Four: The Loot: A LitRPG/Gamelit Novel (The Good Guys Book 4)

by Eric Ugland

  “Destroying the forest.”

  “Just getting us some wood to build with.”

  “You know this is a trail almost five miles long.”

  I looked back behind me, and I had definitely underestimated things. Whoops.

  “Uh, yeah, that was, uh, not, I wasn’t paying attention,” I finally said.

  “That was you not paying attention?”

  “I have some skills.”

  “I would say so.”

  “Are you, uh, what are you doing out here?”

  “Lee asked me to find some downed trees, so we could get a little lumber. Nikolai asked me to find you.”

  “Ah. Well, success on both counts.”

  “Now we just have to haul a wagon out here to get these logs back to camp. Perhaps next time, stay a bit closer—”

  “I got this,” I said. “You just go back to camp, and tell them everything is fine.”

  She arched one perfect eyebrow at me and shot me a smile that made my heart go a little faster. “Oh?”

  I nodded.

  She shrugged.

  I was great at this whole socializing thing.

  “As you wish, my lord,” she said with just the hint of a curtsy.

  Then she sashayed away, tails flouncing along with her.

  I watched her go for a moment, then got to work. Work which now involved truly testing my strength. I cut all the branches off the trees, then got a rope around the trunks, and I pulled them along with me, adding each tree to the group as I went. I got up to ten trees until the weight got somewhat bothersome. Worse was just hauling the trees themselves. These weren’t the biggest trees in the forest; I’d left those alone. I’d taken some of the smaller ones out, the ones that were under ten feet in diameter. So the weight really wasn’t the determining factor. It was more the bulk.

  Needless to say, it took the rest of the day for me to get the wood back in range of the camp, and then the next day to stack it all and get it ready for working.

  Three days in, and we had three buildings up. One was a mess-hall, one was the longhouse, and one was a large barn. But then we started coming up against problems. Not just that the gravlux kept trying to eat the horses.

  The first was materials. We needed more. We had plenty of raw logs, but not much finished lumber. We had little in the way of nails, or of any metal objects. Those had largely been used up already. And, though our stock of food was robust, an end was in sight, especially if we continued eating the way we had. Lee had negotiated several deliveries and purchases with farmers near us, but in order to get that food, we’d need to get the tunnel built.

  And that brought up the tunnel.

  The biggest pain in the ass.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  What Essie had done that first day was pretty remarkable in and of itself. Essentially, she had marked the path the tunnel would take all the way through the mountain, so if one were so inclined to pick up a pick and hammer at the rock, you’d be able to see where to hit. And, she had hardened quite a bit of the tunnel already, so even if you were overeager, you’d likely be unable to do much damage to the tunnel surfaces. That said, it was a monumental undertaking for a single day, and it had drained her quite completely. While her mana had returned, she was still suffering some of the ill-effects of taking her mana down to zero more than once in a single day. Apparently that was rather dangerous for Mages. Or Mancers. Whatever.

  So, day three was the next day she started back to work on the tunnel, and that’s when I joined up with her to see how I’d be able to move the project along.

  “Thing is,” she was saying, “there are a number of ways we can do this. I just have no idea what the most efficient method might be here.”

  “What can you do?” I asked.

  “Are you asking me what spells I have?”

  “Yes.”

  “Loads.”

  “Okay, let’s pretend I know nothing about magic—”

  “Would we need to be pretending?”

  “No, but I was being polite.”

  “I like it better when you are you,” she said with a smile. She was an inveterate flirt, and was already making enemies with half the camp, mostly the women. And some of the men. Her behavior was, well, challenging.

  “So tell me some basics.”

  “I can move the rock. I can transmute the rock. I can cut the rock, break the rock, shift the rock. I can move dirt and dig. I have a long list of what I can do.”

  “Can you make rock just disappear?”

  “And put it where?”

  “Magic it away?”

  “To an extent, but it is extremely mana-intensive.”

  “How much can you do?”

  “Perhaps a cubic foot.”

  “Okay, so that’s not great.”

  “No.”

  “What about cutting rock?”

  “I can do that.”

  “How much?”

  “A fair amount.”

  “Can you just cut out the entire tunnel?”

  “No. Even if I could, that would leave all the rock in place.”

  “Can you form the rock? Like, make a ring in it?”

  “Yes. I can shape the rock.”

  “So try cutting out a big chunk of the tunnel and then shaping a ring on the front of it.”

  “What form of ring?”

  “Something I can grab.”

  “You are going to haul it from the tunnel?”

  “I’m certainly going to try.”

  “This I would like to see.”

  “Let’s do it.”

  She reached out and touched the rock and muttered a little something. Then she sent a pulse of light and energy into the mountainside. There was a loud crack, and I could see that a section of the tunnel was now free. She pushed her hands into the rock, and almost as if it was soft clay, she shaped the rock into a handle. Then she stepped back and gestured that it was my turn on stage.

  I walked up to the rock, and looked at it. I had no idea how thick it was, but I could tell how tall and wide it was. Wide. Tall. Big.

  Reaching out, I grabbed the handle, and I gave it a soft pull.

  Nothing.

  Essie laughed.

  I smiled, and then dropped into a better form, getting my legs ready. I pulled again. My arms snapped tight, muscles taut, veins bulging across my body. A seed of doubt bloomed within. Was I— but then the rock moved, a little.

  A gasp from Essie.

  And I went to work, pulling and heaving and getting all my strength to bear on the damn rock. And, after a grueling stretch of work, I got a chunk of stone out. It was about ten feet thick, and the tunnel was about twenty feet wide at the base and about twenty feet wide at the top.

  Despite my lack of stamina, after pulling the rock out, my arms felt wired, jittery. Like after a truly intense workout.

  I shook everything out, and tried to ignore Essie staring at me.

  “Okay,” I said, “one down, 5,279 to go.”

  Essie ran off.

  I sighed, realizing that this was going to take a long fucking time.

  Lee walked up and looked over the giant block of stone. It was pretty neat to see, this perfect section of granite pulled out of the mountain. You could see all the striations and the color patterns. Coggeshall was going to have the best countertops in the Empire.

  “You know how much this weighs?” Lee asked.

  “Nope,” I said.

  “Granted, this is an estimate, but somewhere north of 170 tons. That’s like a blue whale and a calf.”

  “Let’s not tell anyone about this.”

  “Essie already is.”

  “Fuck, man.”

  “You can’t keep these things quiet in such a small group.”

  “I was going to try.”

  “Probably best not to. The rest of the group already tells enough lies about you as is.”

  “Have you put a stop to it? Pointed out the truth?”

  “That’
s a bit more challenging. They don’t like to listen to me — they have begun to suspect I am from the same world as you.”

  “You are.”

  “Yes, well, they also assume I have hidden powers like you do.”

  “I’m sorry, man.”

  “I’m not. They will come around in the end. See that I am just a man.”

  “Whereas I am what?”

  “I think you’re well on your way to becoming a legend.”

  “Let’s, you know, can that talk.”

  Lee gave me a sly smile, then went back to looking over the block. He had a measuring tape out and a small piece of chalk, and he was making marks here and there.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Getting everything set for the mason to come and start cutting blocks. Then we can find a spot to put everything.”

  “Pretty sure Essie can just cut this up—”

  “She can, but it’s not the most efficient use of her time right now. She needs to be cutting out the tunnel. And we need to get this out of your way so you can pull out another one. And we have to cut it to move it, considering no one else can do the impossible like you can.”

  “Hush.”

  The rest of the day was spent in the tunnel pulling out blocks of rock. We realized rather quickly that it was smarter to do smaller chunks, largely because it required a certain amount of monkeying about with the blocks in order to actually get the big blocks out of the tunnel. Especially when we came to the first curve. It was a gentle thing — it had to be in order for the wagons to get around it, but no longer could I just pull out the whole big piece.

  We hung lanterns and candles along the way, even though I could see perfectly in the tunnel. Depending on the darkvision is why I didn’t really notice how poor Essie was looking after about three hours in. Her skin was grey and she was looking a bit groggy. Finally, when she started to tip forward, I caught her, and carried her unconscious form out of the tunnel. Carrying her around was starting to get just a little too common a practice for me.

  She’d burned all her mana once again. The two other mancers took care of her, and I jumped in to work with the rest of the group clearing the rock out of the way.

  Our lone mason, Conall, was working overtime shaping the blocks as quickly as he could, sacrificing quality a bit for quantity. We piled them up near our building projects, but as we lacked mortar and the appropriate bits for scaffolding, we couldn’t really put any of them to use quite yet. At our lunch break, I sat next to Essie, and I asked her about using her skills to put the granite bricks together, and that’s when she told me about stone.

  “I could,” she said, “but that would require turning all the granite to stone.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “What?”

  “Granite is stone.”

  “No, granite is a type of stone. But stone is stone.”

  “Explain.”

  “Like you are a child?”

  “That seems to work best.”

  She smiled at me, and I got the feeling she liked treating me like a bit of an idiot. Perhaps she thought it was endearing. Who knows? Still, it was often easier to understand things when people thought you were an idiot.

  “Granite is a specific kind of rock. Has a certain hardness and its own density, yes?”

  “Sure.”

  “Stone is a magical equivalent to all rocks. All stone is of the same color, the same density. And it is never quite as good as real, natural rock.”

  “Can’t you, like, connect granite to granite?”

  “I can, yes, but matching rock like that, or transmuting rock in that fashion, is extremely difficult. I have to know the properties of the both the rock I am starting with and the rock I am ending with, or I could muck it up and then it might not stick together. Many a building have fallen to dust from an overeager geomancer trying to make one stone into another. Also, it takes an immense amount of mana. And though I like to think I have quite a range of skills, I do not possess the mana reserves to pull off what you ask for. I could shift it to stone, but I do not think that would be as wise.”

  I sighed. Why did it feel like magic just made things harder?

  Still, by the end of the day, things were looking pretty decent. I actually managed to get a strength bump for all my hard work, +2, and it seemed that everyone else was starting to see the results of all this hard work in terms of their own levels and skills. All told, we were about a third of the way through the tunnel, we had plenty of stone and wood ready to go for construction, and three structures standing. People were happy, and dinner was hot.

  Naturally, that’s when something bad had to happen.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  It was the fourth night in the area when we first had an encounter with our neighbors. And like most meetings with neighbors at night, it started with screaming.

  Specifically, Zoey screaming inside the house.

  I was sleeping outside near the fire. I wasn’t on watch for once, but I was pretty quick to wake up. There were people running around everywhere, lots of shouting, torches being lit from the coals.

  What wasn’t there, Lily. Zoey’s little girl.

  Two dwarves had been on watch, a brother and sister who were both adults. They had seen nothing, but, from the rather guilty looks on their faces and the lines in their faces, I had the distinct feeling they’d been snoozing and not watching.

  A quick walk of the long house showed a major issue: someone had cut a hole in the wall. Small, about two feet by two feet. Big enough to get a child out, but not big enough to get a human in. This wasn’t an animal. And that made me angry.

  You have found a quest:

  Save the Girl

  Lily has gone missing. Or, someone has taken her. Save her.

  Reward for success: XP and the gratitude of your people

  Penalty for failure (or refusal): increased distrust and fear of you. Possible desertion

  Yes/No

  Naturally I picked yes.

  “NATHALIE!” I shouted.

  Her head snapped my way.

  “Get everyone in the house now,” I said. “Post guards outside. Guy, fix the hole.”

  People started to move.

  I knelt at the hole for a moment, and I thought about tracking. I’d done a fair amount of tracking in the real world thanks to years as a scout, and I knew I had a few levels in it now, thanks to the Dungeon, and I wanted to use the skill. I closed my eyes and mentally fortified myself, telling myself I knew how to do it.

  Opening my eyes, I could see faint glowing marks about the terrain. Lots of footprints, things I’d never been able to see before. But now, here they were. Some soft, a few bright. The brightest ones led away from the long house.

  Cold rage blossomed in me, and I started running.

  I heard someone say something behind me, but I was on the hunt now. I sprinted through the dark woods, seeing everything perfectly, following the bright tracks. Small footprints, but numerous. Maybe 20 sets. They weren’t moving that quickly; the tracks weren’t so deep. But, and this was most definitely a guess, they were trying to move about quietly. I lost the tracks here and there, but because there were so many of them, it wasn’t exactly hard to pick them back up. Plus, I could track at full speed, sprinting through the forest.

  Close to morning, I heard chattering up ahead. Creatures talking.

  And then, boom:

  Smashing! You’ve learned a new language: Dark Goblin.

  I stopped, quickly. Almost too quickly — I lost my footing and had to catch myself on a tree. It didn’t seem to interrupt my quarry though. They were intent on setting up a camp. Getting a fire going. And arguing over the appropriate way to cook their catch.

  A few careful steps forward, and I peeked through thick ferns. Creatures were were setting up a camp of sorts at the edge of a clearing, a spot where a large tree had fallen some time ago. The dark goblins were pale creatures, their skin a really gross off-white.
They wore metal armor though, and were much more muscled than their surface cousins. Long teeth, big red eyes, massive drooping ears. And their weapons didn’t look like they were scavenged — these guys were well put together. They had little Lily bound up and next to a circle of rocks where a hooded goblin was chanting something.

  The situation was complicated. I counted 16 of the white goblins, 15 that had armor of some kind and one that had a robe. The armored goblins ranged in size from human toddler to fifth grader, and it was very clear that the largest goblin was the one in charge. He was the one sitting down and barking orders at all the others. All of the goblins were within the fallen trunk of the tree, and all of them were armed with sharp blades. As soon as they detected me, I was sure Lily would be killed. I knew I needed to keep her alive, and that really limited my options. Not that I wish I didn’t need to worry about her — I wished she wasn’t in that situation and that I could just kill the little motherfuckers — just, well, it was a complicated situation and stealth wasn’t exactly my biggest skill set.

  I knelt and watched. Waiting. Letting them get comfortable. I pulled a few weapons from my bag, laying out all the battle axes I’d picked up in Vuldranni. Fourteen, none magical. Those I left in the bag. These were for throwing, and I was willing to accept I wouldn’t get them back.

  The goblin at the fire, the one in the robes, stopped chanting. Black flames leapt forth from the circle of rocks. Slowly, darkness spread from the flames, counteracting the morning sun. In less than a minute, the inside of the fallen tree was completely black, like a little slice of night in the day, and I could hear sighs of the goblins relaxing. They clearly didn’t like the light.

  “We cook her now?” shouted one of them.

  “Yeah,” the boss said back. “But keep her alive. I like them to scream and squirm ‘afore I eat ‘em.”

  Fuck.

  That pissed me off.

  I ran over the few strategies I had, trying to come up with something. Some particular strategy that might work, knowing that I had mere seconds to go on. I could sort of see inside the zone of darkness, thanks to my own darkvision, but being that there was daylight between me and the black, it created an interference of sorts. Hazy vision. I could, however, see the fire, and I could see a gross looking goblin trying to get a spit set up over the fire. I decided that was a good place to start.