by Felix Craft
Just when I’d been getting used to the weapon, too. She tossed the cudgel over to me and I caught it, then gave it a few test swings. Even more like swinging a bat. Though baseball hadn’t been my forte, I was comfortable enough that I’d soon adjust.
“All right, then. If you’re ready to go, we’d best be after that bandit lair.”
I knew better than to protest by now. Leaning my cudgel against my shoulder, I trudged after my companion as we followed the map again.
The map took us through the forest (thankfully) until I was sure we were well away from Old Man Jenkins’ napping grove, then turned inward. The land turned to hills and forests, and Leesha led Charlotte by the reins in the difficult terrain.
We’d only been traveling a little while when we heard the crunching of leaves and snapping of twigs nearby. I tensed, my mind automatically going back to the incident with the cyclops and half expecting a hand the size of crane claw to snatch me up out of nowhere. But that didn't happen. Instead, a group of five people came trekking through the woods, headed straight for us. It wasn’t a towering monster, but I still tightened my grip on my cudgel. Leesha looked similarly wary.
“Don’t let them get close,” she warned me softly, her eyes never leaving the approaching party. “You have to challenge people to duels in towns and cities, but out here in the wilds, other players can attack you as they please.”
Great. Like I needed another reason to be worried.
“Hello, chaps!” said the man at the front of the five in a cheery posh British accent, spreading his arms and smiling to show every last white tooth. He had a bit of a belly that strained against his leather jerkin, and a round, soft face. But despite my initial impression, I could see there was more to him. His armor looked well-maintained even if it was light, and it looked complete as well. Also, the others in his party were all fully equipped and armed to the teeth. One was a burly, ugly fellow with green skin, a pig’s snout, and dark, beady eyes — an orc, I guessed. Another was slim, hooded, and carried a bow. I saw pointed ears peeking out from underneath the hood — an elf. A third was short and stout and practically a walking suit of armor, with a beard so long it was a wonder he didn’t trip on it — a dwarf. The last was as nondescript a person as I could imagine and looked a bit confused as to where he was.
This Brit had a merry troupe out of the Lord of the Rings or something. But circus show or not, they outnumbered us two to five and were definitely better equipped. If it came to a fight, we were toast.
So I slapped on a grin and said, “Hello! Good to see a friendly face in the woods!”
Leesha glanced at me, barely hiding her incredulity, but she smiled thinly as well. “Hello. Nice party you’ve put together.”
“Think so? Bent me over and slapped me ass to hire them all, but what’s a man to do, eh?”
“Got to pay the piper,” I agreed, though who the fuck knew what that really meant.
“This guy gets it,” the leader said, smiling and pointing at me. “Doesn’t he, lads?”
“Lass,” the elven archer said sourly.
“Anyway,” Leesha said with a tight smile. “I’m sure you have places to be. We wouldn’t want to keep you up.”
“Oh, no worries, love. No worries, at all.” The British rogue sauntered forth, his smile never faltering. He was still twenty feet off, but I tightened my grip on the cudgel all the same.
“Looks like you’ve fallen on hard times, anyway,” the man continued with an apologetic shrug. “We not in the habit of holding up paupers, now are we?”
Leesha had a hard time maintaining her composure, but I just shrugged. It was true we weren’t well off. Hell, here, I was even worse off than back in my old life. It was somehow comforting, though the difference certainly wasn’t much.
The orc with the Brit snorted. “Scurry now, meat.” He leered at us with the two tusks erupting from his lip thrust out. Or maybe he just always looked like he was leering.
I didn’t need to be told twice, and Leesha followed after. “Hope to see you again!” the band leader called after us.
“Hope not,” Leesha muttered.
Even after the strange party disappeared from sight, Leesha acted paranoid, and instead of following the map to the bandit’s lair directly, she wove our path into a squiggle, just in case, and took us in circles to throw them off. After seeing the same tree four times, I’d had enough. “That’s enough! If they’re still following, they think we’re either idiots or hopeless at directions without Google Maps. Or both.”
But Leesha looked around distrustfully. “I’ve seen people like him before. He probably knows we’re sniffing around for something, and is just waiting to get a piece of it.”
Considering her secret faction, I didn’t doubt she’d seen people like that. Hell, she was probably like that herself. But I said instead, “We don’t have a lot of time. When did you say that tournament was?”
“Three days,” Leesha admitted. She sighed and couldn’t help but look around again. “Fine. We’ll go now. But if that Brit finds us…”
“I’m responsible, sure.”
She turned away and looked back at the map, and I rolled my eyes. Man, this chick cared too much about this game.
Leesha led us on a straight path now to the bandit’s lair, and it couldn’t have been more than ten minutes before we arrived. Tucked into a cliff at the bottom of a basin shaped like a gravy dish was a shabby little door with a lock. Leesha nodded to herself. “That’s it. Now, if the map is correct, all we have to do is knock like this…”
She knocked twice, paused, knocked another three times, paused again, and knocked once. Then she waited a moment, rang a bell I hadn’t seen before, paused, rang it again, and waited.
“Why don’t you turn in a circle, hop once, and start speaking in tongues?” I asked. She shot a scathing look at me, but I continued. “Why are you doing that anyway? There isn’t anyone in there.” I stared at her for a long moment. She stared back. “Right?”
Leesha smiled sweetly. “Whatever helps you not piss your pants, Z.”
Z. That gave me pause. Danny used to call me Z. Leesha misread my look and smirked, the smile growing even wider when the door clicked open a moment later.
A man’s head with scraggly hair and a dirty leather cap poked out and blinked at us. “Who the fuck are — Oof!” He collapsed as Leesha’s shield connected with his head.
“Whoops,” she said, then leaned down to pad his unconscious body, coming away with a small pouch of jingling coins. “Come on. Or don’t you want that treasure?”
I nodded, and with one glance over my shoulder at the empty forest, I entered inside.
Two more bandits sat inside the dim chamber just beyond, their feet kicked up on a rickety table. A swing from Leesha’s mace and another from my cudgel took them out quickly enough. I snatched up their weapons, but since I was getting the feel for my cudgel, I stuck with it for the moment.
Descending further into the cavern, we went into a narrow, dark tunnel that led farther down. A cool breeze came from below. That meant an opening somewhere else in the cave, right? I hadn't studied up on my Indiana Jones to know.
The tunnel eventually opened up into another chamber, this one larger and with stalactites hanging precariously over our heads. I watched them as we snuck under them, doing the sneak waddle step so no one heard us coming. A good thing, too. The main part of the room came into view, revealing a knot of five bandits crowded around a table.
“They should have been back by now,” one of them griped. “Even Bone-Eye doesn’t take this long to find prey on the road!”
“Then they’re dead,” said a big brigand without emotion.
“Does that compromise us?” A skinny one asked nervously. “Gulper carried a map—”
“What?!” The big man suddenly grabbed the skinny one. “And you’re only just telling me this?”
The skinny bandit stuttered an apology, but the big man threw him across the room. The ma
n went rag doll, releasing a shriek, which was quickly cut off when the back of his head met the sharp end of a stalagmite. I winced.
“Doing our job for us,” Leesha whispered. “Watch out for that big one —he’s the leader, so he’s Level 5.”
“How can you tell what level they are?” I whispered back.
My companion glanced at me like I had shit smeared across my face. “You say, Skill: Analyze.”
I did so, and the stats for the remaining for men popped up.
Bandit
Level: 3
Race: Human
HP: 120/120
SP: 120/120
MP: —/—
Bandit Leader
Level: 5
Race: Human
HP: 200/200
SP: 150/150
MP: —/—
That didn’t look promising. Fortunately, I had my Level 10 companion here, who should have no problem dispatching even that brute.
“What are we waiting for?” I whispered to Leesha as the bandits continued to argue.
She glanced over at me. “What are you waiting for?” Then she stood and ran around our protective stalagmites.
The bandits took a moment to see her as she barreled toward them, involved in their discussions as they were. Then the first shouted and pointed. The bandit leader whipped his head around and snarled angrily at Leesha.
I let her go. After all, combat barely hurt her. What did I need to trouble myself for?
“My companion’s back there!” Leesha shouted, pointing toward where I hid. One bandit’s head followed, searching.
I muttered under my breath and stood, then ran after her. By now, Leesha had already engaged, bashing one to the ground and missing a swing at the leader. The remaining two were moving around to her backside. Even at Level 10, I thought that might be too sticky of a situation, so I quickened my pace.
Right as I raised my club, ready to bash out some brains, a bandit spun and caught the blow with a wooden buckler. I dodged back and swung again, to similar jarring result. The bandit lashed out with his long knife, and though I twisted away, he cut my side where it had been exposed from my run in with the cyclops.
Pain always did piss me off, and I always played football better angry. I bashed his shield again, this time making his knees buckle, then again, hearing a wooden crack. I grinned and went again, knowing he had to be hurting. One more blow, and—
My club snapped in two.
I dodged the flying top half and stared at the bottom half, but there was no time to wonder or be upset. The bandit lunged with his knife again, and I just barely batted it aside with the splintered end of my club. But his shield followed close behind, and the bruising impact of it sent me sprawling.
I rolled on the stone floor then rose. I had other weapons in my inventory, but just as I started to say the command to withdraw one, the bandit screamed and came at me again, waving his knife overhead and lowering his shield.
I’m not proud to say it, but I ran like a startled hen. I dodged around stalagmites, leaped crates and chairs, and vaulted over the table in the middle.
The bandit pursuing me started to wear down. He panted, “Quit running, you pansy.”
“Catch me!” I shouted back.
Then I heard a sickening squelch, and I turned back to look. Leesha stood over the bandit, her mace dripping with blood and other gore, looking at me with such a hopeless expression I almost felt guilty.
Even though I knew all the bandits were dead, I still jumped as something popped up in front of me. Another projection. “Gah!” I muttered. “Why the fuck do they keep doing that?”
Leesha’s mouth tweaked. “What? You get the quest completion prompt? You can change when those appear, you know.”
“I know that,” I lied, and lowered my eyes to the projection so I didn’t have to meet her disbelieving gaze.
You have completed a quest: The Bandit’s Loot! +500 XP
On its heels followed another projection. I sighed and read it as well.
Congratulations, adventurer! You have reached level 3! Boost your stats by 10 HP, 10 SP, or 10 MP and assign 2 AP (Tier 1) within your ability trees.
“Okay,” I said to Leesha. “How the fuck do I get rid of these messages?”
One eyebrow raised, but she led me through the steps. That taken care of, she started walking among the bodies. “We need to get you another axe,” she said. “You’re worthless in a fight otherwise.”
“My weapon broke. What do you want me to do?”
“Fortunately for you…” Leesha said, ignoring me. She approached a body — the leader’s body, which was hardly recognizable except for the size — picked up something and held it aloft. “This poor bastard had this.”
I walked over, keeping an eye on each of the bodies as I went. I’d killed in the game already, but especially in the low light, the corpses were more than a bit unsettling. But not wanting Leesha to make fun of me more than she already had, I made my way past them and took the weapon from her hand. It was a long-shafted battle-axe like the quartermaster had given me. Already, it felt like reuniting with something that I was supposed to have. I gave it an experimental spin, then a couple swings, enjoying the way it worked my muscles.
“That’s a steel axe with a black ash handle,” Leesha told me. “It’s a definite improvement over the one you lost.”
I shrugged, letting the axe fall to my side. “As long as it chops through whatever I’m swinging at, I don’t much care.”
She rolled her eyes. “Well, let’s collect other stuff you don’t care about and get the hell out of here.”
My gaze wandered back to the bodies strewn around us. Time for more grisly work. But I was surprised to find I was actually a little excited to see what we’d find. “Let’s.”
An hour later, we’d collected everything the bandit lair had to give. It had kind of been like an Easter egg hunt, where you hurry to find as much as you can so the other people don’t get more than you. In which case, I was the young sibling hunting, as Leesha was much more efficient than me at searching. Still, I collected a fair amount of Rc myself — 213 in total — plus a few weapons, a satchel that gave me more room in my inventory, and even a couple of small amethysts. Leesha came away with the major prize though, a belt-like thing she called a baldric, that apparently went over the chest and held a weapon. It made the weapon you carried at the ready weigh nothing while held by the baldric. I eyed it enviously as she tried it on, rolling her shoulders and nodding in approval. I even debated whether it was worth trying to steal the next time she had to log out.
She saw me watching, then with a weary shake of her head, she started unbelting the baldric.
I watched with growing confusion. “What are you doing?”
“Doing something I’ll probably regret.” The baldric off, she held it out. “Take it. Maybe you’ll keep up with Charlotte if your axe isn’t dragging behind you.”
Still not quite trusting her, I took it slowly and held it up. A small notification for a projection appeared in my peripherals, but I ignored it, preferring to just look at the belt myself. “Thank you,” I said slowly, almost making it a question.
“Glad to see you’re so grateful,” Leesha said sarcastically. She turned away. “Now put that on and let’s get going. I don’t want to linger until something else moves in here.”
“How soon will that happen?”
She shrugged. “Who knows? But do you really want to find out?”
I really didn’t.
We made our way out of the lair, both of us hurrying. I told myself it was just that I needed to get out of MythRune, but I never could delude myself.
Leesha led the way and stepped out of the door. Peering around cautiously, she waved for me to exit, and I stepped outside as well. The basin walls rising up around us were empty, and all was silent. We started our way up the slope.
Then I frowned. Silent — hadn’t there been birds chirping before?
An a
rrow struck the ground next to my foot, quivering with the impact. My heart pounding, I slowly followed the direction that the shaft pointed in and saw figures standing between the trees. As they came out of shadow, I recognized them instantly. The Brit and his band.
The rogue grinned and spread his arms. “Miss me?”
12
A Bastard of a Brit
“Run!” Leesha shouted.
I didn’t need any encouragement. Glad my axe was strapped into the baldric and out of my way, I bolted in the opposite direction of the Brit and into the trees. But a figure stepped from the trees and leered at me. The orc from before.
I skidded to a halt, heading the last available direction, but the armored dwarf stood there, a huge hammer in his hand and a mean glint in his eyes. Thinking I could outrun him, I started dodging around him, when a burning pain tore through my calf, sending me tumbling to the ground. Looking back, I saw an arrow had taken me in the leg.
I scrabbled to get back up, but the orc and dwarf had me surrounded. “None of that, lad,” the dwarf warned. “Just stay right there until the boss can deal with you.”
Gritting my teeth, I looked to see how Leesha was faring. The strange human in the Brit’s band, seemingly unarmed, stood in her way, his head cocked to the side. The elven archer had an arrow pointed at her, notched and ready to draw. It didn’t look like too much trouble for her, except for perhaps the British rogue approaching her. Analyzing him, I took a look at what we were dealing with:
Name: Henry_808
Level: 8
Profession: Rogue
Faction: —
HP: 140/140
SP: 130/130
MP: —/100
He wasn’t all that impressive then at level 8, though you wouldn’t know it from his cockiness. Henry the Dick swaggered up to Leesha. “Let’s not make this difficult. You know what we want.”