If all went as planned, nobody in that third tower would even get a chance to fire a shot. Their job was to kill anything that got through.
“Shit, those things are bigger than I thought they would be,” I said, seeing the lesser moles for the first time. The sun was just starting to set in the west, the yellow light reflecting off the monsters. They traveled close to the ground, but their gray, fuzzy bodies seemed to be nothing but pure muscle. They marched slowly, leading the procession of dwarves like panzer tanks. Each of the several hundred moles had long snouts with dozens of arm-length appendages writhing from the tip. Their forward claws were like the buckets on construction excavators. Gretchen had said they could dig quickly.
His Royal Majesty Jonah: Granger, fire when ready.
Granger: Firing now.
I watched as a hail of arrows from the first tower rained on the front line of moles, arcing in the air and slamming down on them from above. They squealed in terror, and a handful of them fell over, dead.
“Let us charge these beasts. We shall die in glory, you and me,” Vern said. I could hear the half-ogre’s heart thumping from my position next to him.
“Uh, not today, buddy,” I said. “Remember. We have a plan.”
The moles, as one, frantically dug a hole, creating a colossal tunnel large enough to drive a semi-truck through. So much dirt showered into the air, I couldn’t see anything for several moments. They burrowed out of sight as the line of purple-hued dwarves clomped noisily forward.
Come on, hurry up, I thought, watching the slow-moving dwarves march.
These were no normal dwarves. They had the same approximate size and shape as dwarves, but the similarities ended there. They looked as if they’d all been choked to death, giving their skin the purple pallor. Their round, bug eyes practically boggled out of their heads, their retinas turning in odd directions. Their filthy, dreadlocked beards trailed to the ground, and not a one of them appeared to have ever taken a bath. These creatures wore ragged clothes, and their weapons were mostly pickaxes and simple maces. If they had a leader amongst them, I didn’t see one.
They weren’t undead, but they were cursed, according to Gretchen and Popper. They were normal dwarves who had turned that way because their god had been deposed, cutting off their access to an afterlife.
Christ almighty, I thought, not for the first time. The fuckers who came up with these monsters were sadistic assholes.
The long line of tormented descended into the hole. The moles had started their tunnel just a little too late, and several arrows hit the dwarves as they descended.
Further down, just past the second tower, the ground buckled. I held my breath. The whole ground shook as the moles attempted to emerge back onto the trail, but they found they couldn’t. They smashed themselves against the ground again and again, finding they were trapped.
His Royal Majesty Jonah: Holy shit. I think it’s working.
Poppy: Fuck yeah!
After spending hours studying the map, I’d found the perfect spot for the trap, here on the long, straight path leading away from Castle Two. The first tower would start to rain arrows, causing the moles to dig. Because of the second tower, they’d have to dig a long way, making the tunnel wide and long enough where most of—and hopefully all of—the tormented would enter the tunnel at once.
The moles would attempt to emerge just before the bridge, but they’d find they were trapped underneath a hidden layer of thick, reinforced rock, placed yesterday thanks to the efforts of Spritz.
Building in the center of the spiral was an odd thing. Spritz said the magic wouldn’t allow her to construct barriers or anything that blocked the path, not anything taller than knee height. But flat, horizontal surfaces such as the one she built yesterday were no problem.
Once the moles hit the rock, they’d have no choice but to dig as close to the river as possible, not realizing…
Whoosh! The distinctive sucking noise let me know they’d hit the water. Gretchen’s Create Spring spell, carefully placed just on this side of the river had been all we needed to weaken the shore just enough. Water would now be flooding the cave through the swiss-cheese wall, and the moles would be scrambling to get out, digging the only way they could go: left, right, and down, and each time running into nothing but the edge of the spiral path.
The tormented within, pressed against each other and in the dark would be killed by the hundreds. Already they started to emerge from the back of the tunnel, rushing to get out as Granger’s crew rained fire on them.
His Royal Majesty Jonah: Tiatha. Fire now. Just one shot. Don’t fire again unless I tell you to.
Tiatha: I am complying.
Boom! The ground buckled at the mortar tower blasted at the entrance to the tunnel, caving it in. Red and purple dwarf chunks went flying. The staggered dwarves who managed to make it out were quickly picked off by Granger.
I’d been surprised to see four mortar towers listed on the map, considering all the trouble we’d gone through to get explosives from the gnomes and then the emo-tong alchemists, but apparently the hobgoblins had that technology also. I wasn’t going to complain.
The mortar towers were slow, but they had a decent range, and their explosions had splash damage, hitting more than just their target. But for right now my target was the large, open end of the tunnel.
“Watch my back,” I called to Vern as I sprinted from my hiding spot and rushed toward the water, pulling Triple Fang free.
“I don’t know if this will work,” Gretchen had said, when I explained the first part of the plan. “They’re dwarves, and they have a high constitution. They can hold their breath for a long time, longer than you think. They’re used to being buried. They’re like cockroaches, hard to kill. They’ll just dig out.”
“I guess I gotta jazz it up a little then,” I’d said.
As I rushed forward, I could hear the clinking sound of pickaxes against the ground as the desperate and panicked dwarves tried to free themselves. They’d break through in minutes.
Water burbled out of the small hole I’d had Spritz place, just at the base of the bridge. The vent was too small for anyone to get through, but it was large enough for me to see through.
And more importantly, it was large enough for me to cast my spell, Summon Fish.
My instinct had been to use the same summoning I’d used before with the gorgons in the sewers of Valisa. Lethal piranhas. They’d killed three of the high-level monsters in seconds. But unfortunately here, the water of this river was contaminated with some sort of charm stone, making it uninhabitable to most fish. The stone had supposedly been placed upstream by the Dominion in an effort to starve out the hobgoblins. As a result, when the menu for Summon Fish popped up with this water, my list was very short.
This game had fish that swam in lava and in steam, so I knew there’d be something nasty that could survive in an underground pool of poisoned water. After consulting with Gretchen and Popper, we had found the perfect candidate for this job.
Do you wish to Summon Fish? You have 1/1 summons available today.
I chose yes and scrolled through the list until I found the one I needed. I clicked confirm.
You have successfully summoned a bed of Shocking Ogre Eels.
I stepped back and the water began to fountain out of the small vent. The water crackled with electricity and smelled oddly of beef soup. The ground buckled again, and I stepped back further onto the bridge, worried the whole walkway would collapse. Grayed-out notifications flew past in my vision, scrolling like high-speed movie credits.
Gretchen: Oh, wow. I’m getting assist experience for this.
Poppy: Godamnit it all to hell. I knew I should have helped build that trap. Damnit.
The notifications just came and came. The frantic picking against the ground stopped.
Bam! A rush of water, moles, eels, and dwarves exploded out of a new hole underneath the base of the bridge. The meter-long eels hit the river and continued on
their way, splashing and discharging their electricity downriver. Some were dead, but most lived. They wriggled into the water, their sparkles yellow as they were swept away.
The moles tumbled into the river and quickly hit the shimmering edge of the spiral path. They exploded off the threshold like pinballs. Each collision crackled with electricity, causing a dam of spinning, whirling bodies to form under the bridge. Those pressed against the wall for too long eventually exploded. If these moles were alive before they fell into the river, they were dead now.
Hundreds of dead, purple dwarves mixed in with the electrocuted moles and spilled out onto the shore. Water started to back up on the bank, rising quickly.
A single mole, not quite dead, scrambled up the opposite shore, just skirting the edge of the shimmering path. It turned toward me, hissing.
Oh fuck.
I spun up Triple Fang. It charged. I charged. It exploded.
One moment it was there. The next it literally tore into pieces as dozens of arrows slammed into it from behind. In that fraction of a moment, I thought Tiatha had hit it with her cannon tower. She hadn’t. These were arrows from the triplets. Bloody, stinking mole pieces showered over me as they flew past, covering my face and mouth as if I’d been shot with a shotgun filled with mole gore.
Pain erupted as a stray arrow hit my shoulder, and I rocketed back. My vision flashed red. I hit the ground hard, skidding. It felt as if I’d been hit with a sledgehammer.
His Royal Majesty Jonah: Cease fire! Cease fire!
Damn, that was close. I pulled a healing potion free and drank it down. I screamed as the barbed arrow pushed out of my shoulder, leaving a fist-sized hole in my leather pauldron.
Far behind me, I heard a few more arrows fly loose from Granger’s position. A moment later came silence.
Wave 2 of 5 complete.
You have received a reward! 1,500 jacks have been added to your account. You have received a training token!
War Party> Spiral systems deactivating.
War Party> Spiral systems are now offline, and it is safe to traverse the spiral path. Chamber imps have been dispatched to reset the traps and clear corpses.
War Party Admin> Warning! You have traps that need to be reloaded.
War Party Admin> Warning! You have towers with no assigned defenders.
Poppy: Jesus Christ, Jonah. That was some genocide-level shit you just pulled.
I grunted, not bothering to reply. I watched Vern and the one-armed half-ogre slowly pick their way toward me, the team of oxen trailing behind. I checked the messages as I waited. I hadn’t received full experience for all the dwarves and moles we had killed, but I’d gotten a handful of experience for each one. It wasn’t quite enough to level me up to 36, but I was right on the brink. I suspected Gretchen was now level 27. Poor Popper probably hadn’t received any experience at all for that. The next time we built something like that, we needed to make sure he did something so the game would register he helped.
Poppy: Have you checked the traps yet?
His Royal Majesty Jonah: I’m doing it now.
I pulled myself to my feet, coming to the first of many red rings on the ground. I tried to yank the chain up, but I wasn’t strong enough. Vern arrived and easily pulled the chain, pulling the monster trap out of the ground. Dirt and rock bits came up with it as it slid free of the hole.
We’d buried twelve of them in random spots along the path, attaching them to long chains, and burying them in holes placed by Spritz, lowered just far enough so hopefully the moles would get “pokemoned” into the traps, as Popper had called it. To my disappointment, it looked as if this first trap hadn’t even been triggered.
We weren’t sure they would work. Once triggered, they only sucked in monsters for a few moments until they were reset. Only weakened monsters could be sucked into the capture traps, so moles just burrowing past, minding their own business wouldn’t be seized.
The second and the third trap had been triggered, but both were empty. The third trap held a single lesser mole, its outline magically indicated on the outside of the trap, with a single hashtag, indicating only a single monster inside. The next one held two of the ogre eels, surprising me.
We hit pay dirt with the next three traps. All three were filled to capacity with the tormented. Two had 24 of the purple dwarves trapped within. The third held 23 of the dwarves. We captured two more moles, and the rest were empty.
Full traps, we had learned, were heavy as shit. We piled them up in the back of the oxen cart, and I sent Vern and the other ogre back to the castle to meet up with Oliver the beastmaster, who’d place the dwarves and moles in cages at the Menagerie. I don’t know what he’d do with the eels.
His Royal Majesty Jonah: We ended up with two eels, three moles, and 71 dwarves.
Poppy: No shit? I guess it’s better than nothing.
An NPC member of your party has committed murder!
That notification came from nowhere. It had to have been a direct party member, not a member of the war party. That meant it had to come from one of Popper’s original crew, but they were all in towers right now except for Raj, Bingo, and Winston. Oh and Spritz.
Poppy: Who was that? What’s going on?
Raj: New monsters come! I do not know where Gretchen is!
Gretchen: Guys. I could use a hand here.
Gretchen Note 2
Once the line of tormented had passed, we sneaked onto the trail and rushed out of Castellane and down the road toward the town of Quibou. I’d half-expected to be blocked at the border of the city, but the quarantine appeared to be for the country of Libri, not the city.
Darkness was starting to descend, and we hurried down the path. It was me, Bruce Bruce, Bingo, Winston, and the three new gorcupines. The three newcomers were from the same tribe as Winston, but all three were smaller than him by almost a head. Bingo towered over us all.
“We shall find these cowards, these so-called warriors,” Bruce Bruce was saying. “We shall shame them. Tell them their ancestors are weeping!”
“That’s the plan,” I said.
We had to hurry. Last time, the tormented started streaming into Quibou that night after wave one had started. I didn’t know when the monsters of wave three would appear, but I wanted to be long gone before it happened. The plan was to slip in, figure out where these several thousand arrowed warriors were hiding, and to lead them back into the city.
This was really a job for Commander Holder, but we’d decided not to risk him. If Jonah’s trap failed, we had a series of towers a mile down the road that would hopefully devastate the dwarves and moles. We’d put Holder and his white jackets in charge of that whole area.
In a matter of minutes we were in the main gathering arcade of Quibou, near the base of the Defender’s Door. To the left was the smashed-in entrance to the white jacket garrison, where Popper had first encountered the Orochi demon, Akkorokamui. I didn’t know for sure where the demon was now, though I assumed she was still in that castle there, waiting her turn for wave 5.
On the other side of the street was the Luxuriant, and at the very top, a tiny, furry creature stood dangerously on the top of the hotel, waving down at me furiously. I waved to Raj, and we continued on our way.
We’d decided that we were going to leave him there for now. It was dangerous, but we needed accurate intel on the nature of the upcoming waves. He’d gathered a small crew of hotel guests and staff to keep him company, so he wouldn’t get lonely, and the kid seemed to thrive on having someone to “protect.”
Two streets over to the open-air mercenary markets, and we’d begin our search. According to the list in the War Events tab, we were missing 1,744 mercenaries. They were alive, and they were in Quibou. How hard could it be to find them? Bingo had an excellent sense of smell, and I had a Tracking skill of 10, though I’d never actually used it.
We rushed to the edge of the market, which appeared to be abandoned. The entire street before it was shattered, bars and ma
rkets burned to the ground. It reminded me of Icardi after we’d blown up the demon with the holy wine. The only remaining structures in this neighborhood were a few random structures that miraculously survived and several of the brick halls deeper down in the mercenary arcade.
I paused before the only pub that still stood, a small shack called The Thirsty Intellect. A single candle was lit in the window, indicating someone was there. I slipped off Bruce Bruce, bidding the others to remain outside while I took a look.
I felt the familiar tug as I entered, the lure of the bar. Even before my eyes adjusted to the dark, I felt it, like a magnet pulling me in. This was my home. Small, intimate bars like that were my favorite. I’d always go straight to the bar, order Smirnoff and Sprite. Sometimes I wouldn’t even look around. When you looked around, you would see their eyes, accusing.
Porkchop, Porkchop. I still heard it, the mocking. Even now, in this beautiful body, I heard the taunting. It’d become my mantra. I’d see the bar, tell myself I wouldn’t drink, but then I’d hear the voices. It’d been years, decades. The only time the voices would stop was there, at the bar. I felt myself involuntarily take a step toward it.
The man sitting alone at the counter broke my reverie. I looked at him with surprise.
He appeared to be the only one here. Multiple empty bottles lay about around him. He was a blond man, wearing a fine cloak. He seemed to be about the same height and age as me. It appeared as if he’d been parked in that chair for some time now. He had a line of empty shot glasses in front of him. The human had a single chevron over his head, indicating he’d been arrowed. He hadn’t answered the call to go to Castellane.
“They kicked me out,” the man said, looking over his shoulder at me. He downed another drink. “I told them it hadn’t counted, that I was still at the front of the line. They kicked me out. Then the hobgoblins came, and I saved them. Ungrateful bastards. They still wouldn’t let me back in. When my father gets back…” He poured another shot from a bottle. I realized with amusement that this was wine, a Chardonnay. He was drinking shots of wine. It was something Nadia and I had done when we were small, back when we hadn’t known better.
The Hobgoblin Riot: Dominion of Blades Book 2: A LitRPG Adventure Page 28
