Ripcord Online: (LitRPG Series Book 1)

by Brian Simons

  “You met Nadine?” I asked.

  “Oh yes, she was a beautiful woman inside and out. You know she used to tend flowers?” the man’s voice said.

  “Yes, she was a florist. Do you know where I can find her?” This was absurd, consulting a floating stone pillar for direction.

  “No one will ever find her again, I’m afraid,” he said.

  The crying man continued to sob. The color had drained from his skin.

  “Why is that?” I asked.

  “She died, of course,” the voice said. “Oh, but don’t they all. The sad fate of those who come. I think you knew it was true.”

  “Not Nadine,” I said. “How could you know that?”

  “I am a harbinger,” the obelisk said. “I bring only the news of death. It is a sad job, but otherwise you would search in vain for all of time.”

  “What makes you think she’s dead?” I asked. My heart was racing from news I couldn’t accept.

  “She was your wife, was she not?” the voice said. It terrified me that this odd monument knew anything about Nadine. How could it know?

  “Yes,” I said.

  “She died two years ago,” the voice said. “I’m sorry for your loss, and the loss of your unborn child.”

  I felt tears well up inside of me. I had mourned for Nadine, but had I sufficiently mourned for Alexandria, the daughter we’d never have?

  “She was so full of hope when she came here,” the voice continued. “She made friends easily, and developed her powers. She was a skilled mage.”

  “Green?” I asked.

  “She met someone unkind,” the voice continued. “He tormented her so. He followed her, reminded her that she would never see her dear husband Cale again. Each day she cried harder than the last.”

  I felt tears falling from my cheeks now. I should have come sooner. I should have been there, to face that bully alongside her. It was my fault she even came here. If she suffered, I caused it. I might as well have killed her myself.

  The voice continued, “‘Cale!’ she would cry out, ‘Cale I miss you!’ She wanted so badly to see you before she went.”

  “I want to see her too,” I said, mumbling through quivering lips. Salty tears ran into my mouth but I ignored them. I wanted to wipe them away from my face, but my arms were heavy.

  The woman’s voice stopped speaking. I didn’t look over at that mouth, or at the crying man, only at the mouth divining Nadine’s last moments in Ripcord.

  “In the end, the sadness was too much for her. Her grief overtook her,” the voice said.

  “No,” I said. I could feel it overtaking me too. I was lost in a sea of sorrow, the crushing weight of Nadine’s double death pressing down on me. My heart bore a thousand pounds of sadness, constricting my chest and making it hard to breathe. My eyelids were heavy. I just wanted to close my eyes and listen.

  “Her final words,” the voice continued, “were ‘Cale, I love you.’ And then she took her own life.”

  My eyes sprang open. “No,” I said. “No, she would never. She would wait for me. Nadine had no dark thoughts like that, she was hope and light and love.”

  “A person can change here,” the voice said.

  I looked down and saw that my green boots had turned gray as granite. My right hand was gray too. I tried to curl my fingers but I couldn’t.

  “No,” I said, “you’re lying.” I reached over with my left hand, fumbling to open the pouch on my right hip.

  “She’s dead!” the voice yelled. “Don’t you want to be with her? You should die too. You abandoned her. She died while you were chewing dope. You are weak, and she deserved so much better than you!”

  I felt despair bubbling up in my soul, but I knew it was some evil magic wrought by the twisted minds that designed this awful place. Ripcord was supposed to be a new life, not a new way to give up and die.

  I had a glass of dirt and a glass of water. I tossed the dirt mug aside and placed the water mug on the ground between my petrified feet. I had a sprig of spring ivy in my bag, but I was glad I wouldn’t need to fish it out with my only working hand to kick start my Grow skill. I could sprout anything I wanted now with the power of my mind and a splash of water.

  I activated Grow, controlling the plant as it extended from one of Pickman’s old beer mugs and coiled around the obelisk. I guided it up the stone fixture and the ivy hugged the edges of it like a tightly wound spring.

  The man’s mouth continued to pry at my heart with sad words about Nadine’s suffering. Its heart-wrenching magic worked on me, even as I knew it was lying. Nadine would never call me “Cale.”

  The spring ivy wrapped its way through those evil lips and stopped them from speaking. The obelisk’s teeth tried to chew away at the vine, but the plant was too tough. I forced it to squeeze tighter and tighter until I did actual damage.

  First 10 damage, then 20, then I was strangling the harbinger for 50 HP at a time as I continued to gray out like the statues this monster left in its wake. The crying man on his knees was pale all over. Only his face retained any color to it. His lips were a light pink, and faded purple bags perched under his eyes.

  I wouldn’t let this stone-hearted creature turn anyone else’s sorrow against them. I used the last of my MP on the vile creature, and watched it die, crumbling like a pile of rubble onto the desert ground before it vanished for good.

  You have reached Level 25! Total skill points: 1. Total attribute points: 1.

  Color returned to my arms and legs. The surrounding statues vanished along with the remains of the obelisk, but the crying man remained, frozen in place.

  I knelt down beside him and placed a hand on his shoulder. He felt like he were made of stone, but his lips were a little redder than they had been. His eyes no longer gray, but ever so slightly blue.

  I thought about allocating my skill and attribute points, but I was keen to see whether this guy would recover. I waited with him, watching as he gradually came back to life. “You should have let it kill me,” he said once he could stand again.

  “Why?” I asked. “It was lying.”

  “You don’t know that,” he said. “Not everything it said added up, but it was true enough.”

  “Let’s live like it isn’t, at least for now,” I said.

  The man nodded.

  I picked up my water mug, even though there wasn’t more than a drop left in it, and placed it in my bag.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said, putting an arm around his shoulder and guiding him away from the empty space once occupied by a devious prophet of death.

  We walked in silence toward the sun, the same direction I had walked for days. When I turned back, I saw that the obelisk had returned. Or, rather, a new obelisk had generated in its place, respawning just as the curlynxes had.

  15

  Even if the harbinger had been lying, my mind couldn’t relax. I had allowed myself to doubt whether Nadine had survived this long. That insidious doubt burrowed into my mind and nested there, even as I told my new companion that the harbinger was designed to feed us lies and lure us to our deaths.

  It was exactly the type of twisted creation Vin had warned me about. Somehow, I stopped it from destroying me, though its aftereffects continued to dissolve my optimism.

  “You’re a Longbow Archer?” I asked, breaking the silence for the first time in an hour as we trudged slowly toward the setting sun.

  “Yes,” he said. “My name is Drew. What’s yours?”

  “Cale,” I said. “Have you traveled around here before?”

  “Not here,” he said, “but I traveled other parts of Ripcord with a player who knew the lay of the land. He said the ocean was west of here. We were going to build a boat and sail away, but now it’s just me.”

  I decided not to ask what happened, knowing that Ripcord had many unpleasant endings for the players that roamed its surface. I suspected the obelisk had dug into that old wound enough for one day. “What’s out in the ocean?” I asked
.

  “Hope?” Drew said. He didn’t seem sure. “The mountains are up ahead, then a rainforest. The mountains block all the moisture, so none of it comes out this way. The ocean lies beyond that.”

  “A rainforest seems like a nice change of pace,” I said, kicking at the dry ground underfoot.

  “I hear it’s really something,” he said. “It’s supposed to be in constant bloom. All reds and oranges and purples. Giant flowers the size of a person. The complete opposite of this desert.”

  For the first time in months my heart thumped with hope instead of dread. If Nadine were anywhere, she’d be in that rainforest, tending to the exotic plants native to Ripcord’s more hospitable climes.

  “I’m almost afraid to say this out loud,” I said, “but there’s a good chance my wife is out there in the rainforest. If I promise to help you to the ocean, will you travel with me?”

  “The ocean is my last hope,” Drew said. “Let’s pin our hopes together and see if they float.” He held out a hand to shake mine. After that, we walked a little faster toward the mountains that came into view along the western sky.

  We cut a zigzag path through the desert, avoiding two other obelisks we spotted from afar. Leaving the desert behind, we climbed over rock ridges that sprouted from the ground on our way toward the horizon.

  As overpopulated as Cortina had been, I was surprised we hadn’t seen another soul in the barren expanse of land we’d crossed. Either fewer people left the city’s safe zone behind than Mary suggested, or Ripcord did an excellent job of deleting players from its terrain.

  The sky swallowed the sun but never produced a moon. It was getting darker than dark.

  “I don’t want to discourage you,” Drew said, “so I almost didn’t say anything, but the rainforest is dangerous. It has a bad reputation for accepting visitors that it never returns. We may not be strong enough to make it through there at this level.”

  “Thanks for the warning,” I said. That rainforest was my best hope for finding Nadine, but I needed to stay alive or it was all for nothing. I was generally so focused on the possibility of Nadine’s death that I didn’t always stop to consider my own.

  I stumbled over a large rock, but regained my balance. “It’s too dark to keep going,” I admitted. “We should try to camp here for the night.”

  “I hate that idea,” Drew said, “but there’s no way around it. I’ll take the first shift and keep watch in case anything creeps up on us.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I felt around for a flat spot of ground and lay on my back, shivering. It was cold this far from the desert. I still wore the simple green pants and shirt I started off with, but a coat would be nice, or a blanket. I wondered where Alonso had gotten his fancy ivory suit and where the raiders had gotten their armor. Maybe those items were relics of a time when this land was a thriving kingdom instead of a playground for a demented death mage.

  I stared up at the night sky. Finally, something Ripcord’s developers had done right. An infinite starscape unfolded overhead, with a dazzling display of stars and nebulas hovering in the digital cosmos. It was the kind of chilly night and breathtaking sky that makes a person long for the warmth and companionship of his wife. No offense to Drew.

  Despite the cold air, my skin was damp. The day’s trials had outworn my body’s ability to stave off the withdrawal symptoms. I was weak, and I knew it. I took a leaf from my inventory bag and placed it in my mouth, swapping out the night sky for a tropical sunset and Drew for Nadine.

  Drew must have heard the rustling of leaves or me spitting the chew onto the ground when I finished. “You’re an addict?” he asked.

  “I was taken prisoner at Alonso’s plantation,” I said. “So yeah, now I’m an addict.”

  “I’ve never tried it,” Drew said. “Ripcord is bad enough without reminding myself of how good I used to have it. If I do want to think about that, I’ll rely on my own memory for it, not some ugly leaf.”

  At this point I was addicted to that ugly leaf, but I wasn’t going to argue with Drew. I would have to kick this habit eventually.

  Having quelled the shakes and sweats with a dose of lite, I drifted off to sleep. It was still dark when I awoke to Drew’s hand on my shoulder. “Mind if I nod off?” he asked.

  “Of course,” I said, standing up and stretching. I stared into the invisible distance as Drew slept for a few hours.

  It felt like something swept against my calf. I reached down to brush away at my pant leg and my hand grazed something soft and furry. A second later I felt a sharp pain in my leg and lost 6 HP.

  “Drew!” I yelled. I couldn’t see him in the pitch black of night, but I heard him yell in pain. Something must have bitten him too.

  I took my sword from my bag and held it out, but I didn’t know what I was fighting. More and more things brushed past my legs. I stabbed my sword downward over and over again, but I only hit rocks.

  Another set of teeth sank into my ankle. I whacked at my own leg with my sword hoping to hit whatever was gnawing at me. I succeeded.

  With a thwack, I felt something small detach from my leg. I was dying to see what these things were. I lifted each leg one at a time in a frantic jig to prevent other creatures from climbing onto me. My foot landed on one with a squish and a squeak.

  “I just stomped on one and killed it,” I said.

  “One what?” Drew asked.

  “Hell if I know,” I said. I kept thrashing my sword and stomping my feet, killing the occasional whatever-it-was. After a few minutes of this, the faintest aura of morning light crept over the horizon, turning the black sky a slightly lighter blue. The vague outline of a small body revealed itself. I stared at it while I thrashed my feet. It was a Level 12 Vore Shrew.

  “They’re some kind of mouse,” I said. Now that I could see them, the real stomping began. I wasn’t one to attack small furry creatures, but these little monsters made things personal when they started eating me alive.

  You have reached Level 26! Total skill points: 2. Total attribute points: 2.

  I ignored the level up notification so I could keep fighting. I speared one with my sword and shook its bloody body from the weapon. There were hundreds if not thousands of these critters as far as I could see in the faint light. Most of the shrews didn’t stop to bite me, however. Most simply ran as fast as their pink little feet could take them. Small furry bodies climbed over their slower brethren as they sped across the rocky ground.

  “We’re in the middle of some kind of mass migration,” I said. “This is ridiculous.”

  “It’s good XP though,” Drew said.

  We continued to sustain occasional bite wounds and slay rodents for twenty more minutes before the onrush of vermin dwindled to a smattering of plump shrews too heavy to run as quickly as their comrades. We stood there panting for a moment while the rotund rodents waddled past us.

  “Do you feel that?” Drew asked.

  “Is that thunder?” I asked.

  “Oh god,” he said. “Is that the Stricken?”

  I followed his gaze north. The sun had barely cleared the horizon but it cast enough light that we saw another wave of attackers rushing toward us. The vore shrews were a carnivorous nuisance, but they weren’t the real problem. They weren’t running at us. They were running away from whatever that was.

  “The Stricken is darker,” I said, “like a rolling wave of black energy with sunken faces and frenzied limbs.”

  “You’ve actually seen it?” Drew asked, his mouth agape. I nodded.

  The moving shapes in the distance got closer, and clearer. It was a stampede of skeletal creatures like elephants with massive, curved tusks. I peered at them for a moment.

  Level 26 Bone Mammoths.

  “We should have taken a cue from the rodents and started running,” Drew said.

  “No,” I said, watching the mammoths approach.

  “No?” Drew seemed incredulous.

  “You said it yourself, the rainforest is too dang
erous for us if we don’t level up first.” Those monsters were the same level as me. I had a good feeling about two of us challenging one together.

  “That doesn’t mean we should face off with those things,” he said as a bone mammoth dipped low, scraping the ground with its bare jaw as it scooped up a shrew in its mouth. It was far enough away that I couldn’t see blood gush from its small body like a water balloon as the massive creature ground it between its teeth, but I could still picture it.

  Back in the real world, mammoths were herbivores. That didn’t seem to mean much here in Ripcord though. Even Ripcord’s own creatures weren’t safe from each other.