by Ryan Rimmel
Noob Game Plus
Ryan Rimmel
Copyright © 2021 Ryan Rimmel
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 9781234567890
ISBN-10: 1477123456
Cover design by: Alexandre Rito
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309
Printed in the United States of America
Dedicated to my tolerant wife, Sarah
I thought she was loving, but quarentine taught me differently
Thanks to the many objects in my office that I've started talking to due to the absence of human interaction.
Thanks to Alexandre Rito @ Podium for the great cover!
Thanks to the rest of the Podium crew, Victoria, Emily, and Johnathan... sorry about Chapter 29.
Also, thanks to all of you who continue to read this.
Thanks to my loving wife, Sarah, who did not find the first sentence AT ALL amusing.
Finally, thanks to Jessica M, Jonathan R and Shaun K. You know what you did.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue - The Sanctum of the Sphinx
Chapter 1 - From Hero to Zero
Chapter 2 – The cold dark cell
Chapter 3 – The Great Escape
Chapter 4 – Peachy Princess
Chapter 5 – Into the Unknown
Chapter 6 – Hiding in the woods
Chapter 7 – Waiting in the woods
Chapter 8 – The Great Escape
Chapter 9 - An Impossible Pursuit
Chapter 10 - The Hills have eyes
Chapter 11 - The Perfect Plan
Chapter 12 – Drop Bears, they are real and terrifying
Chapter 13 – Riverfolk
Chapter 14 – Small Town Living
Chapter 15 – Unexpected Guests
Chapter 16 – On the Road Again
Chapter 17 – The Caravan
Chapter 18 – On the Road, For the First Time
Chapter 19 – Interesting day on the road
Chapter 20 – Once Again into the Breach
Chapter 21 – Room to Grow on the Open Road
Chapter 22 - Meeting of the Dark
Chapter 23 - Story Time
Chapter 24 - Recruitment
Chapter 25 - Union
Chapter 26 - Temples
Chapter 27 - How Exotic
Chapter 28 – Spiritual Disagreement in the Public Square
Chapter 29 – Samson and Jim
Chapter 30 – Aftermath
Chapter 31 – Buried Alive
Chapter 32 – The most terrifying of monsters
Chapter 33 – Rock Bottom
Chapter 34 – New Outlook on Life
Chapter 35 – Chamber of Secrets
Chapter 36 – The Bird is the Word
Chapter 37 – A Lesson in Physics
Chapter 38 – Return of the Curious Puppy
Chapter 39 – Bird in a Bind
Chapter 40 – Riding the Badger
Chapter 41 – The Battle for Aetna
Chapter 42 – A greater army
Chapter 43 – The March towards the Sisters
Chapter 44 – Undead Horde vs. the Army of the North
Chapter 45 - Doomed
Chapter 46 – Battle for the Four Sisters
Chapter 47 – ‘Second’ in Command
Chapter 48 – The Mighty Hero Stands Firm Against all Enemies
Chapter 49 – Progression toward the Goal
Chapter 50 – The Final Countdown
Chapter 51 – Onward goes the Hero
Chapter 52 - Preparations
Chapter 53 - The Badger, The Lich, and the Coffin
Chapter 54 - Never Give Up
Chapter 55 - Top Floor
Chapter 56 - Final Battle
Chapter 57 - Windfall No
Epilogue
From the Author
Other books by Ryan Rimmel
Noobtown Series:
Mayor of Noobtown (Audio)
Village of Noobtown (Audio)
Castle of the Noobs (Audio)
Dungeons and Noobs (Audio)
More Ryan Rimmel
Get alerted on new releases, promos, and more by following Ryan on Facebook or Patreon. For those audiobook lovers, don’t miss Johnathan McClain’s incredible performance of Noob Game Plus here on Audible.
Prologue - The Sanctum of the Sphinx
There were few places on Ordinal more secure than the Sphinx’s lair. She, of course, had spent centuries making sure of that. Despite the hidden sanctuary being hers, and hers alone, for all that time, her love had finally returned to share it. At least, parts of him had. The Dark Overlord’s resurrection had come at a price. He had immediately fought some sort of unholy abomination that was capable of going toe to toe with a Godling. The price her lover paid to return to her had been steep.
They were alone in her private chamber, but they were not alone in the lair. From this safe haven, she’d run a shadow empire that had withstood the ages. Her every waking moment had been spent preparing for her beloved’s reappearance.
Presently, even the typical silence of the lair was noticeably in abeyance. Between the piteous moans of her lover and the shrieks of her armorer, the place was downright noisy. Her foolish armorer had lost a rare and exceedingly powerful Dagger of Slaying. He was being tortured until the missing dagger was returned to her armory. Then, whoever stole it would replace him, probably. The Sphinx could be fickle at times. She found it amusing.
Right now, she was considering having the armorer executed, for the sounds of his screams were breaking her concentration. Her favorite’s last missive was lost. The letter appeared to have been intercepted by one of her plaything’s armies. That was sloppy of Bashara. However, the Wizard was unused to open warfare, and the letter was little more than an acknowledgment of her earlier plans. Bashara’s indiscretions would obviously be forgiven, for the Sphinx could forgive almost anything for her favorite.
Still, it was rare that the Sphinx was worried about anything or anyone, save Bashara. Now, her worries were piling on top of each other.
Rising on silken slippers, the Sphinx walked over to a cabinet and opened it, examining one of a dozen vials. Some contained the rarest liquors in the world, while others held the rarest poisons. She even had a dose of Elder Demon’s blood poison, leftover from the days of fighting beside her love. What she’d had to do to get that poison still caused her stomach to curl, even centuries later.
The Sphinx pushed all of that aside and found a small jug. She sniffed it once, her Perks informing her that it contained only the usual brew. She tossed back a swallow of the nasty stuff, a simple corn whiskey. She occasionally liked to remember that she had once been a simple country Rogue.
She toasted to simple beginnings.
Thinking over her last instructions to Bashara, the Sphinx considered that maybe she had been a bit too vague. She had told her to find a dungeon under a castle and search it for the Dark Overlord. She had known that he was in stasis somewhere and was determined to find him. It had been centuries since the Sphinx had even the slightest hint of where her lover might be, though. Bashara had agreed and quickly been dispatched again before much more discussion could be had. Then, the Dark Overlord had fallen back into her life. Wherever he had been hiding for all t
hose long centuries was of the utmost curiosity to the Sphinx. Unfortunately, the Dark Overlord was beyond speech at the moment.
Looking up to a high point on the wall, she waved her hand. A small section of brick vanished, revealing a painting. A younger version of herself, one that she hardly recognized anymore, stared back at her. The Sphinx smiled sadly, staring at Grebthar’s picture. He was laughing next to a beautiful, innocent, stupid woman. The youthful version of herself was so happy. The Sphinx doubted she could even get her mouth to smile like that anymore. Insofar as she was concerned, the only negative aspect of the whole work of art was that the fucking badger was in it. Even so, his passenger brought another smile to her lips.
That badger had been the only sore spot in their entire relationship, but even she had to admit that Grebthar had a reason to keep him. Godlings were strong against all Damage types but one, and his bond with the stupid badger allowed him to be resistant against that one weakness as well. The only real shame in the arrangement was that she had been unable to find the spectacularly annoying ball of fur after the Dark Overlord finally kicked him to the curb. Currently, she was genuinely regretting forcing them apart. Had Badgelor still been bonded with Grebthar, her lover would still be intact. Without that bond, he had been vulnerable to Plasma attacks.
Clearing her mind, the Sphinx looked fondly at the little girl in the painting for a moment, but that child was long dead.
Bashara, on the other hand, was busy searching for the Dark Overlord. She had been doing so for ages, and the Sphinx had even dared to hope that she was getting close. Bashara wasn’t going to find him, not now. The Dark Overlord, or at least the pieces of him that were still attached, had teleported into the lair last night. His wounds had been the work of someone who knew him. That was the only possible explanation the Sphinx had been able to come up with. Whoever had used Elder Demon’s blood poison, to eliminate his ability to use Void magic, and then hit him with a powerful Plasma blast had to have been intimately aware of his weakness. There were only a few beings on all of Ordinal that could even perform such a feat. She intended to kill every last one of them to ensure that she punished the animal responsible for the heinous act against Grebthar.
That was an issue, though. Any being with that amount of power was going to actually require an expenditure of resources. The Sphinx took another swig from her jug and considered her options. In any case, she had time. The Dark Overlord was going to be in a magical healing chamber for weeks, if not longer.
The sound of flesh slamming into stone caused the Sphinx to drop the jug, as she broke apart into five perfect copies of herself. Recovering from the rare startling, one of her images grabbed the jug and replaced it, while the rest materialized again in the heart of her sanctum. She held twin daggers in each of her hands, neither fully manifesting itself in reality, as her shadowy form spotted the dissolving body of her beloved. He had managed to crawl from the healing pod and collapse onto the floor.
It hurt her to look at him. His divine body was partially disintegrating while the plasma chased him through death. If he had not managed to get into the sanctum, he would have perished. As a high level Chosen, the weight of his body was nothing to her. She lifted him quickly, returning him to his healing cocoon. Pain wracked his body. He moaned again, as a particularly vicious spasm ran through him. It inwardly burned the Sphinx for someone she loved so much to be in such pain.
“Who did this to you?” she half-sobbed. The notion of spending all the effort searching, only to have her beloved stolen away, was too much. Even the Dark Overlord’s shard was dim. He must have resurrected himself just the day before. From personal experience, she knew her lover was in agony from the Plasma wounds. As she watched his Mana pool deplete, the Dark Overlord’s eyes opened.
“Jim,” he hissed, his eyes unfocused from the pain.
Instantly, the fear and worry on her face vanished. She remembered Jim. Bashara had mentioned him. Bashara was supposed to have given more information in her next letter. Jim was some podunk mayor in a burnt-out town somewhere in the Riverlands. She could have a half-dozen assassins in his stupid village by morning. She could. . .
“Curious puppy,” he moaned, falling unconscious.
For three heartbeats, the Sphinx sat unmoving. Jim the Curious Puppy was a fucking character from children’s books. She thought back to discussions with Bashara and frowned. It was just as likely that the fictional dog could have done this as the incompetent mayor Bashara had described. Plasma was the most advanced type of magic. There were only a handful of people who trusted themselves to use it in combat, and there was no way Mayor Jim of Podunk could do it.
The Plasma wasn’t even the most concerning thing, though. The real issue was the poison. You had to have an Elder Demon willingly give you its blood to make it. No one on Ordinal had convinced the Elder Demons to part with any of theirs in centuries. That left the Sphinx with one vial, despite her exhaustive efforts. That could only mean that someone had either found or stolen a vial in preparation for killing her lover.
Bashara’s letter was missing.
Windfall. When the name struck her, she had been close to dismissing Jim from her mind entirely. Bashara had investigated and found nothing but low-level monsters. The Sphinx knew Windfall was destroyed, yet Bashara had mentioned the mayor. The deadliest woman on the planet considered her options. So many targets, so little time.
Realizing she had no more time for reflection, the Sphinx concentrated her magic, allowing the lair to wrap its true master in waves of healing shadow. His wounds were so terrible; it would be a long time before he recovered. If his mind was gone as well…
“Oh, mighty lord, I will do my best to keep you. . .safe,” she whispered into his ear, as the cocoon enveloped him. Turning, she spotted a man clad in jet black armor kneeling in the doorway to her private chamber. It was as far in as he legitimately dared to enter. The Sphinx grinned at the tenacity of it all. The man glared back at her with hate-filled eyes.
“I have completed the task, Mistress.”
Chapter 1 - From Hero to Zero
I had gone from the literal apex of power on Ordinal to a level zero nobody in a second. I was having an odd day. Just a short while ago, I had been grievously injured during my battle with the Dark Overlord. During our fight, from which I was still recovering, the Dark Overlord was hurt so severely that he couldn’t finish me off. Instead, he’d thrown me through a Demon Door, which had reset all my levels back to nothing.
I mentally shouted at my erstwhile demon.
It was going to be one of those days. I was currently standing in the middle of the statue room, the place where it all began. This place had been my first experience with Ordinal, the world I ended up on after my death. I glanced back at the
That was new. I’d gained access to the Administration skill when Shart had been repairing me, after my first experience with having two different Mana networks. Now, I was using it to talk to Shart, since Bashara had banished him to Limbo. It had been a very strange day.
Grebthar was alive, his actual name was Charles, and, by the way, he was the Dark Overlord. While I was still reeling from that revelation, he’d killed Jarra. He’d killed her right after she’d achieved something grand. The healer had just become a Cleric, an adventurer, like me. Okay, not like me, exactly. I had levels in multiple classes, but like me well enough.
I had finally accepted my feelings for her, and that was why the Dark Overlord killed her. He had done it just to be a dick. Well, that was fine. It was a day that ended in “y”, and those were all good days to kill Charles.
Shart was thinking so I began looking around. I was back in the statue room, where each statue represented a different class. Some of the statues were dim now. They seemed to correspond to classes I’d already chosen. I wondered what happened when you
stepped through the Demon Door to Remort, but the obvious answer was that you came back here.
Speaking of which, I brought up my menus. Instantly, I was assailed by a prompt.
● Thou hath Remorted, Congratulations! Thou hath Remorted One Time. Thou wilt need to achieve level 0 in 3 additional classes to verily ascend to thine next level.
That was my UnBound trait kicking off. It let me ignore level restrictions when selecting options. It was beneficial, but it did have its limits.
“There,” yelled out Shart, blasting into my head hard enough that it should have deafened me. However, in this room, I didn’t have Hit Points or even organs, for that matter. There was nothing to damage.
“What did you do?” I replied, testing the new mental channel that Shart had forged inside my brain.
“I cheated, Dum Dum,” replied the demon. “I linked through that
“Is there any way for me to mute that?” I questioned.
“Ha,” laughed the demon darkly, “I think you’ve screwed up enough without cutting off your best source of support.”
I nodded. Shart was annoying but very useful. He was like some sort of in-game help menu that could use his wicked powers to assist me, as he saw fit. He seldom saw fit in a decent manner, but he was a demon. I was learning to live with that.
“So, should I stay here or go lower?” I asked.
“First off, you should access the Remort menu and pick your option,” stated Shart. “Then, we can talk about the next steps.”
I nodded, bringing up my menus. Glancing through them, I immediately noticed that Shart wasn’t hiding in plain sight anywhere on my menus. I imagined my menus now looked like what ordinary people saw when they brought up their … inner head menus. They looked like a web browser, actually, with too many tabs open and the music playing from somewhere you couldn’t close. That still felt sort of weird, but not as odd as it used to.