Underpowered Howard: A LitRPG Adventure

by John L. Monk

  Other than that, I knew nothing else about it. Why it was in the game at all was anyone’s guess. Ward 4 heroes generally had nothing to do with anyone below level 1000, let alone…

  I looked up in surprise. The stone ceiling disappeared. Replacing it was Jane's face, now a thousand times larger. Judging from the rose quartz treasure chest visible over her shoulder, she was still at the Tourney.

  “Bernard says you can’t Give Up again for a year,” she said. “That’s fine. I can wait that long. I can wait forever, actually. Once you Give Up, your threat to the world will have been neutralized. Though of course he wouldn’t tell me why. When you finally do it, I suggest you choose a different class. That way I don’t have to trap you again. Goodbye, Underpowered Howard. It wasn’t nice meeting you.”

  I tried shouting at her, but she either didn’t hear or was ignoring me again. After a judgmental head shake, she vanished, and the ceiling reverted to the same unyielding stone as before.

  That bastard, Bernard… If I Gave Up, I’d lose the amulet forever. Heck, even if I got out—something the game’s own description said wasn’t possible—I still needed a way to get the Summon Lich spell. Without it, the amulet was just about useless to me.

  “Dammit,” I said helplessly. I looked up at the ceiling. “Hello? Jane? You still there? Hello?”

  Nothing happened. I shouted some more and eventually stopped.

  In my experience, there was a way around just about any obstacle if you thought long enough. For example, the Mirror had to be a burden for her to carry around. Given the behavior of most magic items, she’d need to keep it in her possession at all times or the spell would be released. And she couldn’t go to Heroes’ Landing or any town with Sanctuary. Doing so would immediately free me.

  I smiled evilly. She’d let slip that her god was Bernard, lord and master of Mythian’s special inns. A surprise that he could leave them. But would he go so far as to leave town? If not, Jane couldn’t commune with him. Which meant no new paladin quests or advancement for a whole year.

  In a sense, Jane was just as trapped as I was.

  “She’s gotta be bluffing,” I said and did my best to believe it.

  One stroke of luck: The imprisonment had left me with all my gear. Curious if it would work, I tried using my Skullcap of Clairvoyance.

  “Show me Jane, the Paladin,” I said while envisioning Jane. When nothing happened, I reread the item description:

  Wearers of this skullcap can see anywhere in Mythian they’ve already been. Viewed locations must be outside. Bedrooms, thus, are im-PERV-ious.

  “Fine,” I said, irritated. “Skullcap: Show me the Timeless Tourney.”

  This time, my vision shifted back to the arena. The chest was still there, unopened, but Jane was gone. Most such treasures disappeared after a set amount of time. Usually a few hours.

  I canceled the vision and began walking down one of the tunnels, lighting runes as I went. Such an odd interior for a cage… It seemed like a dungeon of sorts, though there didn’t appear to be any monsters. After around five hundred feet, I came to a T-intersection with corridors branching off at ninety-degree angles.

  I turned right, automatically following the right-turn maze rule. In another five hundred feet, I came to a four-way intersection. Again, I turned right. Soon, I arrived back at my original four-way intersection. I knew this because the runes I’d lit from before were on when I got there.

  This time, when I set out, I threw in some lefts so as not to double back, but didn’t discover anything. The tunnels kept going, and I kept following. Then, about ten minutes into my aimless trek, the labyrinth shook as if struck with a giant mallet.

  “Hello?” I said. “Jane?”

  No reply.

  I kept walking. After another ten minutes, I stopped when I heard what sounded like sniffing from somewhere in the distance.

  “Who’s there?” I said loudly.

  I’d thought maybe it was another prisoner. Who knew how many necromancers she’d trapped over the years? But at my words, the sniffing was replaced by a ferocious, booming roar.

  Chapter Nine

  Back in Heroes’ Landing, I could have purchased boots that let me run faster, but instead chose Cloudwalkers. Flying was better than running fast, right? In retrospect, I should have bought the speed boots and an amulet of flight, and kept my necro amulet in a bag. But that’s the problem with carefully laid plans: The slightest wind can knock them down.

  Despite being immortal, my fear as the thing caught up to me was real and distracting. Instead of running pell-mell in the opposite direction, I halted midway between pell and mell to look back, then gasped in surprise at the hulking minotaur I found. Clenched in its hand was a glowing red sword. The red from the blade merged with the yellow runes, casting its bovine head in a hellish orange light. With a bellow of rage so loud it made my ears buzz, the bull-man slashed—blowing through the tatters of my Necrotic Aura and killing me on the first hit.

  My Return spell was still active. Way up above me, the minotaur prodded my dead body with its sword. It leaned down and sniffed me from all angles, then bellowed in rage again. Despite being humanoid, there was little intelligence in its eyes. With a final roar, it left me there.

  A funny thing about the damage it caused: There was no overkill. Which meant it hit for precisely the amount needed to kill me outright. Which further meant that no matter how many health points I had, it would always kill me with one hit. The question was: How many health points did it have? Could be it died easily, offsetting its insane damage.

  Not wanting to tangle with it again, I waited five minutes before returning to life with 10 health points. Damned uncomfortable being so low. A nightmare if I hadn’t loaded with my pain resist gear.

  With nothing useful to do, I applied my 10 new stat points to vitality, bumping my base total to 421, or 871 with gear. I applied 10 class points to the necro class, naturally. As for the skill points, I continued to reserve those for the lich spell and future attunements.

  If I ever get it, I thought.

  The wall runes were still lit—elven runes, incidentally. I waved them dark and silent-cast Ghost Flame. This way, unless the minotaur was also a necromancer, it wouldn’t see the light from a distance. Now, if I could just keep from yelling Who’s there? I’d be set.

  I almost cast Return again but held off. Every time I returned from death like that, I’d come back to my old body, fully geared. But if the minotaur killed me the normal way, I could find my corpse and raise it. Then I could test how many health points it had. Also, I’d spawn with full health.

  Nothing about the featureless hallway hinted at which way the minotaur had gone.

  That way, then.

  I went that way, listening carefully and stepping softly. I came to a T-intersection and went left, then right when the corridor turned right. After another five hundred feet and another left at a four-way intersection of tunnels, I heard something.

  Footsteps.

  I waited a solid three minutes, just listening, but heard nothing more. On a hunch, I used my Skullcap of Clairvoyance again, this time to retrace my steps.

  Dammit.

  By leaving the runes turned off, I couldn’t see. And Ghost Flame was no help at all. What I needed was an Earring of Clairaudience. Then I could hear the…

  Sniffing?

  It sounded the same as last time, from beyond the light of my flame. As I stared in horror, the walls reddened and the minotaur emerged, sword in hand. It came slowly, still sniffing, not roaring and charging. Still too dark to see me.

  Quickly but quietly, using every ounce of my agility, I slipped back the way I’d come, then picked up speed. My footsteps seemed too loud. I ended up flying after all—legs folded, head tucked so as not to bash it on the ceiling.

  “Aaagh!” I screamed when I slammed hard into a wall at another three-way intersection. I’d overran my light and couldn’t stop quickly enough.

  Faint roaring bac
k the way I’d come…

  Not bothering with the boots, I ran as fast as I dared, passing branching tunnels and taking others purely at random. More roaring, closer this time, and I picked up speed. To no avail. The roaring grew louder, and that’s when I hit my first dead-end.

  Like a rat after a cheesy prize, I took off back the way I’d come and chose the first turn that broke new ground. But it was too late. The minotaur caught up and chopped me down from behind.

  Dead again.

  Three minutes later, I resurrected the normal way at a four-way intersection lit with light runes. The same intersection? Hard to say. The walls were of dull gray stone blocks, smooth and unmarked.

  Time to find out how many health points this thing had.

  “Hey, you stupid minotaur!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. “I’m over here! Wooh hoo hoo, ya ya ya! Come and get me!”

  I kept yelling. A few minutes later, the roaring started. A minute more and the enraged minotaur appeared and killed me again. When I returned to life, I was alone again at a different intersection. I could tell it was different because my gearless corpse was missing.

  “Dammit,” I said, not caring who heard.

  No blood on the ground, so I knew the minotaur hadn’t taken my body. Not unless it was also a clean freak that carried around soap and water.

  “Screw you too, Jane,” I said bitterly and waved off the lighting.

  Ten minutes later, despite not moving or making noise, I heard the sound of sniffing and the beast-man’s thudding footsteps. I didn’t bother running this time. It killed me again, and that was that.

  The minotaur was gone. Or rather, I’d rezzed where the minotaur wasn’t. No, I wasn’t bound to any particular intersection. I was simply spawning in different places. This ensured I’d always have time in which to reflect on how screwed I was.

  These thoughts flashed through my head as I waited at this latest spawn point and watched the game clock. I needed to know how long it took the minotaur to find me on its own. Ten minutes, it turned out. And always with the sniffing. It didn’t need light to find me…

  “Just its nose,” I said.

  With the first real hope I’d had since my arrival, I began running through the hallways yelling for the minotaur to come and get me. After every shout, I’d say, “Aradune is stinky.” With each utterance, the air grew foul, as if eggs and cadavers had been juiced and sprayed all over everything.

  Guided by my Ghost Flame, I ran a complex weave of turns, shouting the whole way. When I noticed I was still alive despite the noise, I stopped and listened. Far away, I heard the sounds of choking and gagging interspersed with bellowing roars—and they were growing fainter!

  At some point, maybe twenty minutes later, I came across the rotting corpse from my second death. Mythian’s garbage collection had little regard for the needs of necromancers and had kicked in immediately afterward. I considered raising it but held off for now. Plenty of time for that later.

  After donning my gear, I said, “Aradune is stinky,” then fled the area as fast as possible.

  That funny Easter Egg I’d discovered in Ward 3 wasn’t meant for combat. But here—stuck in a mirror with no realistic way of defending myself—it was a godsend.

  A sudden realization: Easter Eggs like this were meant only for fun. Any other use would be deemed abuse by Mythian’s lazy karma system.

  “Screw you too,” I said and kept moving.

  I made sure to take as many turns as I could and double back occasionally, trailing a toenail-curling blanket of stink behind me.

  Previous experimentation had shown my Aradune trick was impervious to wind. The effect lasted thirty minutes, or until I said the phrase, “Aradune is no longer stinky.”

  I kept running.

  The maze, I discovered, was rectangular, maybe a quarter mile on its longest side and half that on its shortest. The perimeter was a long corridor with entrances leading inward. Very easy to keep going in circles, but I worried the minotaur was waiting in ambush just inside one of the branching corridors. It could still listen, after all.

  To counter that, I made occasional forays inward spreading the smell and then backtracking.

  On one of these missions, I got lost and nearly ran head-on into the minotaur. With its sniffer out of commission, it seemed as surprised as me. I recovered first and barely evaded its blade, then sprinted away through a cluster of intersections as it hollered and gave chase.

  Upon reaching the outer wall, I paused and waited, collecting my thoughts.

  Now that I had an idea of how to survive, I needed to see if I could kill that thing. For that, I needed corpses and a place to collect them.

  Daring to feel slightly clever after so many screwups, I found what I thought of as the northwest corner, checked that Return was active, then began yelling.

  “Hey, ugly-face! C’mere!”

  “I got some hay for you!”

  “Come on, ya big stupid ox!”

  Well, that did it. The creature’s snuffling, stomping, and eventual roaring carried my way, and soon I was quickly killed.

  After rezzing, I started up again.

  “Your mother wears horseshoes!”

  “Heeeey, bully, bully, bully!”

  “Why do cows have bells? Because their horns don’t work!”

  That did it, too—in two shakes of a butter churn, the minotaur returned and killed me again. Quicker this time, for being so close. I went through this process twenty times over the next hour, stacking up corpses for the big showdown. When I had enough, I stuffed them all in my bag. I kept myself alive long enough to regenerate vitality again, and to maintain the coming ROD for around seven minutes with gear.

  Finally ready, I emptied out the corpses and began shouting for the minotaur.

  “Okay, you lumbering hatrack—come and face the moooo-zic!”

  Not long after, the minotaur showed up and charged.

  “Summon Wraith!”

  Twenty wraiths came to life and the ROD kicked in, leaking away 66 vitality points a minute.

  “Wraiths,” I said in triumph. “Attack!”

  At 510 points a hit, they’d amass 10,200 on the first attack, and a further 10,200 if I lived at least 20 seconds.

  But no, I didn’t live 20 seconds. The damned wraiths swiped through the creature as if it wasn’t there while the minotaur roared toward me. I turned to run, but it was faster.

  Three minutes later, sitting in Mythian’s cruelest trap wearing a noob tunic, my situation had never looked more dismal. Despite that, I barked a laugh. My idea had been an udder failure.

  Because if I didn’t laugh, I’d cry.

  Chapter Ten

  “So you expect the world to turn suddenly fair?” I said while making for the perimeter. “Ah, but if it were fair, would you actually be happier?”

  Probably not. Some of the most promising games I’d played were perfectly fair, perfectly balanced, and perfectly boring.

  But this mirror… What a nightmare. How the hell could Bernard do this to me? Now I’d have to spend a year chased by half a cow, and at the end of it I’d lose the amulet. If not for my Aradune trick, it would be a lot worse—not just chased, but butchered repeatedly.

  My guess was that Jane, hard-ass though she seemed, wouldn’t make me serve the full term. At some point I’d be given a choice: Drop the amulet on the floor and step away from it, or finish out the year and lose it anyway.

  Stuck between two bad choices, I might have taken her up on it … but I had a devilish idea.

  Before finding my corpse, I ran through the maze stinking up as much of it as I could. Afterward, I geared quickly and pulled out a coin.

  “In Mythian,” I said, “we make our own luck. Heads.”

  When it came up tails, I pulled another. This one came up heads.

  I did this a hundred times, stacking the heads to my right and the tails to my left. I’d pulled thirty-six heads and sixty-four tails. I knew if I did it again, I’d
get roughly the same split. Not good if I had any hope of getting out of here.

  “You’re gonna need to up your game,” I said.

  For the next two days, I ran the maze nonstop, stinking it up to confuse the minotaur. Boring as hell, but if it got the job done, I’d happily endure it.

  Three days later, I was playing a new game I’d invented called “smack the minotaur.” The way it worked was I’d turn on specific rune lights at various corners, just outside the sight of anything coming down a long hallway. The lights would wink out after about ten minutes, so I needed to move fast to build up enough ambush spots. Afterward, I’d yell something like “hey, stupid, come and get me!” Then I’d hide in the corner of a darkened tunnel. When the brute showed up and took the lit side, I’d smack it in the back of the head with a coin and run fleeing through the maze to a new spot. Then I’d do it again. Very hard not to laugh as it bellowed and raged and chopped at the walls in frustration. Sure, it caught up to me a few times, but without an element of danger, it would have been twice as boring.

  “This just isn’t working,” I said in disgust, slumping against one of the perimeter walls.

  Once again, I pulled out a coin—though not to smack any minotaurs with.

  The day before, I’d gotten down to twenty-seven heads and seventy-three tails. For my plan to work, I needed closer to five heads and ninety-five tails.

  It seemed like my karma had fallen quicker that first day. In retrospect, by killing myself for corpses, I’d bent the necro class over my knee and snapped it in half. This was worse than what I’d done in the Grumbling Hills. If it were allowed, necros could sit on a binding stone, kill themselves a thousand times, store their corpses, and then one-shot a dragon. For this and related reasons, purposely trying to die was a no-no, and a well-advertised one at that. So much so that Everlife had included the topic in their orientation back in the real world.

  “All right,” I said. “Time to start dying again.”