Neverstone: A LitRPG Adventure (The Mad Elf Book 1)

by Ned Caratacus

  Era lifted off the ground, and made his way toward the forest canopy. Before he rose too high for the eldritch horsewad to hear—

  [Era — Jimmy Rustler]

  —the fencer belted out a mighty, resounding, baritone, “The glue industry did nothing wrong!”

  [Horse Elemental's Jimmies Were Extremely Rustled!]

  As he ascended, Era heard a poorly-composed fugue of enraged whinnies approach the riverbank below.

  Once the fencer was over the treeline…well, had this scene been set a few centuries earlier, he'd have had a breathtaking view of stars and constellations to witness above. But being that this was the Age of Light 5211, Era looked up and saw haze, ozone, two or three stars, additional haze, and was amazed anyway.

  In such a peaceful, quiet, and a horse elemental free environment, the fencer could finally gather his thoughts, plan his next move—

  [Horse Elemental — Fling]

  —and wonder why a dark, oblong, and gigantic projectile was approaching him from above.

  Hey, what's that dark, oblong, and gig—LOG! It threw a log. It can throw logs. The tentacles are that strong. Uh, crap. I'm boned. Okay, um, new plan, emergency, gonna die, four meters away, three meters, two, use the THING!

  [Era — Trap Strike]

  Without thinking, Era jutted the sword out above him.

  [Impact damage!]

  [370 DMG to Era]

  The sword was hilt-deep in the side of a wet, rotting slab of wood. His hands stung from the force of it, flashing white as they held fast to the handle.

  Era was sent twirling down past the treetops toward the ground. He had four seconds to come up with a counter strategy.

  [Era — Log...centrifugal...toss? I guess?]

  The result wasn't a strategy, but to his credit, it was four second's worth of one. Aiming in the twirling direction of anything horse-like, Era unsheathed the sword from the log with a heartfelt kick.

  Once it was off, he visualized his sword as a parachute, closed his eyes, and braced himself. They better have birds in Paradisia.

  Era landed on the ground just as his descent grew slower.

  [Fall damage!]

  [130 DMG to Era]

  As for the log, it landed in the nearby river, where a familiar hoof-tipped tentacle retrieved it.

  The noise Era made into the damp soil was either a sob, a dry heave, or both.

  Meanwhile, Liv raced through the weeds and underbrush for any sign of Noah. She had a rough landing from the initial fling, but she was still conscious.

  Once she caught sight of her healer belly up in a clearing, she noticed that a few stray white pixels were beginning to float from his skin. Her chest tightened, and her breath quickened. “Pixel fading” was the first sign that someone wouldn't survive their wounds in battle.

  On instinct, she pulled a small glass vial of chemical vapors from her pocket. The cap of the bottle read, “unscrew gently to apply.” She broke it in half.

  [Liv — Second Wind]

  A plume of blue green vapors slithered from the glass shards and shot up Noah's nostrils.

  [Noah was Revived!]

  “Good mornin,' Livvy!” Noah said, his smile beaming as clueless as ever.

  “Still nighttime,” said Liv, hugging him. “Thank Gods you're okay.”

  “So, I wasn't?”

  [Horse Elemental — Leap]

  The sound of 72 hooves hitting the ground at once silenced Liv's reply. Noah was thrown into the nearby bushes from the force of the impact, and hidden.

  [Horse Elemental — This Thing Yours?]

  Era, still conscious but already starting to pixel-fade, dropped from one of the tentacles, falling limply next to Liv.

  “Hi,” moaned Era.

  “Hey,” said Liv.

  The core rose from the center once again; and with a hateful neigh, it gathered energy into its jaws.

  Liv let out a defeated chuckle. “Ah, well,” she said. “At least we won't outlive our friends, right?”

  “And I won't die alone,” Era said. He raised a fist toward her. “Not a bad deal. Death buds?”

  She bumped his fist with her own. “Death buds.”

  [Horse Elemental Core — Fresh Oats]

  And like that, they were both consumed by a boiling hot geyser of rancid, venomous oatmeal from the beast's maw.

  [4,237 DMG to Era]

  [Era was KO'd!]

  [6,327 DMG to Liv]

  [Liv was KO'd!]

  The heat became pain, the pain became suffocation, the suffocation became darkness.

  The darkness became silence.

  [Noah — Divine Intervention]

  [Era was Revived!]

  [Liv was Revived!]

  The silence became light, healing magic, and Noah's panicked screaming.

  “Sorry I’m late, I got here as soon as I could!” Noah asked, his staff still glowing from his trademark pick-me-up technique.

  “Is the horse elemental gone?” asked Era, prying himself up from the oat-soaked ground.

  “I asked it to leave us alone,” said Noah.

  “And did it?”

  Noah's coming reply had to wait. A massive maw of equine teeth opened and lunged toward the healer's head.

  [Templar Elite 1 — Anti-Therian Missile]

  A flash of light blinded the heroes as the elemental reeled backward into the trees from the blast of a rocket-propelled grenade. A chunk of its equestrian mass fell off in a collapsing wave of war molecules.

  [43,273 DMG to Horse Elemental]

  The core peeked out once again to let out a shrill scream of pain.

  [Templar Elite 2 — Anti-Therian Missile]

  Another rocket slammed into the beast's core.

  [64,334 DMG to Horse Elemental]

  [Horse Elemental was slain!]

  The beast faded into a hefty stream of experience points for whoever had fired the killing blows.

  Climbing over a small pile of decayed wood came a squadron of five members of the Knights Templar—the Ariesian army's strongest warriors. They were clad in layer after layer of white orichalcum alloy power armor and hidden electronics, rocket launchers in one hand, flaming chainsaw swords in the other. They were miniature fortresses with legs.

  “Chosen Three!” said the squad captain, as noted by the ten kilogram golden Argo statue on top of his helmet. “General Graveberry demands to speak with you. Come with us, and we'll take you to the Imperial City.”

  Even with his life saved, Era couldn't help but roll his eyes. I heard the Templars wore cheesy gear and had impractical swords, but actually seeing them is another thing.

  Chapter 4

  But Seriously, Vog This Guy

  Though it was in the far north suburbs of the Imperial City, surrounded by thrift stores and muffled gunfire, Templar Tower was the most iconic structure in the metropolis by far. Outshining the glory of even the Imperial Palace. At 129 stories high and shaped like a plate-glass sword that gleamed in the sunset, Templar Tower had it all. Barracks for the Knights Templar, ancient superweapons hidden in its huge underground vaults, and no fewer than twenty helicopter docking areas—it had its own voggin' indoor airport every ten floors or so.

  Era, having just woken up, was about to discover the base's most majestic treasure of all: the continental breakfast in Conference Room D5. “Continental” my ass. They had crêpes!

  After stuffing his face to the point of near-nausea, Era took a look around the war room. He, Noah and Liv sat at a semicircular table gazing at all manner of glowing red and blue statistics and figures flickering and changing with every server update. It was a large, horizontal computer screen, covered in a few layers of plexiglass. An unoccupied chair on the other side of the table was reserved for General Henry Graveberry, who was running a bit late.

  This looks more like a blackjack table at a casino than a military conference table. Maybe they finally realized that war is humanity's collective gambling addiction and remodeled the décor to that
end.

  Era saw the imprint that his fingertips left against the otherwise spotless plexiglass and tried to rub it out with the edge of his sleeve. The mark only smeared.

  “It's self-cleaning. Don't bother,” said the General, finally sitting down.

  Though General Graveberry was a withered old man who would have walked with a cane if he were a civilian, his unhelmeted head poked out from a two-and-a-half meter high suit of gold Templar power armor.

  The General smiled warmly under his thin, drooping mustache. “Now, any questions before we get started on your duties as the Chosen Three?”

  Liv shot a hand up.

  “Yes, Mystic Olivia-Mae?”

  “How do you move in that thing?”

  “Very awkwardly. Now, then. The basics...”

  It is far from naiveté to say that good always wins over evil; quite the contrary, in fact. It is a sad fact that we all must live with. This is because— as anyone who's served Mother Rosencrace in the trenches of Jauncliffe with me can tell you—there is one, and only one, way that the 'good guys' of history are decided: victory.

  The five year cycle of Dark Lords is no exception to this rule. 'Dark Lord' does not mean 'villain.' It merely denotes the less law-abiding of the two competing teams. Remember when Dark Lord Oleg “Eats Yer Eyeballs” Highmarch fed his three heroic opponents to starved weretigers? The Church of Aries claimed that the Gods had sent the 'corrupt' heroes to a fitting demise at the hands of a controversial, yet honorable, warrior.

  At any rate, stir the egg white/thyme mixture constantly for about five minutes, or until a foamy consistency is reached...

  — Lutero Gualtieri, “Five Ingredient Elvish Appetizers for the Holidays”

  A hologram of the Jade Crown—a ring of green, woven crystal patterns, carved with ancient goblin runes—rotated above the table as General Graveberry continued.

  “If the Dark Lord wins, the Jade Crown will grant him, or her, one wish—most likely, enslavement of the whole empire or some other ridiculous thing. But if you win, one of you gets a wish grant—”

  “Dibs on the wish!” said Liv.

  Noah silently kissed his original wish for a half dozen corgi puppies goodbye.

  Era, meanwhile, lay bent over the table, his cheek resting on the self-cleaning plexiglass as he tried to catch up on his lost sleep. Hey, y'know what? Perk of being chosen by the Gods: maybe waking me up is blasphemy now.

  “If you don't mind me asking, General,” Noah said, “who's our Dark Lord?”

  “As a matter of tradition, that is something you must discover for yourselves...” The General glanced towards the open door at his left side. Seeing nobody, he leaned in. “...is what I should tell you. But I'd rather have you prepared than follow tradition, so we have a lead.”

  “Hell yeah!” said Liv. A spark of magical energy coursed through her arms on instinct. “Let's hear it, then. We up against knights? Sorcerers? Goblins? Vampires?”

  “Worse.” Before Liv could shoot out a few extra guesses about dragons and robots, the General interrupted her. “What do you know about a reactionary militia called the GU?”

  Wait a sec...GU, as in “douchebags I was fighting on the train, GU?”

  Era's eyes opened, and he sprung up from the desk. A thin trail of sleep-drool came with him and clung to his shirt in a damp line. Dammit. And that's how you don't make a first impression, kiddies.

  An “incoming call” light on the side of Graveberry's gauntlet blinked, and the General pressed a metal finger to his ear, nearly breaking his unhelmeted neck in the process. “Oh,” he said. “Chosen Three, wait here a moment, would you? We've got a little emergency on our hands.”

  [Graveberry — Rocket Boots]

  A rush of flames and smoke filled the room as Graveberry hovered off the floor and rocketed into the hallway.

  “Does he need to use the rocket boots?” asked Era, coughing on the smoke.

  “Well, the suit does walk pretty slowly,” said Noah. “And maybe he was in a real hurry to (excuse the word, praise be to Argo, Light guide me to salvation) tinkle.”

  Suddenly, a gloomy old janitor passed behind them. As if on instinct, she paused from her floor-waxing to interject: “Actually, they piss in the suit.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Power suits can't be taken off, so they got these portable commode systems. Breaks down human waste into surplus biofuel.” The janitor sighed with satisfaction. Speaking as one of the poor devils made to clean out said commodes, any opportunity to gossip about her higher-ups was refreshing.

  “So, these Templar dudes got robot diapers?” asked Liv.

  Noah covered his ears. “I need a priest!”

  Era, meanwhile, poked away at the various buttons on the table. Let's see...does this thing grant access to—

  The hologram of the Jade Crown turned into a screen.

  “On this episode of Nordic Drag Queen Crab Fishing...”

  Meanwhile, hundreds of miles south of Templar Tower, the coastal city of Crestograd was about to become the tragic catalyst for the new Dark Lord’s campaign.

  In Crestograd’s outskirts was a white, triangular building with thin black stripes for windows. It was the Siege of Crestograd Memorial Hospital, one of the nicer ones in Ovinium that used actual medicine and surgery instead of healing magic.

  On the roof of a parking garage, with a clear view of the hospital stood Monostatos “Monty” Jones—the leader of the GU. A columnist in The Jauncliffe Sun Journal referred to him as “a muscle-bound warrior of 32 years, who embraces ancient traditions of battle and honor. Despite his controversial methods and mannerisms, he is a misunderstood, decent man at his core, and he ultimately acts in the world's best interests.”

  “My Lord,” said Thoric Jones, a bone-thin wizard of 26 years “He died three minutes ago, so you should probably stop harpooning him.”

  Monty looked at his second-in-command/younger brother/punching bag. An eight foot, two-pronged spear, called Lupus, jutted out from a pile of unrecognizable elf remains.

  Monty smirked. “I know, Thoric, I know. But it makes these real cool squishy noises.” He gave the corpse a few more pokes with Lupus to demonstrate. Then, he giggled.

  “That it does, My Lord. I'm just concerned about the blood getting on your cape.”

  “You say that like it's a bad thing!”

  Thoric pursed his lips. “It is, if it's more brown than red.”

  Monty turned to inspect the tan bear pelt around his shoulders and noticed the bloodstains that covered it in blotches; in the fur, they appeared reddish-brown. He let out a savage war whine. “Voggin' hell! Now people are gonna think someone took a dump all over my cape.”

  Thirty feet away, a monstrous black wolf the size of a rhinoceros let out a snarl.

  “Not Barney, we know!” called Monty to the wolf. “Barney's a good boy, only poops around the victims!”

  The wolf snarled again.

  “What, Barney, you smell something?” Monty handed his cape to Thoric with a quick, “Get me the grey moose pelt before we go live,” and ran to his wolf to see the disturbance. Danger? Fresh victims?

  As some of Monty's soldiers pieced together camera equipment, a little Ariesian boy, no more than six, stood at the edge of their concrete encampment. His clothes were tattered—probably a homeless kid, Crestograd was full of them. He stared at Barney, his face blank.

  “You there!” said a GU Centurion to the kid. “This area is now GU property. Turn back or we'll—”

  “Shut your face!” called Monty, who approached the kid and bent down on a knee to greet him. “Hey there, kiddo. Name's Monty. Who might you be?”

  “Greg,” said the boy. “I like your doggie.”

  Barney snarled, but Monty raised a hand to ease him.

  “Thanks. He's actually a wolf. Nordic Warg, to be exact. Usually, they only show up in Pohjola, where it's really cold, and eat walruses. But you don't look afraid of him. Are you?”

  �
�Not really,” said Greg.

  Monty smiled. “And like that, you're already a leg up on some of the useless bitch babies trying to join my army just when it starts to look good. I like you, kid.”

  “What's a bish baby?”

  Before Monty could answer, Thoric came with the grey moose pelt and draped it around his brother's shoulders. “My Lord. We're live in fifteen seconds.”

  “Yeah, okay,” said Monty. “Hey, Greg, you like fireworks?”

  “Yeah!” said Greg.

  “Then you're gonna love this.”

  “Seven seconds!”

  Monty sprinted to a makeshift throne built out of an elf's torn apart car, grabbed his spear, and sat with legs spread wide.

  That day, the one silver lining was that he was wearing his cargo shorts, instead of the kilt that he had originally planned on.

  YularTube — 1042nd Dark Lord Monostatos Jones Announcement

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  A master should never regret his powers.

  The wolf mourns not the rabbit—he devours.

  The blade mourns not the flesh—it only maims.

  The man mourns not the maiden—only claims.

  The slave in agony deserves no tear

  From he who knows no master and no fear.