Underworld - Level Up or Die: A LitRPG Series

by Apollos Thorne

  I just shook my head at the thought. Justice? Maybe if it was the name of a new kind of sauce. She would have likely dipped him in it.

  With regards to the handful of rares that I now had in my possession, it was likely I would be able to sell them for more than what we loaded into the armory. I had held onto them until after getting some sleep.

  Even though my nap had lasted only four hours, I felt like I had slept for a week. Even with the ability to restore fatigue, comfort and relaxation was a reward in itself. There is nothing like doing nothing.

  ***

  Entering the dining hall, I walked into a conversation my group was having with the others that hadn’t been there when we fled the base.

  “Thank you, guys, again for sharing the loot,” said Skyler gratefully. “Seriously, I never would have taken any loot if I would have known you guys had killed them.”

  “No problem,” Aeris insisted kindly.

  Skyler was no worse for wear than before he had been taken by the Mistress. He had swallowed the story of her doing it to punish him literally, since he was unable to recall anything himself. It seemed everyone was willing to believe it was justice and not her appetite that had been behind her actions.

  All five members of his group passed along their thanks as they headed for the door. Each one nodded to me in turn. Sure they were thankful, but if they knew what had really happened…

  No. I would tell them the truth when the time was right, but let them enjoy our newfound wealth and use it to grow. Long term it would make better use of our time. I hoped.

  “Dude! Where are your clothes?” Travis mocked, finally turning his attention to me.

  Everyone was still in their armor so they felt compelled to join him in laughter. They had a game of cards going as they snacked on fries. Yes, real french fries!

  “These are athletic shorts, not underwear,” I explained.

  “Those aren’t shorts. They’re too-shorts,” Olivia rebuked.

  They were right if I was going to be honest. It was harder to get well fitting clothes when you were buff, especially when you had no experience dressing yourself while being so large. It was one of the few downsides to leveling up; a good problem to have I guess.

  I just shrugged as my four closest friends in the underworld clowned on my farmer’s tan. My thighs were pretty pasty white.

  “We should take a trip to the beach,” I recommended.

  They laughed, but immediately all of our minds went to the same place. We would probably never see a beach again.

  I had to get stronger.

  After grabbing steak and pasta—and yes, it was drenched in ranch dressing!—I sat next to Aeris and Travis. The bench on the other side of the table was made up mostly of Russ, with a little bit of Olivia on the end. Russ was the size of a muscular brown bear. He even dwarfed Skyler now.

  “It’s great to see you with some more meat on your bones, bonehead,” Olivia prodded.

  To keep the good humor going I cast just the helm of my skeletal armor. “Who you calling a bonehead?”

  Olivia almost fell off of the bench holding her stomach.

  “Aeris! Put your boy in his place!” she screamed through her laughing fit.

  “My boy?” Aeris replied, bright red as she looked to me for help.

  I just grinned and played it off. “Mistress Aeris. Is that your bidding?”

  “Well…” she teased back, recovering from the unexpected implication. “There is something. The merchants have new items on display…” Kittens and puppies don’t have anything on Aeris’s adorably elfish, large-eyed begging. We went shopping.

  ***

  When we arrived to shop, the merchants had quickly restocked their shelves after we had come across so much more wealth from looting the armor. It seemed they had been waiting for us to get to this point. The items they had laid out for us to view had gone from 50k to 200k or more. Before, I had considered something with 50+ to a single attribute as a decent item. I had been way off. The tables were littered with as many items as they could possibly place on the tables and the walls were hung with items as well.

  Browsing made it obvious the majority of the items had +250 to +500 to a single attribute or as much as +200 to every stat. Not just that, but even though the number of stats had gone up quite a bit, the price didn’t seem to scale with it. The number of stats was nearly 10 times more than before, but the items cost only about 5 times more. That could only mean one thing. These items that were becoming available to us were actually common in the Underworld. That meant that we hadn’t even gotten to the good stuff yet. I assumed the reason the items we had been dealing with cost as much as they did was because of the markup. Basically, the merchants had to make enough money for it to be worth it for them to have a stall here. Now that we were leveling up, that meant they expected us to start making some real money and the items they would be selling to us would make a nice enough profit that they didn’t have to compensate.

  Aeris grabbed my arm, not even realizing how tight she squeezed me. She was like a floundering fish that had seen the water for the first time.

  It occurred to me it was about time we had that talk she had mentioned to me. Should I tell her about what had really happened with the Mistress? I decided I trusted her enough, but would it just be a burden for her?

  I started second-guessing selling my rarer drops. But when I saw the bookshelf up against the wall at the halfling’s stall I started salivating. Over 200 books stared me in the face. I had a feeling there were bound to be more expensive ones than had been available before. Asking him to hide the bookshelf until he saw me later probably wouldn’t go over well. Scanning the titles, I looked to see if there was anything I simply had to have no matter the cost.

  Everything was there from elemental compasses, magic theory, history, maps, alchemy, blacksmithing, scavenging for food, a set of encyclopedias, and even a book on dating all the different races in the Underworld. I hoped they stuck to just humanoids at least. Most of them seemed worth it, but I didn’t see any must-buys yet. I was convinced I did want to find out how difficult it was to learn a different school of magic. Not that I could probably ever compete with someone talented in a different element, but being well rounded for any situation seemed like a no-brainer.

  After selling her drops Aeris began removing her leather armor.

  How was a man supposed to stand there while an extremely attractive girl in cosplay took her armor off to try on new clothes?

  “Help,” Aeris grunted as she tried to pull off her leather vest.

  With my new strength, the job was easy enough. I grabbed the shoulder pads on either side and lifted. It nearly popped off of her. It was a tight fit around the shoulders. She had a thick cotton shirt without any sleeves. The thicker shirt bunched up as I pulled, showing a small portion of her tummy. Whether she had earned her six pack here or before she came, it caught me off guard. I didn’t normally associate abs with casters. She was fairly petite in build, but also lengthy and her muscle definition was firm and taut. She did have a talent in Dexterity.

  Looking away, I did my best to hide that I had seen. In truth, I was afraid if I kept looking I would start staring, get caught, and then become known as the Underworld Peeping Tom. That’s just not a good title to have hanging over your head.

  “Thanks,” she said, completely oblivious to my predicament because she had her eyes on something shiny. Who can blame her?

  Taking the vest off my hands, she placed it in her inventory and went on to try on the new armor she was considering. When she motioned for the dwarf to let her try the Constitution focused plate mail I almost fell over.

  The strangest thing from my observation of the armor's stats was that even plate mail didn’t seem to limit a spell caster’s ability to cast spells. At least not directly. There were a few practical things that would likely affect it. If you used buffs like I did, the armor would have to be fitted to me in a buffed state, because steel didn’t
stretch. Also, how would an element aligned armor react to elemental spells you were casting? Or what if you tried to wear a dark aligned armor when you had a light magic buff. Would it be like wearing magic acid and cause damage at the touch?

  Plate mail also took a good bit of time to put on properly. When the full helm with a face guard finally slid down over her face I was looking at the best outfit in the history of cosplay. The steel was polished and shaped with a lady’s figure in mind. The utilitarian design of it gave it an edge that most cosplay missed because they are mostly concerned with looking amazing. This just looked real.

  “So?” she asked, slightly muffled from behind the helm.

  “You look hot.”

  Her sudden giggle was as bad as a gaggle of girls surrounding and laughing at me in my bathing suit.

  “Um…” I scrambled to find words. I lit up like a red Christmas bulb of embarrassment.

  It was a rare moment when she didn’t have any wisecrack. Even though I couldn’t see her through the helm I was sure she was looking down and away.

  I could just barely see her eyes through the visor as she looked up, recovering faster than me, and responded, “So you just want me because I’m warm-blooded?”

  “No, of course not!”

  “Oh. You just think I’m hot?”

  “No! I mean yes! Or—what I meant to say was, is it hot in the armor?”

  “Oh, so I’m not hot. Well.” She sat her armored chin on her fist as she thought. “It breathes better than the leather armor. It moves well too.”

  She totally had me backpedaling. I could always beg for forgiveness, or… “Yes, you are hot. Cute. Attractive. And look amazing… with the armor on.”

  Getting hit on the arm with steel gauntlets hurts.

  “It does look nice, doesn’t it?” Her attention was now squarely on testing the armor and not our friendly back and forth. It seemed the joints allowed for almost nimble movements. The only burden was the higher weight, which was partially held up by the frame of the armor itself.

  It wasn’t the last armor she tried on. She ended up choosing a mix of a few different plate mail pieces. The attribute bonuses were +450 to Con, +100 to Str and +225 to Int. To get the Int she took dark red gloves in place of gauntlets. That wasn’t all. Magic resistance was increased by a huge 15% except for water and electrical magic.

  Armor rating was far more complicated. Gone was the simple armor rating that I was used to in the games from my past. Instead, there was a breakdown of the material: Steel (Fine Quality). I guess I would have to test the material to get a better idea of how useful it would be.

  As for plate armor causing spell failure as in most games to balance things out, here that just wasn’t the case. It was only the gauntlets that had the ability to cause any kind of real problem, unless she cast something out of her mouth, like my Flame Thrower. Since things didn’t seem balanced like a game, it was a good choice. Steel versus leather, steel wins every time.

  In the end, our Wind Mage was decked out in full plate mail with a black cloak with a violet lining, a small steel buckler and new silver wand that looked similar to a dagger, except it had small carved wooden figures up and down each side of the blade-shaped shaft. 700,000 coins later she was newly equipped and had less than 80k left to her name.

  Part of me was torn. When the time came to shop myself, should I focus on armor, weapons, and items, or books? Maybe a mix of the two? After seeing how much her rarer drops sold for I was pretty sure I’d end up with 500,000 or more. Why were there so many choices?!

  Leaving the merchants, I made a point of telling them I would be back later that night.

  Aeris stopped me in the hall. This time her helm was off and in her inventory, but she still wore the rest of her new armor.

  “You said earlier that the vampire gave you a spell that allowed you to drain a target’s blood to gain stats?”

  The way she said it had me worried. I had a feeling I was about to get a stern warning about my safety. It didn’t stop me from explaining it to her. More than that I set up my argument as to why it was worth using.

  To my surprise, she wasn’t concerned for me at all. “Do you think I could learn it?”

  “Well.” I thought a moment. “If you learn blue magic, I think it’s possible I could teach it to you. I was going to purchase a number of books anyway. I’ll look for something for you.”

  Her face lit up. “Oh, this?” she said, fishing such a book out of her inventory: a Blue Magic Compass.

  “When did you…”

  “You were so infatuated with how hot I am that you were watching me and not what I was buying.”

  Why exactly had I been worried about telling her about what really happened with the Mistress? It was clear she was going to try and take care of business with or without me, so I might as well tell her.

  When I was sure that no one was there with us, I took her by the hand and walked her down the hall into the armory. As I had hoped, it was empty.

  “There’s something I need to tell you,” I said, turning to face her.

  She looked up at me with expectant eyes but held her arms across her chest like she wasn’t sure about what she thought I was going to do.

  “I…” I swallowed to wet my throat, unintentionally finding myself in a romantic situation.

  “Aeris. I need someone to know what really happened with Skyler. It's time we had that talk.”

  She mouthed, “Oh,” slowly dropping her gaze as she processed what I had just said. Her shoulders relaxed and her arms fell to her sides. When she looked back up at me I knew the moment had passed.

  “What is it?” she said.

  “Skyler wasn’t released because the Mistress had punished him for his crime. It had nothing to do with right or wrong. She was going to eat him, or whatever she does, and only she let him go because I talked her out of it.”

  Her head was nodding up and down before I even finished. “I knew it! We can’t stay here, can we?”

  “No, but we can’t just leave, either. Not yet. We just aren’t strong enough. But if we can buy enough time... It’s time we start planning.”

  Chapter 23 – Planning for the Long Term

  “10,000 coins to identify the sword?!” It must have sounded harsher coming out than it was meant to. 10k was a lot of money to just take a chance with. I hadn’t even mentioned the vampire’s ring yet.

  “If a normal identity scroll doesn’t work, then it is more than just a magic item. I can assure you,” the goth dwarf encouraged. “Besides just normal magic items, there are much more powerful items that exist. In order of rarity, items are categorized as Normal, Magic, Rare, Unique, Artifact and Legendary. Normally the rarer it is the more powerful. There are exceptions in regard to quality which can blur the lines, but it is a good practical way to look at them.”

  Taking a step back, I considered it for a moment. Glancing to the closest merchant, I saw both the dark elf and the halfling watching me closely with no objection to what the dwarf was saying. It was just the four of us so I had their undivided attention. The dark elf was even nodding at what was said.

  There was another question that had to be asked. “Can I learn to identify such items?”

  He sighed heavily. “With enough time and hard work. All craftsmen and tradesmen gain the ability to identify certain items. As an example, blacksmiths can identify armor and weapons, and leatherworkers can identify leather armor, and leather items. Merchants, because of the amount of time we spend with all forms of items, unless we are in a niche market, slowly gain the ability to identify anything. Of course, it all depends on the rank and level of your Identify skill as well.”

  “I see.” Well, there was no fast way for me to get around the 10k cost.

  Since the item seemed to garner so much attention, I considered my chances pretty good that it would be worth the cost.

  “Very well.” I exhaled.

  The dwarf took the four foot long sword as delicately
as you would handle priceless jewels. He sat it down on a sturdy wooden stand just behind the table he used to display his goods.

  Suddenly, his eyes lit up with an azure glow as he scanned the sword from top to bottom at length. It was five minutes before he took his eyes off the blade.

  “I think you will be very pleased with what I found. It’s not just rare, but a unique item.”

  Taking the blade back after handing him the coin, I was able to observe its characteristics at will now.

  General Cunningham’s Bastard Sword

  Earth Alignment

  Mana channeled through the blade will intensify its damage by one for every two mana used.

  Skill granted: Build Momentum (Advanced)

  Build Momentum (Advanced)

  Grants the blow additional weight the longer the blade is swung in a consistent motion.

  Maximum weight added, 200 lbs.

  The wielder only bears 10% of the weight that is magically placed behind the blow.

  Description: Bastard sword wielded by a leader of thousands through twenty-four victorious battles. Has been used to slay over five hundred men before its master was run through with a spear and then hacked to death by a dozen men. The blood of its enemies and master has given the blade unnatural power.

  Staring at the blade’s abilities for a long time, I found all three merchants were having a bidding war on the blade when I recovered from the shock. Was it really wise to sell such an item? If I could master using it my blows could impact my target with over two hundred pounds behind the blow at the cost of only adding twenty pounds to the weight of the weapon. With this single weapon, I could mow through an army of mobs and literally cleave and launch the enemies around like a blowtorch through butter. That didn’t even account for the ability to add mana to the blade. It was overpowered! If this was just a Unique item than what would an Artifact or Legendary item be like?

  Since there were no class, level or strength restrictions, I would have to try to wield it before I would know if it was too much for me.