Ripcord Online: (LitRPG Series Book 1)

by Brian Simons

  More MP would help me keep up with the increasing costs of using my skills, so I allocated two of my new attribute points to Acuity. Then I increased my Power once to improve my HP and increased my Speed once to improve my SP. Better attributes would net me some combat bonuses as well, which might help if I had to go up against other players again.

  ATTRIBUTES

  Power 1 -> 2

  Speed 1 -> 2

  Acuity 2 -> 4

  HP 100 -> 140

  SP 20 -> 25

  MP 20 -> 40

  I closed the menus and peered out between bamboo shoots. A woman walked toward me, her dark skin contrasting with the whiteness of her pants and shirt. “Mary!” I yelled, waving my hand toward her above the row of bamboo.

  She jogged toward me and reached into a small pouch at her side. She pulled out a handful of leaves, sticks, and flowers.

  “I picked these for you,” she said. “I thought you might want to add some more plants to your repertoire.”

  “Thank you,” I said, taking the plants from her. Some still had clumps of dirt attached to their roots. I ran my fingers across the plants one by one.

  Daisy. Maple. Morning Glory. Oak. Unknown. Unknown. Unknown.

  “I had trouble with these,” I said, handing the “unknown” plants back to Mary. One was a small white flower with three petals, which didn’t look too useful. Another had a thick green stem with bundles of small blooms, almost like baby’s breath. The last one though, looked promising. It had a woody stem and lots of shiny gray thorns protruding from it. Even the flower had thorns on it.

  Mary took the plants and frowned before passing them back to me.

  “I don’t know what they are,” she said. “Hold on to them for later?”

  I looked down at my side. Attached at the hip of my green pants was a small pouch. I opened it and a menu screen appeared with ten empty squares. When I put the plants into the pouch, they each took up a box on that screen, with the word “unknown” below them.

  “Let’s try leveling up some more today,” she said. “You can Grow plants, I’ll cast my Haste and Heal spells, and we’ll get stronger.”

  “Ok,” I said. Nadine wasn’t here, I might as well get strong enough to find her out there. “What level do you think we’ll need to be to find Nadine and Timothy?”

  Mary bit her lower lip. “I’m not sure. I’ve wondered that for a while. Let’s see how strong we feel after we level up some today.”

  It was a long, hard day of spending MP, waiting for it to replenish, and spending it again. We leaned against the city wall as we worked, shrouding ourselves in a growing thicket of grasses, bamboo, and whatever other plants were nearby. It was lucky there was no need to eat or drink in Ripcord, since nothing I cultivated was particularly appetizing.

  Mary told me all about her teenage son, how he loved watching old science fiction movies and playing sandbox games with his friends online. I told her about Nadine, and the way she always laughed at my bad jokes. I knew they were bad, but I didn’t care. Her laughter brought light to my life. I would do anything to hear that laugh again.

  Well after the sun had set, I had only leveled up twice. Things really were slowing down as we reached higher levels. I opened my menus to use the day’s points. A new skill had opened up to me.

  CURRENT SKILLS

  Grow (Tier 5)

  Osmose (Tier 1)

  AVAILABLE UPGRADES

  Grow (Tier 6): At tier 6, Grow improves growth speed noticeably while slightly increasing mana cost. [1.6 MP per second to cast]. Requires 1 skill point to unlock.

  Osmose (Tier 2): At tier 2, Osmose allows you to learn the essence of special common plants. [4 MP to cast]. Requires 2 skill points to unlock.

  Pollen (Tier 1): At tier 1, Pollen allows you to summon a cloud of pollen to impair your enemies. Effects become stronger at higher tiers. [0.5 MP per second to cast]. Requires 1 skill point to unlock.

  I couldn’t resist picking the new skill. I still had no spells that would cause direct damage, but Pollen seemed like it might help ward off danger. I only had one skill point left, so I improved Grow again to tier 6. I also spent my two attribute points on Acuity, bringing it up to 6 and my MP up to 60. That should let me cast spells for longer before I ran out of juice.

  “We should rest and try again tomorrow,” Mary said. We sat with our backs against the wall. She leaned against me and closed her eyes.

  “Things will only be a slower grind tomorrow,” I said, bringing my knees up. “I’m gonna lie down.” I shuffled over so that Mary leaned against the wall while I nestled into the high grasses of our private enclave.

  ***

  When I woke up, Mary was on her side, sleeping with her back pressed up against my arm. Her body was warm. I didn’t remember touching another person since Nadine died, except for a few hugs at her funeral and the occasional handshake at work.

  I rolled away from Mary and got to my feet. Behind us, thousands of lost souls circled the Mobius strip of Cortina’s city street, lost in a marathon with no finish line. They waited for a future that might never come. In front of us, players fought and trained, an equally fruitless eternity if they weren’t moving toward a real goal.

  The sound of rustling grass told me that Mary was awake. “We need to go,” I said. “Out there. No matter how hard we train, we’re just in stasis here.”

  “I know,” she said.

  I pushed through the bamboo shoots and into the sprawling battlefield pocked with fountains and cherry blossoms. Mary followed behind. There were few players awake at this early hour, and we avoided the attention of the ones that were. Another player-versus-player battle would only slow us down and pit us against people that we didn’t need as enemies.

  We walked further than I had gone before, until the city and its surrounding stone wall were a small mark in the distance.

  “Cale,” Mary said. “We could spend another day training. I should have spent more points on Power than I did, and now my HP is really low. I could die out there, Cale. Let’s keep training, just another day.”

  “We’ll make it work,” I said. “We’ll protect each other. There’s no telling what level we’d need to be. Maybe we’re too strong already.” I forced myself to smile. Of course we weren’t ready, but we never would be. We could train forever and never get closer to knowing what ready looked like.

  I took a few steps further. Everything before me was an endless green field, devoid of players or fountains or trees. The lush grassy landscape was infinite. At last, I walked far enough to trigger a game prompt. It appeared before my face in the same blue writing as the game’s first introductory message.

  Cortina is the game’s only safe zone. The world beyond is dangerous, and death there will end your time in Ripcord permanently. Your data will be erased from the game servers. Are you sure you wish to leave Cortina?

  I looked back at Mary. “We can do this.”

  She grabbed my forearm and slid her hand down to my wrist. She wrapped my hand in her own hands. “No, Cale. I can’t. I’m not ready. I need another day, maybe a week, but then I’ll be strong enough.”

  “Timothy needs you,” I said. I felt guilty using her dead son as leverage, but I believed it. What kid should be out there on his own while his mother hides out in Cortina biting her nails? Nadine needed me, at least I thought she did. God knew I needed her. I couldn’t make her wait for me any longer.

  “I don’t want to die, Cale,” Mary said. “If I die I’ll never see him again. I can’t go. Please stay with me. It’s been months since anyone normal came here. The game, it has a way of changing people. All those people in the city, they’ve given up. The fighters, they’ve given in. I’ve tried so hard to keep it together in here.”

  “You said you were new here,” I said.

  She lowered her head. “What if there’s nothing out there?”

  “That’s what people said about Ripcord, but we’re here, aren’t we? People doubted this, but it’s
real. I believe that’s real too, I have to.”

  “I can’t go,” she said.

  “Yes you can. I believe in you. We’ll find them together.” With Mary still clutching my hand, I took a step forward and left Ripcord’s only safe pocket of space and time. Mary let go of me the second I moved toward Cortina’s outer limits.

  Before me was a dirt road worn into a dry, dusty landscape. Spindly trees and clumps of long grass grew sporadically. Like the glade I had started in, Cortina was an illusion, protecting its inhabitants from the sight of the world beyond.

  I turned back and saw her, standing at the edge of the green field. A faint shimmer in the air is all that let me know the city stood behind a special barrier. Her eyes darted left and right. I reached out to take her by the hand, but I couldn’t reach back into Cortina.

  “Mary,” I said. “Mary!” I yelled it. She didn’t seem to hear me. She took a step backward and clutched her hands in front of her face. “Come on, Mary, just a few steps forward,” I said.

  She took another step back and looked over her shoulder, back toward that miserable city of the dead. “No,” I said, and watched her turn around and run away from me, away from the game’s warning prompt and away from the world into which her son escaped so long ago. I watched until I couldn’t see the shape of her anymore.

  I set off down the only road in sight, once again alone.

  5

  I wondered how long Nadine spent in Cortina. Did she level up first or did she see the city for what it was, a holding pen for the lost and indecisive, and take off running toward freedom. How long ago did she walk this dusty road? Or did she take a different direction, eschewing the well beaten path and forging her own?

  The road was long, and the terrain uninteresting. I was starting to wonder if Ripcord weren’t just one endless desolate steppe when I finally saw buildings in the distance. They were made of wooden planks, with small porches and slanted wooden roofs. There were no people, no lights. It looked like a ghost town.

  I trudged toward it slowly when something caught my eye. To my left, something like a dark cloud was forming along the ground. I kept my head turned toward it as I got closer to the town. As the cloud got nearer, I saw the shapes of people in it. Heads bobbed and arms flailed in strange directions. They were all dark, colorless forms running in a cloud of black fog that rose beneath their feet and evanesced in thin shadowy wisps as it wafted above their heads.

  There must a dozen, no two dozen people in that wild frenzy. I picked up my pace and started jogging toward the city. The dreary cloud of people changed its trajectory as if tracking me, arcing toward the town as I got closer to it.

  I ran, kicking up dust from the dry earth below as my feet scraped at the dirt. I pumped my arms and tried to pick up speed as my stamina bar started depleting. The shapes of bodies were distinct now in that morbid crowd. I couldn’t count how many people comprised it, but it was a lot.

  The small town was a strip of wooden structures on each side of the dirt road, and once I ran past the first few buildings I lost sight of whatever was chasing me behind them. All I could see were broken windows, missing doors, collapsed roofs. I kept running, though my stamina bar was rapidly approaching empty.

  The next thing I heard was the wailing. It was like eavesdropping on a parent as they watched their home burn down with their children inside. The pain and loss burst through the air from not one voice, but a chorus of them, sobbing into the open air as that black mass of bodies got closer.

  It rounded the corner of a wooden building and flooded the street, pale faces with black hair matted down to their heads, tatters of black clothing hanging from their bodies. Their mouths opened and shut in fits and starts as they continued their ululating lamentations.

  My heart raced at the sight of it. I wanted to turn and run, back down the dirt road, back toward Cortina. Maybe Mary was right, she wasn’t ready for this. I wasn’t ready for this. I couldn’t run though. No matter how hard I tried to lift my legs, they were reduced to a slow walk. My stamina points were all gone.

  A ramshackle wooden building with no door sat on my left. A porch stood on my right, leading to a door closed tight and shutters blocking the windows. If my slow feet could carry me through the doorframe on my left fast enough, I could try to hide in that building, but I couldn’t shut out the wave of dark forms tearing toward me.

  I turned right instead, lifting one foot at a time as terrible cries of the black unknown got louder and closer. I climbed one step, then two. I placed a hand on the knob of the wooden door.

  The knob wouldn’t turn. It was locked, or maybe broken. I turned back toward the rushing cloud of limbs and voices and watched it hurl itself down the road toward me.

  Then something grabbed me from behind and pulled me backwards. A door closed in front of me and I spun around to find a man with a short brown beard and long brown hair dressed all in blue. “Do you have a death wish? Come on!”

  I walked after him, wishing I could run. We made our way toward the back of the long room which looked like an old timey saloon. A man sat in a corner with his head down on the table. “Roy!” the bearded man said. “I’m not saying it again, man, come on!”

  Whoever Roy was, he didn’t stir. A hatch in the floor swung open and I was told to climb down. I hesitated. If Ripcord was a dangerous place, there could be anything down there. Though, I was also terrified of whatever was outside. The bearded man rolled his eyes and climbed down first. I followed behind and slammed the hatch shut behind me.

  “What about Roy?” I asked.

  “Roy is dead to the world right now,” the man said. “We don’t have time to haul his ass down here. He’s got a big ass.”

  A crashing sound came from above followed by the throaty wail of dozens of voices. The sound of a strong wind blew through the first floor of the tavern above, and then, just as quickly, it faded away. The sound of sobbing receded into the background. My heart beating against my eardrums was the only sound left.

  I stood there in the dark basement, my feet planted on the rungs of a short ladder while my fingers grasped the metal latch to the door overhead. “Is it safe yet?” I asked.

  “It’s never safe,” the man said, “but let’s get out of here and assess the damage.”

  I pushed up on the latch and climbed back into the tavern. Tables and chairs were strewn all over the place, many of them broken. The door had been knocked off its hinges and Roy was nowhere to be seen.

  “What happened to—”

  “Roy?” the man cut me off. “He’s either stricken or dead. Hopefully dead. Too bad, he was one of my best customers.”

  “Do you run this tavern?” I asked.

  “Eh, not much of a tavern anymore,” he said, kicking at the busted furniture until he found a chair that wasn’t broken. He set it up and sat down on it.

  “No one wants drinks these days,” he said. “Too bad, because I made a mean one.” He picked up a glass from the floor and pointed his finger at it. It filled with water until it cascaded from the lowest side of its fractured rim. Then the water turned a golden color, transmuting into beer.

  “That’s a neat trick,” I said.

  “Level 20 Blue Mage,” he said, “at your service. I assume you’re here for lite?”

  “A light?” I asked, confused. “No, I don’t smoke.”

  “Me neither,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder. He took a tin from his pouch and removed the lid. Inside were a few large, dried leaves. “Have a chew,” he said. “First one’s on me, but after that it’s 10 gold per leaf.”

  “Thank you no,” I said. “What is that stuff?”

  He laughed. “You must be fresh from Cortina. Lite is all the rage in Ripcord. Chew it up and forget how awful this all is. Just be careful where you chew it. You lose track of your surroundings like good ol’ Roy did and you’re a goner.”

  “You sell drugs?” I asked.

  “And proud of it,” he replied. “People need an
escape. Lite is a pretty damn good one.”