Underpowered Howard: A LitRPG Adventure

by John L. Monk

  Felix swore.

  “Do we even know what they look like?” I said.

  “Shiny,” he said. “That’s all I remember. Old info shared who knows how many times. Remember the telephone game?”

  I laughed. “Telephones? I’m not that old. But I know what you mean.”

  Felix didn’t laugh or even smile. He seemed genuinely upset.

  “Do you really want it that bad?” I said.

  He forced an embarrassed chuckle. “You know how it is… You want something for so long and never think you’ll get it. Then you have a chance and it’s right there. I don’t even need it! But it’s special. The most special crafting element in the game. Ever seen a void nexum?”

  I nodded. “A few. Not in a long time, though.”

  “Well if we get any fleckulents, you can bathe in void nexums and gargle with krail extract.”

  “Not my preferred use of either,” I said.

  He still seemed bothered. Something told me it had nothing to do with our lack of fleckulents.

  “All right,” I said, “what is it?”

  Felix shot me a quick glance, then smiled shyly. “I’m that transparent, am I?”

  “Yes, you am.”

  He shook his head slowly. “I don’t like these worms. In fact, I hate them. I’ve always been a fan of turtles, you know.”

  “I never suspected.”

  “I had a turtle when I was a kid,” he said softly. “Freddy the turtle. The idea of my poor Freddy being chewed to death by worms… It pisses me off.”

  Smiling gently, I said, “Felix, it’s not really a turtle. It’s probably not even a lucid. It’s too big!”

  “Maybe… But I’m going to kill these awful things. Hand me a key. I’ll meet you back at the ship.”

  I sighed. “That’s a waste of two keys. I’ll help you.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  In answer to that, I tapped a little more of my latest muffin and smashed one of the bugs. An ill-thought move, because the critter sprayed goop all over me.

  Felix snorted. “Here, at least use this.” He removed a stout cudgel from his bag and handed it to me. “They’re just critters, so you don’t need melee skills.”

  After a few practice swipes, I said, “Nice balance.”

  I smashed another bug. Then another, and another after that. Felix joined me, and soon we were slaughtering worms with abandon. After we cleared the cavity, we started slowly up the tunnel smashing anything that wiggled. Felix ate one of his delectomancies—a delicious-looking stuffed pepper—and breathed fire on the smallest, frying them in place and cauterizing the bloody wounds at the same time. When he did this, the world seemed to vibrate around us—the turtle, shuddering in pain, we guessed.

  “I’ll only do the thickest patches,” he said sheepishly, and we pushed on.

  Upon reaching the closed opening, we were greeted by the gnashing maw of the worm we’d left outside. We’d taken too long to return, and it had managed to burrow its way around the hot capstone back into the tunnel. Big as it was, it couldn’t make the ninety-degree turn.

  The ground, I noticed, had begun vibrating again.

  Felix said, “What do you think?”

  “I think we’re gonna use two keys.”

  “Huh?”

  “Stay close!”

  I ran directly toward the maw of the core trapper. Just before its tentacles could hook into me, I threw a key using my muffin-powered agility and hit the front row of teeth, opening a door. I then leaped through and waited for Felix. When he was clear, I dashed to the capstone, tossed another key, and jumped through the next door.

  Outside, I drew up short at the change in the landscape that greeted us.

  “Hurry—let’s move,” Felix said, and we took to the air.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The jagged tops of the exposed reef were crumbling. The once placid pools of water now rippled, and we could hear a low-frequency thrum rising from below.

  “Some kind of earthquake,” Felix said. “But not from the worm.”

  Down below, the core trapper pulled itself out of the second hole and stood upright like a cobra, head facing our way as if watching us.

  “We should head back,” I said.

  Felix nodded. “Yes. Let’s go.”

  After returning to the ship, we found the sailors mumbling to themselves in fear as the captain shouted orders nobody listened to. His lofty air of authority had thoroughly deflated. This didn’t affect the crew’s loyalty to me, however, which had returned to 100% after the incident with the Nightpath Robes.

  Elfie appeared from the hold looking concerned.

  “The rocks are grinding against the hull,” she said. “The carpenters are doing what they can, but if this gets worse, the ship will quickly turn to sawdust.”

  “How come nobody’s listening to the captain?” Felix said.

  “Check the overlay.”

  “Huh… Oh… Oh…”

  “What?” I said, looking but not seeing.

  “Souls on board,” he said.

  I blinked in surprise. Souls on board had dropped from 100 to 90.

  “We lost ten people?” I said.

  Elfie nodded. “The marines. The crew killed them.”

  “Killed them? Why?”

  “That’s how the captain controlled everyone,” she said. “They know if they kill him, the ship vanishes. But back up a minute: What’s with the earthquake?”

  “We may have found something,” Felix said.

  We filled her in on the details of our latest tunnel adventure—what we found, what we did about it, and the resulting earthquake.

  “Why don’t you get some sleep,” he said to her.

  “Who can sleep in this?”

  A shout from the crow’s nest caused us to look up. Word came down of something sighted in the landscape. A light of some sort.

  Not missing a beat, Elfie flew up for a look, followed by me and Felix.

  “There,” she said, pointing. “A blue light!”

  Elfie zoomed off toward it while Felix and I tried to keep up. We landed maybe a thousand feet out from the ship in a particularly rocky area with razor-sharp formations that would have made it impassable without flight. There, floating inches away from a sheered-off ridge of coral, was a shining point of plutonium-blue light.

  “It’s the fleckulent, isn’t it?” Elfie said.

  Felix nodded uncertainly. “Yeah. Must be. Howard, pick it up.” I started to reach for it and he stopped me. “I’m only kidding. This is my obsession, so I’ll take the risks.”

  “If you die, we’ll come get you,” I said and wondered at my words. Such a trip would set me back a month or more.

  “What if we just poked it with something?” Elfie said.

  Too late, Felix had already grabbed it—or no, actually. He’d missed it.

  “What the heck?” he said.

  He grabbed for it again and missed again.

  I’d watched him carefully the second time. His hand cupped the light and began to close, but the light never wavered or disappeared. Somehow, his hand had closed behind it.

  “Let’s all try,” Elfie said and grabbed for it with both hands.

  Not to be outdone, I tried grabbing it too, but the thing was impossible to catch. No light trail followed its movements. Rather, it seemed as if wherever we reached was the wrong spot, and that we only discovered this after our failure.

  “It’s messing with my perception,” Felix said. “You know how much I hate my perception messed with.”

  Elfie nodded sadly.

  From what I could tell, the light hadn’t moved an inch from the broken rock that had revealed it. It just floated there, gleaming like a tiny blue sun, but it didn’t hurt to stare at it. And when I looked away, there was no afterimage.

  “I’ve got an idea,” Felix said a minute later. “Howard, close your eyes.”

  “Why?” I said.

  “Just do it, monkey.”
>
  I heaved a sigh and closed my eyes. “Now what?”

  “Stick your hand out. I’ll guide you. Forward more … a little left … a little up … now down … now right … your other right … more that way … no, back up some … more up … okay, pull back…”

  This went on for about two minutes with no luck. Next, we tried scooping in a bag. When that didn’t work, the three of us tried floating toward it all at once with the hope of trapping it between us, only to find ourselves a foot away from where we thought we were.

  “This is really aggravating,” Felix said.

  “He hates being aggravated,” Elfie said. “I sort of like it though.”

  There was something about this we were missing.

  “Light isn’t physical,” I said. “We can’t grab it. All we can do is see it.”

  Felix snorted. “Thank you for clearing that up.”

  I shook my head. “You don’t get it. I don’t think we’re close enough.”

  Elfie tilted her head in confusion. “Howard, it’s right there.”

  Rather than try explaining, I closed one eye and leaned in as if approaching a peephole. The light grew to the size of a planet for all intents and purposes and … and there it was. Gleaming in the clear blue sky of another world was a shimmering jewel. Without taking my eyes from the peephole, I reached out, grasped it firmly—hard like a gem, cool to the touch—and the light died.

  I pulled my hand back and stared in wonder at the faintly blue-glowing gem from another world … and my log filled with the item description.

  Primal Fleckulent

  Description: Step right up and gather round! Witness the handy-dandy, never sandy, better than cotton candy, or my name’s Randy, Primal Fleckulent!* No, misters and ma’ams, this is not one of those knock-off sub-primal fleckulents with the adjustable rates and PMI. What we have here is a genuine, rarified, bonafide, stick-a-needle-in-my eye miracle of modern Mythian magic! It catalyzes, substitizes, vitalizes, and instantializes! Need a bat wing? Add a fleckulent. Need silver oxide dust? Add a fleckulent. Need a fleckulent? Add a… Ahem… Well, anyway, you get the point. And that point is: simplification. No scorching, no mess, no fuss, no stains! It does it all and not much more! Order yours today!

  *This product is known to cause cancer in the state of California.

  I looked up to see Felix and Elfie gazing at me in wonder.

  “The light!” Felix said. “It vanished!”

  “It disappeared when you reached out like that,” she said.

  They were right. The blue light we’d first seen from the ship was gone.

  But we’d gotten the prize.

  Back on the ship, Felix said, “Absolutely not.”

  I’d given him fleckulent and told him to keep it, along with any others we found.

  “I have zero interest in money or items,” I said frankly. “Anything I find, other than that spell—and my amulet—is yours. I was never big on crafting. It’ll do much better with you. Look at it this way: Now you have one less reason to rob lucid merchants.”

  Elfie said, “I think he’s serious. He’s beyond all this, Felix. He is altruism itself! He’s like Galadriel, except less pretty and totally different.”

  “Well, you’re at least keeping this one,” Felix said. “As a memento of our adventure. And besides, I insist. And when I insist, only a fool doth stand against me!”

  Elfie covered her eyes in mock horror. “Oh, please don’t maketh him insist, I beggeth you!”

  “You are not beggething hard enough!” Felix said. “He has insultedeth me for the last time! Only a fool doth insultedeth me!”

  “Oh please don’t insultedeth him, Howard, it’s too dangerous! Take the fleckulent or we’re all doomed!”

  Openly laughing, I accepted it back and stowed it in my pocket. I’d lost my bag in the desert and hadn’t replaced it yet.

  “There, you happy?” I said.

  Felix nodded. “I’m sure there’s more where that came from, don’t worry about me.”

  “Or me!” Elfie said.

  To Felix I said, “You ready to get more?”

  “Only for the last ten minutes,” he groused.

  Leaving Elfie in charge again, Felix and I went looking. For the rest of the day, we scoured the island from overhead and found five more fleckulents. Then the island stopped rumbling, and that was the end of the fleckulents.

  “Something to do with the rumbling,” Felix said. “You notice how they all seem to float in the air where a piece of coral broke off? They’re hiding in the landscape just waiting to be unearthed.”

  I nodded. “It’s the worms. Mythian’s a great big story with lots of little subplots. This subplot, I think, goes like this: Tormegazon surfaces under ships that drift near it. The turtle is very weak from its worm infestation and needs our help. We, being bold and kindly adventurers, kill some of the worms drilling into its flesh. As it gets stronger, it tries to shake off the remaining worms itself, which breaks apart the encrustation, which frees these silly fleckulents, which makes Felix rich.”

  “That’s a long story,” he said. “Do I live happily ever after?”

  “You do, but only if we get this island shaking again.”

  “It’ll have to wait,” he said. “I’m exhausted, and I’m sure Elfie can barely keep her eyes open.”

  I stood watch that night and fended off an attack of what I’d call super glurgs—Ward 2 versions of the creatures that attacked us in Ward 1. I was getting better at matching my XP burn with the XP from kills. Though I didn’t gain any, I also didn’t lose very much.

  More good news: There were no crew deaths. They’d learned by now to forego bravery in favor of the better part of valor.

  The next morning, and into the afternoon, Felix and I found two more wounds filled with baby core trappers, which we killed mercilessly. This caused the living island to shake more violently than the first time, and we spent the day gathering twenty-five fleckulents. There were more out there, we knew, but it was getting dark again, and we were worried about the ship.

  Just in time, because I’d eaten our last muffin.

  The ship, when we returned, was floating in the air—raised and held aloft by a high-level telekinesis spell.

  “Thank goodness you’re back!” Elfie said, lying under the ship while the earth rumbled and shook beneath her. “If we’d gotten attacked … I can’t keep the ship up and fight too.”

  “Honey, I’m so sorry,” Felix said. “What can I do for you?”

  “Coffee,” she said. “And one of those super muffins. I need the mana regen.”

  “Are you sure?” he said.

  “No choice.”

  “I’ll have to make a new batch. Can you wait that long?”

  Elfie nodded, all whimsical exuberance gone as she struggled to keep the ship balanced.

  “Just hurry,” she said. “The only requirement for the spell is mana. But holding something this big uses a lot.”

  Pointing upward, I said, “I’ll guard her—go.”

  Felix rushed off and I stared overhead at countless tons of sailing vessel floating in the air, waiting to come crashing down if she ran out of mana.

  To pass the time I said, “So, no mana potions, huh?”

  “Howard?” she said.

  “Hmm?”

  “Shush.”

  I shushed.

  After what seemed like way too much time, Felix returned with a dozen muffins, one of which he gave to his wife. Upon eating it, a massive weight seemed to lift from her.

  “Whoops, I forgot the coffee,” Felix said. “I’ll get it.”

  “Don’t bother,” she said, standing up. “Wow, this feels good. Agility makes this easier, and my mana’s through the roof now.”

  “How much XP are you burning?” he said.

  Elfie snorted. “Don’t ask.”

  “Give me more muffins and I’ll guard her,” I said. “You go get more fleckulents.”

  Felix bit his lip
uncertainly. “Are you sure?”

  “Yep. That’s why we did this. Also, I think we might be at the end of the Tormegazon story. It’s your last chance.”

  Elfie looked at me curiously.

  “Tell you later,” I said.

  “Okay then,” Felix said. “Keep an eye on her. I’ll be back every two hours to check on you both.”

  For the rest of the day, Felix returned regularly to check on us, and each time he updated us on his fleckulent count. Elfie, in turn, would tell him how many levels she lost. Three, so far—which, for Hard Mode players over level 1200, amounted to 20 million each.

  “It’s only time,” Elfie said wistfully. “So long as I have my Feelsy, time doesn’t matter.”

  “I call him Feelsy too,” I whispered, causing her to giggle.

  Just when the island seemed ready to fall apart, Felix returned for the last time.

  “It’s starting to submerge,” he said. “I can’t be flying around when that happens or the Leviathan will get me.”

  “You usually get about ten seconds,” I said.

  “Sometimes it’s quicker. Not risking it.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Elfie said. “You two get up there. When the waves take me, I’ll set the ship down and swim up.” Felix started to object and she cut him off. “I’ll hold my breath. No choice. Hurry!”

  We did as she said.

  The men joined us in looking for waves, with frequent calls overhead for updates from the lookout. Even Captain Richards came out, though nobody paid much attention to him. He seemed deflated, as if everything important had been sucked out of him—a witness to events he was no longer part of.

  Good, I thought.

  “Waves, ho!” the lookout shouted maybe twenty minutes later.

  Everyone cheered except Felix, me, and the captain, who turned at the news and went to his cabin.

  “She needs to be fast,” Felix said.

  “She will be.”

  Five minutes later and the waves rolled in under the ship, hiding Tormegazon for good. The ship lurched down into the water, which sloshed over the sides and filled the air with spray. Elfie had released her telekinesis spell.