Realm of the Nine Circles: A LitRPG Novel

by P. Joseph Cherubino

  Peytral of Clans: +9 Agility, +9 Intellect

  The new one was not only higher in stat value, the agility would do him more good than the stamina. The gain offset the new head piece, which replaced 7 agility with and added 14% ranged damage. The new stats would help him shoot faster, more accurately and do more damage with his arrows.

  “Wow, Kalmond, thanks!”

  The dwarf just grunted in reply. They walked in silence down the parched slope into the valley. The thin trickle was only a few feet deep but it was crystal clear and all too inviting under the scorching sun. Though guilt nagged at Kalmond, he threw off his sweat-soaked armor and dropped it by a straggly scrub bush. He stripped down to his basic outfit, a cotton tunic and trews, but decided they had best stay on. He waded into the water, shivering as it tickled his legs with icy fingers. As it reached his waist he sucked in a breath as his belly protested the sudden temperature change. Gritting his teeth, he took another step. A stone shifted and he tumbled in, feet losing purchase on the slippery stones. He struggled, flailing his stubby arms, unable to buoy his stocky body in the tugging current. Bubbles rushed by his face as a strong grip heaved him to his feet.

  “You look like a drowned dwarf!” Thornbark laughed. “I guess you never levelled up your swimming, buddy.”

  Kalmond looked at his friend for a moment before a deep laugh peeled from his belly. He staggered towards the bank, then, reaching Thuglar who stood tentatively easing into the chilly water, dropped on his belly, sending splashing waves all over the elf.

  “Woah, watch the hair!” Thuglar yelled, then spluttered as Thornbark emptied a flask of water over his spiked locks. The thief responded by splashing the centaur, who enjoyed it enough that Thuglar gave up trying to get a rise out of him.

  The three of them played and splashed, hollering loudly. At one point, Kalmond glanced over to see Keerna on the bank, dangling her feet in, skirts hiked high. Kalmond blushed, averting his eyes from tried her bare thighs and was unsure whether or not to be grateful that the game bodies were built PG13.

  Once they’d burned off their irritation and grief, the Noble Four lay under one of the few trees that lined the water. Keerna took out her version of the chalice—they all had a copy—and examined it for the first time. “What on earth do we do with this?” she murmured.

  “Congratulations, Noble protectors of the Nine Circles.” Virgil’s disembodied voice broke over them like a waterfall, torrential yet unleashing a relief that Keerna did not expect. Though she’d been sure of her words, his absence had worried her greatly.

  “You have taken the Chalice of Forms and broken the bonds which enslaved the residents of the Third Circle. Now they are free to become the Third Army.”

  Kalmond carefully read through the notification as it scrolled by.

  Congratulations! You have completed: Free The Realm quest, checkpoint #1.

  You have received:

  Quest reward: 3000 circs

  Quest Reward: Horned Helm of Nobility: +11 Stamina, +11 Strength

  Quest Experience: 2500 XP

  Kalmond gasped, seeing similar shocked looks on the faces of his friends. That sort of experience dump was entirely unheard of. His XP bar had barely crawled past 5% since levelling and the crawl from level 39 to level 40 was notoriously long. And yet, his bar had instantaneously filled by two-fifths.

  When Virgil spoke again, he had the complete attention of the four Nobles.

  “There are those still bound by evil to actions unchosen. For too long Mylos has ruled through fear, forcing many to face endless death or servitude. To win the battle for the Realms, you must free those who fight for Mylos unwilling. Only when all are free to choose will Mylos become vulnerable.”

  Virgil paused and Keerna waited, knowing his next words would be the most important of all.

  “To free them, you must fill the chalice at the rift. You will need all the armies of the Nine to keep Mylos at bay, but only the Noble Four will able able to penetrate as far as the rift. If you fail, all will be lost.”

  Words flashed up before Keerna.

  Do you wish to continue this quest?

  She reached a finger out slowly, biting her lip as she reached for the checkbox. Each of the Noble Four reached up and tapped a word only they could see.

  Yes.

  “Guess that’s the end game,” Thuglar said.

  “We’ve probably done the hardest part,” Kalmond said.

  “Dude!” Thuglar exclaimed, turning a reddened face towards his friend. “Every time you say that—”

  “Oh, come on,” Kalmond replied. “The cave crabs weren’t that bad.”

  “That’s not what you said when they were tearing you up like a rotten chicken leg,” Thuglar replied.

  “Guys?” Thornbark said, pointing upstream. Both dwarf and elf ignored him and went on arguing.

  Keerna tried to stay out of it, and stared up at the blue sky.

  “Uhh, guys?” Thornbark said. Everyone ignored him.

  The centaur focused his attention on a rock formation he hadn’t noticed before. Each time he blinked, the sense that something was different plagued him. It was like having deja-vu in reverse. He turned back to his friends, studied them, then looked back upstream. Was the bank wider, the rocks smoother and more numerous? He certainly didn’t notice before, the grass that now lined the top of the bank. And now, there was a top of the bank, where before they stood even with the stream bed.

  “Guys!” Thornbark shouted, his voice rising to the equine register.

  “What!” Thuglar replied, whirling to look up at Thornbark with his jaw thrust out.

  “Look!” The centaur reached down and grabbed Thuglar by the shoulder and spun him around.

  The elf jumped back as Keerna fell down from the heights of her escapist musing. Kalmond stepped forward a few paces.

  “That is definitely different,” Thuglar said. “Keerna, did you notice anything?”

  “No. I”ve been cloud watching to avoid the sounds of two thieves bickering.”

  Thornbark lifted one hoof, then another, then paced nervously. “I feel something.”

  Just then, a warm breeze picked up that did not disturb the tall grass that now bordered the bank high above them.

  “Everything’s different,” Kalmond said. “Every time I blink, something changes.”

  “Dude, you gotta stop blinking!” Thuglar replied.

  “Oh no…” Keerna said, and pointed upstream.

  By the time they realized what was about to happen, it was too late. The wall of water somehow snuck up on them like a master thief. One minute they were standing by a tinkling creek, the next minute they were standing at the bottom of a dry riverbed. Somehow, they hadn’t noticed the changes. The Noble Four disappeared into a violent wall of water.

  Kalmond sank. Even without armor and clad only in his R9C skivvies, his dense dwarven bones and thick muscles meant he had little buoyancy. He kicked as the green-tinted world beneath the water introduced itself to him, by pressing him down further. Each time he rose up, another current pushed him back down. His muscles burned with effort. Spots flared and sparkled in his field of vision and the muffled sounds grew sharp and metallic.

  Maybe staying beneath the water wasn’t so bad after all. If his character died here, maybe he could wake up back in the real world. After all he’d been through, all he’d seen, this seemed a fitting end to his life in the game. Let someone else deal with armed thugs in the real world, psychotic virtual reality beasts and imprisoned, reanimated human brains in this one. Dante could just walk out of the Plexcorp building with the promise never to reveal what he’d seen. The cold water, with its remorseless and honest violence, stripped him bare. Why should he care about those crimes he did not commit? Surely, they’d let him go. But with everything else washed away, that little voice remained. “You know you can’t do that”, it said. Damn it.

  Something hard wrapped itself around Kalmond’s thick wrist. A monster, perhaps. Kalm
ond was fine with that, too. The thing tugged at him and the dwarf rose. Before he knew it, he was above water.

  “Got him!” A familiar voice yelled.

  Rough hands dragged him up and lay him down across horse flesh. Thuglar turned himself around on Thornbark’s back and held Kalmond in place. Kalmond’s sensitive dwarf nose wrinkled as he coughed up river water.

  “Your ass stinks!” Kalmond grumbled.

  “And your ass can’t float,” Thuglar said, pounding his friend on the back to force out the water.

  “But horses are excellent swimmers!” Thornbark said, kicking his hooves in the water and picking up speed.

  A billowing white form undulated atop the water. Kalmond didn’t realize what Thornbark was swimming for until Keerna turned over on her back and did a graceful backstroke. She took in some water and sprayed it from her mouth like a fountain.

  “Hi guys! The water’s fine,” Keerna called, then turned over and swam freestyle toward the bank.

  Thornbark followed, then Kalmond and Thuglar dismounted him like the strangest canoe. All three helped pull him ashore. Keerna stood smoothing her armored robes while Kalmond stood barefoot and miserable.

  “I want my stuff back,” Kalmond said, donning the helm he’d received from Virgil, but feeling like an idiot as he shivered in sopping medieval underwear..

  “Why didn’t you put it in your inventory, dumbass,” Thuglar asked.

  Kalmond shrugged and squeezed water from his beard. Thuglar sighed and paused a moment, going through an inventory that hovered in front of him that nobody else could see.

  “I feel heavier,” Kalmond said, checking his own inventory.

  “It’s not much, but studded leather armor will look good on you.

  “Why are you carrying that?” Kalmond asked.

  “Because my boots always have a +50 hauler bonus,” Thuglar said with a sharp-toothed elven grin. “With the right enchantments and mods, that armor would make good stealth gear.”

  “Well,” Kalmond said. “At least we aren’t—”

  “Don’t say it!” the rest shouted in unison.

  “What?” The dwarf asked, shrugging his wide shoulders. “I just mean—”

  “Stop!” Keerna yelled. “Please!” a wry smile cranked across her face, and she chuckled to hitch her voice. “I’m convinced. Every time you say something like that the shit has hit the fan.”

  “I keep trying to tell you,” Thuglar said. “It could be a game anomaly.”

  Kalmond stood blinking slowly, eyes focused somewhere beyond his elven friend.

  “If that is true,” Kalmond said. “I didn’t complete my sentence, and yet, we have…that…” And he slowly lifted his arm to point a trembling finger at the form looming up behind the rest of the group.

  It seemed part of the thick stand of river grass that resembled cattails. When it moved, the cattails seemed to be part of it, as if silk screened onto its skin. But when the thing moved out from its hiding place, its true form became apparent. Gray skin stretched across the muscled, bare humanoid chest. It stared at them with eyes set in a tubular head like that of a hammerhead shark. It seemed to have no mouth or nose, just the eyes and that head set on a stumpy neck.

  The monster stepped forward slowly, lifting a long foot with three, sharp toes. He spread lanky arms wide and spread out equally spiky and sharp-looking fingers.

  “Maybe it’s friendly,” Thornbark said, but he moved back a few paces to give his bow more opportunity.

  “What’s it doing?” Keerna whispered.

  Kalmond just looked on in strange fascination as the beast revealed a second set of arms that rose high above its head.

  “It must have shoulders on its back somewhere,” Thuglar said, moving around in a semi-circle to flank the beast, who turned towards him in response.

  “It does,” Thornbark said. “I can see them below his first set of shoulder blades. Cool! The arms have four joints.”

  As if to demonstrate the function of those arms, the creature reached behind and plucked two of the long, thick grass stalks from the ground. It held them high above its head and spread its first set of arms wide.

  “That might be a gesture of peace,” Keerna said, allowing herself a smile.

  “Shit,” Thuglar said, “Now here you go with the jinx thing…”

  The creature stretched its secondary arms straight up to the sky. The cattails began to glow, then shimmer and harden. What before was simple wetland grass turned to rapiers that glimmered in the sun.

  “Oh sh—”

  The beast struck the unarmed dwarf first. On instinct, Kalmond darted forward as soon as he saw the creature’s pectorals twitch. The rapier slashed at his head, but he brought his left forearm up to take the brunt, while his right fist came up to meet the creature’s belly in a solid uppercut. Bare fist met impossibly hard flesh, and did little damage. The counter attack slowed it down. It staggered back but readied another attack as it did. Thick dwarven blood seeped out rapidly, warming the skin of Kalmond’s forearm beneath the leather armor. The dwarf growled and advanced.

  “Take a weapon, at least!” Thuglar yelled, tossing Kalmond an enchanted hatchet and a dwarven shortsword.

  With reassuring weight in his hands, Kalmond advanced with the rest of the Noble Four. Keerna already hit the dwarf with a healing spell, and Thornbark had double fire arrows nocked.

  “I caught its name after the first attack,” Thornbark said. “It’s a Transmuter.”

  “Never heard of it,” Kalmond rumbled with the bloodlust brewing in his lungs. He moved forward in a low crouch.

  Keerna finished healing the dwarf and deployed her golden fire chain. The creature moved its eyes closer together by shrinking the length of its head and changing the angle of its eyes.

  “Freaky!” Thuglar said, executing a fake lunge.

  The creature bought the ruse and sprang forward as Thuglar sprang back. Thornbark loosed two arrows that caught the creature in the ribcage, while Keerna lashed out at least six times with the sharp dart at the end of her flaming chain. Kalmond released his power lunge to discover the creature was not slowed by the attack. Its health bar showed it took a mere 15% damage.

  The Transmuter whirled into Kalmond’s lunge. One arm dropped to the ground, cleanly severed below the elbow. Its health bar dropped straight down to 60%. Milky white blood fanned out from the wound as the creature screamed from a mouth that opened at the center of its abdomen.

  Kalmond struck hard, but the attack brought him close. The Transmuter wrapped its remaining arms around the dwarf, digging its dagger-like fingers into his back, piercing the leather armor as if it was not there.

  Kalmond watched in dismay as his health points halved in an instant. He could not see what was going on where his body met the Wraith but from the oddly painless tugging, he knew that the creature’s mouth tore at him. The grotesque dance brought them around in a wild circle while the others tried to score hits that would not wound their companion.

  Kalmond struggled mightily and managed to free his right arm, which he used to punch the creature hard in the eye. The beast shrieked again, and Kalmond fell away, barely able to see the red health bar that read 20%. He crawled away while Keerna changed her weapon to a fire saber, while Thuglar moved in with his enchanted dirks. The double attack yielded more critical hits than the wraith could stand. The creature fell bleeding from more than a dozen deep slashes, and Thuglar searched it instantly.

  “It’s got something called a transmute gem. It’s worth a lot—10,000 circs!” Thuglar said, “and you can take its heart, no value on that though. Strange.” Thuglar reached into the corpse and came out with the sopping organ, which he tossed to Keerna.

  “No properties on this item, either,” She said, after scanning the item and dropping it into her disappearing backpack.

  Kalmond moaned and rolled over, revealing shocking wounds beneath shredded armor. Keerna downed a mana potion, knelt over him and beamed him with healing e
nergy.

  “Why the hell did you take him on with borrowed weapons and weak armor,” Keerna asked as the dwarf’s armor mended and his wounds faded.

  “I just want done with this,” Kalmond said, standing up. “And I want my armor back.”

  “Looks like you’ll need it,” Thuglar said. Turning to Thornbark, he asked, “Can I get a ride back to…wherever the hell Kalmond’s stuff is?”

  Thornbark reached out a hand in answer and pulled the elf up on his back The two galloped off back upstream in search of Kalmond’s discarded items.

  “Well,” Kalmond said, limbering his arms and rolling his head in circles on his neck. “With a few more kills, I’ll be level 39, almost the same level as Mylos.”

  Keerna didn’t smile. “I’m almost up a level too, but I think you really have a death wish.”

  “Maybe,” Kalmond said, turning away towards a chat indicator he hadn’t seen in hours. “It’s Martin!”

  “I see it too,” Keerna replied.

  “Hope you are well. All hell breaking loose here. Hurry,” the text read.

  “Well, that was no comfort,” Keerna said. Kalmond just shook his head and sighed.

  “Seems like Virgil is letting them communicate with us,” Kalmond replied. “But why now?”

  Keerna shook her head, said, “I don’t know, but that body is still there.”

  Kalmond turned to see that it was true. The monster looked dead, and the XP bubble showed stats for the kill, but there it was. Without words, the sorceress and dwarf drew their weapons and stepped back.

  The body twitched. This time, Kalmond was not eager to confront it. The body began to smoke, and Keerna spun her golden chain weapon, preparing to strike. The carcass fumed, sending up thick black ribbons of smoke before bursting into orange flames that flared for an instant before disappearing as if never there. Hundreds of strange, little creatures appeared in the scorched outline where the body lay. Scaled things, things with fur, beings with all manner of limb, scurried into the water, fled along the stream bank in either direction or took off into the tall grass.

  “What the…” Keerna said.

  “…hell was that,” Kalmond continued.