Underpowered Howard: A LitRPG Adventure

by John L. Monk

  “Sure,” I said. “Let’s go look.”

  We were soaring two hundred feet above the jagged Tormegazonian landscape. Before leaving, Felix confided that though the fleckulents were here, he didn’t know where, specifically, or even what they looked like. I sort of wanted to land and look around, but the area below us was crawling with giant crabs. They raised their claws like chubby catcher’s mitts when they saw us.

  If Elfie was here, she could wipe them out easily. I still wasn’t sure what area-of-effect attacks delectomancers could do, if any.

  We flew slowly so I could learn how much digestion was needed to stay aloft. It turned out not much—3 XP a second, or 10,800 an hour. Considering I was more than 450 thousand XP deep into my level, I wasn’t concerned about that, at least not yet. My chief worry was running out of muffin to digest. If I began to falter, I’d eat one of the three others Felix had given me before leaving.

  “You sure she won’t be upset?” I said at one point.

  “Who, Elfie?” He dismissed it with a wave. “Trust me, if she wanted to be here, she’d be here and I’d be on the ship. With her AOEs, she knows she’s better off there. The best I can do is run around killing things one at a time. We’d lose crew, and the slimy crawlies would have more time to eat the ship.”

  Which answered my question about delectomancer AOEs.

  “When do you want to go down?” I said.

  “Not sure yet. You?”

  “I’ve never hunted fleckulents before.”

  “Me either. But you’re easily as experienced as me.”

  He was right, but for some reason, I didn’t feel that way around him or his beautiful wife. They knew way more about the seafaring world than I did, for example, and I’d found myself deferring to them more and more.

  “If you were a fleckulent,” I said thoughtfully, “where would you hide?”

  Felix laughed. “No fleckin’ idea!”

  “It’s an expensive ingredient, though, right?”

  “It is literally the most expensive ingredient in all of Mythian—if you can find it—and I’ve only heard of them going on sale twice in all my time here. Both times at exclusive auctions. I’ve never actually seen one before.”

  I nodded. “All that and we’re only in Ward 2.”

  “The turtle paths between here and Ward 4,” he reminded me.

  “Which means Mythian’s giving us plenty of time to figure it out.”

  Felix drew to a stop.

  “I see what you mean,” he said. “The fleckulents aren’t waiting to be picked up. They’ll be difficult to find. Perhaps too difficult. We should make good use of our time.”

  I nodded. “Works for me.”

  We kept flying, looking for something we had no description for. Five minutes later, Felix stopped again.

  “If it’s not resting on top of the ground,” he said, “maybe it’s under the ground.”

  He pointed at something below us. I followed his finger and whistled in surprise. Extending out of a rocky ridge was an enormous white worm with countless hooked feelers around its eyeless head. The creature had seized a giant crab in its toothy maw, which was perfectly round and bristling with tentacles. The poor crab scrabbled and twitched spastically, and a high-pitched squealing could be heard even this far away. When the crab finally stopped moving, the worm retracted back into the hole with its quarry and pulled a capstone into place behind it, hiding its lair perfectly with the landscape.

  We landed a hundred feet out from the now-sealed hole. The ground underfoot was craggy and pitted with little pools of water captured after the turtle had surfaced.

  Up close, the capstone was slightly lighter in color than the coral around it. Seen at an angle, though, it was faintly shiny, as if covered in a hardened lacquer.

  Felix poked me in the side. “What’s the plan?”

  I smiled. “You go up, knock, and ask if it has any flecku-whatsits for sale.”

  Felix snorted. “What if we try my plan?”

  “Depends. What is it?”

  “You jump around out here like one of those crabs. It’ll feel the vibrations, then come out and try to eat you.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then we see.”

  I shook my head. “That’s it? We see? That’s a bad plan.”

  “What’s wrong with it?” he said.

  “It’s just that I noticed your plan has me jumping around out here as bait. I’m only level 85. Wouldn’t it make more sense for you to do that part, and I do the seeing part?”

  Felix snorted. “I’m a dwarf. Barely effective for vibration purposes. You’re about the size of those crabs it feeds on. It’ll seem more realistic if you do it. Also, don’t forget that spell Elfie cast on you. And that ring I loaned you. If you get eaten, you’ll have to pay it back. With interest.”

  A faint smile, which meant he was joking. But it was a good ring. It offered a 20,000-health-point trigger heal similar to the cupcakes he’d given the sailors. Trigger heals were great because they’d cancel a deathblow, healing you instantly.

  Though Elfie was using her one good external shield to protect the ship, the spell she’d cast on me was still a whopper. It upped all my resistances by 1000. Strong enough for anything in Ward 2, and most of Ward 3.

  Felix said. “Just remember: You’re a crab. When you get out there, be sure to act the part.”

  He pantomimed dual pinchers with his hands, grinned like a maniac, then soared to the ridge above the capstone. After landing, he reached into his Portable Hoard and pulled out something that dazzled brilliant gold in the sunlight.

  “Here goes nothing,” I said.

  I reached for the lump of bran muffin in my stomach and upped my digestion. Immediately, my vitality jumped from 100 to 1000, and my health to 10,000. My strength, agility, intelligence, and even comeliness jumped to 1000 too—all at a cost of 50 XP a second, or 180 thousand an hour. I added a little more, shooting each stat to 1500, bringing my health to 15,000 and my burn-rate to 75. Then I leaped through the air and landed hard in front of the worm’s lair.

  Felix had me thinking I’d need to jump around to get its attention. But no sooner had I landed when the capstone flew up and the worm exploded out like a snake-in-a-can gag. It seized me with its tentacled head and lifted me into the air. Then it proceeded to stuff me into its circular, razor-toothed maw.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The worm had about twenty multi-jointed tentacles around its mouth, each roughly twice as long as a human arm, and each tipped with a razor-sharp hook. In a way, they were like the claws of a cat. Pull away and be ripped to shreds. This left the maw as the only direction I could go without taking damage.

  Thank goodness for my new ring. It pushed the hooks from my flesh and healed me instantly. This is where Elfie’s spell came in. With its +1000 resistances—chief among them pain resistance—I barely felt any discomfort.

  By my calculations, I could hold on for maybe four minutes before the ring ran empty. Plenty of time for Felix to do something. Or so I thought…

  “Felix!” I shouted when the worm swung close to the ridge. “Do something!”

  He had a glass pitcher of orange liquid in one hand, and something golden and glowing in the other.

  “It’s too heavily armored!” he yelled. “See if you can…”

  I missed the last part when the worm whipped me the other way.

  To keep from being eaten, I braced both legs against the top layer of teeth, which looked like a million tiny needles all packed close together. I grabbed two of the hooked tentacles and used them to fend off the remaining eighteen as best I could. By one measure, it seemed to work a little. When I struck a tentacle with a hook, it reared back and let go. But when I attacked yet another hook, the previous one rejoined the others in grasping me.

  For lack of a good idea, I kept attacking. The appendages twitched and jerked, making proper aim difficult. At one point, my foot slipped in the translucent ichor coating i
ts teeth and my entire leg went into its mouth. The hole closed, chomping my leg. Mild pain, but my logs showed I’d lost 10,000 points from my ring—or, looked at differently, roughly two minutes of fending-off time.

  When the mouth opened to gobble down the rest of me, I snatched my leg back, braced it in a better spot, then used one of the tentacles to attack another.

  Once again, the worm arched backward over the ridge.

  “Keep doing that!” Felix shouted.

  “I’m not doing anything!”

  “You caused it to twist back at an angle! I think I see something!”

  Other than getting chewed, all I’d done was make the tentacles bleed a little. And with that thought, out of nowhere, a loud voice sounded in my head: DO NOT LISTEN TO HIM!

  I must have shouted in pain or terror, because Felix yelled, “What?”

  Once again, the worm jerked me away from the ridge. Then the voice sounded in my head again:

  SUBMIT!

  YOU ARE NOTHING!

  YOU HAVE FAILED!

  RELEASE THE MORSEL AND FALL!

  The words reverberated in my head like shouts in a cave and my foot slipped again. Somehow, I managed to catch myself, even as the tentacles continued to tug. They seemed stronger than before, and I had a hard time recovering my balance. I shook my head to clear the voice and checked my logs:

  ATTACK FAILED [MIND CONTROL]: Invasive Core Trapper

  ATTACK FAILED [MIND CONTROL]: Invasive Core Trapper

  ATTACK SUCCEEDED [MIND CONTROL]: Invasive Core Trapper (Overkill: 75)

  I checked my character sheet and gasped. Where previously, each of my primary stats had been 1000, now they were sitting at 750. I’d followed the creature’s instructions to “release the morsel” and had slowed my digestion. This dropped my Mind Control resistance from 1501 to 1375.5. Luckily, most of it came from Elfie’s spell, but I needed to get that score up.

  RELEASE YOUR HOLD!

  FALL INTO DARKNESS ETERNAL!

  FALL!

  The game’s randomizer graced me with another successful roll, and I resisted yet again. Rather than risk another assault, I upped my digestion rate, bringing my Mind Control resistance to a staggering 1751. It also popped my health to 20,000. Just in time, too, because that’s when my trigger-heal ring gasped its last breath.

  Eighteen hooks dug into me and weren’t pushed out.

  “Do ana hiig!” Felix shouted from far away. It took me a moment to realize he’d yelled, Do what you did!

  Trying not to scream, I looked at the sticklike appendages holding me and saw tiny holes that bled green ichor. Damage, sure, but negligible according to my game log.

  IGNORE THE DWARF!

  RELEASE THE MORSEL!

  FALL!

  Another successful resist.

  Growling, I grabbed a hook and jabbed it into a nearby arm.

  “Shut the hell up!” I shouted.

  I’d lost close to 1300 health points in the last ten seconds. The creature kept trying to swallow me as I held it off. If I slipped again, that was it.

  One thing about the stab wounds: They were mostly along the flat parts of the twiggy appendages—the easy-to-hit parts. But one of them landed where two sections met in a fist-sized ball of fibrous flesh. On a hunch, I took careful aim and stabbed—and missed when the arm I was holding pulled this way just as I was stabbing that way. I tried again and missed again. One more try and I scored a direct hit.

  A familiar spasm shook through the worm, and it swayed sideways through the air.

  Down on the ridge over the capstone, Felix was yelling excitedly, though I couldn’t make out the words. Encouraging, though. I kept hacking at the joint and missed a few times. Even with my heightened agility, the eighteen hooks grabbing and pulling me made it just about impossible to aim. Eventually, though, I scored another hit and severed the thing entirely. And that’s when I learned the tentacles weren’t part of the worm at all, but rather a parasitic appendage:

  ENEMY DEFEATED: Synaptophagian Sporidite, 8,725 EXPERIENCE POINTS (SHARED)

  The colossal worm shivered and twisted wildly in the air. It flopped on the ground, battering me for 400 points here, 375 there while the appendages sapped 80 health a second.

  A sudden game message appeared:

  YOU HAVE LOST A LEVEL!

  “What are you waiting for!” I screamed when the worm carried me back again.

  Down below, I saw that strange flash of sparkly gold. Felix leaped into the air and the light exploded, firing a beam of gold clean through the worm about five feet below its head, severing it from the body and killing it instantly.

  Falling through the air for a final bounce off Tormegazon’s shell, I witnessed a series of messages:

  ENEMY DEFEATED: Invasive Core Trapper, 198,235 EXPERIENCE POINTS (SHARED)

  YOU HAVE ADVANCED TO LEVEL 85!

  +5 Stat Points

  +1 Class Point

  +1 Skill Point

  After the fight, I dropped my digestion to a trickle and joined Felix next to the worm’s severed head. Beside it was a platinum chest inlaid with gold scrollwork. Treasure chests in Ward 2 typically ranged from bronze to gold, whereas platinum tended to show up more in Ward 3. Which meant we could expect around 60 thousand gold and maybe some decent gear from this one.

  “Whatever’s in it, you can have,” Felix said. “Good luck.”

  I smiled my thanks and popped the lid. Like many chests, this one was bigger on the inside than the outside. Yes, it had the expected gold. There was a two-handed sword I didn’t need with a demon-slaying enchantment, and a set of black robes with a number of great bonuses. My new Nightpath Robes offered +100 intelligence, +300 vitality, +300 agility, and a situationally useful perk:

  Blackout

  Duration: 20 seconds

  Range: 30 feet in diameter

  Description: Once per day, summon a cloak of impenetrable darkness hiding you and everyone else. To make it work, say, “Blackout.” To cancel the effect, say it again.

  “Not bad,” Felix said when I told him. “Wouldn’t have helped with the worm, but I can think of a number of places it might. You gonna wear it?”

  “Better than what I have,” I said.

  Felix looked politely away while I changed.

  “How’s your ring?” he said afterward.

  “Empty.”

  Felix frowned. “It resets in twenty-four hours. Can’t have you running around unprotected.”

  “Especially if I have to fight everything myself.” He started to protest, and I laughed. “I’m only kidding.”

  “It was those armor plates,” he said. “Pure chitanium. Impervious to fire, acid, poison, cold, lightning, you name it. It’s also physically indestructible, so I couldn’t pummel it. The creature had well over a million health points. Definitely Ward 3 strength, if not a little higher.”

  “How could you tell all that?”

  “Carrot Kool-aid,” he said. “Lets me see detailed enemy stats even better than a diviner. See? I told you my seeing plan would work. You just had to see it through. See? See?”

  “Cute,” I said. “So you learned how to kill it.”

  “Not alone. The kool-aid only shows a creature’s strengths. The worm’s weakness wasn’t revealed until you caused it pain, making it jerk around. Tiny gaps appeared in its armor whenever it bent backward. Did you get full XP? I got just over 200 thousand.”

  “I got a little less. Enough to gain back the level I lost with your muffin.” I closed my eyes and sent a feeler to my stomach. “I think it’s nearly used up. We should get back.”

  When the ship appeared in the distance, Felix drank more kool-aid and used its vision-enhancing properties to see how they were doing. Apparently, there’d been an attack of creepy-crawlies—ripped rigging, acid holes in the upper decks, that sort of thing. He also saw Elfie walking around happy and healthy. This gave us license to slow down, which dropped my XP burn to a trickle and preserved more of the muffin.

>   Along the way, he told me about the weapon he’d used, and I felt a sensation I hadn’t experienced since … well, I couldn’t remember when. That feeling was goosebumps.

  “You’ve got the Ray of Sunshine?” I said, staring at him like he had two heads. “The Ray of Sunshine?”

  “Yep!” Felix said and pulled to a halt. “Would you like to see it?”

  “You’d actually let me hold it?” I said, then immediately regretted my word choice.

  Felix laughed. “You’re not going to steal it, are you?”

  “I’ll know when you give it to me.”

  Of course I was joking. Most people our level … or the level I once was … lived by an unstated honor code. We’d long since lost our fascination with the mindless accumulation of things, however powerful, preferring to fill our lives with friendships, shared experiences, and personal enrichment of one kind or another. Greed of the sort that Sarah’s partner, Zor, had displayed was rare.

  That said … the closest thing to an artifact I’d touched since coming to Mythian was the amulet around my neck. The Ray of Sunshine was the real deal. Back in the beginning, there had been many such artifacts strewn throughout the world. In time, they’d all been snapped up. In more time, most of the players who’d found them disappeared—back to the real world, we’d thought.

  “Try not to look directly at it,” Felix said, reaching into his bag. “Leaves spots in your eyes.”

  I tried not looking at the yellow light streaming from his fist and mostly succeeded. Man, it was bright. He slipped it into my hand. Warm. Egg-shaped.

  Felix said, “Whatever you do, don’t point it at me. Haha, I’m only kidding. It’s on cooldown.”

  I read the description … or at least I tried to.

  Ray of Sunshine

  Cooldown: 1 Week

  Range: 50 feet

  Flags: No Loot, No Steal