“The charm stones outside the Catacombs have your church’s symbol on them,” I said. “They keep the undead within?”
The shaman grunted. “It doesn’t keep them within. It keeps them animated. If they go past the stones, the magic quickly wears off.”
Shit. “We need a stone that will keep a giant skeleton boxed in. It only needs to work for about 10 feet or so as it leaves a bridge. We need to keep him trapped in a tight space along a path.”
“Hmm,” the shaman said, rubbing his simian face. “A Quench Eternal Hunger spell might work. Most skeletons are ravenous. Quench Eternal Hunger sates them, making them both docile and unwilling to attack. It slows their movements and disorients them. It only works for but a few moments. Add a second stone that casts Compel Undead, and they will remain on the path they currently are. That stone, at least, is easy enough.”
“Can you cast both of those?”
“Cast, yes. But like I said, you would need a master mason to make the stones. It usually takes months to craft such a thing.”
Spritz leaned forward. “Do you know the runes and stone weight required for these charm stones?”
“I do,” the shaman said.
Spritz smiled, a long, toothy grin.
* * *
The emo-tong entered the Hell Gate only to emerge unscathed. I’d placed a spotter near the castle, and he reported that they entered the coliseum, and there was a great rumbling like the door was rising from the ground, but nothing happened. It appeared the gate itself was gone.
The towers continued to whittle away at the creeps. The triplets in the Sentinel Tower devastated the middle ranks of gun-toting bugs after polishing off the last oni. From there, we had them work on the mages, who marched on the edges of their formations.
The Gardens with the gargoyles took a deep toll, and the emo-tong did not have the protection of the now-drained fountain filled with a Fire Resistance potion. By the time they approached the Butcher’s Delight, a mere 303 emo-tong remained, facing off against a greater number of seasoned white jackets and mercenary warriors.
The strange tower that rose above the garrison arch didn’t seem to have any effect on the bugs. It didn’t matter. It was over in seconds. Bingo and Colonel Holder obliterated them.
My chest swelled with pride. That’s right, assholes. Teach you to rebel against your king.
Only one monster remained. We had all the NPCs pull back. This would either work or not. Either way, we couldn’t use them anymore.
We didn’t know if the charmstones would work against an invulnerable monster. Gretchen seemed to think because they weren’t offensive spells—I still had trouble telling the difference—they would work. Popper was skeptical.
We set the trap up on the first bridge to the small island just east of Fort Bloodgasm. In the real world this was Île Saint-Louis, one of only two natural islands in the Seine as it wrapped around Paris. Spritz worked her magic on the bridge, whittling it down to a mere two feet across.
We finished placing the twin charm stones just as the giant skeleton emerged from underneath the now-abandoned Butcher’s Delight. It fell forward as it approached the low archway of the garrison, growing an extra set of bone arms, turning itself into a six-legged, bug-like creature as it skittered over the corpses of the fallen emo-tong. It crawled under the archway and then pulled itself to its full height.
The gashadokuro jingled oddly as it approached, like it was filled with tiny bells. A javelin from the Sentinel Tower impacted the skull, causing it to jerk back. The triplets refused to leave their tower. Starr cursed again over the chat. She swore every time the javelins impacted and had no effect. Every 15 seconds. It was starting to get very old.
The monster paused to regard the thin bridge. Its head cocked to the side, as if it suspected the trap. Spritz, Archie, and I waited just off the path on the fourth floor of an abandoned building that appeared to once be a hotel for the wark-ee. Molded, nest-shaped beds filled each room, and each room had what appeared to be a now-empty hot tub in them. Some of the rooms on the top floor were smaller but with open-air skylights, so the flying guests could come and go as they pleased.
“Come on, big boy,” Archie was saying as he leaned out the window. “Come on, come on you bloody bastard.”
The massive skeleton observed the bridge for a few more moments then cascaded down into a pile, falling in on itself like a house of cards, filling the midnight air with the sound of clacking bones and bells. The bones writhed and reformed, turning into a long, eel-like creature. It started to slither across the bridge, undulating like an inchworm as it slowly crossed the Cassagnac river.
It paused again at the other end of the bridge. The line of bones was so long, it encompassed the entire span. It seemed to sniff the charm stone, the Compel Undead. It seemed to ignore the second one, placed to the side. It moved forward off the bridge.
The giant skeleton normally returned to its standing skeleton form the moment it could. We needed it to remain in its thin form for just ten feet. Ten feet. It slithered forward, not changing. Nine. Eight. Seven.
I held my breath.
The gashadokuro reached the level 4 vortex trap.
War Party> Vortex Trap in E3 triggered.
War Party Admin> Calculating casualties… 1 casualty. 0 invaders remain.
Wave 3 of 5 complete.
You have received a reward! 10,000 jacks have been added to your account. You have received two training tokens!
You have received a bonus reward! Your pack has been upgraded! Storage size doubled!
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 that have been destroyed and need to be repaired.
I collapsed against the wall in exhaustion as Archie and Spritz whooped and hollered.
“I can’t believe that worked,” I said. I wondered if that was how we were supposed to have defeated the thing. We couldn’t harm it, but we could move it. I’d remembered how we’d slowed down the centipede during the nipple quest, and I thought maybe we could do something similar here. We did, and it worked. In some random place in this world, a giant, pissed-off eel skeleton just landed. I hoped it was the ocean somewhere, and that it would sink to the bottom and get stuck.
Poppy: This shit is too easy. When are they going to make it a challenge?
His Royal Majesty Jonah: Gretchen. Would you object if I punted his ass off the balcony?
Gretchen: You’re too late. I just smacked him upside the head.
Popper Note 19
The first thing I did after the wave finished was send Spritz back out there to repair the destroyed towers. After, her job was to make all the bridges as thin as possible. Then she was to move the three barracks so two of them were near bridge exits and the third—the Butcher’s Delight—was placed smack there at the exit to the Catacombs. Jonah would later talk her through moving several of the towers around now that she was high enough level.
Moving the towers and barracks took a little bit of time, about a half hour for each one. We had 60-something hours before wave 4, and we needed to build as many kill zones as possible. After she was done rearranging, she was going to start upgrading towers. She was currently level 14, though that would go up a few times before today was done. But at her current level, she could upgrade all towers to level two, and some towers, such as fire and archer towers to level three. At level three, a tower could pick a specialization. Fire towers could either become plasma or inferno towers. Inferno towers fired slow, but they set the ground on fire for several minutes. Archer towers could become sniper towers or ballista towers.
Spritz needed to be level 17 to upgrade lightning towers to level three. From there they could specialize in either thunde
rclap, which stunned enemies for ten seconds in addition to electrical damage, or chain lightning towers, which jumped from creep to creep. One of Jonah and Archie’s plans required some of each of those towers. Upgrading, however, also took time. We really needed four or five of these rock singers to be effective.
Once that was done, we were going to see how much time we had and how many towers she could build between now and then. I suspected it wasn’t going to be very many.
We’d lost about 50 arrowed fighters during the fight. We had another 5,000 citizens showing up tomorrow from Nijon, which would bring our total fighting force to just over 7,500. That put us in a pretty good position as long as we prepared properly.
After the wave, Jonah and Archie grabbed Granger out of his tower, and they rushed off to grab the “supplies” as he called it for his grand trap idea. In the morning, I had Bingo sending fighters off to the various dungeons hidden in the city to collect as many beasts as they could for the cage traps and hopefully some larger monsters for the Menagerie.
Holder was put in charge of training the fighters for the barracks. Gretchen, with her human calculator skill and general nerdiness was already hard at work, cross-referencing skills and tower requirements, making the most effective use of each NPC for each individual tower.
Jonah came back to Fort Bloodgasm as dawn broke. He, Archie, and Granger laughed like children as they approached, holding their now-full traps up like trophies. Jonah kept dropping the traps, he was laughing so hard. Gretchen crinkled her nose. “You need a shower, Jonah. You smell like you’ve been crawling through the sewer.”
I found myself checking on Raj every hour or so. The little dude was so damn enthusiastic about everything. I felt bad about us leaving him there in Quibou. He and his pack of hotel workers had returned to the roof, where they were eagerly awaiting a clue as to what the next creep would be.
I let Jonah and Gretchen sleep before I did. Alice came up into the Fort, and we went out together to the great balcony that looked north over the Cassagnac and onto the city. The rising sun glinted off the decrepit buildings. My eyes caught furtive movements in the distance on the roofs, the remaining and broken hobgoblins going about their day.
Alice lay down on the stone floor of the balcony, and I leaned up against her. She purred, her heavy body vibrating so deeply that my teeth chattered. Together, we watched the city. My city. I’m the regent. Jonah and Gretchen were helping with the heavy lifting, but this was my city. My responsibility. It was stupid, I knew. But I understood now why Jonah was so reluctant to abandon Harmony.
“Tell me about her again,” Alice said. She spoke softly, like she was drifting off to sleep. “About Molly.”
My heart broke, just like it did every time we had this conversation. “She’s gone, Alice. Lost to time.”
“She’s only gone if you stop talking about her.”
The tears already started streaming down my cheeks. I turned and buried my face in Alice’s side. Then, quietly, gently, I told Alice the story of Molly. I started with Juliette telling me she was pregnant, and me proposing, and her laughing in my face. We were finally married a month after Molly was born. By then, her doctor was already suspicious that something might be wrong. Cerebral palsy, it turned out. All around the world, new medical achievements were rendering some of humanity’s worst killers obsolete. Most cancers were now survivable. Alzheimer’s was reversible. Heart disease was curable with a simple pill.
But not cerebral palsy. Doctors couldn’t even agree on how she got it. Some thought trauma in the womb. Others thought something happened to her head after she was born. And still others said she was just cooked wrong. Her brain wiring wasn’t properly grounded.
We managed, though. Her symptoms were moderate. Worse than some, but not so bad compared to others. She would always have trouble talking, and she’d have to walk with forearm crutches for the entirety of her life. There were a few experimental treatments, implants for the brain that were supposed to help, but getting into those studies was like winning the lottery.
When she turned seven, word of a new treatment coming from Canada gave us hope. By then, Molly was already a beautiful, vibrant, and happy kid. She had trouble concentrating, and while others her age were already reading and starting to deal with real math in school, Molly was just rounding the bend at kindergarten level. So she was a little slow, but not so much. I used to joke she was just like me. Slow, but so damn good lookin’ it didn’t matter.
The treatment involved brain surgery and stem cells and gave her a chance to start over. She would come out with full brain function. She was still young enough. As long as the surgery was done by the time she was ten or so, she would supposedly reach adulthood with no sign of the condition. There was time. Juliette had gotten her on the list. She’d had her surgery scheduled. It wasn’t to cost anything. It was like a dream.
And then the world dropped out from under us. They canceled. They canceled just a few days before Juliette and Molly were to go to Montreal. Why? Because of me. I was in prison at this point, for the second time. That’s not what they said, not outright. They’d found another family with a child whose “home situation was more conducive to a full recovery.” I knew what that meant. Juliette knew. Molly’s mom was married to a man who was in prison for a violent crime. It didn’t matter that he still had another ten years, and that the violent criminal wouldn’t be home with the child. It showed a lack of judgment on mom’s part.
I’d raged and cried. I’d failed her once again. Juliette pretended she wasn’t mad at me, but I could tell. She still visited every month. She brought Molly four times a year. We didn’t want her too exposed to the prison. My fault. Once again.
The man visited me about six months after the canceled surgery. His name was VanPelt. Rumors had already been swirling around the prison. A few other guys who worked in electrical with me had been visited by mystery men and then disappeared the next day. “We’d like to offer you an opportunity to get out of prison and start a new life.”
“I don’t know what you’re selling,” I’d said to the large man. “But if you get my daughter the surgery she needs, I will do whatever you want.”
The man had frowned, looking down at his tablet. “I don’t see you listed as having a child.”
“I do,” I said. “I have a wife and a daughter. Get her what she needs, and I’m yours.”
My reverie was broken by Raj. I looked up, and Alice was snoring. She always fell asleep when I told her that story. I wiped my cheeks and read the notification.
Raj: A new portal has opened! Things are coming out!
Poppy: Okay, buddy. Describe them to me.
Raj: They are like humans but white and bald. They have red robes and lots of swords. Each one has three swords. They are riding on the back of giant chickens.
Poppy: Chickens?
Raj: Giant chickens! Each one is bigger even than the mean spiky monkey. They are very pretty though. They have blue feathers and red feathers and brown feathers. It is very bright. Some of the bald people now have bows and not swords. Some have long spears.
Poppy: Okay, thanks little man. You’re doing a great job. Keep your head down, keep your people safe, and let us know if anything new appears.
Raj: I am a scout! I went up a level!
Gretchen came out onto the balcony, yawning. “Did I read that right? Giant chickens? Maybe we should go out there and take a look for ourselves. I can’t think of any monsters that I remember that are giant chickens.” She paused, looking me up and down. “Are you okay? Have you been crying?”
I self-consciously wiped my eyes, standing up. “No,” I lied. I kicked away the small luck charms that had sprouted on the stone floor of the balcony, but it was too late. She’d already seen them.
She put her hand on my shoulder. “You know, we see you cry a lot. Both Jonah and I. You can talk to us. You don’t have to hide it.”
I shouldered away, suddenly angry, though I didn’t know wh
y. “I ain’t no damn kid. I know it looks like it, but I’m not.”
I left, leaving Gretchen and a snoring Alice out on the balcony. I didn’t have time for this. I had a meeting with Oliver the beastmaster. He had a cage of small, useless rat things in his stables. He used them to feed his scorpion mount. Each day we didn’t have to fight, I went down there and had him release one so I could kill it. I had to kill one thing a day to keep Montu sated, or he’d imbue me with a penalty.
After that, I’d sleep five hours to knock my exhaustion back down, and then I’d get to work. I had a damn city to save.
Gretchen Note 3
I spent the morning after wave three with a sheet of paper and pen, huddled in a corner of the defense cockpit. I sorted through the NPCs, calculating the most effective NPC combination for each tower. Around noon, the ragtag group of NPCs from Nijon arrived. A large contingent of white jackets accompanied them. Also, we received three additional blacksmiths, a leathersmith, an armorer, and a chemist, all pulling carts with their supplies. Most every other NPC from the town was garbage, with stats at one or zero across the board, except a few middle-level archers and hunters. Nijon was a mining town filled mostly with blond-haired dwarves. They did have higher than average strength, though. That was good for a few towers such as rock chuckers and mortars.
It turned out if you had the maximum number of troops in a tower, and the average of their skills in the tower’s prime skill (archery for archer towers, pyromancy for fire towers, etc.) was at least expert level (level 11), the tower received additional attack bonuses. If it was mastery level (level 25), then the tower received an enhanced attack and speed bonus. It explained why the shots from the Sentinel Tower had been both quicker and deadlier than normal.
As I worked, Bruce Bruce came in and lay down near my feet. He slept, murmuring as he dreamed. I wondered if NPCs dreamt while they slept.
The Hobgoblin Riot: Dominion of Blades Book 2: A LitRPG Adventure Page 34
