Honestly thinking like that was still a bit of a mindfuck for me too. Realizing that humans had done that with thinking creatures like Rezzik was enough to have me wondering if the same could be true of my world as well. What if I was nothing but an entertainment for someone else invading my inner thoughts or something?
I shivered and tried not to think about that. Instead I focused on this damn scroll that wasn’t working like it was supposed to. The thing pulsed a few more times, like it was trying to be absorbed, but nothing happened. Finally I sighed and turned to Rezzik.
“Okay, do we have a table or something that’d be big enough that we can spread this thing out on it and have a look at it?”
“I took the liberty of having the boys bring something up out of storage,” Rezzik said, a supremely satisfied smile on his face.
He snapped his fingers and some goblins who’d been hiding in the shadows at the other end of the vast forge room appeared carrying a rather large table. It was positively gigantic by goblin standards, though in my case it only came up to about my waist.
We spread the airship plans out over the table, and as I looked at the thing I realized that there was a good reason why I couldn’t just absorb the knowledge in the damned scroll.
These airships were complicated machines. I mean it made sense that they would be ridiculously complicated machines, but I was surprised that they would be this complicated in a video game sense.
They were made of reinforced wood to provide some armor, though it looked like there might be ways to add more heavy armor if I spent enough time and resources developing the things. They were held aloft by antigrav crystals that stuck out from the ships on pylons at six different locations along the side looking like a cross between a steampunk airship and the USS Enterprise’s warp nacelles.
Like I said: complicated. Way more complicated than I could hope to create with what little resources I had right now.
“Is there a problem?” Rezzik asked.
“This thing is going to take a lot more work than I thought,” I said. “There are engines I have to learn to build, Spellcrafting gems that I have to discover and infuse to create some of the stuff that allows them to hover, parts for navigation, weapons, so much.”
It was like Lotus had taken some of the best spaceflight simulators out there and grafted it onto their game, only instead of building spaceships I’d be building airships.
I sighed and slumped against the table.
“This is going to take a hell of a lot more work than I thought,” I finally said.
“On the bright side, we have plans for most of these individual parts,” Rezzik said. “You’re going to need a shitload of goblinsteel to even start to make some of these components though.”
I looked at something I hadn’t noticed before. Sure enough there was a list of materials needed. There were mundane materials that I’d learned were pretty easy to come by. Stuff like wood and iron, but sure enough down at the bottom there was a requirement for goblinsteel.
And when Rezzik said we were going to need a shitload of goblinsteel he hadn’t been lying. We were going to need a metric fuckton of goblinsteel to pull something like this off. On top of the goblinsteel I was going to need to start turning goblins into goblin soldiers.
I sighed. Then did the one thing that could calm me when I found myself staring at yet another mountain that I had to climb on my path to vengeance against Horizon. I pulled up a screen that showed me my current skill counter. It was something I’d muted from my normal notifications and relegated to this special window because it was happening so often. At least it’d been ticking up fast when we still had materials for the goblins to work with, though it’d slowed down since we ran out.
My Spellcrafting and regular crafting skills had been ticking up on the regular. Again I got the feeling that whoever had designed this system hadn’t anticipated a crafter suddenly having an entire city of goblins at their disposal to do their crafting for them, and I was about to unlock a perk that would let me have a hell of a lot more goblins start working on this stuff.
It was like the factional combat team and the crafting team hadn’t talked to one another to see how their systems could potentially interact in unexpected ways. Though given what I’d seen of Trelor, that was hardly a surprise.
I smiled. That was something. And honestly I was starting to think it was time to take a little break from crafting.
“Rezzik, how are we doing on weapons and soldiers?” I asked.
“We have enough for a small strike force right now,” Rezzik said. “We need more goblinsteel to make anything more than that. Especially if you start making those airships.”
I grinned an evil little grin. I needed a break. I needed to try out my new goblin army. I needed goblinsteel.
There was one location I could think of that would allow me to do all of those at once, and it happened to be pretty close by if you were using tunnels to travel under the game world.
“Keia, Kris, are y’all still bored out of your skulls?”
They’d been griping for days about having nothing to do. Though they’d been occupying their time sparring with goblins which gave them skill increases in combat and healing while I was busy delegating and playing evil overlord.
“You know it,” Kris said, twirling her hammer.
“What’s up?” Keia asked.
“I was thinking it was time to pay Horizon Dawn a visit,” I said.
Kris cocked an eyebrow. “What about all that stuff you were saying about how I wasn’t allowed to attack those assholes? That we need to lie low so they don’t think something is up?”
“Well that was with a patrol. This is going to be with a fully armed raid,” I said with a grin. “Big difference.”
“Plus we sort of need those resources now,” Keia said. “We can’t afford to not attack them if we need that goblinsteel to advance. Otherwise we’re just waiting here in our hole to die.”
“You’re so full of shit,” Kris said with a grin of her own. “But I’ll avoid highlighting your hypocrisy too much considering it sounds like I’m finally gonna get to smash some heads.”
“Good,” I said. “We need to start planning a raid on the Goblinsteel Mine for materials. In the meantime I’m going to keep studying these airship schematics and see what we can do with them once we have one.”
“Might be easier for you to just look at one in the hangar,” Rezzik said.
I stopped. Took a couple of deep breaths. Turned to look at Rezzik.
“Excuse me?”
70
To the Skies
I stared at the airships before me in awe. It was everything that I’d been dreaming of since coming into this game world, and yet it was so much more than that. They were beautiful.
For all that they were also sitting there unused, with a few bored goblins standing around the things looking like they didn’t have much of anything to do.
“Why are they just standing there?” I asked.
“Um, I don’t know?” Rezzik said.
I sighed. Of course it would be the same here as it was with everything else in the game. The goblins were sitting around this airship hangar not doing a damn thing because that’s what they were programmed to do until a player came along and had them getting their asses in gear and getting those ships in the air.
“Is there a reason you didn’t tell me about these things back when we were talking about airship plans?” I asked.
“Well you didn’t ask, so… I don’t know,” Rezzik said again.
I sighed again. I was really going to have to get used to the game, and my new minions, not giving me something I wanted until I came out and expressly asked for that something.
“Okay,” I said, figuring it was time to play by the game’s rules. “I understand why you couldn’t tell me about this, but it would be nice if you could point me to whoever is in charge of this room.”
“Sure thing, boss,” Rezzik said, starting
across the room to the first of the airships.
As I got a good look at these things I realized that they were different from the ones that were out in the city providing transportation for all the players wanting to get to and from Nilbog without walking.
No, they were bigger, sleeker, and there were ports along the side that I presumed were for weapons of some sort. Though I didn’t see any weapons sticking out of the things right now.
I figured we could figure out what was going on there in a minute, though. Right now I needed to have a conversation with the goblin who was running this thing.
Rezzik stopped in front of a goblin leaning back from a desk holding up a scroll of some sort. He wore a cap and uniform that was vaguely reminiscent of uniforms from the First World War back at the beginning of the twentieth century, complete with a flyer’s cap that was pushed back so he could read what was on the scroll.
Rezzik stood there for a moment looking more and more annoyed as the goblin continued to ignore us. Finally he cleared his throat.
The only reaction was that the goblin pulled the scroll down and peered over it at us, but if he was surprised that there were humans standing before him he didn’t show it. No, this goblin struck me as a cool customer.
“Can I help you with something?” he asked.
My fingers twitched, and I barely resisted the urge to pull out the lightning dagger I’d created a couple of days ago and used on the Chief when he was giving me a bit of the guff. I figured it wouldn’t be a good idea to have all my interactions with annoying goblins ending with them getting a bit of the old Palpatine treatment.
For all that there was very much a part of me that would’ve enjoyed seeing him reacting to getting a bit of the old Palpatine treatment. This was a smug goblin who looked like he could do with a bit of roasting at the hands of a Spellcrafted dagger.
I needed to be direct, though. Nothing vague with these goblins.
“What’s it going to take to get these in the air?” I asked.
The goblin looked up at the airship and then back to me. He shook his head, then turned and spit on the ground.
“They’re airworthy right now,” he said. “I just took one out on a patrol last…”
The goblin paused. He seemed to be thinking about exactly when he’d last taken these airships out for a spin.
“I’m willing to bet you thought you’d taken one of these out recently, but now that you’re really thinking about it you’re having trouble remembering a time in the last month when you actually did something like that?” I asked, my voice quiet.
It had been the same situation all through the Underground. Goblins who had memories of going about their lives business as usual, or getting ready to fight Horizon Dawn people, but the only thing they could remember actually doing in the past month since the game went live was being in a holding pattern or occasionally begging loved ones who suddenly got the calling to go to the ring mines to stay home.
It was a fucked up situation to put thinking creatures in. The more time I spent around these goblins, really spent around them and got to know them, the less I was thinking of them as simply creatures in a game.
And the thought of them being able to recognize that there was something calling them to their ultimate death even as they knew there was nothing they could do to resist that call had my stomach churning.
Lotus had a lot to answer for, but right now I’d have to settle for taking out some of my frustrations on Horizon.
“As a matter of fact, I think I am having some trouble remembering the last time I took one of these bad girls out for a spin,” the goblin said, reaching out and patting the wood hull that looked like something straight out of a sailing ship of old.
“Right,” I said. “I’m here on the authority of your king.”
The goblin looked me up and down again. Then he looked to Rezzik standing beside me. His eyes narrowed, and it seemed like he was having some trouble coming to terms with the fact that there was a human coming in here and giving him orders.
“I’ll have to clear something like this with the Chief,” he finally said. “This is all highly irregular, and…”
“The Chief is dead,” Rezzik said.
“And I’m the new authority in town,” I said.
I waited to see what would happen. This is the first goblin I’d run into who hadn’t spoken with one of the goblins who’d been in the forge room when I sent the Chief to his spectacular end.
Would the authority simply be taken as a given? Or was it a situation where I was going to have to go proving myself to every goblin who decided they didn’t want to bow and scrape to a human?
If it was the latter then this whole raising a goblin army thing was going to get really exhausting really fast. Like we’re talking I didn’t want to have to make an example of every leader of every small faction within my larger faction, but I’d do that if that’s what it took to get the goblins back into fighting shape.
“Huh,” the goblin said. “Now that you mention it, I suppose that’s true.”
I let out a sigh of relief. I hadn’t brought Keia or Kris along for this little jaunt because I’d figured it was more important to make sure they were in fighting shape for what was to come. Even though they’d both complained about how they wanted to see the airships.
The practical upshot being I didn’t have anyone around who could help me out if things went pear shaped up here in the hangar. I hadn’t thought it would be an issue considering I was the power around here these days, but I’d also been worried for a moment there.
“Fine,” the goblin said, standing and making the same symbol that Rezzik had made a few times. “I’m Korsob, by the way. Commodore of His Majesty’s Airships. What is it you need, sir?”
“I need to know what it’s going to take to get these airships combat ready,” I said.
There were three of the things in here, and they filled almost the entire hangar. Which was impressive considering how massive the thing was. The whole thing looked like it was a natural cavern that’d been carved even more to allow for airships to take off and land.
Though I wasn’t sure exactly how they were supposed to get out of here. There was a sheer rock wall all around us with tunnels that presumably led out to different parts of the Underground, but none of them looked like they would be able to accommodate one of those massive airships.
They had big asses, is what I was getting at.
“How would you even be able to get these things out of here?” I asked, staring at the airships and then at the massive hangar all around us.
“Oh well that’s easy enough,” Korsob said. “At least it’s easy once you’ve practiced it enough. That’s actually a wall that conceals a shaft that goes up over there on the other side of the hangar. Come and have a look.”
I followed, because I was really curious about where this was going. It took a little doing to get across the room, but soon enough we were on the other side and I found myself staring up at a massive shaft that went up through the mountain. There was also daylight streaming through up there.
“We carefully maneuver the airships up this shaft first,” Korsob said. “Then from there we move through a horizontal shaft that is set up so that you can’t easily see it from above. You’d have to really be looking for it from the ground to see the thing if you didn’t already know where it was, and it comes out on a jagged mountain plateau that you can only get to if you have an airship of your own.”
“Damn,” I breathed, looking up at the daylight streaming in from above. “This place is all set up for aerial warfare. I don’t have to find a single bit of goblinsteel!”
“Well, not quite, sir,” Korsob said, suddenly looking like he’d thought of something that he didn’t quite care for.
“Not quite?” I asked, suddenly worried by his tone of voice.
“Well the thing is, sir, now that I think about it we’ve been having a touch of maintenance trouble with the girls. We’re mi
ssing some key parts we need to fabricate from goblinsteel, and we haven’t had enough coming in lately.”
He shook his head and then put a hand to his forehead. As though he was having a dizzy spell or something.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I think I’m okay,” he said. “It’s just that I’d think I’d remember something important like the ships not being airworthy like that, you know?”
“I think I know exactly what it is you’re suffering from,” I said, my mouth compressing to a thin line as I looked at the goblin.
“We’d also need to spend a little bit of time loading the ships with the ammunition we need,” he said. “But if we had that and some goblinsteel then it wouldn’t be long at all before we could have the beauties ready to go again. Assuming we could find someone who could get us all those materials we needed.”
“Right,” I said, looking back at the airships and trying to think about how we could do that.
The more I thought about it, the more it was becoming abundantly clear that the solution to all the problems I was having down here was a raid on the Goblinsteel Mines. We needed supplies, and there was plenty of goblinsteel lurking in the ring mines that ran around the main raid dungeon.
With a little luck we might be able to get in with a strike team and get some of the goblinsteel before they could even mount much of a response against us. It would be taking a gamble, but at this point taking a gamble was about the only thing I could actually do.
It wasn’t like I was going to be able to get goblinsteel from any other source. Unless I went back to Nilbog and raided my remaining supplies I had in the vault back there, but even then and even with the encumbrance spell infusions I’d put on all our armor it’s not like we’d be able to carry all that much out here. Probably not enough to be able to pull off what the good Commodore here said he needed.
Spellcraft Page 55
