Bugs and Loopholes: A LitRPG Adventure (Beta Tester Book 3)

by Rachel Ford

  King Miradorn was waiting by the edge of the city with his bride, and they sent them off with fond farewells, urging them to beware of the dangers that waited. “Many are the guardians of the sacred places.”

  Arya, who was as bent and disfigured as he, said, “Condemned souls they are, working through their long perdition: they will show you no mercy.”

  Miradorn nodded. “Good luck to you, my friends. I pray we will meet again soon.”

  “May your deliverance be ours, and ours yours,” the queen added.

  The Blessed Tears of Saint Acaria, the king and queen told them, were a day’s walk southeast of the city. “Beyond the hot springs, over the dark river, and past the great darkness.”

  Jack just shook his head, imagining the endless series of absurd trials ahead of them. Jordan, though, smiled and thanked the king and queen with a grace that surprised him. He told her so as soon as they were out of earshot. “That was pretty impressive.”

  “What?”

  “You. The way you talked to them.” Here, he affected an admittedly poor British accent. “Very posh and proper, milady.”

  She rolled her eyes. “They’re royalty. You have to be polite.”

  “Quite right, milady. Very nicely done, if you don’t mind me saying so. First rate.”

  She groaned. “That’s a really bad accent, Jack.”

  “Well, that’s bloody rude of you, milady. Is that how it is, then? You’re all posh and proper to old king what’s his face, but you talk like that to me? Well I’ll not ‘ave it, you hear me?”

  He might have gone on rambling out his faux outrage if she hadn’t interrupted to warn, “I’m going to push you into one of the flesh dissolving hot springs if you don’t lose the accent.”

  He affected shock. “I say, that’s not very ladylike either.” Then, he registered her words, and forgot the accent for a moment. “Hold on, did you say ‘flesh dissolving hot springs’?”

  “Did I?” she asked, innocently. “I don’t think so.”

  “You definitely did.”

  “Nope.”

  They exited the city by a narrow road, arguing as they went about what Jordan had said and whether hot springs waited for them or not. The lights of the city, dim though they were, faded. Strategically planted iridescent mushrooms, standing knee high, lit the way in a pale blue light. Now and then, rats would scurry across the path. Some were small and hairless, and others great and pale. Jack made the mistake of killing a few – a mistake, because that allowed him to harvest meat from the fallen creatures. And Jack being Jack, he couldn’t resist picking up food stuff when it was available…even if it was rat meat.

  “Ugh,” he said to Jordan. “You know what this means? Sooner or later, I’m going to have to eat it.”

  “You don’t have to. It’s a delicacy to the people here. One of the merchants will pay you good money for it.”

  Jack shivered. “Rat meat, a delicacy?”

  She shrugged. “Selling it’s better than eating it, right?”

  Jack nodded. “But I still have to collect quite a bit more if I’m going to complete that quest. I think I need fifteen pounds or something.”

  She shrugged again. “Well, I mean, you can always cook it up.” He shivered, and she smacked her lips. “Yum, yum.”

  He frowned, and was about to retort something when a loud growl sounded behind them. Jack spun around at the same time she did, to see their ogre companion stomping a huge, hairy rat.

  “There you go,” Jordan said. “More food.”

  They walked on for a long time. For some reason, the rats seemed predisposed to attack the ogre, though they were no match for the giant monster. So despite his best efforts, despite deliberately ignoring them when they ran past, Jack found himself collecting an ever increasing supply of rat meat.

  Eventually, though, they reached the first pools. The water glowed an eerie light blue, and heat and steam rose from the still surface. A sulfuric smell filled the air.

  “Are these the flesh dissolving hot springs?” Jack wondered.

  She grinned at him. “You could always put a hand in, and test the water.”

  He scowled at her, until she knelt by the pool’s edge, and splashed water onto her face. “You know, you could have just said ‘no.’”

  “I could have,” she agreed. “But where’s the fun in that?”

  He shook his head. “I miss Migli already.”

  She laughed. “Speaking of Migli…”

  He shivered, suddenly regretting his words of a second before. “Do we have to?”

  “Yes. He’s programmed to give you a warning here. Maybe a little earlier, I don’t remember. Anyway, he tells you that the pools are deeper than they look sometimes.”

  “Really?” He peered into the water. He could see the rocky bottom, and it seemed so close he could reach out and touch it.

  “Yes. Some of the pools are very shallow. Some aren’t. And there’s a system of rivers in these caves. You don’t want to get swept up in them.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, they can take you off course. And some of them will dump you into the hot springs. You know, the really hot springs.”

  “So they do exist?”

  “That’s not the way you want to find out.”

  He nodded. “Alright. Well, lead on then.”

  She did, picking a path through the pools. They made their way through great, echoing caverns full of steaming water, and tiny chambers full of deep, shimmering water. They walked on open paths, and passed over thin ledges barely wide enough for feet to cross. The rats vanished here, but now they met a new foe.

  Jack was the first to spot it: a wispy orb glowing pale and translucent on the horizon, flitting here and there like it had a mind of its own. It vanished, flying out of sight before he could point it out to Jordan.

  He didn’t need to wait long, though. The wisp reappeared not two minutes later, with a companion this time. They descended from high above the party, letting loose a barrage of magical attacks. Jack felt a strange, tingling, almost stunning sensation sweep him with each hit. It wasn’t enough to freeze him in place, but it did hamper his movement.

  He drew his sword, but Jordan said, “You need magic to fight wisps. Steel won’t do it.”

  He thought she’d missed a perfect opportunity for a pun about his sword not cutting it. But as his health meter slowly ebbed away, puns took a backseat to survival. He switched to fire magic, and shot a quick succession of fireballs at the phantasm nearest him.

  It went up in a flash and a literal puff of smoke with the third hit. By then, Jordan had already dispatched the second. Jack searched the ground for some kind of corporeal remains – specifically, in case they’d dropped any loot. But he found nothing. “What the heck?”

  “Those are the souls Arya mentioned, serving their time in perdition.”

  “They didn’t drop any loot.”

  “They’re basically ghosts, Jack. Ghosts can’t carry anything.”

  He harrumphed. He’d played plenty of games with ghosts in them, and he’d collected everything from items to wizarding ingredients from their corpses. “If ghosts are too insubstantial to carry anything, they shouldn’t be able to hurt you, either.”

  She shrugged, though, like the point didn’t bother her. “Keep your eyes open: there’s going to be a lot more of them.”

  He harrumphed again, thinking of extensive fights that would yield no bounty. Which is exactly what happened. Soon, they were running into packs of four, then eight, and finally a dozen at a time. They seemed to be prowling the caverns, hunting for travelers.

  Dutifully if not patiently, Jack dispatched all he came into contact with, with Jordan’s help. Shimmerfax’s horn must have been enchanted with some kind of magic, he realized, because the battlecorn’s melee attacks inflicted damage – as long as the wisps got near enough for him to be effective, anyway. Of their entire party, though, the ogre seemed the most out of his depth. He resorted to smashi
ng nine times out of ten – which, against any other foe, might have been his best move, since his magical attacks were fairly low level. But against wisps, he could smash and stomp as much as he liked, and he would do nothing. Still, the great monster’s antics distracted the wisps, which made Jack and Jordan’s job a little easier.

  They reached the bank of a dark, raging river a few hours later. Jack stared at it. “How the heather are we going to get across that?”

  “We should explore the banks,” she said, evasively.

  He nodded, and she headed off upriver. “So, what are we looking for exactly?”

  She shrugged. “Something to help us get across.”

  “A bridge? A raft?”

  She shrugged again. “Whatever it takes to get across.”

  “You really are the second Migli.”

  She laughed. “I’m going to take that as a compliment. You always need a bard on your team.”

  “Wait, a bard? Is that what he is?”

  “Of course.”

  He frowned. It made sense, since the dwarf’s primary function seemed to be singing. Still, he associated dwarves with warriors and smiths. Singing seemed more a human or elven pursuit. “A bard,” he repeated in a moment. “Why would the game start me out with a bard? Why not give me, I don’t know, a warrior or a mage?”

  “You needed to learn to fend for yourself. So you wouldn’t get too dependent on your companions.”

  Now, he snorted. “Well, I guess there was never any fear of that. Not with Migli as my only companion.”

  Jordan threw a grin over her shoulder. “Come on, grumpy. Get a move on it. We’ve still got a long ways to go.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  They headed upriver for a good stretch. The raging tempo of the water slowed, and its inky depths hummed rather than roared. Then they came across a patch of giant, glowing mushrooms growing on the banks of the river. There must have been two dozen that were larger than a human head, and a few dozen smaller ones.

  “Here we are,” Jordan said.

  Jack glanced around. As far as he could tell, they were about as close to nowhere as you could get: stone, water and endless darkness stretched before and after them.

  She gestured toward the mushrooms. “We can make a bridge out of these.”

  “A…mushroom bridge?”

  She nodded. “I guess it’s more like stepping stones. But yes. Come on, let’s harvest a few.”

  Jack watched her. She knelt over the mushrooms and popped the stems off as near the stone as she could, so that she was left holding a massive mushroom a good foot wide and two feet tall. “Look for flat caps,” she said. “That will make the crossing easier.”

  Jack still didn’t fully understand how mushrooms could be of use, but he did as she asked, filling his pack with giant mushrooms.

  “Grab some extra,” she said, “for the way back. Otherwise, we’ll have to go downriver to find another patch, and then back up river to make the crossing.”

  Jack did as he was bid, collecting just over two dozen mushrooms of various degrees of enormity. When he wrapped up, he found Jordan watching him, a bemused smile on her lips. “You don’t do things in half measures, do you?”

  He shrugged. “No point, is there?”

  She laughed and shook her head. “Well, now that you’ve cleared out the local fungi…”

  “I didn’t clear it out,” he protested, gesturing at some of the smaller mushrooms he’d left behind.

  She headed toward the water’s edge, and pulled one of the great, glowing trophies from her sack. She tossed it into the water, two feet off the bank. The mushroom bobbed then settled, its stem dipping out of sight and its flat cap moving gently on the slow stream. She stepped onto it, and the mushroom teetered a little. But its wide, flat surface stayed upright.

  Jordan dropped another mushroom, a stride’s length away, and stepped off onto it. And then another and another. “Come on,” she told Jack. “Follow me.”

  He did, with a lot less relish than she seemed to employ. She was smiling and laughing as the caps teetered and tottered under her, or rocked with the river’s movement. Jack didn’t smile or laugh. He didn’t enjoy himself at all. On the contrary, the whole business put his heart in his mouth. He remembered the rushing water, not so very far away; and he stared into the inky blackness below him, and wondered just how deep it went, and how fast the currents might be under the surface.

  Still, stiff-legged and covered in cold sweat, he made his way across. Shimmerfax followed while Jack caught his breath, leaping with a nimble grace from cap to cap. The ogre took up the rear, ignoring the mushroom path altogether. Instead, the great monster plunged into the icy waters, sputtering and grumbling as they rose up to his head. Then, he emerged: wet and dripping, looking and smelling worse for the wash.

  Jordan laughed, and Jack was again struck by how much fun she seemed to be having with this all. “Come on,” she said. “We’ve got one more leg of the journey left.”

  “Ah yes,” he remembered, “the ‘great darkness.’”

  “That’s right.”

  The great darkness was pretty much exactly what its name implied: a stretch of absolute darkness. Nothing – not Jordan’s light spell, or Jack’s fireballs, or even the mushrooms they’d stashed in their packs – could break the dark. They walked blind, with only the dim glow of the mushrooms on the far side of the river bank, at the edge of the darkness, as any kind of guide. Now, Jack wished he’d harvested more judiciously, so their light source might be a little bigger, and a little brighter.

  But the time for that had come and gone. And soon, even the faraway mushrooms faded into the eternal night. They ran into a wall, and Jordan said, “Use your hands. We’ll need to feel our way out of here.”

  So, groping blindly, going at a snail’s pace, they went on. The ogre whined in his familiar growling, grumbling tones. Again, Jack sympathized with the monster.

  On and on they went, in stillness and darkness. Then, Jack felt a shiver of something run through him, and his health dropped a few points.

  “Wisps,” Jordan called.

  “Where?” He threw a quick gaze all about, all through the void around him. He could see nothing.

  “You won’t see them. Just like my light spell, the darkness hides them.”

  Another shot hit him. “You mean, we have to fight bad guys we can’t see?”

  She didn’t say anything. She might have nodded, but, of course, Jack couldn’t see that. So, gritting his teeth and growling to himself – in a very good imitation of the ogre’s own protests – he spun around and shot fireballs in the direction he figured the wisp was coming from.

  He didn’t hear any sizzle of impact, or any low, electric hum of pain. So he moved to the right and shot again. Again, he heard no confirmation of contact; but the wisp’s aim proved right on point. Jack’s health dropped again. “Mother trucker.”

  Behind him, the ogre roared with pain and slapped his hands together loudly, and Shimmerfax snorted angrily. “Aim by ear,” Jordan called. “And if you’ve got any spread shot damage spells, use them.”

  Good advice, maybe, but easier said than done. Jack missed more than he hit, and he absorbed more damage than he dealt. But he had a lot more hit points than the wisps, so he survived just fine – if a little pissed off. “You know, this would have been a lot easier if that silly buns ogre had used magic instead of trying to swat them.”

  Jordan laughed. “Yeah. In retrospect, we might have been better off with Aderyn after all.”

  He nodded, though, of course, she couldn’t see him in the absolute darkness all around them. “How much longer do we have?”

  “A ways.”

  “Peachy.”

  They stumbled on in the darkness. Jack kept an eye on his compass. As it was a feature of the game’s inventory system, he could reference it at will. They were still heading in a generally southwest direction, but beyond that, he could tell nothing about where they were.
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  They ran into a few more clusters of wisps along the way, and fought their way through – Jack and the ogre grumbling in such perfect harmony that Jordan declared they must be long lost brothers.

  Finally, though, they reached the end of their road. Jack discovered it first. “Hold up,” he said. “I think I hear something.” Jordan’s footsteps came to a halt, and so did the ogre’s and Shimmerfax’s behind them. He did hear something, like the whisper of a faraway wind. “You hear that?” he said, frowning into the dark and taking another step forward. “It sounds like –”

  “Be careful,” Jordan interrupted. “There’s a –”

  Jack didn’t hear the rest of her sentence, though. The floor gave out beneath him, and he dropped like a rock through the air, screaming and flailing as he went. Bright light assailed his eyes, and wind rushed at his ears.

  Then he landed, sputtering and gasping in a pool. He got a mouth full of hot water for his trouble, and he kicked and splashed his way back to the surface and into the glaring light. He’d registered a little damage, but nothing too serious.

  As he blinked and sputtered, he realized that the light wasn’t really that bright. It was just a lot brighter than the absolute darkness he’d grown accustomed to. Cursing under his breath, he dragged himself toward the shore.

  A second later, he heard Jordan yelling, “Cowabunga!” as she dove like a cannonball into the pool.

  He was just pulling himself onto dry ground when the wave hit. He shook his head at her and pulled himself onto the shore to watch. He turned in time to see Shimmerfax falling from a pitch black ceiling. The horse whinnied and flailed as it went down, then sputtered and swam to the side. Jordan, meanwhile was laughing and heading toward him. “That was fun.”

  “Uh…Jordan? You better move. Quickly.”

  She turned, glancing back in the direction he was looking: toward the ceiling. The ogre had tumbled through the invisible aperture and was coming in for a massive belly flop.

  Jordan’s eyes bulged, and she swam hard for the shore. Jack scrambled to his feet to help her. She neared the edge, a few feet from his proffered hand, when the ogre hit.