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

by Matt Dinniman

  “Us don’t run?” the half-ogre called pointing at me. “No. We won’t. But you need to. Right now.”

  Behind us, the door to the rogue’s union burst open, and Jonah and I stood face-to-face with a massive, red ogre-like beast carrying a spiked club. The horned monster looked at us in surprise, then roared. The beast was almost as tall as the door. The muscled creature was several feet taller than Bingo, and just as wide.

  Bruce Bruce growled, swiping forward with his claw, barely reaching the monster’s ankles.

  The minimap was suddenly awash in red dots.

  Bingo: You need to get out of there. They are coming from multiple hidden exits in that building. They are already flanking you. These are beasts from Orochi. They are very strong.

  Poppy: What the fuck is going on? Get the hell out of there.

  Bruce Bruce and I backed away as the club swung high. Another of the ogres appeared, then another. Suddenly they were all around us. From deep within the rogue union, there was an additional noise, an odd clicking, unnaturally loud, mixed in with the deep clang of a bell, ringing over and over like a heartbeat.

  Jonah struggled to spin up his blades without hitting me or Bruce Bruce. An ogre swung, hitting him from behind. He cried out, falling forward onto the walkway. He rolled out of the way, getting tangled in his own blades as the club smashed against the ground.

  Gretchen: Poppy. I think we’re going to die. We’re surrounded. It’s more Orochi monsters, bigger than the kappa ones you fought.

  Poppy: Hang on.

  Jonah rolled onto his feet, his blades whipping out as he untangled them with an impressive flick of his wrist. He managed to deflect another swing of the massive club, but yet another ogre rounded the corner, pushing the others out of the way to get to him. We were completely walled in. Shouting rose behind us, the calls of mercenaries and other citizens of Quibou as they emerged from the other union halls.

  Damn you, Pritford, I thought. You said they were all connected.

  I cringed as an ogre stood above us, club in the air. But just as the creature was going to flattened us, he paused, looking up at the sky, his eyes blinking with what appeared to be a data transfer. They all stopped dead. The ogres looked at each other, and without a word, they turned and ran away. The flying emo-tong mounts were also gone. Just like that.

  The entrance to the rogue’s guild, where just moments before had been filled with the monsters scrambling to get at us, was now empty. The ones inside hadn’t even run past us. It was like they’d disappeared. Through the smashed-open door I could see a few wide-eyed, arrowed soldiers walk hesitantly into the room. It appeared the guilds had been connected, but they’d all been trapped together. There’d been a battle, a recent one, within.

  What the heck? Where did they go?

  “What the hell just happened?” Jonah asked, looking around wildly. He pulled out a healing potion, downing it. His left shoulder made a sickening noise as it crunched back into place. I hadn’t even realized it had been dislocated. “Why are they leaving?”

  Poppy: Did it work?

  His Royal Majesty Jonah: What happened? What did you do?

  Raj: Many more buggers just appeared in the street! They teleported in! So many they fell on top of each other! A big portal opened, and they’re going through! I see the other end of the portal! They’re taking a shortcut to the big gate! There’s a big skellie! He’s scary!

  With a sinking horror, I realized what he had done.

  Gretchen: That was not a good idea, Popper.

  Jonah Note 12

  Wave 3 of 5

  This wave has been called early! You will receive an additional bonus if you survive this wave!

  War Party Admin> Warning! Your city has been invaded by a battalion from another Kingdom! <9,998 Emo-Tong warriors. 50 Oni. 1 Gashadokuro. 800 Katydid Mounts. 1 Flying Mantis Mount. Led by Jinzhou Un of the 101st Hive Bombardiers.> They are now traveling the spiral path. Proceed immediately to the defense cockpit!

  War Party> The city is under attack.

  War Party> Spiral systems arming.

  War Party> All defenders proceed immediately to your assigned towers.

  War Party Admin> Warning! You have towers with unassigned defense positions. These towers will remain inactive until you assign a defender.

  War Party Admin> Warning! You have cage traps that have not been loaded. They will issue a misfire if triggered.

  His Royal Majesty Jonah: Oh my fucking god, Popper!

  Poppy: What the hell else was I going to do? You were trapped! If it had just been Gretchen, I’d have let her die. But oh no, hero Jonah—the only one of us who isn’t immortal—had to go out there and put himself in danger. I did it to save your ass, dickweed. So quit complaining and get your ass back into the city and help me figure this out.

  “Okay, okay,” Gretchen said. “We have the soldiers we need right here.” She indicated the soldiers and people streaming out of the union halls. Those who weren’t arrowed, ran, rushing away toward the far edges of town. “I’m promoting some of these soldiers to sergeant. Arrow everyone you can before they get away!”

  I looked about, dazed, still a bit muddled. My shoulder ached. This was my fault. But Gretchen had asked for help. I hadn’t even thought about it. I’d just come running.

  I selected two older men as they rushed by, both of them pollywogs. I arrowed them both. One of the men rounded on me, enraged, until he saw who I was. “Your majesty!” the pollywog cried, falling to his knees. I bid him to get up.

  “Everyone form up,” I called. “We don’t have time. We’re marching into Castellane in a few minutes.”

  “Bingo,” I added, pointing to the large gorcupine, who was being healed by a cleric. “Conscript as many as you can! No children or elderly. Everyone else.” The gorilla nodded and loped off down the street.

  I turned to arrow more people as they ran past, but a texugo bumped right into me. The man was not arrowed, but he wasn’t fleeing, either. It appeared he’d been walking toward the already-arrowed mercenaries. The grizzled NPC wore a dark cloak, rogue style. Gretchen came up beside me, riding on Bruce Bruce. The badger looked oddly amused at the sudden chaos in the streets. “What happened in there?” I asked.

  “A portal opened up inside the rogue guild. Right there in the main room. The oni came through,” the rogue said. As he talked, he reached forward and pretended to pull a coin from Bruce Bruce’s ear. The bear gasped. The badger ruffled the top of the bear’s head. “But they found themselves trapped same as us. We sealed up the walkway between the rogue hall and the druids best we could. It was a standoff for a good three days. Then our ability to wield our weapons and cast spells came back. Everyone started bashing each other then.”

  The badger tossed Gretchen the coin.

  “What’s this?” she asked, examining the jack.

  “It’s yours,” he said. “I took two from your purse. I’m keeping the other one as payment for entertaining your bear.”

  Her hand instinctively reached down to her pack. “What… How did you do that?”

  I immediately arrowed the badger before he could pull another stunt. Even as I arrowed him, he’d made a quick move, like he was about to do something to disappear, some rogue trickery. But I got him just in time. I examined his stats.

  Archibald. Texugo. Level 35 Sapper.

  A sapper! Finally. And unlike Spritz, this guy was already at a higher level. “Archibald…” I said.

  He held up a clawed hand.

  “Archie, mate. Only my old lady calls me Archibald, and only when she’s mad at me. We gots 10 pups between us, so as you can imagine, she’s mad a lot.”

  “We don’t have time for this. How much to hire you?” Gretchen asked.

  Archie raised an eyebrow. “No offense, miss, but I’m fairly certain the king over here just conscripted me. That means you already got me. For free, I might add.”

  Gretchen looked at me. “We gotta go now. But we need him in the par
ty, not just the war party. He’s the only sapper I see here, and I don’t want him slipping away.”

  “How much?” I asked.

  “Well, let’s see, mate,” Archie said, rubbing his chin. “I guess 1,000 jacks a day will do it.”

  That was an outrageous amount for a rogue. We were paying Spritz five jacks a day.

  “I’ll give you 500 jacks a day,” I said.

  He held out his hand. “Archie at your service.” I shook it.

  Pickpocket attempt foiled!

  “And don’t do that again. Or I will have Bingo over there rip off your hands.”

  NPC Archibald (Level 35, Sapper, Texugo) has joined the party.

  “Message received loud and clear, mate,” Archie said, eyeing the gorcupine, who came loping back, a line of pissed-off looking men and women following him.

  We rushed back toward the staging area where about 2,500 people now stood. It was a huge number of people. It reminded me of the crowds at the maglev stations in Los Angeles every morning on weekdays. On the chat, Raj was giving a running commentary for Popper. Most of the un-arrowed civilians had gotten away, or had been killed in the vicious fighting inside of the union halls, but we’d ended up with more fighters than I thought we’d get tonight. Plus we finally had a sapper.

  “Come on everyone,” Gretchen roared, coming to the front of the pack. “We’re putting you in towers right away. We don’t have time. Let’s move.”

  “Hey,” I said to Archie as we jogged toward the Arch of Conquest. “Why did you bump into me? I saw you try to run at the last moment. You weren’t arrowed. You could’ve gotten away.”

  He looked surprised, then amused. “Remember my wife and kids? We’re a family of sappers. My wife is a level 65. Most of my kids are level ten, except little Rebecca. That girl has a natural talent. She’s a 37 already, higher than her old man. A prodigy, that one. Anyway, I was having them sneak out of the city while I distracted you.”

  For fuck’s sake. A level 65 would’ve allowed us to absolutely fill the spiral with lethal traps. I shook my head.

  “You’re not going into a tower,” I said. “You’re headed straight to the castle. You’re going to get a crash course in trap-making, and we’re going to try to come up with something to kill these bugs.”

  His eyes flashed and he nodded thoughtfully. “The existing traps are locked in place, but if you got the supplies, we might be able to whip something up on the fly. The bugs will be easy, I think. The ones on foot at least. I never liked the emo-tong. The oni are tougher. That hide of theirs is mighty thick. And they also got that thing with them.”

  “What thing?” I asked.

  “The gashadokuro,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Oh you can’t miss it, mate.”

  War Party> Slam Trap in A2 triggered.

  War Party Admin> Calculating casualties… 4 casualties. 10,850 invaders remain.

  Poppy: Fuck guys. Hurry your asses up. Did you see that shit? The traps aren’t working.

  His Royal Majesty Jonah: Fill up all the Muzzle towers before you do anything else. And the lightning and fire towers. Piercing won’t be good against emo-tong. Keep the triplets in that same tower though.

  Poppy: We’re already maxed out as much as we can. Get those people in here.

  Gretchen: We’re coming now.

  His Royal Majesty Jonah: Start assigning these NPCs to towers. I can’t do it from here. That way they’ll run straight there. No time to train. They’ll have to figure it out. Don’t assign any towers with only half-ogres.

  As long as we had at least one moderately-smart person in each tower, they could show the others how to use it. Ideally we’d be able to train them on the tower, but that was no longer a luxury we had.

  Poppy: Okay, but you’re getting your ass into this cockpit, and I’m grabbing Alice and going out there. We’re done risking you tonight. And don’t forget your damn curse. I don’t care how much of a badass you are. You’re not fucking indestructible, and I want you here.

  I checked the time. It was just about 8 o’clock. I had two hours before the curse would cycle, so I was good there. It had been over 60 days since my curse had successfully cycled. I wondered if anything different would happen if I was caught out of the safe zone when it fired. Either way, I didn’t want to be in Castellane when it happened.

  Traps continued to fire as we reached the city, but the casualties were thin. They approached the first set of towers, but they were empty.

  An explosion rocked the night, a small, red cloud rising into the darkness.

  War Party> Level 1 Arrow Tower in A2 destroyed.

  “Oh shit,” I said. “What was that?” We’d run through the defender’s door and were now rushing up the main thoroughfare. Many of the arrowed were slowing down to a crawl, bending over themselves, breathing heavily. We’d continue to cut through the city, but I paused, urging those near the back to keep going, to stay with the group. Archie stood with me. The grizzled badger didn’t seem the least bit winded.

  At the main intersection we could see the host of emo-tong as they flowed down the distant path toward Castle One and the empty Sentinel Tower. The fire of the destroyed tower lit them up like a spotlight. The line of bugs marched in formation, in lines of 10 by 10. The orderly procession seemed to go on forever. I hadn’t realized until that moment what 10,000 soldiers looked like. The sight filled me with dread.

  A formation of katydid mounts floated directly above the distant procession, about 25 feet off the ground. How high could they go? The blue walls that indicated the edge of the path dissipated about 20 feet in the air. The flying creatures clearly had to stick to the path, even though they were above the line. Was there an upper limit? There was clearly a lower one. I made a mental note to ask Gretchen about that if I got the chance.

  Behind them, the massive ogres—called oni—walked casually, dragging their spiked clubs. These red-skinned devils did not walk in any sort of formation. They jostled against each other, some stopping to investigate the edge of the walls. I watched as one slammed his club against the blue barrier. He was blown back, falling against the others. Another oni smacked him in the head, and a short scuffle broke out.

  Archie said they’d portaled into the sealed guild hall. Specifically, the rogue hall. That seemed almost on purpose. If they’d managed to kill the sappers, we wouldn’t be able to build any automatic traps or move any existing ones. It had taken us a full day to manually build the trap that had killed the tormented. It wasn’t the most efficient use of our time. The loss of a sapper would’ve been a big blow.

  Behind the oni was a single, hulking creature, standing about 25 feet tall, walking slow and falling further and further behind. The gashadokuro.

  A boss monster, I realized. Gretchen and Popper were always talking about fighting bosses in dungeons. Hadn’t the quest said there would be a boss for each of the last three waves? That’s right. If he touches the castle, we all die.

  The monster was a skeleton. A giant skeleton. That was it. No weapons. Other than its size, I was actually a little underwhelmed by it. At first.

  My initial impression was that beast was the skeleton of a giant humanoid. Upon closer examination, it appeared to actually be a skeleton made out of thousands of normal-sized bones, all put together to form one massive one. But that’s not what troubled me.

  The skeleton emanated a yellow glow.

  Invulnerability. We wouldn’t be able to touch the thing. The yellow glow meant both physical and magical attacks wouldn’t hurt it.

  What the hell?

  “When we were holed up with the clerics, one of the them was telling me about that thing,” Archie was saying. “It sort of fell apart on its own to get into the tighter spots, though the pieces were all still together, like a damn, neverending snake made out of bone. The monster was throwing itself against the barrier we set up. For three days straight, it was trying to get us. We were lucky that the passageways between the
unions were so small, otherwise we’d all been dead. As it stands, most my fellow rogues…” The badger made some sort of sign in the air. I took it as a religious gesture, similar to making the sign of the cross, Catholic style. “This cleric said the gashadokuro are in fact multiple spirits formed together by rage. People who’ve starved to death.”

  “Did this cleric tell you how to kill it?”

  Archie shook his head. “I’d say you can ask him yourself, but the beastie ripped the cleric in two when the barrier broke. That giant monster towers in the sky, but it managed to fit itself through a hole as wide as my head, it did.”

  Another explosion rocked the night.

  War Party> Level 2 Arrow Tower in A2 destroyed. Occupants lost.

  “Damnit,” I said. How were we losing towers?

  That had been the first manned tower, the one we’d used to test whether or not the moles would dig. I remembered the NPC we’d assigned to the tower, a texugo named Lucky.

  “It’s that funny bugger thems blowing up your buildings,” Archie said, pointing. I saw a single emo-tong riding upon a larger mount. He was lit only by the fire of the two towers. He carried a heavy satchel in his hand. Even from this distance, I recognized it. The bag was the same thing Popper had purchased from the emo-tong just a few weeks back. We’d given it to Raj, and he’d obliterated an entire street using one.

  This was the leader of the emo-tong. He ignored two larger towers and tossed the satchel at a smaller one, another arrow tower, destroying it. This one had also been unoccupied. He circled to the ground, restocking his satchels from a large cart in the middle of the emo-tong horde.

  His Royal Majesty Jonah: The leader guy is tossing satchel bombs at the smaller towers, blowing them up one after another. We need to take him out first. I have an idea. For now let’s move everyone to the larger towers. This is going to take a bit, so we gotta delay them as much as we can. Bingo, on me. Popper. Order the triplets out of that tower right now. I’ll tell them where to go.