Noob Game Plus

by Ryan Rimmel

  “Hey, you fucking ass,” yelled the Woodsman, as a hatchet flew past my head and slammed into a nearby tree. I turned around just in time to see a second hatchet swinging toward my midsection, an enraged Woodsman wielding it.

  ● Phillip Geary Hollister, Woodsman Level 35

  ● HP: 420/420

  ● Stamina: 122/440

  ● MP: 20/20

  I used Fancy Footwork and inched away from the blade currently slashing at me. The Woodsman’s eyes bugged out at that, and he swung twice more. I continued rushing down the slope, him close on my heels. The attack was coming down to my Mobility versus his Elven Steps, as he continued swinging at me. Each swing took a decent chunk out of my Stamina pool, due to the difference in our levels. Thankfully, it was less than I remembered. I guessed the difference was due to my skills being higher than his.

  The Remort hadn’t reduced any of my skills, and Fancy Footwork was at Talented after the dungeon. With its combination of Dodge and Footwork coming into play, combined with Mobility, I wasn’t missing a step down the stony path. Phillip the Woodsman didn’t have that advantage. Every time he swung at me and missed, it took him several paces to regain his balance for another strike.

  Thinking back to my Woodsman days, I realized what he was using wasn’t Elven Steps at all. There had been several similar Woodsman perks for different environments. He probably had some sort of Ice Hare steps or something that let him keep his footing on icy terrain. As he missed twice more and kept to his feet, I became quite confident that he had a perk helping to keep his feet firmly planted.

  “Howdy, pilgrim,” he said, swinging his hatchet at my head. I dodged.

  “Hello, and who might you be?” I replied.

  “I might be the guy who is going to tear off your head and fuck the hole,” he screamed, swinging again and missing.

  “The hole in my head, or the hole in my neck?” I asked, truly curious.

  “What difference does it make?” Phillip shrieked. He swung again. “You will be dead, and I’ll be defiling your corpse.”

  “Well, it makes a difference to me. I just want to know if you are more of a neck guy or a head guy.” I said.

  “Oh, Really? You look more of a one pump chump to me,” he smirked. “But if you must know, I’ll violate both holes, just for you.”

  “Dude, you have anger issues,” I replied.

  “This fight sounds awesome. I wish I could see what was going on,” sighed Shart.

  “Kind of boring, actually,” I said. Both of us blasted past Julia. She had grabbed a hold of a root that my Hiking had, naturally, let me avoid. Phillip avoided it, as well, and moved to strike again. It was then that I finally saw what I needed. When he moved in for his strike, instead of just avoiding it, I moved my backside into position. As he missed, I hip thrust into him.

  ● Unarmed Strike: Hip Thrust Damage 0. Target must make a balance check.

  ● Phillip fails balance check.

  Phillip stumbled. On the straight track we had been running on, his flailing wouldn’t have mattered much. He could have regained his footing, and his perk would have done the work for him. However, we weren’t on a straight track anymore. Where Julia had grabbed the root to stop her rapid descent, the path shifted directions. I was able to keep running down it. Phillip was not. He floundered exactly one pace, before careening, face-first, into a small tree. A loud thwack filled the air, but Phillip didn’t stop there. The tree he hit wasn’t that thick, and he simply smashed through it. I saw him fly into the woods before I heard a second, much louder, thwack. Glancing around with my Improvised Tool skill, I quickly formed a plan.

  Fighting a bit of nausea, I grabbed the large stick I would need to prepare my plan. Julia ran down to me shortly after I had finished the first part. Her clothing was torn, but she looked fine. One glance told me that she’d used a healing spell on herself. Her skin had that same plastic appearance, kind of like a child’s doll, that my cheek had had for a short time after I’d cast a healing spell on myself.

  “We don’t have time for this! He will be out of there as soon as he finds his healing potions,” she said.

  “If he has any,” I responded, tucking away the one potion I’d managed to steal with my Quick Steal perk.

  “He’s not an idiot. He’ll have several,” she stated. Natch. We continued quickly down the trail.

  Chapter 7 – Waiting in the woods

  Sometime later, Phillip Foxworth Moses shakily rose to his feet. Once he had finally come to a rest, he had been at the base of an overturned tree trunk. He considered himself fortunate. Just two inches to the right, and he would have been impaled on one of the dead tree’s sharp, menacing limbs. His thick leather armor had narrowly deflected the tree’s prickly roots. Had he not pushed himself at the last moment, he would have been seriously wounded, instead of just badly banged up. A second level Cleric had done this to him.

  The Woodsman struggled for a moment to get his temper in check, but it was difficult. He had done this to himself. That Cleric had simply been lucky; he was totally outclassed. He had just managed to bump into Phillip at the wrong moment. If Phillip had been focused and in control, that would not have happened. That idiot Cleric wasn’t even what upset him, not really.

  Phillip was just blowing off anger from the real source of his constant misery. It had taken nearly a week to get up the mountain to that lodge, only to discover that the Princess had left just before they got there. It boggles the mind.

  “Did the little Cleric beat you up? Walk it off, Phillip. We have work to do,” said Su-Kar in that particularly annoying, singsong voice she loved to use on him. She adjusted her fine robe and higher quality coat as she walked over to him. They were out in the middle of the forest on a job from the boss, and Su-Kar had spent considerable time getting properly dolled up in the height of fashion before they came here.

  When Phillip first met her, Su-Kar’s beauty had overwhelmed him. She was possibly the single most beautiful woman that he had personally ever laid eyes on. Her perfect skin, green sapphire eyes and long black hair complimented her exquisite figure. The fact that she was a massively condescending, terrible bitch had taken literally minutes to overpower her beauty in his mind. Now, he gagged whenever he saw her. If the boss had not made them work together, Phillip would have fled at the first available opportunity. He dearly hoped that when he could eventually leave her, Su-Kar’s cooling body would be in a ditch somewhere.

  “He didn’t seem like a low-level Cleric. His Footwork skill was at least Journeyman tier,” grumbled Phillip, standing back up. He had wanted a simple Cleric to accompany him on this journey. Instead, he’d gotten a Sorcerer who only looked at his faults.

  “Or this could be another example of how incompetent you are,” she smiled. Phillip couldn’t kill her now. His Hit Points were barely 75%, and he was out of health potions. He had already used one, and he must have, like an idiot, forgotten to pack a second. Plus, if the boss found out Su-Kar died suspiciously, she would have words with him.

  At least Su-Kar wasn’t useless in the woods, which was a surprise. After all, she had found him. For a moment, Phillip wondered about that before realizing she must have put a tracking spell on him without his permission. She would be able to follow him effortlessly without displaying any real, non-magical skills.

  “Let’s get back on the trail. I’ll find those two; then, we can torture that little Cleric,” Phillip said, gesturing to the path his tumble had created. Su-Kar rolled her endless sapphire eyes; eyes that Phillip would have just loved to gouge out of her head. She began walking on his newly formed trail. Groaning, Phillip yelled, “I’m supposed to be guiding you in the woods.”

  “Your guidance has been found lacking. Besides, we are only going to kill the Cleric,” she said, stomping up the path he’d formed. “Tisk tisk, you have to remain professional, even in these trying times.”

  Su-Kar emerged from the hillside and into an old creek bed they had run down. Philli
p felt the thud more than he heard it. Instantly, Phillip’s Trap Finding kicked on, as he spotted the spent tripwire. He spotted the tripwire, but no trap.

  “Su-Kar, be careful,” Phillip called belatedly.

  Su-Kar just gurgled. A moment later, she dropped to her knees, clutching her groin in pain. Unfortunately, she landed on the second tripwire. That trap engaged, swinging a heavy tree branch with an even heavier stone directly into her face. Her head snapped back, knocking her into the snow in a spray of teeth and blood.

  Using his Trap Making skill, Phillip spotted the second line as well. The first was a classic Ball Breaker trap. Although, in this case, Beaver Buster would have been a more accurate name, he supposed. It was a case of two traps built together to maximize their effectiveness. Both traps had been hidden well, placed right where he was most likely to reenter the trail. He hadn’t even seen the secondary trap, which would have either been at about sternum or face level, depending on the target’s height. That little Cleric was impressive. The well-made trap would have certainly crushed his boys. The Cleric had even shaped the rocks to make them cause Bludgeoning Damage and coated them with something. Su-Kar groaned, her Hit Points reduced by nearly a quarter from the two attacks.

  Phillip traced his fingers on the nearly frozen goo and carefully tasted it. He quickly spit out the Frostberry pulp, a tart, but mildly poisonous, berry. So, the Cleric had some skill in Alchemy. He had condensed the pulp to enhance the Frostberry’s secondary properties. Phillip could feel his intestines growling just from his brief taste. It seemed that Su-Kar had gotten a mouthful of the stuff. Best to not be here when that effect kicked off.

  “Walk it off, Su-Kar. We have work to do. I’m going to head down this trail.”

  Chapter 8 – The Great Escape

  “This is the spot,” I declared. Julia sighed with relief.

  “Finally! We’ve been walking single file for ages now, with you and that blasted stick getting snow all over me,” she said. I glanced over at her and shrugged. We had chosen to traverse rocky ground to make our tracks harder to find. It was very uneven and walking in it with this much snow blowing around was hard work. More so for me, because I had this long stick with me. I’d been hitting every tree branch with any snow on it for the last mile or so. Our tracks must be nearly obliterated by now. “Are you sure they aren’t right behind us?”

  “Uh, well, I think they are closer than we’d like,” I replied.

  “Define ‘closer’,” the princess ordered.

  Thinking to Shart, “How close are they?”

  The demon replied, “The Woodsman discovered you were leaving traps. He knows how to deal with them effectively enough.”

  “So…,”

  “Move it or lose it, Dum Dum,”

  As I looked around for inspiration, Shart continued, “The Sorcerer is back up, too. She may have detected my scrying. I have to be very circumspect with her.”

  “How likely is that?” I asked.

  “That she figured out she was being watched?” responded the demon. “Oh, I’d say about a 100% chance. That she can track it back to me in Limbo? That’s about a zero percent chance. No one in Limbo pays attention to you lame, boring mortals unless we absolutely have to.”

  I pointed toward the nearby cliff. “I have a plan, and it will throw them off our trail.”

  “O’Really? So, we are done mutilating corpses?” asked Julia.

  “One deer corpse mutilation is enough,” I agreed. I had a pair of deer hooves in my pack, harvested for this very occasion. I found the clearest spot in the woods and affixed the hooves to the bottoms of my boots with Mend. I didn’t know how long my deception would last, though, based on what I was about to do.

  “The Answer is Blowing in the Wind,” intoned Julia. A blast of wind shot forth from her hand, back up the trail. The spell was her significant contribution to this stage of the plan. The Tracking skill required tracks to work. With us walking, single file, on hard rock, coupled with me knocking down all the snow I could for a mile or more, our tracks were very dubious at this point. Blasting the tracks away with the wind would make them extra hard to find.

  “You don’t have time to go much further,” stated Shart. My declaration of this spot was far more to do with Shart’s belief that this was the spot than my own. “He’s getting closer. You are only going to have thirty seconds or so before he spots you.”

  I nodded. Julia leapt onto my back. Thankfully, she wasn’t the kind of princess who minded jumping strange men.

  Looking to the left, I examined the cliff face and the secondary patch of rocky ground over the crevice. Then, I engaged my Flash Steps perk. It was a movement perk that let me cross five logs of distance at a single pace. To me, it felt like stretching my leg really far. It looked much more impressive to anyone else, as I blipped away from one spot to the next in a flash. That only covered the first step of the process, though. I went from the center of the path to the cliff's edge in one swift motion, leaving no tracks.

  The next part was Shart’s suggestion. I’d never been much into pole vaulting.

  I jammed my stick into the ground and prayed my Journeyman Jumping skill would manage it. It did, mostly. Jumping massive distances on Ordinal wasn’t usually all that tricky. Doing so with my current Stamina budget, as well as carrying a passenger, was. The stick allowed me to vault, which lowered the Stamina cost to something I could just barely afford. With my trusty dual-purpose stick, I would have the range to manage landing on my feet. Hopefully.

  That was important, because I needed to cleanly land on the other side without having to scramble up the cliff face. I needed to leave no obvious appearances of someone tearing up the cliff. Doing that would point to our new destination like a big fecking arrow. As we sailed through the air, Julia worked on the secondary issue.

  In short, I’d thrown most of my Stamina into the jump. That didn’t leave me anything left for the landing portion of this plan. I had a perk called Second Wind, but it was still on cooldown from the fight at the lodge. As amazing as that perk was, its cooldown of four hours was a significant problem. Fortunately, Julia knew a spell that restored Stamina. It didn’t do very much, and it also had a cooldown, but we were depending on it being enough. Julia had to wait until I was mid-flight to cast it and then hope it worked before we landed.

  We were partially successful. I landed hard, my legs wobbling badly from the strain. Julia’s spell had restored a trifling 12 Stamina by the time we landed. At least the spot I’d chosen was flat. I managed to hobble my way forward for a half dozen paces before I felt one of my deer hooves crack off. By then, we were at the wood line. We stumbled in, just past the first trees, and collapsed into a bush. We began slinking away before the Woodsman could find the end of our trail.

  Unfortunately, the Woodsman landed in the clearing a moment later, staring directly at the bush we were hiding in. Julia froze for an instant. As she began to open her mouth to cast a spell, I put my hand over her lips to shush her. The Woodsman stared at our bush for a second, then turned to face the clearing we’d just left.

  He leapt back down, and we crawled away as silently as we could.

  Chapter 9 - An Impossible Pursuit

  Over an hour later, Su-Kar seethed as she finally made it to the clearing. Seeing her oaf of a partner impatiently stomping around did not help her mood. Walking hurt. Everything hurt. The first trap had bruised her pelvis, along with crushing a very sensitive spot. Healing potions did quite a bit, but she had a lingering injury that would require a healer to fully recover from.

  Even worse, she had to put her entire nice outfit into dimensional storage, after her explosive blowout. She was now wearing a ‘fresh’ outfit that she hated. She had very nearly frozen to death while changing into her new clothes, and the very act made bile come up in her throat. It was last year's fashion. If Phillip recognized that she was wearing old clothes, she would have to kill him then and there. When she found that Cleric, she was going to k
ill him properly. Maybe Phillip had the right idea about torturing him first.

  Su-Kar hated assignments that involved working with the dolt, and he had once again failed. He’d lost the target, along with whoever she had found to aid her in her flight. “Wher sss sshee?” She instantly regretted speaking. The second trap had struck her dead in the face. Several teeth had been knocked free. Her nose had also been crushed, along with the accompanying need to soil herself for three solid minutes. Now, everything she tried to say sounded uncultured.

  Phillip was too angry to even snort at her appearance. She’d always assumed that Phillip’s temper would be the death of him. If only she could do something to hurry that along. Alas, she imagined the boss would be vexed with her. “Remember that deer corpse?”

  She turned to look at him, surprised by the non-sequitur. He had to bite back a cruel laugh, so she turned away. Finally, she nodded, grateful that she wasn’t required to speak. Someone had hastily mutilated a deer corpse, not that she had cared. However, the great pinhead had finally found his clue.

  He gestured toward a clearing. “He used some trick to not leave tracks. He jumped to the opposite side with the hooves on his feet. I found the strange deer tracks on the other side. They entered into a bush and became the tracks of two people.”

  “No traaappss,” she sputtered, before noticing that Phillip was also wearing a different suit of armor. His face looked hollow. Su-Kar smirked, only to realize how ridiculous she must look. The realization wiped the look right off her face.

  “I think he’s a Remort,” stated Phillip.

  “You thhink that he’sss a Remort? Whhat, id he come to protect the princess or sssomething?” she sputtered disgustedly, hating each word. “He’s disssguisssed, you fool.”