Wolves of the Lost City: A litRPG Novel (Adventure Online Book 2)

by Isaac Stone

  Inside the box was a photograph. I lifted it up and looked upon it in the moonlight. There wasn’t a lot of illumination to use, but I could see who was in the photograph. It was the Hans Konkin and Chamita, or the woman she was based upon. She appeared to be on top of the world and sat on his lap on what had to be some kind of bar. I guessed a high-end gentlemen’s club from the activity in the background. It was obvious to me that Chamita, or whoever she was based upon, simply humored this man. His eyes looked directly at the camera and were wide. He reminded me of a kid who, at that moment, received everything he ever wanted for his birthday. Who in their right mind could believe these places really granted wishes? It reminded me of the time, on our way back from a survey; I hit a number of Philly clubs with a few work friends. I watched a young man stuff bills into the bikini bottom of a dancer while a bouncer kept them both under a watchful eye.

  “She’s only in love with you so long as you keep feeding her cash,” I told him in a drunken stupor. I managed to make it out to the cab with my buddies without eating the pavement that night.

  “Who are you?” I said to the statue. “What would cause someone to create such a powerful archetype for a game system? I don’t believe these games developed independently. There had to be some collaboration along the way. What am I not seeing in this place? I don’t get it. There is more to this game than playing a scavenger hunt against Nazis. Both of these games reflect something fundamental down at the deep design level, which bled through to the surface. It’s why they want me to run through these scenarios. I have some damn connection that they want to exploit. Hell, if I can figure out what it is.”

  I sat there and tried to reckon where to go next. Now that I understood the real reason of this game, or games, I could quit with the pretension and try to figure out what to do.

  It was the inactivity I couldn’t stand. Because I was the only one left, there were no more people to bounce ideas off right now. At least I had my team to converse with back on the mountain. In one swift moment of bad decision, I’d lost my entire crew here. Granted, they were computer simulations, but the fact remained that I was alone and had no one else to call on for help. Unless you counted the VR team and they wanted me out of this place. I still didn’t understand why they just didn’t order me out. Seriously, if this problem was so big, what kept them from pulling the plug on the entire operation? It should be easy. All they needed to do was initiate it from the other side.

  I could still find the courier box, it had to be somewhere in this abandoned city. At least that was what I was told by my commanding officer who sent me on this secret mission. The question was, did I have enough food to last until I located it? The VR team wasn’t about to help me, so I was on my own this time.

  I went through the possible locations of the box in my head. I knew where it wasn’t, but that left the other 99% of the lost city to search.

  I pulled the revolver out of my holster and looked at it. It was time to end this thing once and for all. They’d beat me. I was done. I didn’t care if I never would figure out who Chamita/Chamistra represented. It might be some nameless dancer. Yes, I’d seen her or someone who might look like her, but she didn’t want to communicate other than by note. Let somebody else solve this game. All I wanted to do was collect what money I could and get on with my life. If the headaches stayed away, I could manage to do it.

  I flipped the cover off the gun handle and looked at the red ejection button. With one sigh, I reached down and placed a finger on it. Finished. Beaten.

  “Don’t do it!” a voice yelled behind me. I almost dropped the revolver on the ground.

  “Don’t give up and let them win!” Chamistra said to me from the door of the temple.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I snapped the cover on the handle and shoved the revolver back into its holster. There she was, the moonlight behind her, creating a lunar vision before me with her hair loose and untied down her back. She wore the same plain wrap I’d seen her in before with the grey ashes smeared over every visible part of her body. The sandalwood paste mark was prominent on her forehead.

  “Chamistra!” I snapped at her. “Where have you been? I’m the only one left. The others are dead. I still need to find that damn box.”

  For some reason it didn’t strike me as odd that she knew what I was about to do. My finger was on the verge of depressing the red eject button and ending the game. I assumed she thought I was suicidal and wanted me to stop. What else would anyone think if they saw me with a loaded gun in an abandoned temple?

  “I went to get some help,” she told me. “How foolish of you to think there was some way to stop those other men with guns. I saw the look in their eyes. They were born killers, every one of them. I don’t know where that bunch came from, but they were ready to kill all of you and anyone else who stood in their way. You Europeans like to kill anything that gets in your path, but these men were tenfold worse than anyone I’ve ever seen. I knew there was no way we could stop them, so I went for help.”

  I heard the prayer beads rattle around her neck as she knelt down in one motion. How she came up behind me with such silence I could not fathom.

  “I supposed we made someone angry?” I asked her, in a reference to the offering she made when we first arrived. “I thought you fixed it for us.”

  “You don’t fix something like that,” she told me. “All you can do is make amends and hope you don’t get crushed. I was too late and the others suffered. At least I managed to save you.”

  “I managed to get inside their camp,” I told her. “The German Commandos don’t have the courier box I need to find. I don’t know where it’s located and the map doesn’t show it to me. A gentleman can't seem to catch a break.” I looked at her as she closed her eyes and put her hands into a Namaste position. She didn’t seem to hear me. I supposed she was in some state of meditation.

  I noted she faced the statue and didn’t say a word. Now this was an unexpected development, a woman in the image the statue in front of her appeared to be praying to it. I reminded myself I was deep in the game and anything could happen. I expected a tiger to leap into the building, although I hadn’t seen any animal life inside the city.

  After a few minutes, she opened her eyes and turned them to me. “You have guns, don’t you?” Chamistra asked me. “Guns besides the one strapped to your side?”

  “I’ve got a submachine gun,” I told her, “And the weapons we brought here.”

  “How fast can you get the submachine gun?” she asked again. There was a look of concern in her eyes.

  “It’s not far from us,” I told her. “I can go get it in a few minutes. I should have some ammunition clips with it.”

  I slapped myself in anger. “What’s wrong?” she asked me.

  “I left my submachine gun down the pit where I fell. It’s busted from the fall and useless.”

  “What about the other one?”

  “I won’t know until I go and check.”

  “Then go grab it and meet me back here,” she told me. “I need to check on something.” She vanished out the door to the temple while I watched. The only thing I heard was her feet pad down the corridor between the buildings. Even her beads didn’t rattle this time.

  I found the submachine gun Private Tommy used next to where I’d left it. All the bodies were gone and I wasn’t about to go in search of them. It was enough to know there was still a useable submachine gun with a few ammunition clips. I grabbed it and ran back to the temple where the statue stood.

  Chamistra was already there. She sat cross-legged at the entrance and rose up when she saw me.

  “All I could find,” I told her as I showed her the gun. “It will have to do for now.”

  I was filled with curiosity and looked at her. “Why are you so concerned?” I demanded. “What do I need to know?”

  “Your German friends are on their way here,” she informed me. “They’ve found the rations missing and know what it means. They wan
t you dead and plan to finish the task this time. You’ll need that gun if you want to stay alive.”

  I wanted to ask her how she knew these things, but I was interrupted by the arrival of twenty men.

  I heard a sound of shuffling and they materialized next to us with their weapons and shields. These were the same tribesmen we’d encountered before, but this group was ready for war. They were led by the same leader I’d seen before, but he wore body armor this time. It wasn’t the highest grade of body armor, most of it was hand-forged, but it would stop a knife and slow down a bullet. Each man had a helmet strapped on his head. Likewise, the steel construction looked homemade and crude, but they would give the wearer a level of protection. I admired them in the dim light of the moon. Even in the pale light, I could see their body armor gleam with a fresh coat of oil. They were ready.

  “I trust you know these men,” she said to me. “They are what stand between your Nazi horde and us.”

  I met them on the way here,” I told her. “Those helmets and body armor are better than nothing, but the commandos have guns of their own. The armor won’t save them if they turn their machine guns on us.”

  Ramshunda, the tribal leader, pulled a Sten gun out from behind his shield and let me see it. “It’s amazing what you can buy on the open market these days,” he told me. “Especially with a war about to begin in Europe. The Germans wanted to make us a deal, but we won’t turn against our benefactor.” He nodded in Chamistra’s direction.

  “There is some relation between you and these men I don’t understand,” I told her. “Am I supposed to understand it?”

  “You wouldn’t,” she told me. “No one born outside of this part of the forest would. His people have looked after our convent for a thousand years. When the kings who built the city fled, their guards settled around our hills. No one has conquered this part of the frontier. Ever. Even you English might think you own it, but you don’t. And I won’t stand for those Nazi’s to come in here and take over. That is what they want to do. They think they’ve found the city where all their virl energy began. They want this city, and what it represents, to deliver as a prize to their great leader. I won’t let it happen and these men won’t either.”

  She looked down the corridor in front of the temple. “The men from the North are about to find out they’ve stumbled into a cobra’s nest.”

  She turned to Ramshunda and closed her eyes. “They are here.”

  I watched as the Dimmur tribesmen pulled back and assumed a staggered formation inside the city. It was the perfect format to prevent the commandos from an assault. They could take control of any advance before the other side knew what hit them.

  Chamistra and I moved back into the temple where the statue of Chamita was placed. We could smell the cigarette smoke, which I thought to be a little odd as it ruined the element of surprise. I finally came to the conclusion that the commandos didn’t think anyone else was in the city except me. They felt this was an easy operation and all they had to do was track me down. Once I was located, my elimination should be simple.

  I watched them approach from a small opening inside the temple. As the giant statue of my VR wife looked down on Chamistra and me, I saw the first commando come near the temple. He didn’t have a clue as to where I was located, but he had a general idea. It was enough to hunt me down.

  There was no way this division could pass for locals, so the Germans didn’t even try. The first man I saw had the standard military uniform on with a Hamberugeren Division mask and sword insignia on his shoulder. He was a lower-ranked red shirt and I didn’t have to look his character up in the book to know he was an expendable recruit. These commando squads didn’t get the best men since the German military didn’t trust remote commando forces, mostly just brutes with lots of guns and nothing to lose.

  He stopped and signed behind him. In a few more minutes, he was joined by three commandos of a similar rank. The walked with care to the nearest temple and looked inside. The moon was still bright enough to see basic shapes and they searched for human forms. I’m sure the commandos had electric lanterns with them, but didn’t want to surprise me by turning them on when they reached the inside of the temple. They were silent, but I could smell the tobacco they liked to smoke. Soon the corridor was filled with the rest of the unit. They’d brought everyone up.

  “They didn’t leave anyone behind to guard their camp,” Chamistra whispered to me. “That was not smart.”

  I could see the first commando as he moved out of the temple and toward our position. He was young, no more than 22. It seemed such a waste for a young man to give his life for a madman. It wasn’t the first time someone was fooled into fighting for the wrong side, nor would it be the last.

  They fanned out, but their officer, who could be told by his insignia and attitude, kept his commandos together. He stayed up toward the front with a small submachine gun of his own and kept them in line. It wouldn’t be much longer now as the commandos were almost at the first hiding place the Dimmur set up. I knew the tribe’s plan: allow the German Commandos to advance far enough to become surrounded. At which point they would open up on them and tear the unit to shreds. The commandos still didn’t understand they’d walked themselves into a trap.

  It all happened so quick that I almost missed the action. I stayed in the temple with Chamistra and played heavy reserve. Although in the body of a British officer from 1942, my actual military experience was limited to tabletop RPG’s. I decided to let the Dimmur take care of the commandos. If things went bad wrong, I had the submachine gun to back them up. I was getting handy in a fight thanks to all the VR violence, but I'm still Vince when it comes to training.

  Two Germans went down quick from the gunfire behind them. I heard the rattle of the Sten guns as the tribesmen opened up and caught the commandos when they weren’t ready. Two of them went down with blood spurting from their uniforms while the others swerved around and tried to find cover. They shot back in the direction of the gunfire, but it was too late. Before the officer could call out and order, the second group of tribesmen blasted away from their concealed position and raked bullets across him. He went down in a yell and the remainder of the commandos scattered.

  The air was filled with the smoke of burnt powder and the floor was littered with the spent cartridges. I stepped out with my submachine gun and waited to see if the locals needed any help, but they were in control of the battle. I’d kept mine on single fire, as I didn’t think it a good idea to waste ammunition at such a close range.

  The moment I stepped into the corridor, one of the Germans tried to site on one of the men who didn’t notice him. The firefight was out of control in seconds. The only thing that kept the same side from shooting each other was the commando uniforms. The Dimmur body armor was obvious in the moonlight.

  The German squeezed off a round, which sent his opponent to the ground, but I had the commando lined up by then.

  “Mach schnell!” I yelled in the only German I knew. The commando spun around to face my submachine gun and I opened up. He went down to join the others on the ground.

  Four or five commandos fled the scene of the carnage in the direction of the forest. As they ran across the open perimeter, I watched two of the tribesmen jump up on the wall and site on them. It wasn’t easy to do and the range increase would make it a hard target, but I could tell they didn’t care. One of the Dimmur depressed the trigger and emptied an entire magazine at the Germans who were on the run. Two of them went down, but the rest continued to flee for cover.

  I heard the click of magazines slide into position and the tribesmen were already back in place. I didn’t think they could get the commandos from this range. They didn’t care, the rage was upon them and four men shouted to victory as they lowered their Sten guns at the Germans.

  “Stop!” Chamistra yelled at them. They lowered their guns and turned to look at her.

  “There is no need to waste ammunition,” she explained. “You won’t be
able to get them from this range.” She stood there in the moonlight with both hands on her hips and glared at the men.

  “We can go after them,” the nearest man offered. “The northerners don’t know this forest. We’ll have them in an hour at most.” He seemed irritated, but didn’t want to contradict her.

  “Let them go,” Chamistra commanded. “They can tell their people what happened and never to come to this place again. I don’t think they’ll survive in the jungle on their own, but if they do, it will serve as a warning to the others who might try and come here.”

  The Dimmur lowered their submachine guns and looked at her with sorrow. They’d lived for this moment, I could tell. None of them seemed to know a lot about the guns they fired. I guessed their training was minimal. Every time they’d fired off a round when they learned to use the weapon, it was one less bullet and one more chance for someone to find out they had the weapons. I watched as they slung the Sten guns across their shoulders and looked to Ramshunda for guidance.

  “Do as the abbess says,” he told her. “We still have the guns. At least the British will be less of a problem in the future.”

  He turned to me. “We should kill you too, captain,” he fumed. “But the diva doesn’t want us to do it. Be grateful we have such respect for her.” He still glared at me.

  Chamistra folded her hands and bowed at the elder. “You may go back now,” she told him. “I will see to the mess they’ve left behind.” Ramshunda folded his hands and returned the salute.

  As I stood and watched, they lined up and approached her for a blessing. It was quick, each man, gun locked on safety, bowed down to Chamistra, touched her feet and stood still until she laid a hand his head. Then he moved to one side and allowed the man behind him to do the same. The entire process took less than five minutes. When finished, they formed a line, bowed again to her and left the city. I watched them slip into the forest as they left under the stars.

  “Do you think they’ll let the Germans go?” I said to Chamistra as she watched them leave. “Seems to me they were pretty disappointed.”