Rise of the Crimson Order: A Crematoria Online LitRPG Novel

by Matthew J. Barbeler

  We traded blows until I shifted my weight forward and brought the end of my sword down into the soft spot between its head and shoulders. The roach hound's head lolled forward. Whatever was holding it upright gave way, and I gained a chunk of experience as it died. Blood pooled around its corpse, a sickly mix of white and red that reminded me of a candy cane.

  Ellie was fending off two of the beasts at once. She kept one at bay with her heavy shield and smashed her hammer down at the other.

  James's weapon seemed to be uniquely suited for piercing through the armor of the roach hounds. The wickedly sharp end of his rapier jabbed in and out of the armor of the beast attacking him, leaving small red-and-white holes of mush in its wake. There was already one dead roach hound next to James, and he was close to finishing the other one off.

  Ellie was struggling. Even though her hammer was well suited crushing the armor of the roach hounds, she couldn't get a clean hit in on either of them. All she was doing was keeping them at bay.

  I saw a message lingering at the bottom of my view that I hadn't noticed during the heat of combat.

  New weakness discovered for Insectile Abominations.

  Attacking between the chitinous plates where the armor is soft will reward you with a critical hit. This tactic will work against most insects.

  "Aim for the legs!" I said.

  "What?" Ellie asked.

  "Aim for legs, it's the place where their armor is weakest! You'll get a critical hit if you hit their weak spots!"

  Her expression changed, then so did her tactics. A critical hit on an enemy in most video games made it so that your attacks did at least double damage. Sometimes you did even more damage if you had a higher critical damage multiplier. I didn't know how it worked for sure in Crematoria Online but hitting a monster in a weak spot was a central mechanic to almost every video game I had ever played. They always went down quicker if you hit their weak spots.

  Ellie kept one roach hound at bay with her shield, while using her hammer to destroy the other roach hound's legs. After one or two decent hits, one of the roach hound's legs crumbled beneath it. Then another. As I ran over to join Ellie, she had managed to destroy four of the roach hound's legs and was just about to go for a killing blow.

  While she finished it off, I tried to distract the other roach hound that was trying to rip her shield from her arm. It was another six-legged roach hound, but this one appeared to have thicker armor than the one I had already killed. Despite the thick armor, it still had a weak point I could exploit.

  Using my forward momentum, I launched myself at the disgusting creature, focusing my entire body weight into the tip of my sword. The blow struck just behind the shoulder joint. The momentum carried me forward, sword lodged in the roach hound's body. We flipped together. It landed onto its side and then continued rolling onto its back. Its barbed legs beat the air, but in my tumble I had completely lost my grip on my sword!

  I ended up on my back in the rotten trash on the floor. The monster trashed, but it was stuck. My sword jutted out of each side of the monster, which stopped it from righting itself. If only it was like a real cockroach. Ellie brought down her hammer for a killing blow and I called out to her.

  I considered pulling my flintlock, but I doubted that I would have been able to load it in time. That damned thing was almost useless until I was able to use it more efficiently.

  "It's stuck on its back!" I yelled. "Quick, Ellie, come over and finish it off! Smash this thing!"

  Ellie's attention snapped to me. She stormed towards the roach hound trapped on its back and surged forward as she did before, shield raised. It was a great move for covering distances quickly. The battle-focused look on her face could have withered swords and melted steel breastplates. The hammer came down on the roach hound's head. I turned away at the last second as a great gout of pulped roach hound meat peppered my back.

  Great. Now my jacket was going to smell like trash and rancid roach hound meat. The roach hound's legs were still twitching as I pulled my sword out of its corpse.

  On the other side of the room, James had handily dispatched the other two roach hounds. Both corpses were marked by precise strikes where his needle-like rapier had pierced their armor.

  James flicked the residue from his sword. "Is that it? Is that all there was?"

  "Yeah," Ellie said. "I have no idea what I would have done if I didn't stumble across you guys. How's it going, Lucas?"

  "Let's just say I'm glad it already smells like hot garbage down here, but I'm alive. How are you doing?"

  "I'm okay. Still stuck here though. What level are you now?"

  "I'm-" I was about to say I was Level 2, but I noticed an alert.

  You have reached Level 3!

  You have received one Primary Attribute Point to distribute.

  "It looks like I just hit Level 3," I said. "How about you?"

  "Level 5. I solved some cases up on the surface before I came down here."

  "Did you solve the murder with the snowflake wound pattern?"

  "No, I-" Ellie's attention moved to the back of the room. "Is that what I think it is?"

  "Yeah," I said. "James and I were just talking about you and your unsolved case. Does that symbol match your wound?"

  "It's an exact match."

  James let out an exaggerated sigh. "Are you two going to introduce me, or what?"

  "Oh, right!" I said, feeling my cheeks flush. Where were my manners? "James Treborn, this is Eleanor, um, I'm not sure of your last name."

  "Rooker," she said. She offered her gauntleted hand to James. "Eleanor Rooker. Enforcer with the Eldin Judiciary."

  James took her hand and shook. There was a wry smile on his face. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Eleanor. Lucas, you left out one of the most important facts about Eleanor. You didn't tell me how gorgeous she was."

  Ellie's cheeks flushed three shades darker instantly. "So you just found this?" she asked, deftly changing the subject.

  Incredibly pleased with himself, James explained. "We're on the trail of a missing young boy, and that symbol seems to be linked."

  "This is connected," I said.

  "Your missing boy is connected to my murder victim? How?" Ellie asked.

  "The symbol painted here in blood was the same as the wound pattern," I said. "It's a good bet that the person who killed your victim and the person who helped the missing kid escape from the cell above are linked. They have to be."

  "Tangentially," James added.

  "The murder happened close to one of the entrances to the sewers in Banshee Cross," Ellie said. That's why I came down here looking. Plus, I figured there would be some good opportunities for leveling up down here. If I want to stay alive, I need to be strong."

  I looked over at James and tried to figure out whether he was hearing us talking about the mechanics of the Crematoria Online game world. He'd responded earlier when I asked whether he was a player, but not in the context of the game. Ellie and I had just mentioned levels and leveling up, and he didn't seem to register those words at all.

  "This world certainly does reward strength," James said. "But coming down here to find it? I'm not sure you're looking in the right place."

  "I didn't know where else to go," she said. "There were no leads. Just a body. I talked to a couple of other Enforcers about it, and they said it wasn't the first time someone had shown up with that mark on them. People feared it. One of the other Enforcers in the Halls of Justice said that I should seek out a man named Mordio who lived in the sewers. He said that Mordio would know all about any cult killings happening here in the city."

  "Cult killings?" I asked.

  James nodded. "This has a certain air of the unknown about it, doesn't it? This symbol has been tied to an act of the impossible and is now linked to not one but multiple deaths. You would do worse than to seek out Mordio. In fact, I believe that Lucas and I will be making that our very next stop. Would you care to join us?"

  Ellie shrugged. "I've
got nothing better to do, and there's strength in numbers. I think I'll stick around until we finish this, or I find a way to log out."

  "Ellie, I've found something out. Something big. I accepted a quest after we met. A hard quest, with a bunch of rewards. One of them is something called a Celestial Offering. If I get that item, I get to log out of the game."

  Ellie's face fell. "Are you serious?"

  "Yeah. I need to solve this case. I need to find the missing boy, and then I can get out."

  "If I help, can I get one too?" she asked.

  "I don't know. This is an Investigator quest, and I can't see that I can share it with anyone. If you come with us, I'm sure you'll be able to find some kind of quest line that will let you get your own offering."

  She considered this for a moment. "It's called a Celestial Offering?"

  "That's right."

  "Okay. Just confirming. I'll keep an eye out for that item. I'll stick with you until I get one of my own."

  James still didn't respond or acknowledge that he had heard what we'd said about the game mechanics. That was a good thing. Maybe the AI running each of the non-player characters were programmed to filter that kind of thing out. I'd watched enough bad science fiction movies to know what happens when the AIs figure out we're using them for entertainment.

  "So our next stop is finding Mordio. How exactly are we going to do that?" I asked.

  James grinned. "Mordio is the adviser of King Malidar Rattus; the Rat King."

  "The Rat King?" Ellie asked dubiously.

  "Yes. The Rat King. It seems as though fate has put you on a crash course with Lucas and I, my dear Eleanor. We were on our way to see the Rat King ourselves about this business already."

  "Well, what are we waiting for? Let's get going!" I said.

  "Not so fast." James held up a finger to stop us from moving. "Eleanor, did you happen to see any sign of a nest?"

  "Yeah. They were all guarding the entrance to something, but I started running as soon as they saw me."

  "I was afraid of that. We have one errand to run before heading down further under the world's skin. We must route the roach hounds and destroy their nest, otherwise, they shall be left to spread The Bleed."

  "What's The Bleed?" I asked.

  "Nobody really knows exactly what The Bleed is," James said. "We don't know whether it's a disease, a curse, some magical affliction, or maybe some kind of parasite that blends the boundaries between one species in another. If you become afflicted with The Bleed, then whatever creature you caught the damned thing from starts to become a part of you. Down here in the sewers Goliath Cockroaches and packs of stray dogs scavenge through the waste, and often the affliction is passed between them, causing them to bleed over into each other. That's why the roach hounds we fought were all different. Because they are all different."

  James walked over to the corpses of the roach hounds he had killed. Their heads were still intact.

  "You see how all of these roach hounds are different?" James asked. "Some of them have four legs, some of them have six. Some have compound eyes, some have mammalian eyes, and one of them even has eyes that are transitioning."

  James knelt next to one of the fallen roach hounds and turned its head towards us. The socket that should have contained a single eye was bulging out of with a multitude of eyes, each with its own sclera, iris, and pupil.

  "The damn thing didn't know what kind of eye it wanted, so it's half compound eye like a roach, half mammalian eye like a feral dog. The Bleed doesn't have a mind to make intelligent decisions. It just makes changes based on the two elements that it's mashing together. It reads the genetic material and just goes nuts."

  "How do you catch it? How do you catch The Bleed? Can humans get it?"

  "Absolutely. We are lucky that the vector for infection is quite easily controllable. You only catch The Bleed from consuming the flesh of another creature that is already afflicted by it. That's why you often see scavengers afflicted with it. They eat anything."

  Ellie looked like she was going to be sick. "There is exactly zero percent chance of me putting that roach hound meat in my mouth."

  I swallowed. "Seconded."

  "So, this roach hound nest, can you lead us there?" James asked.

  "Sure," Ellie said, then turned to me. "Who knows, I might get my own Celestial Offering for clearing it."

  "Let's hope so," I said.

  This detour would mean my own way out of the game was further away, but I didn't mind. We're both stuck here, and I would have hoped that if our positions were switch, Ellie would have done the same for me.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Stagnant Hive

  New Quest Available: Clear Out the Roach Hound Nest

  The marauding roach hounds took your group by surprise, but where there is one hunting party, a hive is often close by. Locate the source of the roach hound infestation and snuff it out.

  Do you want to accept the quest?

  I looked towards Ellie. Her eyes were unfocused, as though the same quest notification appeared in front of her.

  "Okay. I've accepted the quest," Ellie said.

  "Me too," I said, accepting it too.

  "We can't allow that corruption to go unchecked," James said.

  I quickly opened my menu and navigated to the Quests screen, and the new quest was shown there, selected as my primary. It was nice to go on a straight up search and destroy mission for a chance.

  Dynamic world events were one of my absolute favorite things in any video game. The ability to explore the world and uncover things to do organically felt so much better than just getting a quest from a hub.

  I closed my menu.

  "Help me drag those corpses over here," James said. "We can't just leave them here for something else to come along and eat. We need to destroy any trace of the Bleed that we can."

  "How?" I asked.

  "Just pile up the bodies," James said. "I'll take care of the rest."

  Together we all gathered the roach hound corpses into a pile. James rolled the sleeves of his jacket up to the elbow, and I was shocked at what I saw. From wrist to elbow his arms were covered in thick black tattooed lines. There were triangles, circles, and other geometric shapes all interlinked and connected across the surface of his arms. He motioned for Ellie and me to stand back.

  "Back away. This next bit might get a little bit messy."

  I took a couple of steps back. He didn't seem like the type to get tattoos, but I guess you never really could tell. Personally, I had a hard time committing to a haircut, so committing to a tattoo wasn't something I could fathom.

  James took a flask out of his jacket pocket and splashed a little of the contents onto the pile of dead roach hounds. He slipped the flask back into his coat.

  "Always keep some malt whiskey on you, kid. You never know when you'll need it. It's good to use as fuel for lighting fires, offering a curmudgeonly companion a drink, and numbing the pain when you're nowhere near an apothecary. Whiskey is a multi-purpose wonder drink! But right now, we need a fire."

  James began making some gestures with his hands. Circles, straight lines, and ornate curves. The palm of his right hand began to glow, and suddenly it erupted. The liquid flames writhed over each other, forming an almost perfect sphere of molten fire.

  James flashed that smirk of his in our direction, then threw the flaming ball onto the pile of roach hounds. The whiskey caught and acted as catalyst. The horrid creatures became a funeral pyre.

  "How did you do that?" I asked as I took a step back from the heat of the roaring flames.

  "I've picked up a few tricks along the way," James said, evading the question.

  "No, seriously, I want to learn how to do it. Is it something you can teach me?" I asked.

  James shook his head. "No. It's not something I can teach you. This is a curse."

  "I don't know about that. It looks pretty damned useful."

  "No, it's literally a curse," James said. He held
his tattooed arms up in front of me. "The ink they used was mixed with the blood of an Inferi. A demon. This particular demon had an affinity for fire, and they were trying to transplant that power over into me by infusing me with its essence. It worked, but I am damned now. I mean, I always figured I was, but now it's a surety. I won't be welcomed at the Alabaster Gate when I die, that's for sure."

  "The Alabaster Gate?" Ellie asked.

  "Sure. That's where your soul goes after you die if you've lived a righteous life."

  "Like heaven?" Ellie asked.

  James furrowed his brow. "Never heard of it. Is that a provincial thing?"

  I looked over to Ellie, who looked like she was considering her words, then thinking better of voicing them.

  "I think what Ellie is trying to ask is if the Alabaster Gate is like other afterlife myths? It's a place that you go after you die if you've lived a good life, right?"

  "Well, yes. But it's not a myth. The Alabaster Gate is real, just like the Oblivion Gate," James said, as though it explained the situation. I guess the confused looks on our faces made him realize that we had no idea what he was talking about, so he continued. "The Alabaster Gate leads to paradise, and the Oblivion Gate leads you into oblivion, into nothingness. You just cease to be."

  Was that what was going to happen to Ellie and me when we died in Crematoria Online? Would we be taken to the Oblivion Gate and delivered into nothingness? Not if I got my hand on that Celestial Offering first. To do that, we needed to focus.

  "Shall we get back to the task at hand then?" I asked.

  "The roach hound nest," Ellie agreed. "We need to destroy these monsters at the source, and hopefully there'll be some good loot."

  "If we don't kill them, their numbers will increase," James said. "It's a detour, but a necessary one for the good of the cities."

  "Cities?" I asked.

  "There's more to Eldin that what you see on the surface, kid. You'll understand soon enough."