Chronicles of Ethan Complete Series: A LitRPG / GameLit Fantasy Adventure

by John L. Monk

  With every pained step, the savagely painted ziggurat loomed larger. Each striped layer was about fifty feet high, and the base looked twice as wide as the pyramid at Giza (which I’d had the pleasure of visiting once in my younger years).

  The jostling from our captors ended as we stooped to enter the goblin-sized corridor in the bottom-most tier. We followed a long incline for three hundred paces, which I silently counted. Blank walls the whole way, with no doorways or side-passages like you’d expect in a normal building.

  With our stats artificially lowered, the three of us were huffing and puffing when we got to the end, where we found a tiny portal that let in light. Then we were off again up the next course.

  The going each way grew successively shorter, which made sense if we were in a pyramid. No funny time/space trickery here. Where the heck were we going? Couldn’t the designers have put in stairs?

  Still we climbed. Had to be near the top because the number of paces per length had dropped by two thirds. Eventually, we stopped at a ladder leading to a hole in the ceiling.

  “Zhaga zha ar d’hazha ga!” one of the goblins growled in a high voice, shoving me toward the ladder.

  I pointed at the hole. “D’hazha ga?”

  “D’hazha ga!” he said and thumped me on the head with his stick.

  Instinctively I chose a spell to blast the little pipsqueak … and drew up short at my inaccessible spells.

  “D’hazha ga…” I muttered.

  And climbed.

  The three of us stood in an enormous room draped in multicolored silk screens, plush pillows, and gold-trimmed everything. Lying on the pillows were beautiful half-naked elven and human women with golden chains around their necks. At first, I thought they were slaves, then thought better of it when I saw their wickedly grinning faces. Like something out of Ancient Greece, they drank wine from golden cups and ate grapes dangled over their painted lips.

  Rita elbowed me in the ribs. “Would you please pay attention?”

  “He’ll pay whatever they want,” Frank said with a lascivious grin.

  I cast him an irritated glance, shook my head, and looked everywhere but the harem.

  Our goblin captors remained below, replaced by a pair of massive creatures with big curling tusks growing from their mouths. Not bugbears, and not goblins. Their steady gazes were discomfiting, but I didn’t feel hated.

  “When you meet the chief,” the one on our left said in a surprisingly urbane voice, “be honest in your answers, and brief. Avoid giving offense, and do not stare.” A second later he added, “He is quite short and silly looking, so that might be unavoidable.”

  I blinked in shock. “I thought you worked for him.”

  The beast-man snorted. “I do my job. But I do not kiss anyone’s ass, or mince words. He sits in there now, waiting for the best time to ring us in. He wants you to get an eyeful—to see how powerful he is and make you green with envy. That way you will be more likely to give him what he wants.”

  “What does he want?” Rita said.

  The creature’s mouth widened in an approximation of a smile. “What any of us wants, hero. He wants to live.”

  A deep bell sounded from somewhere, and we were gently urged toward a section of yellow and blue silkscreens.

  The screens opened wide enough for the five of us to enter an anteroom of sorts, then pulled shut behind us. When the next set slid open, we found a crowned goblin balanced on several pillows stacked on a massive throne. And wow, he was tiny. Easily half the size of every goblin we’d seen so far.

  His face was livid.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  “You shall kneel before the chief!” the crowned goblin shouted in a reedy, strident voice that demanded respect without engendering it.

  The big guard who’d talked with us earlier nudged me gently, and I dropped to my knees, followed by Rita and Frank.

  “What are you looking at?” the chief screeched.

  “Not looking at anything,” I said, still looking at him.

  “I’m considered tall for my race,” he said after a long, hard glare. “I’m a chief, you know. Officially, everyone is shorter than me. To be otherwise is treason. Which, in a way, means I’m also a very merciful chief, because I haven’t had you all executed yet.” He stared off distantly, head high, expression regally lenient in a goblin sort of way. “Well, go on. Thank me.”

  “Um,” Frank said cautiously. “Thank you?”

  “You’re welcome,” the chief said.

  “Chief, why have you—” Rita began.

  “Lord Usurper,” the chief said. “Of the Goblin Tide. Quick, thank me.”

  “Sorry?” she said.

  “You may call me Lord Usurper. Please continue. You were thanking me for sparing you.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “You’re great. Obviously. But what do you want?”

  Still looking into the distance, the chief said, “Now his turn.”

  Rita glanced at me, a slight smile on her face.

  I blinked at her in surprise. Was she prettier, now?

  She looked the same, nothing physically different, but I found myself staring a little longer than I normally would have. A moment later, I realized what she’d done. Somewhere between the slave-girl harem and here, she’d put a point into comeliness. Maybe two.

  “We’re all super grateful,” I said, dragging my eyes away. “Now what the hell do you want, you ugly little toad?”

  Everyone gasped, including the brutes who’d brought us in.

  As expected, the goblin chief lost his mind. He scrambled to his feet and jumped up and down on his thick satin pillows. He screamed goblin curses at the top of his lungs and shook his tiny fists—at me, at the guards, at Rita and Frank. He pulled out his hair (of which he had very little), and his screaming morphed into incomprehensible orders nobody followed.

  While that went on, I smiled and enjoyed the moment and waited for someone to chop my head off. The way I saw it, either we were so valuable the chief wouldn’t dare kill us, or we weren’t, and we needed to die fast so we could get on with the drudgery of grinding out levels.

  The guard who hadn’t spoken yet looked at me, sighed, then scooped up the still-raging goblin chief and carried him away.

  The first guard said, “You had to get him riled up. He will not be normal for many hours now. Usually we rile him up when you heroes attack. That way, he does not meddle with the defensive planning.” His sigh was long and tired. “I am supposed to kill you all. Luckily, he did not say when, so that gives me some wiggle room. Follow me.”

  Considering he was still talking to us, and not chopping us up, we followed him to another screened-off section. The goblin chief’s fancy silks disappeared, replaced with hides and exotic furs. There were several wicker chairs in the room with cushions, and the big guard invited us to sit.

  “My name is Kradich, and I am a woggim,” he said. “And to answer your next question: no, I am not a guard. I am more like a chancellor, in your Hero tongue. The creators of this world designed us to protect the Goblin Tide from all dangers, foreign and domestic. Woggims are quite formidable in battle, and also fine strategists. We and the chief are not ephemerals, like the goblins you have seen.”

  “And the children,” Rita said frostily.

  Kradich inclined his head. “As you say. That pit you were in was built to hold captured heroes—players we could convince to join the Goblin Tide for power and glory. Sadly, no one has joined for a great many years. Those who do typically grow tired of the Usurper and move on. But sometimes they stay a while, and then win!”

  Kradich’s eyes practically blazed at the talk of winning.

  “Is that what this is about?” I said. “You want us to fight with you? Against our own people?”

  “Are your people really that good to you? Hard to believe if you are here so soon.”

  I started to answer and then shut my mouth. I’d been murdered several times by Magda and Jaddow. And almost ever
yone had either ignored me or sneered in contempt at my low-level appearance. But was this reason enough to turn traitor?

  Frank said, “I’ll fight with you. I’m sick of those jokers. I asked some high-levels for help once—after I lost my gear—and they laughed at me. Where do I sign up?”

  “Hold on a minute,” Rita said and faced the woggim. “Why us? We’re too little. In a couple of weeks, hundreds of heroes are gonna come here looking for points. We’ll be slaughtered.”

  Kradich made a yes-and-no gesture. “We win sometimes even without help. With your assistance, we could surprise them. And your low level will not be a problem at all. Remember the shamans we sent after you? Their elementals?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “When your kind kill such creatures,” he said, “you gain in power. Points, yes? When my kind kill your kind, we gain whatever you are carrying at the time, and nothing else. We do not get points. We are forever the same strength.”

  As interesting as that was, I worried we’d drifted from the matter at hand.

  “You were saying about shamans?”

  The woggim smiled broadly. “If you join us, you may kill as many elementals as you can cram into a day, every day, until we fight the heroes. You will gain more power in that short time than if you had come with your kind to slaughter us. In return for your help, we will build you a stronghold deeper in the Swaze Pit and shower you with half the riches we take off our attackers whenever we win. You will also gain a special perk after killing your first hero: a twenty percent bonus on all points earned in our defense, with no so-called griefing penalties. This is a very rare and powerful perk, but it only applies here. Once you leave the Swaze Pit, it will disappear.”

  I looked at Rita, who smiled at me with a feral look in her eye. She nodded.

  Frank was grinning so hard my face hurt in sympathy. A bad way to start any sort of negotiation.

  On the surface, Kradich’s offer sounded like a good deal. A way to advance quicker than most people our level. For my part, I didn’t care about the goblins, my fellow heroes, riches, or strongholds in the mist.

  But I didn’t tell him that…

  “Okay,” I said. “We’ll give it a try.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Kradich returned an hour later with the good news: the goblin chief officially claimed not to remember anything about our conversation. He also declared the three of us legally shorter than him, rendering us permanently safe from unintended treason. More importantly, he agreed to the terms of the arrangement Kradich had presented.

  The woggim, despite being a lucid, knew a thing or two about the game manual. He suggested we “bind” our resurrection point at a nearby stone. He and a band of goblins took us into the mist and stopped at a wide, flat stone with six interlocking circles etched into it. In form, it looked similar to the one in Martyr’s Square.

  “I am not sure how you do it,” he said. “I have worked with hundreds of heroes over the eons. They usually check the manual and figure it out.”

  “Already found it,” Frank said, stifling a fake yawn.

  “Me too,” Rita said.

  Whereas I felt like the slowest kid in school. “What do we do?”

  “Repeat after me,” Frank said. “I, say your name.”

  “I, Ethan.”

  “Being of sound mind and body.”

  “Being of sound mind and body.”

  “Am a big dopy sorcerer with a minus-three comeliness!”

  Rita doubled over with laughter. Even the woggim smiled.

  “That’s real cute,” I said.

  “Oh, lighten up,” she said. “Here, I’ll show you. Seems easy enough.”

  Rita stepped onto the disk and spun around six times. Her body pulsed blue, and the area thrummed as if a bell had been struck deep within the earth.

  “Now you do it,” she said.

  Like Rita, I spun in circles. On the sixth turn, I experienced a crushing sense of vertigo as the world shifted around me. Up was down and down was up, and I felt myself falling through space even though my eyes showed me standing still. Then everything turned right again.

  BINDING UPDATE: “Swaze Pit”

  Frank took his turn, and afterward the woggim said, “There are stones like this all over Mythian, but I hope you stay here for a good long time. Now, are you ready to fight the elementals?”

  We were, and we did.

  For the next four days, Frank, Rita, and I fought elemental after elemental in a big circle near the ziggurat set aside for gladiator fights. Sitting on the sidelines, the goblin children were delighted as the shamans summoned the creatures.

  They came in a variety of forms: earth, fire, water, and even air. Rita always had trouble with the air elementals because there was nothing for her to physically hit. Frank and I got battered mercilessly until she unlocked an ability that let her punch shockwaves through the air.

  In that short span of time, Rita and I gained ten levels. Then we hit a plateau where it took two days to gain a single level because of the diminishing returns per kill. That and the shamans could only summon ten a week, per shaman, and there simply weren’t enough shamans yet.

  I was now level 22. Cipher had said Jaddow would meet me at level 25, and Jaddow later confirmed that in his note. How he’d know was a mystery, as were the details of the hypothetical meeting.

  “Now what?” I said after finishing off an earth elemental with a Greater Invisible Fist.

  I was running on auto-pilot and had been for a while. The fighting had gotten boring and safe, and I now yearned for those in-between times when we could chitchat and eat the wonderful food the goblins kept bringing us.

  “You have gathered power quickly, just as I promised,” Kradich said happily. “You will make great allies in the years to come.”

  “We’re super grateful, Kradich,” Rita said, coming over and throwing a friendly arm around me.

  I tensed slightly, and Frank frowned. Rita had tossed a few more points into comeliness, though not nearly as many as Magda or the women in Heroes’ Landing.

  “So when do we see our new home?” she said. “Might be nice to put our feet up and read a book or something. You do have books here, right?”

  Kradich sighed. “No books. But if we live long enough for the desert traders to arrive, we can get some. They come every six months, but only if we win. They then establish what your kind would call a mobile sanctuary instance. All may go there and trade. Sometimes this results in a brief respite from attack, because your kind enjoys the things they sell.”

  The friendly woggim regaled us with stories of the traders’ bazaar—the food, the entertainment, the magical wares you could only get there. Part of me would have loved to see it, but of course I had no intention of staying. Rita knew that, though she hadn’t yet broached the subject.

  I’d already mentally forgiven her for agreeing to stay, rather than journeying with me to Ward 2. This was a great opportunity for her. Frank would cover for me. His healing was top-notch now, and he’d picked up some devastating new offensive spells—rare gifts from the woggim’s personal stash of looted gear, which he’d managed to hide from the monthly wave of heroes.

  “Nice shpell ya got there, Efan,” Frank said drunkenly. “Here, wanna sip?”

  He held out his bottle.

  “No thanks,” I said.

  Frank had taken to drinking insta-hooch between kills, then curing himself before the fighting started. He also ate a lot, even though we didn’t need to. He was quite a sight: bottle in one hand, mutton chop in the other.

  “Can’ waifer heroes show up,” he said. “Anyfing bigger around … out there … shomewhere?”

  Kradich nodded. “There is a wyvern in the wastes, but you will need ten times more power than you possess. From what I have seen, none of the heroes who come here bother with it. She has only been killed a handful of times. That was back in the early days when the heroes were more daring. Now, your kind only wants what is ea
sy.”

  “And goblins are easy,” I said.

  He made a sweeping gesture. “As you say.”

  “Sho whad we godda do?” Frank said, earning an irritated look from Rita. Like me, she preferred sober Frank to drunk Frank.

  Kradich frowned and rubbed his chin in thought. “I mean no offense when I ask this, but we have had problems in the past…”

  “Go on,” Rita said.

  “Are you quite certain you will stay with us?” he said.

  Frank and Rita nodded. After a brief hesitation, I nodded too—while purposely not looking at Rita.

  “Very well, then,” Kradich said. “My colleagues and I will offer our lives to the cause. You may slay us both tomorrow in front of our chief. We are far more powerful than these elementals, and our absence will likely spell your defeat when the heroes arrive. But next time—with your help—we shall return and triumph over them, ushering in a golden age of prosperity for the Goblin Tide!”

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  We stood in the chief’s silken throne room with Kradich and the three other woggims. This was the total complement of the creatures. The goblin chief—whose permission we needed for Kradich’s plan—had kept us waiting for over an hour. During that time, Rita, Frank, and I had argued heavily for another solution that didn’t involve killing people we knew and liked.

  “There’s gotta be another way,” I said to Kradich for maybe the tenth time.

  His tone was gentle. “This is the game you signed up to play, friend Ethan. Sorcerers get a particularly useful spell at level twenty-five. You can stand atop the city wall and call down a rain of fire on our enemies. Harmless against the most powerful of them, but it will quickly weed out the weakest. This will allow our troops to focus their attacks. Our biggest problem has been the sheer numbers of … well … noobs that they send against us. They force us to spread our defenses too thinly.”

  I wondered if I was still considered a noob, and if so, how long that would last.