Ripcord Online: (LitRPG Series Book 1)

by Brian Simons

  If I had any hope of leveling up though, I’d need MP. Lots and lots of MP. My green magic produced XP with each skill I used, and my maximum MP was the upper limit on how many of those spells I could cast in one round. I added the point to my Acuity, hoping I’d eventually get strong enough to spare some points for my other attributes later.

  ATTRIBUTES

  Power 2

  Speed 2

  Acuity 6 -> 7

  HP 140

  SP 25

  MP 60 -> 70

  I thumbed at a few rocks embedded in the ground while my mana meter slowly refilled.

  “See that?” Pickman said. I glanced up and saw a pillar of white light fall from the sky like rain, splashing onto the ground and then disappearing. Where moments ago there had been nothing, there was now another curlynx.

  “Every curlynx we kill respawns,” he said. “That’s what makes the monsters different from us. We will never have that pillar of light. There’s no coming back from where we go, don’t ever forget that.”

  “We can’t stay here,” I said, worried that the animal would catch sight of us and attack.

  “Like hell we can’t,” Pickman said. “You level yourself up some more and then we’ll take on another one. And another one. I’ve got all day.”

  7

  The curlynx sat in the same place for hours. Without Pickman attracting its attention, it was a stationary fixture in the steppe. It didn’t even seem to notice that I had raised a small forest of sagebrush and rhubarb.

  I plunged my hand into a pile of rhubarb leaves and grew the plant higher. Finally, I leveled up again. In the last few hours, I had gone from level 9 to level 10, and now to level 11. I still couldn’t tell how many XP I earned as I grew these plants, but I seemed to level up faster than I had in Cortina.

  I was ready to improve my Osmose skill. I spent two skill points on it, enabling my ability to learn the essence of special common plants. I also improved my Speed and my Power once each.

  Pickman pulled a handful of red stalks from the ground and tore the leaves off. He started eating the rhubarbs.

  “I thought we didn’t need to eat here,” I said.

  “We don’t, but eating is one of the only pleasures left to us. And I like the taste of rhubarbs.”

  “That’s a difficult flavor to like,” I said.

  “Precisely.”

  I pulled the unknown plants out of my bag. I touched the first one and activated my improved Osmose skill, but it stayed unknown. So did the second one, and the third one. I did learn the fourth plant from the small sample I had in my bag. It was the one that looked like baby’s breath.

  Hemlock.

  I didn’t need the game to tell me what hemlock could do. I never thought I’d be so happy to have a deadly poison at my fingertips. I reached out to the plants nearby and activated my Engraft skill.

  Poison Sagebrush. Poison Rhubarb.

  “I did it,” I said. “I poisoned the plants.”

  Pickman spat out a mouthful of rhubarb mush. “You really know how to ruin a man’s lunch.”

  “I’m not sure it makes me battle ready, but it’s something,” I said.

  “Let’s find out,” Pickman said, standing up. He stuck two fingers in his mouth and forced out a loud whistle. A distant curlynx cocked its head toward us and started running.

  “My MP hasn’t recharged yet!” I yelled.

  “You’ll figure it out,” he said. “You’ll get a lot more XP from killing something than tending to baby rhubarbs. Indulge me. I’m getting bored of waiting for you to toughen up.”

  The cat bounded toward me, its bone-tipped tentacles bobbing alongside it. Before long it was a few yards away, looking for its opportunity to attack. Pickman just stood there, rummaging around in his pouch.

  I tried to pull a sagebrush stalk from the ground to wield as a weapon, but it was too firmly rooted. As the monster darted toward me I dove into the pile of rhubarbs I had cultivated to get out of its path. No sooner did I roll onto my back than I saw a massive feline shape in the air, crashing down on top of me.

  Here I was again, under an angry lynx-like creature bearing its fangs at me. I could smell the rotten meat of whatever its previous meal had been. It’s what I was destined to smell like soon unless I could find a way out of this.

  I heard the quick pop of metal against metal behind me. Pickman wasn’t rummaging in his bag for a weapon against this monster, he was after his snuff tin. He wasn’t coming to my aid this time.

  As the monster reared its head back, I clenched my fingers in a thicket of leaves and yanked them from the ground, rhubarbs hanging from red stems in a cloud of floppy green leaves. Maybe I could bludgeon it with root vegetables.

  I thrust my fist up as the cat lunged toward me. We both missed our targets.

  Rather than sink its teeth into my neck, I had stopped its motion by forcing my hand into his mouth. As the cat’s sharp teeth penetrated my wrist, I saw 60 HP disappear from my heath point meter. I only had 180 HP to start with. Losing a third of it to a punctured wrist didn’t bode well for what would happen if this cat landed a hit someplace more vital.

  To make matters worse, I was injured. A small icon appeared above my head with a hand and red wavy lines in it. The game’s blue text appeared to explain what I was looking at.

  Debuff: Injured wrist. Use of this wrist is impaired for the next 60 seconds.

  I let my fingers release the handful of greens I had yanked from the ground and focused on pulling my wrist free of the monster’s maw.

  I took another 22 damage just getting my hand free, shaking a clump of wet leaves from the cat’s mouth as I did. The curlynx’s tentacles thrashed at me, forcing the sharp shards of bone at each end through my sides, scraping at my ribs and taking another 10 HP off each time. Once, twice, five times they landed in my skin. My HP meter blinked an angry red, drawing my attention to the fact that I would be a goner soon.

  I punched the cat in the jaw, an uppercut that sent its feline form rolling off to the side. My arm throbbed as pain radiated from my injured wrist and up the bone.

  My attack dropped the cat’s HP bar by a fifth or so, which gave me a little confidence. I didn’t know exactly how much damage I had done, but I wasn’t completely useless.

  Take that, Pickman.

  Still, I wouldn’t have time for another four uppercuts. The cat’s tentacular bone blades were still scratching at my sides. I lost another 10 HP in the time it took even to think about punching this cat monster’s face again.

  I grabbed another handful of poison rhubarb leaves and got to my feet. If plants were my signature weapon, I would just have to make do.

  The cat lunged at me again, but I dodged. It skidded to a stop and turned toward me again. Adrenaline coursed through my veins, reawakening my will to live. I may only have 38 HP left, but I refused to vanish into the digital ether at the hands — or jaw — of this whiskered monster.

  When the curlynx ran at me again I stepped aside, then jumped on its back as it skidded to another stop. I pushed a handful of poisoned greens into the cat’s mouth with my injured hand and wrapped my other one under its jaw, holding its mouth closed.

  A tentacle whipped into my peripheral vision, so I rolled my weight to one side, taking the curlynx with me. I was trapped under the writhing monster now, with its stomach exposed to the sky above and its tentacles scraping madly at the dusty ground beneath us. It struggled to aim those sharp bone blades at me from this angle.

  I held on as tightly as I could, but I was losing my grip. My arms were sore and tired, but my wrist was the real weak link. My hold on the powerful monster loosened just enough that it whipped a tentacle blade up and into my arm.

  Another 10 HP vanished, but this hit hurt more than most. A sharp pain seemed to invade my bones, first in my arm, then across my whole body. I seized up, unable to move. A small box appeared above my head with two rows of jagged yellow lines surrounding a stick figure person. The game kindly ex
plained in its frustratingly calm blue writing:

  Debuff: Paralysis. Your body and limbs will remain locked in place for 30 seconds.

  That stick figure icon represented me, and the lines showed that I was now paralyzed by whatever strange magic coursed through the curlynx’s bone tentacle blades.

  The cat continued to writhe while I clung to it, an inanimate person curled around the struggling feline. My hand was frozen in place, clasping the monster’s mouth shut. Another whip from its blade shaved ten more health points off my tally. Perhaps I would find out sooner than I anticipated whether death outside of Cortina was permanent.

  Finally, I felt something under the cat’s chin, like a lump moving toward its neck. It had swallowed.

  Soon it pulsed with strange convulsions as it continued to whip up a cloud of dust with its frenzied tentacles. It was in its last throes as poison worked its way through the feline’s system. Finally, the curlynx went limp in my arms. My paralysis faded away and the monster’s body vanished.

  You have reached Level 12! Total skill points: 1. Total attribute points: 1.

  My mind instantly turned on Pickman next. Of all the nerve. Chewing himself into a stupor when I was fighting for my life was low, even for a bottom-feeding Ripcord dealer-turned-addict.

  I scrambled to my feet and spun around to face a comatose Pickman.

  What I saw, though, was a blue mage holding a long, sharp icicle, poised to throw it like a javelin. I felt guilty for doubting him. He had my back after all.

  “You did well,” he said. “You might even have it now.”

  “Have what?” I asked.

  “A fighting chance.”

  8

  “Let’s go see Alonso,” Pickman said, tossing his makeshift ice spear aside and heading into the dusty nothingness ahead of us.

  “If this Alonso has worked out a way to keep safe,” I asked, “why bother helping me level up first?”

  “Because despite what you’ll think, I’m a decent person sometimes,” he said. “Walk fast, we need to get there before it’s dark.”

  “Why,” I asked, “what happens when it gets dark?”

  Pickman gave me a hard stare, like he was sizing me up. All he said was, “We’ll miss dinner.”

  I checked on my abilities as we walked. I was intrigued by Osmose, which I could improve again for three more skill points, and which would let me learn the essence of basic rare plants, whatever those were. I wasn’t sure I should wait for three more levels before improving my skills though, so I sank my only skill point into Grow again. Then I used my attribute point to improve my Acuity. I was happy for the boost to my max MP, since Growing things quickly only depleted my mana points at a faster rate.

  There were a few curlynxes sitting sentinel every so often, but Pickman wove a path that avoided drawing their attention. They were like landmines, only activated when a person got so close. A low, square shape rose in the distance.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “That’s it,” Pickman replied. “Alonso’s compound.”

  As we got closer a short stone retaining wall came into view, made of some brown rock that likely came from deep under the steppe we trod on. The wall must have been a mile wide, with guard towers at the corners. How far back the other sides of the wall stretched I couldn’t tell. A wide metal gate sat in the middle of the front wall, and not far behind it was a mansion.

  Pickman had interesting taste in friends.

  Two men with long dull swords stood outside the front gate. “Hello, gents,” Pickman said.

  “Is he expecting you?” one asked.

  “Probably not,” Pickman said, “nor is he expecting my friend the green mage, but I think he’ll make some time for us, yeah?”

  The men locked eyes with each other for a moment. One opened the gate a few feet and disappeared inside the mansion. He came back out with a tall man in a sand colored suit and a short, wide-brimmed hat. A long, thin sword hung in a sheath from his hip.

  “Pickman, my old friend,” the man said. Pickman grimaced at the last word. “And who do we have here?” he asked, turning toward me.

  “Cale Cross,” I said, extending my hand.

  “My name is Alonso,” he said, gripping my hand hard and shaking it slowly. “Just Alonso. So very pleased to make your acquaintance. I think you’ll enjoy your stay here quite much.”

  “I don’t think I planned to stay,” I said.

  “Pickman,” Alonso said, “you haven’t sold your friend here on the benefits of plantation living? Come, let’s eat and talk, drink and chew.”

  I took a step toward the gate when Alonso held a hand up to stop me. “First things first,” he said. “I can’t have you boys bringing weapons into the house.”

  “No need to worry,” I said, “I don’t have any weapons.”

  “You are the weapon, kiddo,” Pickman said. He held a hand toward the ground behind us and shot water from his palm like a fire hydrant. The ground absorbed what it could, but then the water started to stream away from us, a muddy trickle rolling gently downhill until Pickman had exhausted his MP.

  “Perfectly harmless,” Pickman said, raising both hands and stepping through the gate.

  I doubted Alonso wanted a cloud of pollen in his face, so I took a few steps from the property until I found a small shoot poking through the ground. I touched it, bringing a fully-fledged sagebrush to life. My MP meter hit zero.

  Not that I could have done much damage anyway.

  “Very impressive,” Alonso said, stroking his chin with one hand. “Come, we have much to discuss.”

  I walked through the gate and heard the metal clang shut behind me. Two large trees stood outside the mansion’s front door. They looked wet, like they had been leaking a constant stream of sap. I was curious whether I could Osmose them, but I didn’t want to do anything rude. Maybe on my way out.

  Alonso’s mansion was opulent. High ceilings, golden vases on rich mahogany tables, marble staircases. It baffled me how he could live like this only a day’s walk from the abandoned ghost town I first saw. We walked through the main entryway and into a formal dining room with paintings hung on every wall and honest-to-goodness silver set out on the table. I followed Alonso’s lead and sat down to a place setting.

  “Has Pickman told you how rare your gift is?” Alonso asked. A butler brought a tureen to the table and started ladling out soup. His hands were unsteady, and I worried I might end up with a lap full of hot broth.

  “I do understand that not many people choose green magic,” I said. Pickman was already slurping soup from his bowl.

  “And for a man like me,” Alonso continued, “that makes you a potentially valuable partner.”

  “Partner in what?” I asked.

  “Pickman really told you nothing then,” Alonso said. He brought the soup spoon to his mouth, eating infinitely more delicately than Pickman. “I grow lite.”

  “The drug?” I asked.

  “Some people abuse it,” Alonso said, “as is true with all things. Lite has a purpose though. Not everyone who dies comes here. Many of us have left loved ones behind never to see them again. Lite reawakens our memories of them, provides us ready access to their company when we need it. A way to commune with the spirits of our dearly departed.”

  “So it’s a hallucinogen.” I said. Alonso spoke like a prophet, but he was a drug lord plain and simple.

  Pickman had a slab of meat on the end of his fork. He ripped pieces of it off with his teeth, not bothering to cut it. I hadn’t realized a full plate of food had landed in front of me. Looking down, I noticed there were no knives with our place settings.

  “You seem to live well here,” I said, “but things are bad out there. How can anyone afford to buy drugs from you?”

  “This used to be a beautiful kingdom,” Alonso said, “before the Stricken began to demolish it. The economy was robust, full of artisans and crafters. We traded with the lands beyond our shores. This mansion, for inst
ance, belonged to a baron of the kingdom.”

  Beyond these shores? “How big is Ripcord exactly?” I asked.

  “I don’t even know inexactly. It’s enormous. Perhaps new regions are added from time to time. For someone that has a product to sell, that is a good thing indeed. There are still people here who scrounge together the gold they need for an occasional mental respite, and I would like to start shipping by sea. As long as people like Pickman sell my products out there for me, it’s a system that works well.”