This Quest is Broken! (This Trilogy is Broken (A Comedy Litrpg Adventure) Book 1)

by J. P. Valentine

Between maintaining his defensive spell and cursing out Alvin, Melithor had failed to notice a baby drake in the process of chewing through a certain length of rope—a very specific length of rope, in fact.

  Preston surged forward, thrusting with all his measly eight Strength. The jagged knife buried itself in Melithor’s neck. “Alvin deserves so much better than you,” he growled. “Maybe now he’ll find it.”

  He didn’t need to read the notification to know Melithor was dead.

  The winds died down and the tempest faded as the cult leader collapsed to the stone floor, allowing the faintest glimmer of warmth to return to the frigid air. It echoed through Preston’s heart as three familiar faces greeted him.

  “Hey guys,” he managed, still clutching the bloody dagger, “long time no see.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Is it Getting Cold in Here or is it Just Me?

  EVE MANAGED TO keep her eyes on Preston for all of two seconds before he disappeared once more, this time behind two hundred and fifty pounds of fire mage. She had to wait until Wes was good and finished for her own turn to hug the rescued healer.

  “Good timing,” he eventually said once all the pleasantries of being reunited were complete. “They almost had me there.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Not sure why you chose to take the long way here.”

  Wes’s brow shot up. “The what?”

  Eve smirked. “Found a secret tunnel, broke some ice, burned some demons, ya know, dungeon stuff.”

  Preston’s face lit up. “Any good loot?”

  “Not yet.” Eve shrugged. “But there’s two dozen dead cultists that have gotta have something valuable.”

  Wes stepped in, his eyes already flashing blue. “Messages first, loot second.”

  “He’s right,” Alex said, still grasping her spear and shield. “I’m not letting my guard down until I see a ‘dungeon complete’ notification.”

  Eve snorted. “Yeah, that’s why Wes wants to do notifications first. It’s got nothing to do with how close he is to tier three.”

  Too distracted by his reading to formulate a witty reply, Wes resorted to the good old rude gesture.

  Eve returned one she knew he couldn’t see before opening her own blinking messages.

  You have defeated Level 48 Cultist of Garaxia: +1830 exp!

  You have defeated Level 48 Cultist of Garaxia: +1830 exp!

  You have defeated Level 47 Cultist of Garaxia: +1770 exp!

  …

  You have defeated Level 36 Cultist of Garaxia: +1110 exp!

  Twenty-three cultists in all left her with a grand total of 34410 exp. Had she been blessed with the opportunity to have been tasting one of Alvin’s delicious tea cakes at that particular moment, she would’ve spat it out. How had a bunch of cultists gotten so high-level? Why were they worth so much? It seemed too easy.

  Eve shrugged internally, deciding ultimately not to look a gift demon in the mouth. She’d take whatever exp she could get.

  Level Up!

  Level Up!

  Ability Upgraded!

  Passive Ability - Surefooted

  Circulate Mana through your feet to adhere to surfaces!

  Eve’s immediate thought was of climbing walls. She even took a step towards the nearest pillar to see if she could walk up it before realizing the description only mentioned her feet—a vertical wall would certainly require the use of her hands as well.

  The upgrade was probably targeted more towards icy or moving surfaces. The Striker was just fostering ideas of standing upright on the back of a griffin in flight when another concern arose.

  Will this work through boots?

  Her daggers required physical contact for her to charge them, and Eve wasn’t particularly fond of her bare feet coming into physical contact with stuff. Maybe she could find some enchanted boots that would allow Mana through? She sighed. It was another thing she’d need to spend money on.

  Ability Unlocked!

  Active Ability - Mana Burst

  300 Mana

  You don’t need to be a master spell caster to simply throw Mana at the problem. Unleash a short-range blast of concentrated Mana, dealing magic damage in an area in front of you.

  Warning: You have reached the Active Ability cap. Please choose an ability to replace.

  Eve was conflicted. She had vowed to replace Fate-al Blow at the earliest opportunity—both for its cringeworthy name and relative uselessness—but its strength scaling combined with Mana Rush was nothing to scoff at.

  Beyond even that, Mana Burst looked an awful lot like a worse version of her daggers. It had a fixed Mana cost—unlike the enchanted weapons—that had to be paid on cast instead of being stored ahead of time. Then again, the words “area in front of you” did spark her interest. Any skill that could hit multiple enemies at once would be useful, short range or otherwise.

  Sure, she had Wes for that, but what if they got separated? It had already happened once in the Burendian ruin, and in all likelihood would happen again eventually.

  She could, of course, replace a different ability, but they were more important than Fate-al Blow. Charge! and Mana Rush were the core of her kit, and Jet had far too many possible uses or future upgrades to even consider replacing. Eve exhaled.

  “At least I’m free from the pun,” she muttered as she accepted the change. It hurt to lose the ability, but Mana Rush alone did insane single-target damage. Fate-al Blow was redundant. Being well-rounded was more important.

  Eve blinked the blue from her vision as the last of the notifications faded away. It took more than a minute for her eyes to readjust from the bright glow of the status screen back to the dimly lit ritual chamber. When at last they did, she was unsurprised to find Alex already finished with her own messages while Wes still read on.

  The disappointed look on Preston’s face, however, did elicit a reaction.

  “You alright?”

  The Priestess shrugged. “I didn’t get credit for killing the cultists, just Melithor here.” He pointed down at the bleeding corpse at his feet. “Got me to level twenty-four.”

  Eve cringed. He was so close to his next promotion, yet there were no demons left to kill. “No milestones either?”

  “No, not for…” He trailed off. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll get there soon enough.”

  “Yeah,” Alex barked, “once we’ve actually finished the dungeon. That drops exp, remember?”

  “Right!” Eve snapped her fingers. “So how do we finish it? Are there more monsters?”

  “Or we need to find the core,” Preston said.

  “So… back into the tunnels?”

  “Well,” the healer thought aloud, “if the Burendian ruin was anything to go by, it’ll be somewhere fairly central, with a lot of magic, and of import to the theme of the dungeon.”

  The three turned as one to stare at the stone altar.

  Eve was the first to get to it—fifty-four percent higher movement speed had its perks. She stepped over Melithor’s body and the carved runes in the floor to reach the rectangular block of stone itself. Sure enough, a head-sized obsidian sphere sat inlaid in its center.

  Preston was the first to speak. “So—um—how do we get it out?”

  Eve drew her daggers. “Dungeon cores are explosion-resistant, right?”

  Alex placed a halting hand on Eve’s arm. “Let’s not find out. We can either chisel it out or wait for Wes to burn the altar down once he’s done with his reading.”

  Eve sighed, pressing the tips of her daggers into the space between the stone and the core. “Alright, hard way it is. I’m gonna have to completely resharpen these, aren’t I?”

  Without waiting for a response, she dumped a few points of Mana into Mana Rush before getting to work. She had nearly pried the thing free when Wes’s voice filled the chamber.

  “What are you all standing around for?”

  “Dungeon core,” Alex explained.

  “You finished with your reading, then?” Eve asked.


  “Yep,” Wes chirped. “Unlocked six classes, but only one of them’s worth taking. It’s nothing particularly interesting, just the natural continuation of the Devouring Flame line, but it’s way better than the other options.”

  Eve furrowed her brow. “Is that a good idea? You’ve been getting a bit—I don’t want to say crazy, but… flame-happy? Maybe the Devouring Flame isn’t worth fucking with.”

  “I’m fine.” A sharpness overcame Wes’s voice, his comment hanging in the air for a moment before he recovered his excitement. “I haven’t even told you the best part! Disciple of the Devouring Flame is gods-damned Epic.”

  Alex cursed. “Of course,” she muttered more to herself than anyone else. “Of bloody course he gets an Epic class at tier 3. Why shouldn’t he?”

  Eve reacted a bit more positively. “Wes, that’s amazing! At this rate, you’ll be Legendary by level a hundred.”

  “You—um—” Preston stammered, “you know who else was a Disciple?” He pointed down at the former Lord Melithor. “He was.”

  Wes exhaled. “Look, we don’t have to decide right now. I’m not taking the promotion until I’m sure we’re safe. Who in their right mind would let themselves pass out in the middle of a dungeon?”

  Eve and Alex exchanged a sideways glance at that, knowing the Survivor had done exactly that in the Burendian ruin.

  “You sure?” Eve asked. “You’ll miss out on the dungeon completion exp if you don’t evolve first.”

  Wes shrugged. “There’ll always be more exp. Besides, I don’t want to miss out on the looting!” He made a move for the nearest body, carefully maneuvering around the assorted claws and spikes and horns it had grown in combat. “There’s gotta be something worth taking in here somewhere.”

  Eve rolled her eyes at the typical display of adventurer greed before returning to her task of defacing a religious artifact to claim the dungeon core within. It was a messy process. Chips of stone and dust flew in all directions as she worked, chiseling away at the altar with every strike. It wasn’t until she held the foot-thick orb in her hands that the notification appeared.

  You have cleared dungeon: Temple of Garaxia: +20000 exp!

  Level Up!

  Ability Upgraded!

  Active Ability - Jet

  Apply the momentum change to individual body parts!

  “Well shit,” Eve swore to herself. Just as she gave up Fate-al Blow, Jet evolved into a sort of replacement. She couldn’t really see any use for the change other than to speed up her mace swing, but if she ever needed extra damage, it would certainly do the job. Given the power of Mana Rush, she had to wonder if the cooldown would be better spent using Jet to maneuver around the battlefield, but the option was nice to have.

  It was Preston’s turn to read a long list of potential evolutions while the others discussed.

  “That was…” Eve said, “a lot more exp than the ruins gave.”

  Alex shrugged. “It’s a higher level dungeon. Now put that thing away and we can move on to these cultists.”

  Eve nodded, rearranging the contents of her pack to fit the dungeon core inside. By the time she finished, Wes was already leaning over Melithor himself. She watched as he slipped a hand from the cultist’s pocket to his own, wondering why he didn’t bring up the find to the others. She opened her mouth to ask about it just in time for Preston to step in first.

  “Hey guys? Is it getting cold in here, or is it just me?”

  Truth be told, Eve had no idea. She certainly didn’t feel cold, but she hadn’t felt cold this entire time.

  “It’s always been cold,” Alex answered from across the room.

  Wes sat up, holding a jagged sacrificial dagger in his hand. “Do you think this is worth anything?”

  Eve shrugged. “Probably? If you’ve got space in your bag for it, you might as well—”

  Preston interrupted, “Ayla’s tits that’s a lot of blood.”

  The Striker peeked around Wes’s wide body to peer at the now unplugged knife wound in Melithor’s neck. An unnatural amount of crimson gushed from the corpse, flowing along the runes in the floor like so much water through a maze of canals.

  Her eyes widened. “That can’t be good.”

  Wes lunged forward, sticking a single finger in one of the rune structures to stymie the flow, too low on Mana to find a more elegant solution. Were it not for the seriousness of the situation or the simple fact every other segment of the vast engraving still had blood running through it, Eve might’ve laughed at the silliness of the display. Instead, she drew her mace.

  Alex leapt up to the dais to join them. “What’s going on?”

  “Their ritual,” Wes answered, “I think it’s working.”

  Sure enough, a fingertip wasn’t enough to fully disrupt whatever magic drove the spell forward. The blood surged around Wes’s makeshift stopper, continuing on to fill out the entire floor’s worth of runes.

  “So—uh… if sacrificing a virgin Priestess summons Garaxia, what happens when you sacrifice a Disciple and two dozen Cultists?”

  None of the four companions were remotely well-versed enough in demonology to actually answer Preston’s question. They knew nothing of Mana alignments or soul frequencies or any of the other jargon best kept to scholars.

  What they did know, however, was that whether or not they could venture a reasonable guess as to the result of the imminent summoning, they were sure as hell about to find out.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Prove Your Valor

  YOU HAVE ENTERED the dungeon: Goblin Warren! Fight well.

  “Ooh, we get a neat little message and everything.” Liam grinned, twirling one of his throwing knives around his fingers. “Fight well.”

  “I’ll show them fighting well,” Jason laughed, his chest sticking out as he rested his hands on his waist. Truth be told he looked rather heroic posing like that with his plate armor and the steel sword hanging at his hip, not that Alex would ever admit that.

  “You gonna keep peacocking or are we gonna actually clear this place?” she asked.

  Priya giggled, covering her mouth with the draping sleeve of her oversized hand-me-down Witch’s robe. “Let him have his fun. It’s not like we’re on a clock or anything.”

  Liam smirked. “We didn’t come here so Jason could show off his shiny new armor. We came to kill some gods-damned goblins.”

  “Yeah,” Alex added, “the longer we waste letting Jason have his fun, the longer I’ve gotta wait before I can have mine.” She planted the butt of her spear in the rocky soil beneath her feet. “Gotta get that exp somehow.”

  “Alright, alright.” Jason drew his sword, taking the first step down the dark tunnel. “We’ll see if any actually live to get past me.”

  “Careful you don’t get cocky,” Liam teased, executing yet more flashy feats of sleight of hand with his short blades, “can’t kill anything that’s already got a knife in its neck.”

  Priya rolled her eyes. “Boys, boys, you’re both pretty. Now let’s go. You can brag about your kills once you actually have them.”

  Alex resisted the temptation to prod at them with her spear, choosing instead to swallow her impatience as the Knight and the Knifesinger took the lead. Her quest said she had to “prove her valor,” and she was going to have a hard time doing that if her friends took all the kills. She sighed.

  The two men walked abreast as long as they could, but this burrow wasn’t built for humans. Ten minutes in, the passage had already constricted enough to force them into single file.

  The taller members of the party, specifically Alex and Jason, even had to stoop over to fit beneath the damp earth ceiling. Unable to hold her weapon upright, Alex found herself falling behind her companions in order to avoiding stabbing them in the back as she carried her spear pointed forward. At least she’d be ready for any goblins that somehow managed to get past all three of her friends.

  From her limited vantage at the back of the procession, she never ha
d a chance to see the ambush coming.

  It wasn’t until Priya’s horrific shriek filled the cramped tunnel that Alex even knew something was wrong.

  Jason collapsed backwards with a heavy thud, his armored form pinning Liam to the ground. With Priya in the way, Alex couldn’t see the arrow in his eye or the crimson running down his neck or the emerald glow of Priya’s magic desperately trying to stem the bleeding. It did no good. She was a Witch, not a Necromancer.

  Liam panicked. Lacking the Strength to move the mass of muscle and armor atop him, the rogue could but flail his blades in the air to try and fend off the coming foes.

  Alex’s heart raced. She instinctively lurched forward to grant what help she could, but Priya blocked the way. There simply wasn’t space in the confines of the warren to allow the Soldier past.

  Her muscles tensed up. Her breathing quickened.

  Priya abandoned her healing, leaning down to help lift the fallen Knight. She was too late.

  Two kill notifications popped up in Alex’s vision as Liam threw what knives he could with his free arm. His efforts ended with a goblin spear through his throat.

  The goblins’ smaller forms maneuvered deftly through the tunnel, stepping over the bodies to continue their assault. Priya had no way to stop the charge.

  Alex ran.

  She dropped her spear, letting the weapon fall to the floor rather than try and reverse her grip on it in the confined space. She ran back through the dirt tunnels, through the layer of foliage atop the dungeon’s entrance, through the grasslands she’d once thought peaceful. No more.

  It wasn’t until her Stamina ran out that she collapsed to the soft earth, panic and adrenaline finally giving way to tears. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. They were heroes. They were adventurers, slaying monsters and saving lives, each and all destined for greatness.