The Road East (Epic LitRPG Adventure - Book 2) (Fayroll)

by Andrey Vasilyev

  “Ah-ah.” I clapped once. “You still don’t have control over your temper. And you can’t take a hit. Remember this—you need to be ready for people to throw all kinds of crap at you because they always will.”

  Vika understood that I’d apparently been joking or testing her yet again and calmed down. “They didn’t teach us that,” she said.

  “They didn’t teach you anything,” I answered. “There’s a Grand Canyon of difference between what they teach you at university and what it’s like here in the real world. Anyway, we’ll come back to that later.”

  I looked at my troops. “Okay, our job is to publish a six-page—well, twelve-page, really—insert called the Fayroll Times. I hope everyone knows what Fayroll is?”

  They all nodded, which made me feel better. Next, I moved on to a five-minute speech about what I wanted to see and who would do what.

  “All right, let’s talk about who’s responsible for what. Who liked history and geography at school?”

  “I did.” The Tuft raised his hand.

  “Excellent. You get two articles in every issue: one about the history of Fayroll and the other about a geographical look at a location. Where it is, what’s nearby, who lives there, how to kill them. You can find everything you need on the forums. If you’re having a problem with that, let me know.”

  “Got it.” It didn’t look like the Tuft was terribly pleased with his assignment.

  “Who’s game for facts and analysis?” I asked.

  “Probably me,” said the Nose, who raised his hand as well. “What should I write about?”

  “You’ll describe the classes. Make sure you’re detailed, and that will be a ton of material. Mages and everything about them, from A to Z, you know what I mean. And so on. You’ll also be responsible for the Guide section. Each release should include information about a dungeon or something else like that. You’ll figure it out.”

  “And then I have something different for you two,” I said, turning to Fish Eyes and Vika. “Well, let me tell you, Vika. You can tell him later.”

  Fish Eyes was hurt, though he didn’t show it. You’re just going to have to wait it out. It’ll get worse before it gets better. What can I say? I don’t like you…

  “Okay, Vika, I’m going to write down the number of a girl named Diana, but you should call her Di. Give her your email address, and she’ll send you a ton of information. What I want you and your friend to do is go through it every week and find what you think is most interesting. Don’t worry too much about it—pick out everything you think is even just a little interesting. Every Tuesday we three—you, me, and that goblin—will sit down and sort through what you have. Okay?”

  “I think so.” The girl nodded, all business.

  “I’m going to give you my number, too, so call me whenever you need to—for work, of course. You give it to everyone else, and then have everyone exchange numbers and give them to me. All right, let’s go.”

  “Where?” Vika blinked, not understanding.

  “That’s a strange question. Am I not your boss?”

  “You are.”

  “Well, then,” I said with an oily smile, “let’s go to the next office. I want to use you!”

  The girl did a good job that time. She reddened a little, but she reacted much better and waved me off.

  “Oh, come on. You’re nothing but talk.”

  “Ten points for you. Let’s head over to the main office so I can introduce you to everyone. You’ll also be handling the technical side of things, so you need to know all the more or less important people around here.”

  Everyone stood there quietly listening to me.

  “You.” I walked over to Stroynikov and poked him in the chest.

  “I have a name. Or a last name,” he answered, frowning.

  “Perhaps, if you’d behaved yourself at the beginning…” I looked at him narrowly. “Now, you have to earn them. If you don’t like that, the door is still open and waiting for you.”

  Fish Eyes was quiet, and his silence marked his consent. Sure, I was being harsh, but I was only doing things the way I’d been taught, and I turned out fine. There was no point reinventing the wheel.

  “Okay, while we’re gone, make sure all the equipment works well, get the office supplies you need, and see what else you’re missing. Questions?”

  “We’ll help,” said the Tuft. “There’s nothing else to do since the computers haven’t been hooked up yet.”

  “Go,” I said approvingly. “IT’s extension is 126. Bother them until they give you what you need—that’s the only way to get anything out of them.”

  I won’t describe the next day and a half, as it was spent going around, unpacking everything, moving things around, and introducing people. By the time Saturday evening rolled around, everything had mostly calmed down. My team was working late, and I headed home. They were young and still had plenty of energy; I was not. I needed to sleep and eat once in a while.

  I walked into my apartment, my phone ringing right when I stepped over the threshold.

  “Hi, Kif, this is Zimin.”

  “Good evening!” When the boss calls, you drop everything.

  “Yep. Kif, make sure you’re at work on Monday by noon.” Sure. They didn’t ask me, they gave orders.

  “Got it. What’s up?”

  “Nothing, just the security guy we talked about may drop by. Remember?”

  “Okay, I’ll be there,” I answered clearly and concisely.

  “How are the kiddies?” asked Zimin when I didn’t say anything else.

  “Fine so far,” I said. “I pushed them hard, and they got in line.”

  “Good job. Okay, talk to you later.”

  I put my phone in my pocket and realized I’d lost my desire to eat or sleep. The clock read 9 p.m., and I decided that I might as well see how my trip down the river was going. Was I lying on the river bed with crayfish clawing at my legs?

  I was not on the river bed, and there was no seaweed draped over my legs. Instead, I was standing on the bank of the Great River watching the sun set behind its waves. Behind me was a forest, in front of me was the water. The Firefly was nowhere to be seen.

  “Nice.” I whistled and opened my map.

  The Firefly had dropped me off well short of Montrig—maybe a day’s walk. I looked to see what was nearby, hoping there would at least be a headstone to link to. Dying, after all, would have sent me all the way back to the beginning of my journey and made the whole thing a waste of time and money. As it turned out, there was one settlement about an hour away from where I was. Its name was Snakeville.

  Chapter Nine

  In which our hero finds himself somewhere less than enjoyable.

  With my luck, it would have been stupid to think I’d find myself anywhere else. If it were possible to wind up exactly where no one wanted me to go, that was what would happen.

  I checked my map again. The next settlement looked to be half a day’s walk away, while it was only an hour to Snakeville. There was an hour and a half of daylight left.

  Snakeville it is, I decided. At least, I’ll head there and log out. Everything there comes out at night, or at least that’s what everyone said.

  The forest there was not what I was used to. It was almost impassable. In comparison with, say, Fladridge and its elegant birches and aspens, it was the Krasnoyarsk taiga[7] and a forest somewhere in Germany. I clambered over debris, crawled under fallen trees, pushed my way through bushes. I wasn’t thrilled with my latest tourist venture.

  Why do people pay money to go places like that? I mean, more power to them, but I don’t get it. Every once in a while, I’ll see one of them in the metro. They’re walking along with an enormous backpack as majestic as mammoths walking among the cavemen, and they always have something rubbery to sit on tied to the back of their backpacks. Everything is worn and singed by all the campfires they’ve sat around, and on their head, is invariably some kind of knitted contraption or a fisherman’
s hat with strings hanging down from it. The look on their faces is ethereal, as if us city people can’t understand the children of the forest. Forest children—ha! You can just take the train eighty kilometers outside the city to somewhere like Vereya,[8] light a fire, open a bottle of vodka, and sing your lungs out until midnight. Ah well, we all relax in our own ways. I still don’t get it, though.

  And so that forest drove me crazy, too. I’m just not a fan. Though what stood out to me was that I’d been making my way along for half an hour already and hadn’t come across a single enemy. Not a goblin, not a wild, snarling wolf, nothing. It was like the entire forest had gone extinct.

  That thought had no sooner struck me than I heard a grunt as I crawled out from under yet another fallen tree.

  I stood up and looked around to see who was grunting at me.

  There, looking back at me, was an enormous red boar. He was a meter-and-a-half high and had an ugly, tusked face.

  A small clearing separated the two of us. He stared at me with deep-set eyes, and I could feel him tensing to attack.

  I looked closer. Phew boy. He even had a name: Erimanf. Apparently, he had something to do with a quest, which I found equal parts interesting and illogical. After all, there weren’t any villages nearby. Why would a quest require you to burn half a day trudging across the known world to do it? Or maybe he’s left over from Snakeville?

  As I stood there thinking, the boar had had his fill of looking at me and started shuffling his legs.

  “Okay, listen, fangs,” I said to him. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  The boar tilted his head slightly as if listening to me.

  “Let’s say we go ahead and have this fight,” I said, continuing my admonishment. “You may kill me—I won’t argue there. But I might kill you, too. And there’s no reason for us to pick a fight. I’m not on your turf, and I don’t have a quest for you. So, why don’t you go dig up some oaks while I keep on walking toward Snakeville? What do you say?”

  I’m not sure if my voice soothed him or if he was actually intelligent—they say boars in real life actually are very smart, and who knows what they could be like in the game? Either way, this one turned tail and ran, grunting as he did.

  What do you know? I noted to myself. You can always come to an agreement with nature! Not like people at all.

  The little victory wit scored over weaponry cheered me up, as did the fact that the forest was becoming more and more open. I’m not sure I was enjoying the whole thing anymore, but it was at least easier. Ten minutes later, the forest had thinned to the point that I could move quickly without the risk of tripping over some bush or rotten tree trunk.

  My brisk walk, interspersed once in a while with a quick jog, took me another ten minutes. I regularly checked my map—I really wanted to make it out of the forest by nightfall.

  Happily, I made it. The first stars were twinkling in the sky when I broke out of the forest and into a meadow that ended on a tall hill. I could see half-destroyed buildings on the hill—the notorious Snakeville itself. After a few moments’ thought about whether it was worth continuing toward the city, my curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to go for it. Maybe there’s a headstone there. The village was gone, but its headstone may have remained.

  As it always did in Fayroll, the distance turned out to be farther than I thought. The sky was completely dark and featured an enormous moon by the time I walked up the hill and into the village. Everything was quiet and empty. No ghouls flew down to drink my hot blood. No zombies creaked and stank as they meandered up to eat my brains. No ghosts circled my head, trying to suck my soul out of my mortal body. Everything was peaceful and grand, marred only by a lonely shutter creaking rhythmically somewhere in the darkness. A light breeze chased dust down the ragged road and into the houses lining it.

  I walked along Snakeville’s main road (I wasn’t positive that’s what it was, but I was pretty sure) and realized that it had actually been a decent-sized village in its day. There were something like forty buildings from what I could see—buildings in which fires once burned in hearths, buildings which once rang with song, laughter, and conversation. But it was now an open-air museum of human folly that worked only when someone living wandered in.

  That thought surprised me, as I could have sworn someone had put it in my head against my will. What museum? What hearths?

  “This museum,” a voice hissed smoothly in my ear. “See for yourself!”

  A whistle gathered in my ears and went ultrasound, causing me to instinctively cover them and scrunch up my eyes. I felt someone tugging at my sleeve.

  “Mister, are you a warrior?” I heard someone say.

  I opened my eyes and let my hands fall away from my ears.

  In front of me, stood a tiny barefoot girl. She was all of seven and dressed in a calico sundress. Her blue eyes danced, and her hair hung down simply from her head. She was clutching a rag doll with button eyes and a mouth drawn on with charcoal.

  “What?” I asked, not sure where she’d come from. It was brightly lit—wasn’t it just night?

  “Are you a warrior?” she patiently asked again.

  “Yes,” I nodded. “Where am I?”

  “This is my village, Snakeville. I live here with my mommy, daddy, and brother,” she said cheerfully. “My name is Marika. This is Dizzy.”

  She held up the button-eyed doll.

  “And I’m Hagen,” I said, looking around.

  Where did the empty, ruined village go? It wasn’t exactly that scary even in the moonlight. But where did the moonlight go?

  From what I could tell, it was some time around noon, and I was in a completely different village. Well, the same one, but different. There was life in the homes, people walked in and out of them, and chickens mixed with cows on the street.

  “This is Snakeville?” I asked Marika in disbelief.

  “Yep,” she nodded. “But why did you say that your name is Hagen?”

  I looked at her, surprised. “What do you think my name is?”

  “Well, I’m not good at reading. My brother’s teaching me—he’s really good. There’s something above you that says your name is W-…Wi-…Winkle.”

  I pulled up the interface to find that I really was no longer myself. The whole thing becoming more scary than fun. From what I could tell, my name really was Winkle. I was a warrior from the Heirs of the Gods Clan, and I was proudly up at Level 122. That was impressive, of course, but I was more worried about what would happen if I tried to log out.

  Something exploded over the village, and I crouched, instinctively covering the girl with my body. It sounded like a fireball.

  “What was that?” I asked rhetorically.

  “You’re the ones fighting.” Marika’s voice came from under me. “It’s been like that all day. Dizzy and I wanted to ask, are you almost done? It’s so scary, and mommy’s crying—she’s scared, too. Daddy isn’t home, so who will protect us?”

  “If there’s a war going on, why did your mom let you leave the house?” I muttered, picking the girl up off the road and brushing her off. I’d knocked her down when I covered her.

  “She didn’t,” admitted Marika. “I ran away.”

  “You shouldn’t do that,” I said. “When there’s a war, children should stay at home. Really, you should be in the cellar just to be safe.”

  Another explosion rocked the area, though this one was a bit farther from the village.

  “Winkle, damn it!” I heard someone yelling from behind me. “What are you doing standing there? Why did they send us here?”

  I turned around. The person yelling at me was named Denny Lorien, and he was pretty high-level, too.

  “Why did they send us here?” I bellowed back, hoping he’d give me the answer. Why did they send us? How should I know?

  “To make sure the Chaos Riders weren’t pulling apart the houses so they could make boats and cross the river,” said Lorien, waving his hands. “But they aren�
��t here—they didn’t come into the village. Our people are all over by the river already, and you’re the only one left here. Come on, move your ass!”

  I glanced at Marika. She was holding her doll and looking up at me.

  “Fly home,” I told her. “Everything will be over soon. And if you hear metal and swearing, like from that guy over there, don’t leave the house. Don’t let your mom or brother leave either, okay?”

  Marika nodded, waved her doll’s hand at me, and headed off in the direction of a squat house next to the main square.

  “Come see us when it’s over!” she said, turning when she got to her house. “Dizzy and I will be waiting for you!”

  “Are you done teaching your little lesson?” asked Lorien sarcastically. “Maybe we can actually do our job now. There’s a war, you know!”

  We ran off, me behind Denny Lorien.

  “Stop yelling—you’re scaring the villagers,” I said as we went.

  “What villagers? They’re NPCs,” said Denny, glancing at me. “Who cares? Now we just need to worry about taking out their mages. We’ve gotten almost all of them, and we even killed Fistius. It’s just their leader Magnor… He can give us some trouble if he wants to.”

  Mages, mages… Thoughts spun in my head. How did things end here? How did Snakeville get the way it is? I can’t remember what Kro said…or was it Lis?

  “They’re just about done. Oh, there are our guys.” Denny waved.

  On the bank of the river, running around the base of the hill, was a group of maybe ten warriors dressed in chainmail and carrying swords.

  “Why here?” I asked Denny. “Couldn’t they just cross the river?”

  “How?” Lorien stared at me. “There’s something wrong with you today; it’s like you’re a completely different person. They can’t cross from over there since it’s too wide and deep. The ford is right here, so if they come anywhere, it’s here.”

  “That’s true,” I confirmed. “But wait, how are just the few of us going to hold back their attack? What if fifty of them come charging at us, for example?”