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

by Eric Ugland

  Fast as I could, I drew a sword from the bag, and stabbed over the shield, slipping the blade into the fold of skin right around the talon, and shoving it down as hard as I could, hoping I’d cut right to the quick.

  There was a gasp from the ancient wyrm, and green blood came out of the wound. The matriarch snatched her hand away, and reared back.

  I peeled the shield from my side and tossed the ruined bit of metal onto the ground.

  Stepping sideways, I was trying to get a bit of the natural formation of the cave between me and the great beast, just as an extra bit of defense. I could feel my body aching from the hit, and a quick flick of my eye towards my HP bar told me I’d taken some damage. Who knows how much damage that hit would have done to me without the shield, but even with it, I knew I couldn’t withstand many more hits like that. Plus, I was currently out of shields.

  The wyrm was sucking in a great breath, so much so that I started to wonder if wyrms had breath weapons. I figured dragons did, that was just such a part of the lore, that they breathed fire. The wyrm I’d fought before had done nothing of the sort, but maybe that was because it was too young. Or too stupid. Or, you know, I’d jumped down his throat before he had the chance to use a breath weapon. All possibilities.

  It came slower than I’d anticipated. I heard the rush of air, and I could see, vaguely, the wyrm weaving its mouth back and forth through the air. But there was no flame. No nothing. For a second. Then the roiling greenish clouds came burbling towards me, like the footage I’d seen of World War One.

  Poison gas. I had no way to fight it. I had to run.

  I turned and burned, shouting to Fritz that he needed to run as well.

  Fritz was nowhere to be found, so I guess he was wise enough to know the wyrm would breathe poisonous air out.

  Despite having good scores, and sprinting as fast as I could, I couldn’t outrun the noxious fumes. As soon as they overtook me, I could feel burning. My skin was on fire, and I stumbled.

  My knee hit the ground, and then my hand, but I was still trying to go, to move forward. The cloud was dissipating, and though I could feel wetness as great blisters burst all over me, I knew that if I could just get out of her range, I could probably wait it out. If I could get out of combat, I could heal. I pulled myself along the ground, my legs really not working.

  My health bar was green, and it was dropping quickly.

  Finally, though, I got around the corner, and it seemed like the wyrm had decided to let me die further from her. She didn’t pursue. Combat was off, and I started to heal.

  Sort of.

  The poison seemed to be killing me at or about my regeneration rate, so I was stuck in the liminal stage, hovering right over death as the poison ravaged my system.

  Then my savior walked up to me. Fritz, standing above me, looked down at me.

  I smiled weakly, and reached an arm out to him, thinking he’d drag me out of the cave.

  “Help,” I said softly.

  He bit me instead.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Fucking monsters.

  His first bite took nearly all the flesh from my arm, leaving the bones hanging there like I was a well-cooked rib.

  I screamed in pain.

  And it counted as being back in combat, so my health started to plummet. Blood poured from me.

  “Why?” I asked, thinking death was imminent.

  “Try. Help,” came the reply as he looked me over, ostensibly trying to pick the next juicy morsel.

  “Help?” I screamed. “You’re killing me.”

  “Think.”

  I tried to think, despite the agonizing pain. Was this betrayal? There’d been nothing to indicate betrayal. I thought we’d been getting along. How was eating me going to help me—

  “Absorb,” I said, using my other hand to grab the manticore’s face.

  Fritz’s eyes closed, as if he was accepting his fate.

  “Fam-i-ly,” he said softly as he got sucked into me.

  There was some magical swirling, a bit of flashing lights, and some sounds that were right out of the Superbowl Halftime Spectacular. Then he was gone, and I had a little notification.

  Ability Gained: Poison Immunity.

  That was nice.

  The green tinge to my health bar disappeared, and my health started back up. I closed my eyes as my arm reformed, clenching my teeth through the pain of new flesh stitching itself together. Regeneration was a neat trick, but a fucking painful one.

  I might have taken a nap there, involuntarily. But it was safe enough. The matriarch seemed content to remain in her part of the cave, and no other creature was stupid enough to come into the cave holding an ancient wyrm.

  Except me.

  When I woke up, with a brand new arm, thank you, I stood up very slowly and worked the kinks out of my muscles. The new arm felt just like the old one, which was good. I felt pretty good.

  And now that I knew what was waiting for me at the end of the cave, I could take a moment and actually put together a plan, instead of running blithely and blindly along.

  I had to ask myself, what was my end-game here? To get more treasure? There was certainly some niceties about that. But if this was just more ancient coin, I’d be in the same position. I probably needed to just set up a smelting station and make ingots. Say that we’d found a gold mine. Probably would have also been a good idea to set up this city in the spring so we could get farms going instead of in the middle of fall. We were going to be royally screwed come winter. And a lot of people were counting on me to pull them through.

  Leaning against the wall, I thought about Lily. And her brother Mouse. I thought about how she’d looked at me when I found her tied up in the goblin encampment. That hope. That relief. I’d been her hero. I thought about Fritz, that he’d sacrificed himself so I’d have a chance to actually defeat the wyrm. I couldn’t let that go to waste. I couldn’t run, not after he’d done that.

  I knew I’d have to go in to fight the wyrm. At least long enough to scoop up treasure.

  Maybe I didn’t need to kill her. But I would have to steal from her. Where was the morality on that? The wyrm obviously had no real use for the treasure — it was just, you know, a collection. I was going to use the gold to feed my people. Surely I had the moral high ground. But did good guys steal? Was killing the wyrm any better? Kill the wyrm to get the loot?

  These questions were too hard for me. They were things I needed to ask Nikolai. Or Lee. He seemed to enjoy philosophy and inane questions.

  At that moment, I supposed that a good guy did what he needed to do to help others, regardless of what it required of him. It was time to go up against the wyrm.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  This time, I went in quietly. I took my time. I used stealth. And when I got close to the pile of riches, I stopped completely and knelt down. I looked around. I listened.

  There was virtually no sound save an occasional dripping.

  Kneeling there, feet from the gold, a thought occurred to me. I suppose it was because I was looking at something golden I was thinking of harvesting, but I began to think of the wyrm like a queen bee. This was honey. I was just harvesting the honey. Sure, it wasn’t a perfect metaphor, but I had to admit that it soothed my soul just a little bit. The wyrm didn’t seem like she was overly intelligent, not beyond a typical beast, so perhaps it was just, you know, me taking the fruits of her labor. In a way.

  I crawled across the stone floor until I got to the coins spilling off the pile. I wasn’t here to kill the wyrm, just take some gold. As quietly as I could, I started picking up coins and dropping them into my bag. It was slow going — trying to move gold in silence was a challenge, especially since most of it was precariously balanced on each other — and I couldn’t exactly climb to the top of the pile to start there. But, I realized there was a great way to expedite the process: use the magic of the bag. I opened it as wide as it could possibly go, and then I just scooped the bag along the pile. The coin
s just disappeared inside. Almost total silence. I was doing really well for about ten minutes, just getting massive amounts in the bag.

  Then, I got a little overconfident. I tried a new technique, putting the bag down on a pile.

  It worked. The whole thing disappeared inside. Which was a bit mind blowing, and certainly wouldn’t work with a regular bag. But, by going vertical, I could take everything that fit inside down to the stone floor of the cave below.

  But, as soon as I moved the bag, other coins rushed in to fill the empty space. And those coins made a heck of a lot of noise.

  Instantly, the great wyrm’s head popped up. Her eyes narrowed as she saw me.

  A great big intake of air, and she blew out the poison gas, so hard and so voluminous that my hair blew out behind me. I couldn’t help it, I struck a pose, ready for my romance cover photo.

  The wyrm was not impressed.

  It was, however, quite confused.

  The air was hot and moist, but there was no burning of any kind.

  I smiled, and then continued trying to get as much of the treasure into the bag as I could.

  Now, I’ll admit that I was more than a little overconfident in that moment, which is probably why I wasn’t paying attention when the wyrm smacked me. I went flying, hit a wall, and fell to the ground.

  It hurt. I hurt. A solid chunk of my hitpoints were gone, and I was having trouble breathing. Some broken ribs, but everything worked. But the ground was moving under me. And around me. I got my eyes to finally open, and I saw a horrible sight.

  There was a rift behind the treasure pile. The floor of the pit was covered with small wyrms. Young things. Still big, somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 to 16 feet long, depending on where you’d like to stop counting the body and start counting the tail. They were very interested in their new plaything, and immediately began moving towards me, mouths open.

  Mama had given the babies a snack.

  And talk about babies. They were everywhere. Tons of them.

  Above, I could see Mama Wyrm looking down at her kids, waiting for them to eat me.

  Oddly, I wasn’t exactly keen on that idea.

  The first one came for a bite, and I smashed my fist down on its head. The creature bit its tongue off and squeaked.

  A roundhouse punch to the next one, and a few kicks to make space. I reached into the bag and pulled out an axe, my go-to weapon.

  I swung overhead and split a wyrm in two.

  Being young, they were stupid, and they continued to swarm, excited by the blood. Some of the wyrms even began to feast on their litter-mates. (Do wyrms have litters?) I swung again, and this time, I drove the axe through two wyrms. I had to kick to the side as some were getting a little close, and then I abandoned the big battle axe and instead pulled out a short sword from the bag. The numbers were overwhelming, and I didn’t have the space I needed for big swings.

  With the sword, it was quick work. Jabs were fatal to the creatures, going through their mouths and out the back of their heads.

  I started to make some headway, using my free hand to pick up the occasional wyrm that got by me and throw it over my shoulder. I’d get a stomp in here and there.

  My death march got mama’s attention. She was angry, and she roared. That’s when I saw the rest of her body. It was in the pit with us. Hell, it made up one wall of the pit. Jeez, she was big. Like eat a jumbo jet and still have room big.

  She quickly determined I was too dangerous for her babies to feast on. Though, to be fair, I’d done a pretty good job at providing food for the surviving ones, since they didn’t seem to have any predilections against cannibalism.

  The ancient wyrm brought her head down to bite at me. But I’d watched how she’d worked. Her head was shaped a bit like a horse’s, which meant that as soon as I was close to her mouth, she couldn’t see me very well. I needed to get out of the pit, and I had a terrible idea.

  She snapped at me, and I dodged just out of the way, where I could still reach out and touch her. Then I got up close and personal with her pebble-y green skin.

  I jammed the sword in as deep as I could, feeling the steel blade stick against the bones of the wyrm’s snout.

  There was a roar, and a surprise jerk.

  I kept hold of the sword and shot up as the wyrm brought her head out of the pit. Then I let go and got to soar like a bird. That is, until I smacked into a stalactite high up against the roof. Acting on instinct, I grabbed hold of the protrusion, snapping my legs around the rock and holding on with all my strength. It was wet. And, if I remembered my science of caves, this was going to ruin the stalactite’s formation. Also, I hadn’t seen any when I’d come into the cave, clearly I needed to go further and look higher. Likely, the wyrms knocked everything over while coming and going from their cavern home.

  Mama Wyrm shook her giant head, the sword still stuck in her snout. One giant clawed hand came up and swiped at her nose, and the sword cut deeper, but came free and went spinning end over end into the darkest reaches of the cave. Green blood poured liberally out her face, and I swear I could see her eyes watering. Nose injuries always made me cry. It took a moment for her to recover, but then she scanned the cave floor, looking for me. She pawed through the piles of treasure, and then picked through her surviving wyrmlettes.

  The one thing she didn’t do? Look up.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  I hung there for minutes, and though it was unpleasant, it wasn’t overly difficult. Once more, I had to thank Mister Paul for his gift of strength. I waited. And waited.

  Eventually the Ancient Wyrm decided I’d gotten away. It probably would have been a good idea for me to walk away. Hell, to run out of that place. But, while I was hanging there, I had a moment to do some thinking. And another moment to count the wyrmlings. There were 112 still alive. I thought about the wyrm I had killed. The size, what it had been capable of doing. I thought about the hundred-plus wyrmlings down there. Even if just ten percent survived to a larger state, there was a very good chance one of them would head west. It was just nature — they needed to find their own hunting grounds or territory, and it was overwhelmingly likely, in my head, that conflict would arise between the peoples of Coggeshall and the wyrms. And, given the current battle-readiness of my folk, I could only imagine the wyrms coming out the victor. So while I hadn’t initially wanted to kill the Ancient wyrm, and frankly, still didn’t, I knew that I needed to kill the wyrmlings. And to kill the wyrmlings, I had to kill the ancient wyrm. Which meant I had to do some strategizing.

  The matriarch was almost directly below me. Her head lay on a pile of gold, her body snaking down into the rift and then who knows where. Coiling into oblivion for all I knew.

  I had a bag of treasure and weapons. I looked around the ceiling, hoping I’d find a giant stalactite I could use to crash into the wyrm’s head. That was a classic maneuver, one I’d read in books a hundred times. Well, probably not a hundred times, because I’m not sure I’ve even read a hundred books, but I’d definitely read it in more than one book.

  Oddly, that perfect set-up wasn’t here.

  There was just the one I was holding onto. It wasn’t that big, and definitely wasn’t that pointy. I need something that’d do more damage. Preferably all the damage. And it needed to happen before my poison immunity wore out. Which could be any moment now, depending on Typhon’s whims. The boon he’d given me was pretty shit in retrospect, and I started to wonder if there was a way to change it. Or get rid of it.

  Locking my legs as tight as I could, I let one hand go, and I reached into my bag, thinking of a spear.

  I got one, and pulled it out.

  It was remarkably awkward, but I had it. I looked over the weapon, and decided it wasn’t quite right. It was a pretty traditional spear. Long haft, pointy metal bit at the end.

  I put it back in the bag.

  What I wanted was something pointy, but barbed. Something that would be very damaging going in and nearly impossible to get out. I
figured I’d only have one good shot at damaging the wyrm matriarch, so I needed to make it count.

  So instead of a spear, I thought of a halberd. There were several we’d pulled out of the bag when we emptied it, but I couldn’t remember if I’d put any back.

  But my hand felt something. When I pulled it out, I saw immediately that it wasn’t perfect but it would have to do. There was a big pointy spike, a long haft, and an axe head on one side and a hammer on the other. If I got really lucky, I’d nail the creature and get the hammer and axe heads lodged on the other side of a bone. If not, well, I’d probably get eaten. Or smushed and then eaten.

  I got one hand around the halberd, pointing down. My other hand and both legs held onto the stalactite. I leaned my body out, trying to aim.

  And then I jackknifed off the stalactite, driving my body down while riding the halberd.

  Flying, once again, then stopping rather suddenly.

  I’ve never viewed luck as a dump stat, mainly because there are so many occasions in which it’s pulled my ass from the fire. As in this moment, where the halberd pierced the wyrm matriarch’s head, going all the way through the brain and into the floor beyond, where it stuck into the stone.

  There was some thrashing around, but the halberd held, and the matriarch couldn’t rid herself of either me or my weapon. As her blood and brain fluid sprayed forth in the worst possible wash, she died.

  It wasn’t pretty — it was actually gruesome — but it had been effective.

  GG! You’ve killed an Ancient Forest Wyrm (lvl 67 Matriarch).

  You’ve earned 29756 XP! What a mighty hero you are.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Huzzah! Against all odds, you have reached Level 23! You receive 3 attribute points to distribute in the next 36 hours or you lose them. Dare to believe you can survive, and achieve greatness. Or don’t.