Village of Noobtown: A LitRPG Adventure (Mayor of Noobtown Book 2)

by Ryan Rimmel

  SueLeeta rushed toward us, bow half drawn. Cat Two was by her side. She stopped as she got closer, identifying me and the massive War Badger at my side. Her eyes went wide. I could tell she was activating her Lore skill. She first examined me, and then the massive beast next to me.

  “That’s a War Badger? How?” she asked, obviously impressed by my new companion.

  “Yes, I am Badgelor,” responded Badgelor. SueLeeta looked on uncomprehendingly.

  “Yes,” I replied. “Can’t you understand him?”

  “Of course not,” stated SueLeeta. “I’m not nearly at a high enough level to speak War Badger. At least, not without training.

  A look of realization suddenly crossed over her face. “Ooh, you must have taken Beast Master! That would allow you to talk to your companion. Fenris knows a little Badger. He might be able to understand him a bit.”

  “Well, I’m sure that will be fun,” I groaned, glancing over at Badgelor. He looked annoyed.

  “Most people don’t understand my magnificence. What’s the point of being Lord of the Badgers when most do not bow down and worship me?” he grumbled.

  Drawing SueLeeta’s attention back to me, I said, “My leg is injured. I’ll need some help getting back to town.”

  SueLeeta finally gave me a proper once-over. Gasping, she catalogued my injuries. Stalking over to me, she placed the back of her hand on my forehead.

  Condition: High Fever. You have an infection that is causing the high fever condition. Without treatment, this reduces your HP, Stamina and Mana Regeneration by half.

  Condition: Dehydration: You need to drink water. Until you are rehydrated, your Stamina and Mana Regeneration is reduced by 90%.

  Condition: Broken Bone (Treated): Your leg is broken. You have applied a treatment.

  Condition: Concussion (Untreated): You have a concussion. You suffer a 30% penalty to all mental skills until the condition is treated. You will have the nausea condition until concussion is treated. You will have the dizziness condition until concussion is treated.

  Condition: Broken Bone (Untreated): Your knuckle is broken. It will require an Initiate Medic check to be treated. You will suffer a 40% penalty to use your left hand until this is restored.

  Condition: Blood Loss. You have lost more than 30% of your blood. You will suffer penalties to all actions until you are restored. You will have the nausea condition until blood loss is corrected. You will have the dizziness condition until blood loss is treated.

  I stared at the list of injuries on my status bar and inwardly flinched for two reasons. First, this was the worst set of injuries I’d suffered, so far. The expansive list didn’t even cover the relatively minor scrapes, cuts, and bruises. Second, I’d panicked while underground; I totally forgot that I could just check my conditions with the list

  When I panicked, I went back to a safe place, a place where I knew what to do. That place didn’t include menus, unfortunately. In my heart, I was still on Earth. The menus on Ordinal were nice, but they were, by no means, something I was fully acclimated to, yet.

  “We can talk about what happened later. We need to get you back to town,” SueLeeta said, as she handed me 6 heal roots and her waterskin. She quickly headed over to the nearby buildings to find materials for a stretcher. I wanted Jarra the Healer to look at my leg prior to really using it. The splint was supposed to be all that the injury needed, but, in my mind, that didn’t seem like enough.

  Out of nowhere, I felt the splat of Shart, landing on my shoulder.

  “What the hell?” called the demon. “You can’t get that far from me! It cuts off our communication and destabilizes the bond. You know that, you insufferable dunderhead!

  “What the feck is that?” replied Badgelor. During my brief conversation with SueLeeta, my new companion had shrunk down to his original size. The once again small badger was glaring at Shart.

  “You can see me?” responded the demon. Badgelor bristled and started climbing up my leg to reach Shart.

  “How did you get small again?” I asked, amazed, as Badgelor’s claws came dangerously close to my pocket pals. I really needed better armor and a cup.

  “Of course, I can! How could I miss you? You look like a big red zit that needs popped,” replied the badger. As Badgelor reached the shoulder opposite, Shart lifted off. Hovering several feet above us, he glared, as Badgelor turned to me.

  “To answer your question, War Form is a talent I possess. Of course, I can stop using it at any time. After all, you certainly don’t always use your Annoying Whiner talent, do you?”

  “Badgelor, this is Shart. Shart, meet Badgelor,” I growled through gritted teeth. Something about the appearance of Shart had riled Badgelor. I completely understood the sentiment, but, at least in this instance, Shart hadn’t provoked it.

  “Shart is my familiar,” I explained. Badgelor promptly decided that leaping off the top of my head was the best way to reach Shart. It was mildly uncomfortable for me, but more so for Shart. He was knocked out of the air and onto the hard ground.

  “I thought Demonic Familiars were cool. Yours is a wee lil fecker named Shart,” stated Badgelor. A high pitched laugh escaped the badger, as he scampered back toward me.

  “Shart is a proud name,” the demon replied, before looking at me with hurt eyes.” Isn’t it?”

  “No,” I replied, fending off the recovering Badgelor with an ineffective kick, as he tried to scramble back up my torso.

  “It really isn’t,” stated Badgelor, smugly. The badger reclaimed purchase on my leg and climbed at a rapid pace. It was like having a kitten climb you, except the kitten had inch long claws that could pierce stone. I moved to protect my boys.

  “I thought Shart was Earthling for Sir, you lanky bastard,” growled the demon, rising again to stare directly at me.

  “YOU wanted me to call you “sir”. I chose a more appropriate name, you little Shart,” I stated, conversationally.

  Shart crossed his stubby arms and plopped down on my shoulder. “I don’t get any respect at all.”

  “Well, you are actively trying to destroy me,” I replied. Badgelor stopped laughing and stood on my head, windmilling his claws about. With a concussion, that felt just great.

  “You aren’t allowed to die until I finish my quest,” stated Badgelor, stomping down with his tiny foot.

  “You both suck.” Shart responded. “What new quest have you decided is more important than mine?”

  “Jim, we have a problem,” SueLeeta said, returning with a hastily crafted stretcher. I collapsed down, causing the badger to flop into the dirt. He got back up and growled at me.

  “What else?” I asked. It had already been a long day, and there was no end in sight. SueLeeta handed me a wad of paper, covered in goblin script. I flattened it out and examined it.

  “Well, at least that explains why the goblins have been so quiet.”

  She nodded.

  Chapter 12: Inter Goblin Warfare

  The goblins of the valley had, for a long time, been using their Wargs as a means of both military and economic strength. A Warg was a good mount for a goblin, but it was also good for pulling things, like plows or mine carts. Due to their secure position, the goblins had been breeding Wargs for centuries, for every possible role.

  The latest addition in the goblin hierarchy had been the Warg Boss. His influence on the Goblin Horde had allowed more Wargs to be controlled than ever before. Wargs could be bred to be more powerful than ever before. Furthermore, those Wargs could be controlled with less effort than ever before.

  “You see, Dum Dum,” explained Shart, “The goblins are a Horde. Think of that like a permanent army. They have a bunch of roles, like Cavalry Commander and Battle Leader. The Warg Boss oversaw the Wargs, but his bonus carried over for the entire Horde. When you killed him, that bonus stopped.”

  “And the goblins needed that bonus to keep their Wargs from revolting,” I finished, thinking of Kappa. Even when the Warg Boss was still alive, he ha
d barely been able to control Kappa. Had he still been in goblin captivity when the Warg Boss died, Kappa certainly would have made his issues with his rider known.

  Which is, apparently, what had happened nearly everywhere, according to the notes SueLeeta had found on the dead goblins. It would be like every horse in a prosperous medieval village suddenly going berserk all at once. Except, Wargs were wolves, all intelligent to varying degrees, and had been bred as giant, bloodthirsty hunters.

  If the notes were to be believed, they had rebelled in a big way in the wake of the Warg Boss’ death. The wolves were busily trying to murder off enough goblins to usurp the dominant players in the valley. It seemed the Warg’s end goal was to possess some of the goblins as slaves, as they themselves had been. They were somewhat successful, with multiple goblin outposts overrun. Thousands were dead on both sides, but it looked like the rebellion would be short lived, one way or another.

  Given a few more weeks, either the goblins or the Wargs would win. If the goblins won, it would go back to normal here. The green creatures would resume their patrols and raids, but we would at least know what to expect. If the Wargs won, things might get worse for the village. The Warg process twisted the wolves; besides making them intelligent, it also made them cunning. Some were downright ruthless and evil. There was no telling what fallout we would see from a Warg-ruled valley.

  Alas, that was in another few weeks. Right now, all the hybrid wolves’ attention was away from the village. That gave me a window of time to prepare for the coming storm. Groaning, I laid my head down to think. Something would come to me.

  Unfortunately, what came to me was sleep.

  Chapter 13: Unlucky Jim

  I had no memory of SueLeeta dragging me back to the village on my makeshift stretcher. When I awoke, Jarra the Healer had already tended to my injuries and resplinted my leg ‘properly’. According to her, my effort at first aid had been valiant, but she was “more experienced” and “had cleaner materials” with which to make a splint.

  I was on the mend. On Earth, having your leg crushed to pulp was a non-recoverable injury. They would have had to amputate, and I might have suffered even more damage. Here, I was treated and told to sleep it off, because sleeping improved recovery rates. I seriously wondered what it would take to get a permanent wound.

  Word got around pretty quickly that I had been wounded, and, as such, people treated me like I was injured. That gave me a small reprieve from the usual tasks of mayoring. Unfortunately, the usual tasks were the semi-interesting quests. Now, I was left doing paperwork. I miss my wife.

  I had been temporarily banished from my nice hole in the wall in the leatherworking shop and was forced to spend the night in the infirmary. At some point, I’d have to get my own home in this village. In the meantime, I had sent Badgelor and Shart outside the building and relaxed into the rough mattress. Jarra the Healer was close by, in her own home next door. So, it was just me and the poor bastard who’d dropped a wall on his foot. He’d be fine by tomorrow.

  Bringing up the town menu, I flipped to the mine. There were now 4 job slots available, with a potential for 12 more, once the mine was fully repaired. I could currently assign two miners, an ore worker and a gopher. Ten more miner slots were blocked off, due to the traps, and the other ore worker and gopher were unavailable, due to the damage. The town menu listed everyone who was skilled in each position.

  “I guess I should interview some mine workers,” I said.

  “What?” responded my clumsy roommate, AngusBerg. “Interview, Mr. Mayor?” He said ‘interview’ like he’d never heard the word before.

  “You know, interview. Figure out who wants the job and who would be the best fit.” I responded, already dreading his response.

  “Mr. Mayor, begging your pardon. You just fought a terrible battle, and I heard you suffered a mighty head wound. Shouldn’t you just check your town menu and assign people the job?”

  “Won’t they be offended if I don’t ask them first?” I asked.

  “You can just say no when a job is offered,” stated AngusBerg. “Technically, you can say no to a quest, as well. Though, you never do. My lovely wife is worried for you, working yourself so hard and all.”

  “So, people won’t be offended if I just assign them full time jobs?” I continued.

  “No, Mr. Mayor. With that terrible head injury of yours, you probably don’t remember that that’s just how things are done. The menu always suggests the best people for a job,” he assured.

  Ordinal was weird. I would be slightly miffed if, upon waking up one day, I was told what job I would work, day in and day out. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, though. As AngusBerg said, only those people that were qualified were suggested for a job, and they could always decline. I didn’t hold so much power that the people were afraid to tell Mayor Jim ‘No’.

  I assigned 4 people to the mining jobs, which turned them yellow in the town menu. Dropping out of menu time, I relaxed on my cot. Within seconds, I received a notification that the first of the jobs was accepted. The remainder of the notifications followed a short time after.

  Yet another prompt appeared. Reopening the menu, I saw a new page lit up. The town resource tab showed all available resources and the projected rate they would become available. Now that I was going to have a steady supply of iron, I had to allocate it. The town was going to get 6 bars of iron per day, 3 per miner. I selected all of it and assigned it to the blacksmith. From there, I could further specify what tools and hardware needed to be crafted. If I didn’t, the blacksmith would just build what he knew was necessary. I decided to let the blacksmith handle his own lode.

  That done, I looked to the maintenance tab. It listed the state of repairs on many of the buildings in town. There were a great number that required significant maintenance, from the old Windfall Manor, which was nearly collapsing, to the relatively undamaged masonry shop, next to the town wall. Many of those were highlighted for repair, which let the repair crews select which sites to repair at their discretion.

  Overall, I’d found that letting the townsfolk handle the details was a reasonably decent solution. They tended to be a bit short sighted, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. The repair crews had been focusing on the jobs that they could repair the fastest and the easiest. This had allowed nearly the entire population to get under roof in a relatively short period of time.

  The buildings were listed with various types of damage. Some had sustained only light damage. These required only a few wood planks and nails to repair. Others had been heavily damaged when the city was overrun. They required significant amounts of iron to be brought up to snuff. The final category was buildings that were considered a total loss. These sat in a ring on the eastern side of town. They had been burned out when the town was sacked. What little that was left, was not worth repairing.

  Up until now, we had been without a supply of iron, making a number of buildings impossible to fix. This included the Town Hall. I selected it and whistled. We could repair six other buildings with the materials required for just this one.

  Wood planks and logs were needed for most of the buildings’ repairs. The log was a standard allotment of wood on Ordinal. A log was just about 3 feet long. If you were thinking that different sections of tree made for different sized logs, you’d be surprised to learn that that didn’t matter. I know I was.

  “They are clearly different sizes,” I had said, on the very first day of repairs. I gestured at two logs from two completely different kinds of trees. “There is absolutely no way to get the same amount of building material from each.

  “Crafting magic,” replied Shart, grinning wickedly. Despite their different sizes, each log had produced 3 identical planks. The little jerk had been right.

  The Town Hall would take thirty logs and way more iron than we had possessed. I had decided it wasn’t even worth adding to the list of buildings to be repaired. Now that we had iron coming in, I added it on. I fully expected it to
be quite a while before it was fixed; it was going to take nearly an entire day’s output of iron for the materials.

  Closing out that item, I also checked the Forestry Hut in the nearby woods. Since we had gotten back from the fortress, OttoSherman had been assigned there. He’d spent every day gathering logs for the village. Initially, I’d been concerned with OttoSherman in the woods all alone, so I’d tried to be clever. I had assigned another person to the hut.

  EdithGretta was a tall, straight backed woman who had been thrown in the same cell I’d found OttoSherman. She’d actually been with the archers at the Battle of the Eastern Gate of the Western Fortress, firing arrows into the occasional unfortunate goblin head.

  Right now, I could see both of them on my map. They were in a workspace in the Forestry Hut, where they met several times a day. Probably conferring about where to chop trees next. Those two were always planning.

  OttoSherman had the Lumberjack profession and Axe skill. EdithGretta had the Forestry profession and skill in a bunch of things, including Bows. They were a natural fit, and I congratulated myself on my foresight. I was positive they were working on aspects of lumberjacking, oft unconsidered by the common man.

  Finally, I checked on defenses. This was the area I was most concerned with in the coming weeks. Of course, the barrier was our first line of defense. I knew that launching an attack from within would cause the barrier to fail. JoeClarence’s rock throw had taught me that. I had also seen goblin spells bounce off it, and when Wargs tried to charge it, they burst into flames. Other than that, I had no actual knowledge of our blue barrier. I didn’t know what, if anything, would penetrate it or make it fall completely. Of course, the barrier was well outside of town. Even if it fell, we’d have plenty of time to man the walls.