The Great MacGuffin: A LitRPG Adventure (Beta Tester Book 1)

by Rachel Ford

  The dwarf outpaced him as per the norm, and got on the boat a good thirty seconds before he did. By this point, he’d already apparently secured their passage, because the boat at once began to move out.

  It was a steam powered boat – the sort of thing that most definitely would not have been sailing the seas during the medieval period. But as Jack watched the approaching horde of angry, armed guards, as he saw the upraised fists and blades, and as the occasional arrow whizzed past his head, he didn’t get too hung up on details and historical accuracy. On the contrary, he shouted, “Faster, faster dangnabbit.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jack’s last view of the coastline was Elise blowing kisses at Migli, and the mayor and his horde of goons racing back and forth, trying to launch boats before the escapees got too much of a lead.

  The captain laughed at their efforts. “Don’t you worry, adventurers. They’ll never catch this old girl in time. Not if they had hours and hours to do it. The Lady Luck’ll outrun anything they’ve got.”

  His name was Cap’n. That was all he volunteered, and Jack didn’t feel like peppering him with questions. Or doing anything, really, that might offend the other man.

  Cap’n had forearms like tree trunks, and hands as big as bowling balls. He stood a good seven or seven and a half feet tall, and rumbled more than he spoke. His laugh was particularly hair-raising. Jack had never actually exchanged witticism with a bear, but he figured that if bears could talk, they would have sounded something like Cap’n did when he talked and laughed – deep and guttural, with the sound rising from his stomach, booming in his barrel chest, and finally blasting out of his mouth, loud and confident. So if this titan wanted to be called Cap’n, well, Cap’n it’d be.

  Cap’n told them the trip would take two days and two nights. “The island yer headin’ to be a place of untold danger. Only the bravest or most foolhardy venture there. Which ye be, I reckon we’ll find out.”

  “Well, the latter, I hope.”

  Cap’n seemed a lot less sure than Jack, though. He hmm’ed over it, and then said, “I hope ye stocked up on provisions before we left. That was the last major port between us and the island.”

  Jack nodded confidently. Sure, he probably could have allocated his money a little more judiciously. But he was already ridiculously over-levelled for this part of the game anyway. So what if he didn’t have a healing spell? He’d be just fine.

  He was feeling pretty good about life, especially once Cap’n told him, “By the way, the boat’s outfitted with all kind of tackle and rods. If fishin’ be yer sport, yer in luck on the Lady Luck.”

  Jack didn’t like fishing in real life. He threw up at the idea of impaling worms. Even artificial lures made his stomach turn a little. Not that there was anything inherently wrong with them, but they inevitably got him thinking about real worms, and that in turn brought him back to a particularly horrendous childhood memory of the one and only time he’d been fishing. That was one half of an earthworm that would haunt his dreams forever.

  So in real life, Jack wasn’t any kind of angler. But in videogames? Well, in videogames, you didn’t deal with bait – even the artificial kind. In videogames, you just cast a line and waited; and sooner or later, you ended up with fish in your inventory. No bait, no fish guts, no unpleasantness at all.

  That was the only kind of fishing he liked. So he grabbed a rod and scouted out a nice vantage to fish from. Migli, he saw, had already made the acquaintance of the captain’s daughter, a young woman called Beatrice. He was laughing and joking and flirting like he hadn’t seen a woman in ages.

  Jack shook his head. So much for true love, and his ‘lady fair.’

  Still, if it kept Migli out of trouble – and by trouble, he meant out of his way – he was happy with it. He positioned himself on the opposite end of the ferry, as far away from their giggles as possible, and cast his line.

  He had spent about twenty minutes fishing when a thought entered his mind.

  You can sleep to pass the time.

  He figured he would, but not for a while yet. The fish were biting like crazy, so he was going to keep harvesting fillets until he got bored with it.

  Then everything paused. The ferry froze in place. The steam rising from its stacks froze too, and so did the frothy white water of the boat’s wake.

  He glanced around. “Uh…”

  “Jack?” a voice called, seeming everywhere and nowhere at once.

  He recognized the voice. “Mr. Callaghan?”

  “Hey Jack, that’s right. Call me Avery. Sorry to interrupt your game like this. But I promised you I’d let you know when we had good news.”

  Jack’s day felt even better. “Right. I’m getting out of here?”

  Avery laughed. “You are indeed.”

  “Awesome.”

  “My guys have an update. It’s going to scrub the patch completely and refresh the impacted routines. It’ll take a while to install – a few hours, by our estimates, since we’re installing on an active game. But when it’s finished, you’ll be able to go home.”

  Jack whooped with delight, and thanked Avery profusely. The corporate man laughed good-naturedly and demurred at the praise. “I can’t take credit for it, Jack. It’s the programmers who do the work. I just get to be the guy who tells you the good news.”

  Avery stayed on the line for a few minutes longer. He didn’t have many details, and Jack didn’t have many questions. He was too elated to get bogged down on the technical side. He was getting out, and that was all that mattered.

  It seemed to be all that mattered to Mr. Callaghan, too, because he seemed just as delighted as Jack. But eventually, he had to go. “You keep on playing, Jack. I’m going to unpause this thing. And don’t worry about what we’re doing. You just have fun.

  “I’ll hop back on here as soon as it’s go time.”

  That, of course, was easier said than done. Jack felt full of restless energy. The game didn’t hold his interest anymore. Fishing – even the neat, sanitized version he so enjoyed – bored him to tears. He didn’t care about collecting fish filets. He was getting the hell out of Dagger of Doom. He couldn’t think of anything else.

  He prowled the deck for a while, trying to stay clear of Beatrice and Migli. He exchanged a few syllables with Cap’n, but other than a mediocre pirate accent, the other man didn’t have much to offer. His conversation routines were limited to a few snippets that he’d loop through.

  As if sensing his frustration, the game reminded him,

  You can sleep to pass the time.

  Jack decided to do exactly that. He found his cabin and lowered himself into his bunk. Then he shut his eyes and fell asleep to the rhythmic rise and fall of the waves.

  He woke sometime later. He wasn’t quite sure when. He felt disoriented. At first, he thought it must be the update. But a thought entered his mind:

  Your rest has been interrupted. You wake feeling disoriented.

  He frowned. What the…? That was a far cry from the more familiar you wake feeling refreshed gambit.

  The room was dark. The sky outside his window had gone black. He heard heavy, angry breathing.

  “What’s going on?”

  “You,” a deep, growling voice said. It sounded familiar, but he didn’t at once recognize the speaker. “You’ll answer along with him.”

  A giant pair of hands seized Jack, hoisting him out of the bed like he wasn’t more than a ragdoll.

  “What the heather?” he demanded.

  “You can join him in the drink,” the voice growled.

  Jack blinked, placing the sound. There couldn’t be two people with a voice that deep, that bearlike. “Cap’n?”

  “Aye.” Jack felt the big man fling him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. “It’s Cap’n, alright. You thought you can pull that on my ship, eh? You thought your friend could dishonor me own daughter on me own ship, and get away with it?”

  He felt a blast of cold air and heard his ca
bin door open. He heard footsteps and saw lantern light outside. He realized he was being carried out, onto the deck.

  “Wait, what’s going on? I have no idea what you’re talking about, Cap’n. I’ve been asleep.”

  “You’re lucky I don’t castrate you – the pair of you.”

  Jack gulped. “Uh…yeah, please don’t do that.”

  “I’ll leave you for the fishes instead.”

  They were headed to the side of the ship, and now he yelped. “Oh…that’s definitely not necessary either.”

  The captain wasn’t persuaded, though. Nor did Jack’s attempts to physically outmaneuver the other man make a jot of difference. Cap’n held on tight, and when they reached the side of the boat, lifted him high in the air. Then he cast him, like someone might throw a football.

  Jack flew, screaming, through the air, and plunged into icy black waters. Sputtering and gasping, he struggled to rise above the waves. The steamboat had already moved on. It seemed little more than a dark silhouette and a handful of lanterns against a black, starless sky. Cap’n was shouting over the side, yelling something about hoping they learned their lesson.

  He had no idea what lesson the other man had been talking about. For a long moment, he sputtered, trying to clear his lungs of water, and shivered, trying to adjust to the temperatures. The day had been warm. The water was anything but. It felt just warmer than freezing.

  “Sir Jack?” a voice asked.

  He yelped, spinning around in the darkness. He saw a squat, bobbing silhouette on the water. “Migli?”

  “Aye. What wicked tidings are these, then, that my good friend is consigned to the same perilous fate?”

  Jack glared at the dwarf. “This is your doing, isn’t it?”

  “Mine? Nay. I had nothing to do with it, or little enough anyway.”

  “It was you. He said something about dishonoring his daughter. You’re trying to tell me that wasn’t you?”

  Migli laughed sheepishly. “Dishonor? I wish we’d gotten that far. I had barely gotten a few kisses.”

  Jack wasn’t laughing, though. “You miserable little…” He stopped before he cussed. Not because he hesitated to lay the abuse on Migli. On the contrary, he didn’t know anything that could get past the profanity filter that would remain strong enough to convey the true measure of anger he felt. “That’s twice – twice – in a row now that you’ve gotten us kicked out of someplace – first, because you shagged the mayor’s wife. On their anniversary, no less! And second, because you tried to shag the captain’s daughter.

  “What is wrong with you?”

  “An unlucky turn of events,” the dwarf opined.

  “Unlucky? It’s practically sabotage. You couldn’t bleep up this quest anymore if you were actually trying to. Now what the heather are we supposed to do? We’re in the middle of the bleeping ocean.”

  “I recommend we swim.”

  “You recommend, eh?” Jack felt his fingers itching to wrap around the dwarf’s neck. “You recommend? I recommend you leave women the heather alone, so we stop getting thrown out of places.”

  “Look,” Migli said, seeming to ignore his criticisms entirely. “The sun’s coming up. Let’s head north. We can’t be too far from land.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  They swam for a ways. Jack followed Migli. He figured the coordinates had probably been programmed into the dwarf; and even if they hadn’t, well, he had no clue where they were headed anyway.

  The Lady Luck had long ago disappeared into the horizon. The whole world seemed to be a palette of endless dark grays and blacks. He could make out no distinguishing features – no landmasses, no ships, no…anything.

  They kept swimming. “How much further?” he mumbled, fighting to keep his head over the choppy water.

  “We can’t be too far from land,” Migli said. Which is exactly what he’d been saying since they got thrown overboard. Jack scowled into the night.

  Then, something unexpected happened. Something brushed him. It was a light touch, fleeting and gentle. But he hadn’t made a mistake. Something had touched his leg. He yelped and drew his limbs upward while he peered into the inky water.

  It was so dark he couldn’t even see his legs. “Migli, are there…things in this water?”

  The dwarf didn’t answer, though. He just kept swimming. Jack wondered if maybe he’d imagined it. Maybe it had been some kind of current, brushing his clothes in an odd way.

  He decided to follow the disappearing blob of shadow that was Migli. He’d almost convinced himself he imagined the whole thing.

  Then it happened again. A long, unmistakable sweep of some kind of limb or fin. “Mother trucker…what’s in these waters, Migli?”

  The dwarf didn’t answer, and Jack redoubled his swimming, kicking and paddling furiously. He started to gain on the other man. “Be careful,” the dwarf called over his shoulder, “these waters are reputed to be full of creatures. Dark creatures, terrible creatures.”

  Now, Jack was fully aware that this was just a game. But he felt wet, and cold, and terribly afraid. He could still feel where that strange appendage had wrapped around his leg. Consequently, Jack’s skin crawled. He pumped his arms as fast as they’d go – so fast, that he almost outswam Migli.

  Then it happened again. A long, snakelike form writhed around his chest. Jack screamed. Every sense in his body revolted. Eerie music floated along the horizon. He felt sick and terrified all at once.

  “Mercy be,” Migli said, “they’ve spotted us, Sir Jack: sea snakes.”

  Now, the dwarf started off swimming with his usual haste. Jack growled and beat his arms against the water. He kicked like a madman – mad with fear, and mad with fury. “Not this time, mother trucker,” he swore.

  A slithering form wrapped around one of his legs. He kicked all the harder. And he reached Migli, just as the dwarf started to pick up speed. He latched on to the other man’s belt and held fast.

  Migli swam like a devil, kicking up a tremendous wake behind him. Jack sputtered and coughed and clung on for dear life. They must have been moving at twenty or thirty miles per hour – a good four to six times as fast as the fastest Olympic swimmer, at their best.

  Videogame physics, again.

  He figured he wasn’t supposed to be going that fast. He figured Migli was meant to outpace him, and he was supposed to stay back and fight these monstrosities. The dwarf’s unhelpful hints about using water spells only reinforced the idea. But he had no water spells, and he sure as heck wasn’t letting go. Not until they safely reached land.

  Which they did, much quicker than he would have guessed. A great, dark shadow rose against the horizon. And then the shadow began to take form. Over the splash and roar of Migli’s wake, Jack could see palm trees and sandy beaches.

  Now and then, one of the sea snakes latched onto him. They had razor sharp teeth and would sink those teeth deep into his flesh. He’d feel his hit points dropping. But he didn’t let go, not even to swat them away. He writhed and angled himself so that the spray beat against the serpents. And eventually, they let go.

  Then Migli made land, dragging an exhausted Jack behind him. He didn’t let go until they were a few steps onto the beach. Sea serpents writhed and hissed at the edge of the water. He wheezed and panted and glared daggers at the undulating mass of bodies.

  It took a few minutes, but once he’d recovered himself enough to do so, he pushed to his feet and took aim at the first serpent to raise its head above the water. Then he loosed a fire spell. Flame shot from his fingers and darted across the distance between them.

  He heard a satisfying sizzle as it hit the snake. But the serpent ducked below the waters, and the flame extinguished.

  “A good water spell’s what you need,” Migli said, just like he’d been saying all along. “Control the water, and you control her vermin.”

  Jack scowled at him. “Is this the place, the island?”

  “We’re at an island, to be sure. But not the island. T
hat’s a good several leagues from here, I should think.”

  “How the heather are we going to get there, then?”

  “We’ll have to figure something out. We’ll need some way of getting across the water.”

  “If only we had…I don’t know…some kind of boat that could take us right there. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

  Migli ignored his sarcasm, again. “Ah. A boat. Excellent thinking, Sir Jack. We need to find a boat.”

  Jack turned his eyes to the beach around them. It was a sandy place, with little coves and lots of palm trees. And not a single habitation or dock anywhere in sight. “Right. I’m sure there’s tons of those around here.”

  “These waters have been full of mariners since time immemorial. There’s bound to be a craft here or there.”

  That seemed a deeply dubious proposition to him. If a craft had washed up here, he doubted it would be seaworthy. And if it had come here under the command of some person or group, he doubted it would have remained; they would have set out again, as soon as they got whatever they wanted. No one just left boats at random islands.

  Still, Migli started marching northward along the shore confidently, and so Jack followed. He was hungry, and waterlogged, and his muscles burned with fatigue. He figured it would be time for another sleep soon – a real sleep.

  But, they were working on the update. He wouldn’t go to sleep during that. So he plodded along after the dwarf.

  The sun continued to rise. The day got hotter, and more humid. Insects flitted around them. Jack swatted them away, and fished through his pack, settling after a space on a demon boar steak.

  He studied it for a long time before he actually took a bite. It looked alright. It looked like any other pork steak he’d eaten. It smelled like it too.

  Finally, he worked up the requisite courage, and took a bite.

  It tasted fine. Even better, it tasted pretty good. He breathed out a sigh of relief and went to take a second bite.

  Then the game froze. “Jack?”

  It was Avery’s voice, and Jack swallowed his mouthful of food. “Avery? Are we ready?”