It would take hours for me to figure this shit out.

  I pulled Alice up to the side of the table and hopped off, standing on the table. Chauncey gasped, as if offended, but I shot the little fucker a shut-your-fat-mouth scowl. I circled the map, careful not to kick anything.

  I tentatively reached forward and tried to pick up the model representing the Sentinel Tower, which was almost as tall as me. It wouldn’t budge. A moment later, I had my ass kicked by a wall of incomprehensible text:

  Sentinel Tower (Special.)

  Class: Tower

  Status: Unmanned.

  Unable to assign defender.

  Warning! This tower is locked in place and cannot be moved while the spiral is occupied by an invading force.

  Warning! This tower may not be manned while Castle One is occupied by an enemy force.

  Warning! You must have a skill level of five or higher in Siege Defense to move this tower.

  Warning! You must have a skill level of one or higher in Siege Defense to man this tower.

  Warning! Your party’s Rock Singer must be at least level 25 or higher to move this tower.

  Your Siege Defense skill has risen from 0 to 1.

  “Fucking hell! This is complicated as shit,” I said. “How the hell am I going to figure out how to work this thing?”

  Gretchen, Jonah, and Bingo circled the map, looking at all the pieces. I knew math wizard Gretchen was doing her nerd arithmetic and Jonah was calculating angles and whatnot. I was glad they were here.

  Gretchen reached forward and touched one of the many towers. She pulled her hand away, frowning.

  “It looks like we can leave the defenses as they are and man them with defenders. If we want to actually move the towers around, we need to all level up our Siege Defense skill. You get to level one just by touching the map.” She pointed at Spritz the astound. The large rock creature stood silently in the back of the room, contemplating the map. “We also need to get her up to level five. It looks like she’s also required to move things around.”

  “Indeed,” Spritz said, her eyes suddenly glossy. “I must be level five to move towers. Level ten, fifteen, and twenty to build certain towers or to facilitate certain tower upgrades. Level 25 to move castles and specials, and level 50 to build new castles.”

  “Jesus,” I muttered. “I’m glad I ran into her at the guild.”

  “So,” Jonah said, peering forward to examine some small aspect of the giant, room-sized map. “I think I understand. It looks like there are five base types of defenses. The towers, the traps, the castles, the barracks, and the obstacles.”

  “That’s right,” Gretchen said.

  Jonah grinned. “It’s just like a giant board game. This is my thing.”

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “You’re a board game nerd.” The other night, he’d spent a good two hours talking about all these board games he used to own. He had a giant collection and nobody to play with back
before we’d abandoned Earth. The only game in Harmony he’d managed to find was a chess set, and he and Keta had spent hours playing it. I tried playing it once, but I couldn’t remember how each piece moved. Jonah and I ended up just playing checkers with the pieces. He’d kicked my ass three times in a row before I vowed to never play him again.

  Jonah reached forward to touch the map. “It looks like there are something like 75 towers, six castles—seven if you count this one—three barracks, dozens of traps… This barracks, the Butcher’s Delight. It’s both a barracks and a tower. It’s where the Tower of Saint Jacques was in real life, but moved over a couple blocks. And this Castle Five is also an obstacle.” He pointed to a tunnel near the middle of the spiral path. “What is this? ”

  “It’s the Catacombs,” Gretchen said. “It’s an obstacle, I guess. It looks like we can’t see anything in there. But at the start is a safe room and a small general store. You can rest there but not sleep.” She pointed to another spot a bit further down. “You come out of the Catacombs here.”

  “The Menagerie appears to be occupied by only twenty defenders,” Bingo said. He reached forward to touch the zoo park just south of the island. “The magic of the map will not let me interact with it.”

  Gretchen, Jonah, and I all reached forward and touched the large square of the zoo.

  The Menagerie.

  Class: Obstacle.

  Status: Armed. Currently at 13% occupancy.

  Occupants: Eight humans. Two Texugo. Five gorcupines. Five Pazuzu. One oblivion walrus.

  See the Beastmaster and the Master of Obstacles to refill this obstacle.

  “There are five gorcupines in there,” I said.

  Bingo stood straighter. He opened his mouth to say something, but Gretchen cut him off.

  “Plus texugo and humans, which is weird,” she said. “We’ll have to go check that out when we can.”

  “I will investigate this now,” Bingo said. “If these are fellow Spear Gullet Clan warriors, we alone will be sufficient to stop this invasion force.”

  “Wait,” Gretchen said. “Remember the three fire towers overlooking the garden here?” She reached forward and touched one of them. “Yes, two are fire and one is plasma, whatever that means.” She paused. “Hmm, that third tower is a level-three fire tower and has been upgraded to specialize in plasma. I say we go to these towers and ambush them when they enter the Gardens.” She traced the path of the spiral around. “If they get through, it’ll give us time to run from the towers, cross the bridge, and face them in the Menagerie, where Bingo can hopefully talk his friends into helping. The Menagerie is pretty much our last stand.”

  Jonah was nodding. “We really need to move these towers around,” he said. “Look at how inefficient these placements are. This level-three tower has the smallest cone of effect.” He pointed to another tower deep in the map. “Here’s another level-three tower. If we can just move it over a couple hundred yards, it can reach two sections of the spiral.” He clucked over all the different placements for a few moments. He reached forward and touched a trap and frowned.

  “A sapper?” he said. “Do we have one of those?”

  “No, why?” I asked, reaching forward to touch what appeared to be a vortex trap. The hobgoblins would walk over it in a few minutes.

  Level 1 Vortex Trap

  Class: Trap

  Status: Armed

  Warning! You must have a skill level of two or higher in Siege Defense to move this trap.

  Warning! Your party requires a Sapper of at least level five or higher to move this trap.

  “Shit,” I said. Bingo had attempted more than once to get me to hire one of those guys, but we’d never got around to it. “Hopefully we can still get one.”

  I looked at Bingo now, who glared at the three of us impatiently. “Let’s send Bingo to his friends in the Menagerie now, before they get triggered and let out of the cages. He can talk to them through the bars, and if they’re hostile to him, he can get away.”

  Bingo grunted, but nodded his appreciation.

  “It’s your call,” Gretchen said after a moment. “You’re the regent.”

  “What’s a vortex trap anyway?” Jonah asked.

  “Eh, they’re not so good,” I said. “They suck for the victim though. You step on it, and a portal opens, and you get sucked somewhere else. You could end up anywhere in the world. It’s usually the ocean. My friend Monobrow Sam stepped on one once. He ended up somewhere in South America. He got torn apart by fire ants as soon as he landed. Anyway, the portal is only big enough for a single person, so it’s not an effective trap. I was a half-ogre, and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t get sucked into a level one vortex.”

  I reached forward and touched the top of the first of the three towers Gretchen had indicated.

  Level 1 Flamer Tower

  Class: Tower

  Status: Unmanned.

  Click here to assign defenders. Requires one defender to activate. Requires three defenders for maximum efficiency.

  I clicked over to assign soldiers, and that long list of players appeared. I could assign anyone I wanted to man the tower, but I didn’t know how it worked. If I assigned a random dude from Quibou to the tower, would he be magically transported there? Would he get a notification to run to the tower? And once in the tower, how did the defenses work anyway? Did the effectiveness of the tower depend on the person manning it? There’d never been anything like this in the game before as far as I knew.

  I picked a random person from the list, a level 35 dwarf warrior named Willy. I clicked assign, and a message appeared:

  Warning! This NPC is outside the city of Castellane. Are you sure you want to assign? I clicked no.

  “Chauncey,” I said. “Is there anyone left in the city I can call upon to man the defenses?”

  The rodent looked about nervously. “There’s only a handful of us left in the castle. Six of us, I believe. None of us are for that sort of thing I fear, monsieur.” Indeed, I noticed for the first time that Chauncey did not have a chevron over his head. Neither had that platypus-looking stablemaster guy. “There are some hobgoblins left,” he added. “But you won’t convince them to fight against their prince.”

  “We’re going to have to do this shit ourselves,” I said. Gretchen nodded and Jonah grinned. I looked to Alice and sighed. Getting her into the castle was one thing, but getting her into a thin, needle-like tower would be impossible.

  “Alice,” I said. “I have a job for you, Chauncey, and Bruce Bruce.”

  Popper Note 12

  War Party> Invaders are entering the Catacombs. Stats will be offline until the creeps reappear or are all killed.

  “Christ, they’re booking it through this thing,” Jonah said. “What the hell is a creep?”

  “That’s what they call them,” Gretchen said. “Invaders or creeps. It means the same thing.”

  All three of us stood on the roof of an apartment block bordering the edge of the garden park. I’d never made it this far into the spiral before, but Gretchen explained how the statues all came to life at once and attacked. Each of the monster-shaped statues had its own distinctive shape and attack, culminating with a centaur figure at the end of the park that stood about fifteen feet high.

  The three defensive towers stood side-by-side on the edge of the park. Technically all the towers were inside of the spiral territory, therefore were able to be either stormed or destroyed. However, the entrance to all three of these towers was clearly on the Castellane side of the spiral wall. The first would be manned by Granger, Tiatha, and Vern the half-ogre. The second by Winston, Nale, and Spritz. Jonah, Gretchen, and I took the third tower. Bingo was off on his own to talk to the other gorcupines. Bruce Bruce, Alice, and Chauncey were off on their mission.

  The first two towers were level one flamer towers. This third one was a level three flamer tower, upgraded to specialize in plasma, which caused more damage. After I had assigned the three teams to the towers, a purple
waypoint appeared in my vision, leading all of us here to this spot.

  Each of the three turrets reminded me of the tower from the Rapunzel fairy tale. As towers went, these were on the smaller side. Each were about three stories tall, shorter than some of the apartment blocks deeper in the city. They were thin, round towers made of gray stone and capped with those alternating, teeth-like indentations in the stone. Jonah said they were called crenels and merlons, and the whole top was called a parapet. The spout was placed on this top battlement, but the mechanisms to control it were inside, and that’s where we would be.

  Once up in the tower, we discovered the controls were simple and straightforward. We had three positions: the trigger, the looking glass, and the loader. The moment we reached the top level of the tower, the instructions appeared before us, a paragraph of text floating over each of the three positions in the tower.

  Magical, basketball-sized globes of swirling blue popped into the room from a hole in the floor. The loader had to pick up the ball and move it to the chute. The defender manning the looking glass was responsible for spotting and aiming, and the trigger, who stood back from the others pulled a long, metal lever until it clicked in place, like a ballista. Once cocked, they pulled the trigger.

  This being a plasma tower, a firehose-like gout of blue-hot plasma would shoot from the top of the tower and wash its target in death. Each magic basketball lasted about ten seconds, and the instructions stated it took twenty seconds for the tower to generate each ball of plasma. Apparently the other two flamer towers could shoot faster, but the plasma did a significant amount more damage.

  The instructions over the ammunition came with an ominous warning:

  Be wary not to drop the plasma orbs. Doing so may result in catastrophic failure of the plasma containment.

  I was too short to man either the trigger or the looking glass, so I was stuck as a loader. I hesitantly picked up one of the swirling blue globes and was surprised to find it very light, and kind of squishy, like a poorly-inflated beach ball. My hands shook as I held the ball.