PrimeVerse: Dose of Chaos: A GameLit / LitRPG Adventure

by R K Billiau

  “Sure thing.”

  “Maybe we should explore each path for a while before selecting one to go down further,” Kai suggested.

  “Which way first?” Carl asked.

  “LEFT! To the treasure!” I shouted. Probably too loud in case there were monsters. Everyone looked at me like there was something wrong with me. “What?” I asked. Kai just shook his head and started down the left path. We followed behind him, but only got a few yards in before we stopped.

  “Hudson, would you like to lead? Or perhaps let me use the light?” Kai asked. “I can’t see well enough with the light bouncing around behind me.”

  I paused to consider this, Kai having the light might make him less effective in combat if something jumped us. I drummed my fingers on the Mana Torch and felt a ridged line at the very base that I had missed before. It reminded me of the flashlights I had used on Earth, and I grabbed it and twisted. The Mana Torch grew in my hand, like an automatic police baton, and the light went out.

  “Crap!” I frantically began feeling the Mana Torch in the dark, pressing the button to no effect. I fumbled around and pulled out the blue disc from my inventory and placed it in the slot on the Mana Torch.

  “Hudson?” Madison asked. “Um, I don’t know what is going on, but we could really use that light back on.”

  “I know, I know. I’m working on it.” Now that the disc was in place, I pressed the button and the end lit up blue. Instead of a beam of light shooting out like the flashlight, the end lit up with a sphere of blue light, illuminating everything in a small radius.

  “Yes!” I shouted, happy to have figured the thing out.

  Congratulations! You have increased your Superconcious attribute!

  It made sense to me that you would gain strength attribute points when you did something... strong... strength-y? Whatever. But how did the game world know to raise your more esoteric attributes like Conscious, or Connection, or even Superconscious? Was messing about with magic stuff really all it took?

  “This is so cool!” My blue face didn’t hold back the huge grin. I was excited to get into more of the fantasy-esque elements of this game world, and a magical item like this thrilled me.

  With the blue light I was able to see the rod now; it had grown to over two feet and gained a slight bulge at the end where the light eManated from. Much faster than before I took out the blue disk, dumping us in darkness again, and replaced it with the yellow one, giving us a much easier to view light.

  “There you go!” I said and showed off the Mana Torch.

  “Okay, so I don’t have any idea what you were doing, but that is really cool,” Madison said as she eyeballed the glowing light sticks. “Can I check it out?”

  I handed her my light and she inspected it. “Why does it have a damage stat? Is it a weapon?”

  My eyes widened, I hadn’t even thought about rechecking its stats since it transformed, thinking it was just an accessory.

  Bright Lux Baculus – short staff

  15 bludgeoning damage

  +10 Accuracy

  +5 Agility

  (Consumes 3 Stamina per attack)

  ACTIVATE: Form a globe of light. Manadrain 2

  “Interesting,” Kai said, “may I see it?” I nodded and Madison handed it to him. He took a few swings. “The balance is good,” he said as he swung it around. “You could use this as a tanbō.”

  “A what-o?”

  “A tanbō. A style of short staff for fighting,” Kai said.

  “It’s just a stick, though. I mean, we’ve passed hundreds of sticks since we’ve been together, and I didn’t see you use any for fighting,” I said.

  “It’s not just a stick,” he said. “The balance is good, and the durability is very high. This could be an effective weapon in the hands on one who knew how to use it.”

  “Could you teach me?” I asked.

  Kai swung the stick around and performed some dangerous looking moves with it, the light bouncing wildly off the walls. “I could,” he nodded.

  “Wait a minute,” Carl said. “That’s great that you guys are all so excited about this, but shouldn’t we pick fairly who gets it?”

  I frowned at him. “Dude, relax. You got your spiffy dagger, even if we did roll on it, you would be out of the rotation.”

  “Well that’s not very fair,” he continued to argue. “I don’t even have a dagger using skill, I think-”

  “Enough,” Kai said. He didn’t shout, but spoke with a firmness that ended the argument. “You have won something from here already, this tool is something the party will use to get around. Anyway, I think it should go to Hudson, he has many weaknesses that need shoring up.”

  “Uh, thanks?” I said.

  “Me too,” Madison said. “But I want something in trade.”

  “What? What do you want?” I asked, my brow furrowed in surprise.

  “I want that shield you found, I think it suits me better since I have the highest armor anyway,” she said with a curt nod.

  I looked at Kai. “Can I fight with a shield with this thing?” I wiggled the stick.

  “You probably could, but I never learned how to fight with a shield, so would not be able to teach you. Fighting with a short stick is all about precision, so it might get in the way,” he said. “And that shield is heavy, which will throw off your balance and take away from your accuracy.”

  I gave it some thought and with a few scrolls through my HUD, my shield appeared, and I made an over exaggerated motion passing it to Madison.

  “Oh dang! It’s heavier than it looks,” she said as she wielded it.

  Carl didn’t look too happy about all of this. But then again, he never really looked happy. “Well, we are drawing lots on the next piece of loot.”

  Kai smirked. “No, unless you wish to put the dagger back into the pool, the next piece should be mine. Perhaps it will be something you will trade for.”

  “Let’s just get this quest over with,” Carl sighed.

  Kai started walking down the pathway again, bathed in yellow light, only to come to an abrupt stop so he didn’t run face first into the huge gelatinous thing that was blocking his path.

  The thing was the size of a large dog- you know the kind of dog that makes you ask yourself “is its poop bigger than mine?” It was a bright yellow, a single color throughout, almost neon in the light, and it had no features. It was like a giant drop of water that moved on its own.

  And move it did. In a heartbeat it closed the distance between it and Kai, stretching a part of itself out like a pseudopod. It lashed against Kai, hitting him and sending him down to one knee. He popped back up to his feet immediately, landing a powerful kick square in its flesh... uhm... goo... whatever. The creature burped, and Kai’s foot became stuck in the thing. It inched its way up Kai’s leg with a bubbling suction sound. It was as if it were eating his leg, just with no mouth, or teeth, or stomach. Kai hopped around trying to balance on one leg and made a strange noise while he tried to slide the thing off himself. It must have felt so weird.

  “Hey!” I shouted. “Leave him alone! Pick on someone your own shape!” I strode up and hit the creature with the only thing I had handy; the light rod... er... baculus, I guess, that I carried. As my light touched it, the whole creature lit up as if it were glow in the dark and sent out another pseudopod to grab me. I avoided that one, barely dodging out of the way, and landing right in the path of another pseudopod. It hit me with a surprising amount of force, decreasing my health by ten percent, and adding a Poison debuff to my status.

  Kai landed a series of punches, each sounding like he was hitting water without the splashes. The creature rippled with each hit but was otherwise unfazed. Not that I could tell if it could be fazed, I didn’t even know if Kai was hitting the front or back.

  “What is that thing!?” Carl screamed.

  “Does it matter?” I shouted. “It’s trying to kill us, kill it back!” I swung the baculus like my life depended on it, hitting the cre
ature and causing it to flinch back as if I had hurt it. Again, it lit up like a Christmas light, but this time I saw something floating within it. It looked like a core, but bigger, floating near the surface of its insides. Kai kept kicking and punching to no effect and I shouted at him, “Aim for that floaty thing!”

  Carl rushed in and stabbed it with his spear, causing some goo to spurt out, but when he pulled back the wound sealed back up. Madison stood there, shield at the ready, looking impressive but completely unhelpful. Until I saw her fingers waggle in a familiar way.

  You have been Boosted!

  Please choose what attribute or skill you would like to Boost by 21 points

  Not choosing after 5 seconds will default to: Max HP

  Expendable pools are Boosted by 42 points

  I wished the Boost would let me pick staff weapons, but I didn’t have the skill unlocked. Oh well, instead of picking a skill to boost, I selected the Agility attribute, hoping for more critical hits. The thing kept attacking me ferociously, like I had spit on its grandma, and no matter how many times Kai hit it, it would not let off of me.

  My health kept dropping with each hit, and I was starting to get worried. What happened if I died here? Would I have to go all the way back through the trap floor? I couldn’t dodge the next hit and was knocked to the ground.

  Critical hit! A Flavus Glob strikes you for 34 damage!

  Ouch. My head spun as I struggled to get back up, only to find it was enveloping my feet and preventing me from moving my legs. “Get it off! Get it off!” I shouted. I tried to kick like my life depended on it. Because it did. Sorta.

  Kai was continuing to whack at the glob, his strikes having minimal effect while Carl hacked at it with his dagger now. At least Carl’s attacks had more effect than Kai’s, each strike causing the thing to leak, the wounds caused by the dagger refusing to seal.

  The glob got up to my waist and I was freaking out, the Panic debuff fading into view in my HUD.

  I wasn’t one to feel overly claustrophobic. I had spent plenty of time crawling around in too small spaces scavenging back on Earth. But this was different. I couldn’t stop picturing the thing consuming me whole, slowly suffocating me while I watched, immobilized, through its see-through innards. I shook my head and got back in the fight.

  I couldn’t get very good leverage with my glow stick, so I jabbed at the glob instead, the stick penetrating in to half its length. The glob lit up brightly again and illuminated that strange core. With my glow stick still within the thing, lighting it up from the inside, its defenses must have weakened, as the next powerful strike from Kai broke through the membrane, striking the core and shattering it.

  With a pop like a soap bubble, only much, much louder, the glob exploded, spraying yellow fluid everywhere, painting us with its essence.

  “Okay then,” Madison said, wiping goo from her face. “It looks like we found the monsters.”

  Chapter 21

  “Now what?” Kai asked. It was hard to take him seriously with the goo dripping from his ear. I tried not to laugh and looted the glob. Between its regular inventory and Scavenging, I came up with a small yellow gem the size of my thumb.

  Minor Flavus Globstone

  Crafting Material

  I wondered how this gem could be used. Would it add a poison effect to something? Crafting was one aspect of the game I was excited to get into, and I hoped to be able to in the village.

  I tucked the stone into my inventory and brought up my Illusory Map, displaying the route we had taken through the fog of war. It was a pretty straight shot with hardly any corners and no converging paths. “Let’s just keep going,” I said. “I mean, we could go back, but we haven’t even discovered anything interesting down this path yet.”

  “Gross monsters,” Madison said. “We discovered gross monsters that explode when you kill them.”

  “Yeah okay, but besides that,” I said.

  “The plan was to go down a bit and see what we could see,” Carl said. “We’ve done that, let’s go try a different path.”

  I shrugged, not wanting to argue. “Whatever, let’s go.”

  We turned around and went back toward the entrance. Our path was lit by the yellow light from the baculus, but we still couldn’t see very far ahead of us.

  As we walked, Kai talked to me about how to use a short stick like this as a weapon. It was fun to see him so excited about something. As excited as he got, anyway.

  “This kind of weapon is swung with the elbow and shoulder, like this,” he showed me a quick strike, it even looked more powerful than what I was able to do. “You can also use this to jab,” he thrust the stick forcefully in front of him, the shadows dancing from the movement of the light. “Typically, something like this is used to strike at bones, in an effort to break them. It is not as effective against soft tissue,” he pointed to the back of his head, his collarbone, his forearm and shin. “You can even use something like this for deflections, or joint locks and choke holds. It is quite versatile, though many of those techniques are advanced.”

  I was shocked by the sheer amount of knowledge Kai had right off the top of his head about using a weapon. I felt like it was just scratching the surface of his knowledge too, and I was counting my blessings that he had been a part of the tribe. “I can’t believe a stick can be this versatile,” I said.

  “Oh there are many combat styles that use sticks for fighting,” Kai said, his posture loose and a smile on his face. I had never seen him this interested before. It was like he came alive at the chance to talk about martial arts.

  Kai continued. “There’s Donga from south Africa, Maculelê from Brazil, Escrima, Arnis, many of them have been distilled down into what’s known as Kali stick fighting but-”

  “What about my dagger? Can you show me some cool moves with it?” Carl interrupted.

  “Yes, in fact some of the techniques are the same, utilizing the same movements. In Filipino martial arts they train with sticks and daggers.” Kai stopped and repeated the basic striking move he had shown me, fixing the knife in Carl’s hand and showing him the stance before encouraging him to try the move.

  I checked on Madison bringing up the rear who had somehow gotten the shield to strap to her back. She smiled at me as we made eye contact, then pointed towards Kai, her smile widening. I turned back around with a grin and a nod.

  We made it back to the entrance, Carl and I practicing our strikes as we walked.

  “Should we go in order?” I asked, pointing towards the middle path. After a round of nods, I gestured toward the tunnel to Kai, who started down the path.

  “If we fight more of those things,” Kai said, “be sure to light them up again, that seemed to weaken it so I could hit its core.”

  “I wish I could do more to help,” Madison said. “Being a healbot kind of sucks.”

  “It is an important role though,” Kai said. “Your support is vital.”

  Madison smiled at him, “I know. I just want to give it my all, and it feels like I should be hitting things.”

  “Hey at least you can do something,” Carl said. “I’m not effective at all here.”

  “I know what that’s like,” I grumbled.

  “I would not discount the power of that blade,” Kai said. “Everything in this dungeon has had a use, and I highly doubt that your weapon would only be useful for cutting ourselves to fill that bowl.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “like when you find the boomerang you can access hidden rooms and use it to fight with.”

  “What boomerang?” Carl said with a confused look on his face.

  “Never mind,” I said with a shake of my head.

  We had gone just about the same distance as the previous tunnel before another glob appeared. This time it was bright orange, like half a tangerine made of jello. It slowly started coming towards us, moving like a shell-less snail, its goo squishing and squelching against the stone floor, like an old lady that couldn’t hold in her gas. It was not nearly as
aggressive as the previous glob had been. In fact, it made no threatening moves at all, and even made a small noise like a purr if a purr could be made of farts.

  “Hold on, don’t attack yet,” Kai said, his hand in the air. He waited while the fart-purring thing got closer, the light stick up ready to swing in his other hand. The orange glob came right up to him, and just sat there, vibrating softly, ripples cascading down it. Kai placed a hand on the glob and I sucked in a breath, waiting for his hand to be absorbed or for him to scream or for something terrible. But nothing happened.

  “Okay,” Carl said slowly, “What is going on here. Why isn’t it attacking?”

  Kai shrugged. “Perhaps the orange ones are not aggressive, where the yellow ones are?”

  “Should we keep going?” Madison asked.

  “I don’t see why not, if it’ll let us get by then maybe we should ignore it and see what’s ahead,” I said.

  I looked at the amorphous creature. It was half as tall as me and at least three times as wide. I don’t know if it was the strange vibrating noise it was making or the fact that it was just hanging out not trying to consume me, but it was almost kind of cute.

  We squeezed past the thing and I let my hand slide across its surface as I passed. It felt smooth and somewhat firm, like pliable plastic, not goo like the insides of the last one that had splattered all over us.

  We continued down the path a few dozen more yards until the tunnel opened into a round room. There was still no light, natural or otherwise, but from what we could tell by the light of our torch, the room had another path on the side opposite us, and four more of the orange globs milling about globily.

  “I sure hope all these orange ones are as docile as the last,” I said.

  In the center of the room was a wide pedestal with a depression like a bowl on top. Resting in the bowl was a large crystal sphere, as big around as my torso. Kai hesitantly took a step into the room, and the globs continued to bubble and fart and squelch in place like he wasn’t there. We all entered after him, to the same effect. Smiling at one another, we explored the room. Beyond the pedestal and the globs there was nothing else in there.