by Mark C. Wade
Fight for the Greatclub
Henry thought: spoiler! Now I know what’s in the chest.
The thought didn’t last long, because Aareikg’s greatclub swung right at Henry’s head as the world around him shifted to a fiery hellscape.
Chapter 19
The music ratcheted up Henry’s nerves. He could barely concentrate as this much-larger goblin attacked. The pounding in his head made the whole world throb with the war drums.
That little fairy had morphed into the ugliest goblin Henry had seen yet. Puss-filled boils covered its green head as a disturbing substitute for hair. One eye bulged out like it was about to explode while the other had shrunk into his head.
The grimace as the greatclub swung at Henry revealed a thousand razor-like teeth. Henry made a note to avoid getting bitten. Aareikg wore heavy, metallic armor with harsh spikes protruding randomly.
Henry acted on pure instinct and spun sideways, tentacle slapping Aareikg twice as the greatclub skewed off Henry’s side, pushing Henry to the side. He couldn’t actually feel the pain of it, but his health got knocked to about three-quarters.
The attack staggered Aareikg briefly, and Henry used the time to examine his new surroundings. Whatever had happened right before the transformation of the goblin had changed the entire battle arena.
The ground shifted under Henry, and a fiery pit began to open. He scrambled to one of the platforms as the rest of the ground crumbled and dissolved in the heat.
Great.
Red flames licked up from the pit. Five irregular platforms remained in a circle around a central pillar. Aareikg looked to the sky and gave a menacing warcry. Henry thought it was to scare him, but he saw his MP get cut in half. The cry had been some kind of debuff.
Henry used that moment to get a poison spell off. This angered Aareikg even more, and he rushed at Henry.
The attacks came fast and at random. Henry barely had time to jump from platform to platform, out of the way of the incoming fury before having to do it again.
It was a constant barrage of fast motion. He was out of ideas. He could never get his own attacks in and never had enough time to cast any more spells. He was stuck in this loop of barely dodging out of the way over and over.
Henry had no idea how long this went on for, and he used the time to study the goblin. He needed to come up with something and wondered if this battle had a time limit.
Then he noticed it.
Aareikg seemed to have three attack patterns, and each one was telegraphed by a distinct movement. Henry wondered if all bosses had this. It had never occurred to him that he could predict their movements like this.
He watched, and the goblin lifted his head. This would be an overhead club slam. Henry calmly dodged out of the way. Now that he understood what was coming, he didn’t even need to move that quickly.
Aareikg’s back twitched: the windmill attack was coming.
Henry slithered up the nearby pillar, and while the long attack animation continued, Henry pummeled down with an eightfold tentacle slam to the head.
Aareikg stumbled back, stunned. Henry cast poison on him, and he flashed green, indicating it landed. The health bar ticked down, slowly. This boss had way more health than the last one.
Henry continued to chip away at the health little by little. He would anticipate the attack, dodge appropriately, and get a little damage in. The process was slow and tedious but very safe.
Aareikg’s health was right on the edge of zero, and Henry went in for the final blow. He half-believed something strange would happen.
He didn’t think he could have won already.
Surely, the boss would come back in another form.
But the music played the victory song. Henry tensed, waiting for the surprise.
The ground came back up, and the fire disappeared as Aareikg’s body shattered into a million pixels. The greatclub clattered to the stone, and Henry stared.
He’d done it. He couldn’t believe it. Henry felt like he’d actually gotten better at the game and taken out this boss with the generally intended method.
A surge of pride welled inside of him as he went over to the hard-earned club, not that it would be useful to an octopode. Henry was beginning to hate the restriction of no weapons. He finally felt like he could be a good melee fighter.
Henry gulped. He suddenly feared that he’d have to equip all the legendary items to complete the quest.
The words flashed on the screen:
Congratulations! You’ve defeated the second Mini-Boss on the Quest. You have obtained the Goblin Greatclub.
Henry looked around and saw the chest still there, unopened. He thought the club would be in it. The sound of gaining a level played, and Henry watched his experience points and money flick upward as spoils from winning the battle.
Henry went over and opened the chest. Just as he went to look in, long spindly legs sprouted underneath the chest and teeth jutted out from the lid. It didn’t have any eyes, but it still seemed to know exactly where Henry stood.
Henry pushed away just in time as the chest tried to gobble him up.
What the fuck?!
Henry used his ID spell to find out the creature was called a mimic. The beast waddled toward him slowly. Henry didn’t think he was in danger, and he did a series of dodges and hits until the mimic died.
Henry’s breath returned to normal after the surprise attack. He promised himself to never fall for that again. He felt rightly punished for being so greedy. He’d already gotten what he came for, and yet he’d looked for more.
Henry opened his status screen and looked through his options for leveling. His heart skipped a beat when he saw he finally had a high enough level, and enough Intelligence, for “Wraithform.”
He clicked it without a second thought.
The message boards had been clear about how vital this spell was for a corruptor. It would make him transparent, able to go through solid objects, increase his defense and armor, and most importantly double the damage of his spells.
This allowed for the broken combination of stealing a spell, then using wraithform, then hitting the opponent with their own spell for twice the damage. Of course, this all assumed he would be fighting enemies with good damage-dealing spells.
Henry left the game satisfied.
As he opened his eyes, he realized he couldn’t move.
A wave of nausea almost caused him to vomit. Henry was still alive, but the game had done something to him. He felt like he hadn’t slept in months.
Henry’s vision whirled with exhaustion, and everything fell out of focus.
“Ykülma.”
No response.
“Ykülma!”
“Hungry.”
Henry realized it was her voice, but it made no sense. She was an AI. How could she be hungry?
Henry said, “What?”
“Hungry, how do you like it when I say your name wrong?”
It was like she was actually upset about this.
Henry moaned, “Oh, come on. Let me change it to something normal if it bothers you so much. Wait, never mind. We are not having this conversation again.”
Henry let his eyes rest shut for a moment, and the physical world crystallized into something less dreamlike.
What was I saying?
Henry said, “Oh, yeah. Get me information on what level I should be to beat the roguelike dungeon in Eburnean Passage.”
Ykülma said, “You’re not going to like this.”
“Why? Is it 100? Please tell me it’s not 100.”
“There is no suggested range. The dungeon scales to you as it randomly generates.”
Henry thought about that for a moment. “That’s great, actually. It means I can try it.”
“There is no data on who has successfully completed it. Some say it goes on infinitely until you die, and so no one has completed it. There are people claiming to have done it, but the tone of their messages alerts my spam filter that they are full
of shit.”
“Ykülma! Are you allowed to say stuff like that?”
She replied with no tone of humor. “I just did, so…yes, I am.”
Henry gulped. He didn’t necessarily need to beat the dungeon. He just needed to find the third item, which probably meant finding a third goblin mini-boss. He’d already beaten two with less experience than he had now.
How hard could it be?
Henry went back into the game and traveled to the location nearest The Dungeons of Doom. He stood outside of the menacing cave, took a deep breath, then entered it.
Chapter 20
The music turned dark and brooding, and the cavern felt cold and dank. Henry tried to control himself. It had to be his imagination because the VR gear couldn’t make him feel temperature.
Something was off about this. He feared dying in here wouldn’t just mean his character’s death—it could mean his actual death. Henry was tempted to step out of the game and call an expert over to examine his gear, just to be sure it hadn’t been tampered with.
But there was no time for that. He needed to get through the quest and into the Grand Manor. He sensed he’d discover the truth there. He’d find the clue to prove Aeden had done it.
The dungeon asked him a question. It was the first time any region of the game did such a thing.
Are you sure you want to continue? Dying in this zone is permanent.
He chose: Yes.
Henry needed liquor to calm his nerves, but he didn’t want to dampen his senses. He needed to be sharp in here if he was going to survive.
Henry looked around. He could barely see his tentacle in front of his face. The sound of dripping water pinged and echoed from various directions, making Henry have no idea which way to go. Every direction sounded possible and impossible at the same time.
He slithered forward. The stone floor appeared to have a grid of perfect squares on it. Henry wondered what purpose that could serve, and then he wrote it off as merely a design choice.
He got to the far end of the starting room and found a tight corridor.
Henry moved through it slowly. This was easier than he was expecting so far. He hadn’t even encountered an enemy yet.
A sound of rolling rock came from the other side. Henry stopped and listened.
Nothing.
He moved toward the sound. The noises resumed. There was an enemy over there. He braced himself, and just before he stepped out of the corridor, it showed itself.
It was identified as a kobold, and Henry stopped dead again, hoping it hadn’t seen him. It appeared to be staring right at him, but it didn’t move.
Is it frightened?
Henry lifted his tentacle slowly, and the creature pulled back its arm slowly. Henry realized it had a stone in its hand that it was going to throw, and he was stuck in a narrow hallway.
Henry paused.
The kobold paused.
Holy shit. It only moves when I move.
He then realized the grid probably existed to help plan under this strange movement system.
Henry suctioned up the wall to the ceiling, and sure enough, the kobold threw the rock where Henry should have been. He kind of wanted a harder challenge. Dodging was simple when you had time to predict where the throw would be.
Henry quickly slithered up to the kobold and tentacle slapped it to death. In the heat of the action, he forgot he could stop and think, and so the whole thing played out in real-time, as if time wasn’t dependent on his movement.
Luckily, the enemy was weak. When it died, a quick flash of white light flickered, and its body disappeared into two things. One of them hit the floor with a revolting smack, and the other jangled like a coin against a stone.
Henry examined them. The one was indeed a small gold coin with a large Z on it. He put it in his inventory for later. The other thing he identified as “chunks of meat.” Henry ignored the disturbing turn of phrase.
He looked about this new room and realized he no longer felt cold; he was sweltering under the intense pressure. These enemies were all going to be new, and so the slightest miscalculation of their strength could mean the end of his life.
He slithered into the room. It was brighter than the last one with torches on the wall. Henry experimented with stopping, and sure enough, the motion of the flame stopped with him. It wasn’t just enemies. All of time seemed tied to his movement.
He saw several other corridors off this room. He wondered if the whole structure of the dungeon was just large rectangular rooms with narrow hallways connecting them.
The center of the room had a large fountain of water. Henry approached it cautiously. The stone around the water basin had a dark aquamarine moss or mold growing along it in little fuzzy patches.
One of the octopode’s special traits was that he could heal by submersing himself in water.
Henry prided himself on realizing this could be a trap, so he tested the water first by dipping a single tentacle. Even this was enough to get a little health boost.
Henry yanked it out when something bit and poisoned him.
He leaned over to see, and five snakes streamed out. He fled toward the nearest corridor, but they were too fast. Two more had nipped at his body, and the poison counters were collecting in little green numbers at the corner of his vision.
Henry paused at the edge of the hallway, realizing he could think without time passing. He looked around. The snakes were all on one side of him, and he decided he could edge into the hallway and be able to fight them one at a time.
He feared it was too late, though. Henry only had one-quarter of his health left. He went into his inventory to see if anything would help. He had nothing and wanted to kick himself for not prepping better for this.
He backed into the hallway and cast wraithform, his newest, most powerful spell. It was his only hope at this point. He knew it would boost his tentacle slap damage and protect him better.
He spewed out the poison spray to start taking off the snakes’ health. The spray landed, but they didn’t flash with the typical indicator showing they had been poisoned.
What?
The word appeared over each of their heads: immune.
Fuck!
Of course, a poisonous snake would be immune to poison, but now he’d wasted precious time. The front snake struck again as he hit it. Henry had only a few ticks of health remaining. He didn’t know if he should stand and fight or run to an emergency exit.
Both options seemed to lead to death. It couldn’t all be over already, could it?
He used the tentacle strike a few more times and the snake died. There was a slight gap between it and the next one, so he fled through the hallway.
One tick of health remained.
As he entered the next large room, he saw his salvation: an exit. He pushed as fast as he could, and that’s when he felt the nip of the snake behind him.
Everything seemed to happen in slow motion, and that’s because time had actually slowed as Henry looked at the snake behind him.
The bite took his remaining health.
Snakes didn’t have facial expressions, but this one looked smug at its big kill. The game world went black.
Henry stared at the familiar screen with the red letters: You Have Died.
Then something new happened; a sad, solo violin played a song he hadn’t heard before, and the words came up: Game Over.
Henry couldn’t bring himself to lift the VR gear off. He’d taken a risk, and it hadn’t paid off. Now he didn’t know what to do.
People could die in the real world because of this mistake.
He stared at the words, over and over. How could the game be over?
A sinking crept into the pit of Henry’s stomach. He knew what he had to do, and he didn’t like it one bit.
Chapter 21
Henry was shocked to find it to be 3 a.m. when he disconnected. He staggered to his feet and swayed with exhaustion. He barely had the strength to stumble to bed, and he collapse
d into the sheets.
Henry slept until noon the next day and woke up shivering. He hadn’t managed to get under the covers the whole night, and the horrible taste of dread rested on his tongue. Today was the day he would lose all self-respect and possibly the man he loved.
Henry took special care to get a smooth, clean shave. He went out to his closet and hunted for anything decent and settled on his best suit. Henry slid out the door toward the police station.
He needed to beg Quillen to get him special access. But Quillen had demanded he not work on the case, and now he feared what that would do to their relationship.
Quillen said he kept their private and work life separate, but this seemed like a major violation of trust to Henry. The stoic man had to have some limits.
He stood outside the door, staring at the grains in the wood before he mustered the courage to knock on Quillen’s office door.
“It’s open!”
Henry stepped inside, and Quillen stopped whatever he was saying on the phone. “I’m going to have to call you right back.”
Quillen slammed down the phone, and the small, expensive machine bounced off the desk to the floor. Henry cringed and wondered if permanent damage had been done.
Henry said, “You sure showed that.”
Quillen grimaced.
Maybe that wasn’t the best opening line…
Henry realized he hadn’t prepared what he would say at this point. Quillen crossed his arms across his chest while he waited. He actually tapped his foot, something Henry thought only happened in movies or cartoons.
Finally, Quillen growled, “Yes?”
Henry said, “Okay. Just hear me out before you say anything, please. This is important.”
Quillen rolled his eyes. “It’s always important with you.”
Henry ignored the comment and burst into the story of going into Eburnean Passage and the invisible wall and the quest. He left out many of the more impressive details on how he killed the mini-bosses when he saw Quillen just had no interest whatsoever.
Quillen sat in silence for a moment when it was all over.