Noob Game Plus

by Ryan Rimmel

  “Nice mask,” he chuckled. Su-Kar considered using several techniques that she had been saving for the Cleric on the oaf.

  “It will do for now,” Su-Kar ground out.

  “I think it's safe to assume they died,” said Phillip casually.

  Su-Kar would have liked to believe that, but the princess was resourceful. She groaned. They were not supposed to kill the princess, but things happened. The boss would understand if they had to kill her to prevent her from escaping with her bodyguard. Su-Kar sighed. Sure, the boss would understand, right before she handed them over to her torturers.

  Phillip, the dolt, had other ideas. He believed that recovering the princess was going to be too difficult, but he was positive the boss would be forgiving. Su-Kar tried to keep calm but being attached to so much stupidity made calmness challenging. In a perfect world, the princess would get herself killed before Phillip did her in. Then, it wouldn’t be their fault.

  Then again, the princess might have been smart enough to hide in a cave somewhere. Doing so would have made her difficult to track, for someone other than Su-Kar. Su-Kar had one significant advantage, though. The boss had given her the key to the princess’s collar. While that, in and of itself, was a priceless tactical advantage, it wasn’t the only one she had. Su-Kar could also cast a spell that would locate the collar. She just had to be willing to pay the cost.

  Then again, that’s what oafs were for.

  “I’ll need a gemstone,” Su-Kar said after a moment.

  “I thought you had gemstones. I thought they were part of your budget,” replied Phillip snidely.

  “A local stone will work faster. Need I remind you that you are the one who lost the princess in the first place,” Su-Kar replied. “Fetch me a gemstone.”

  Phillip stiffened. It hadn’t been entirely his fault that he’d lost the princess and the Cleric but arguing with Su-Kar was next to pointless. He groaned, “Fine. I’ll go get you one. You will at least pay me back?”

  Su-Kar smiled under her mask. When she cast that spell, it would be child’s play to find the collar. It would either be around the princess’ neck or in a pile of dung somewhere.

  ***

  “They are going to eat us! I count forty,” stated Julia. She pulled herself tightly against me, her fingers blistered from where she’d tried to pull the collar off.

  “You missed about twenty,” I commented, gripping my bat tighter.

  Typically, correcting a woman earned me a fast rebuke, but Julia was too tired. It had been hours, and the Drop Bears had been coming at us from our fronts and our backs. The Drop Bears from deep in the outback were the worst. You’d start to think you had only imagined them, and then a drop bear would say “G’day” and try to bite your face off. We were in the whoop whoop now. We were also in heaps of trouble.

  “Crikey,” I groaned, adjusting my position on the log. “If you are going to do this, you need to do it now.”

  Julia swallowed. I didn’t blame her. We were standing on a log left behind in the flume. Behind us was the dam and the closed sluice gate that filled it. The dam was a massive thing that covered one entire wall of our defensive point. It seemed to divert water to another nearby stream. Had the dam not been there, the small outcropping we were standing on would have been a damn impressive waterfall. As it was, the ledge was dry. The flume plunged about twenty logs, leveling back out and ending in the lake below. If we could have gingerly opened the sluice gate, we would have been able to gently ride the log down into the lake. Of course, the sluice gate had swollen so much that there was no chance of just slightly opening it.

  As I swatted away another Drop Bear, Julia stood tall and began to scream, “Shaka, When the Walls Fell!”

  It was the next generation of magic. A vibration ran down the flume, its wooden structure twitching under the blast of divine energy. Fortunately, the flume wasn’t tied to the earth deeply enough. It had also been designed to resist the mountain’s occasional rumbling. On the other hand, the dam was just a fancy wall, and Julia’s spell seemed intended to tear down walls. Several leaks formed when the first wave hit the flume, spraying high-pressure water dozens of logs away.

  “This was a terrible idea,” I said, as Julia turned to me in horror. Her mouth dropped open as the dam broke.

  A massive flood of water broke forth. I reached down and grabbed our log. As the blast hit us, the entire chunk of bark I’d held peeled off the log.

  ● Balance check successful, you have acquired ‘Bark Surfboard’

  ● You have learned about Surfing. You are unskilled. Cowabunga, Dude!

  I landed on my new bark surfboard and... surfed forward, caught up in the tidal wave of muddy water blasting behind me. As I plunged over the edge of the cliff, I used my Aerial Control perk to shift myself enough to land back on the flume. I was just slow enough that the water beat me to it. I spared a glance backward, only to see Julia holding onto the log for dear life. We both slammed down the channel at speeds I would have felt were outright dangerous had I been at a mere water park.

  For one glorious, stupid instant, I thought everything was going to be okay. Then, a Drop Bear landed on my face.

  ***

  Phillip clutched the gemstone in his palm hard enough that his knuckles turned white. He tried to breathe calmly. “That’s nice.”

  “Yup,” replied the old woman that was slowly counting out his change, “The old King’s Flume goes right through the middle of Drop Bear country. That’s why we had to shut it down. It’s been such a hardship on the town.” She was blathering again. Phillip wanted to kill her. It wouldn’t be the first time Phillip had killed an old woman. It would be the first time he REALLY enjoyed doing it, though. His little shopping trip had taken hours longer than it should have, but she was the only precious gemstone dealer in town. He wished he had someone with him to simply steal the stone. Phillip silently vowed to kill the shopkeeper for boring him, before Su-Kar and he left town.

  Again lamenting the boss’s choice of partners for him, Phillip forced himself to not scowl, as he collected his change and abruptly exited. Turning to the river, he spotted the end of the massive flume. It was dry, so he discounted it. If it was in use, it would have emptied high above the rapids, nearly thirty logs over the waterline. If anyone survived that, the current would take them straight into the lumber yards. Phillip guessed the fall was to discourage riders.

  No, that log flume would surely kill any idiots riding it. A person would have to be as crazy as a War Badger to even attempt it. Their corpses would be plucked out of the plunge pool in the valley below, assuming the bodies could even be recovered.

  ***

  “These things are surprisingly buoyant,” said Julia, as I again drove my bat into the base of the Drop Bear’s skull.

  “Yes, if you give them the proper encouragement,” I grunted. I had to bash the thing every thirty seconds to keep it stunned, and then Julia had to heal it. I’d complain, but we were making excellent time since getting past the lake and onto the next part of the flume.

  When we’d gotten out of the initial waves, I’d already been riding the unconscious Drop Bear. I’d surfed over to Julia, whose log was in the process of converting itself into multiple chunks of driftwood and collected her. Now, we were hitting impressive Jet Ski speeds with our unfortunate boat.

  Once we got back into the flume, we’d had a major advantage. At our current speed, the Drop Bears had been misjudging their landings.

  Another Drop Bear face planted in front of us, only to be swept back by the water. He hit our boat hard enough to cause me to sway slightly from the impact. My Surfing skill was up to Initiate already. That, combined with Mobility, allowed me to weather anything we’d run into, so far. Julia gripped my waist tighter. She lacked my unique skill set. My Jack of All Trades let me quickly learn new skills. Being stuck in a continuous tidal wave for the past thirty minutes was doing wonders for my skill progression. The other thing helping me was that some of the
Athletics skills just didn’t require many Skill Points to level up. In fact:

  ● You have increased your rank in Surfing. You are now Journeyman. Gnarly Dude! Please select a perk!

  As I crushed the base of the Drop Bear’s skull for the umpteen time, I glanced at my Surfer perks. They were righteous. I was tempted to take the Surfer Lingo perk, which improved your vocabulary and granted you Surfer Speak. It allowed you to commune with both other surfers and the waves, but that sounded like it might be grody away from the sweet curls. Instead, I went for the more practical option and took Hallelujah Wipeout Save. You could activate that perk to rapidly recover from a wipeout and it only had a one-minute cool down. A person only needed to almost trip over their Drop Bear once to realize how important staying on the ‘board’ was.

  “Jim, you seem to be going a bit faster,” stated Shart. He’d been in a state of perpetual panic ever since the Drop Bears began. I sighed.

  Of course, right at that moment, we started picking up speed. The angle on the flume began to dip dangerously. I’d seen that before. “Julia, grab on tight!”

  ***

  Su-Kar was ‘enjoying’ some of the local blends of tea. That was to say, she was suffering through them in silence. She’d already sampled the local wine, and, of the two, the tea was less likely to give her indigestion. Phillip was late. She assumed he was probably having trouble with the gem merchant. Everyone said the elderly woman was a pain in the ass, which was the first reason Su-Kar had sent the oaf to buy it. The other reason was that she enjoyed making him spend his money on her.

  The first clue she had that something was wrong was when the kitchen staff, with no sense of decorum whatsoever, yelled into the dining room, “The King is Back!”

  That gave Su-Kar pause. The Falconian king was most assuredly not coming back. She knew that for a fact. She was about to ask the serving wench what the hell was going on, but the young ditz walked over to a window and looked toward the river. Su-Kar rolled her eyes. The King was the name that Grebthar had given their log flume, back when he’d first ordered it built. Technically, it was called the King’s Flume, or some such nonsense, but no one ever called it that in Angwin.

  She stood, pushing the girl out of the way to get a better look at it. A moment later, Su-Kar rushed out the door.

  ***

  We had hit the water with a mighty splash. Hallelujah Wipeout Save had activated as soon as we’d started to go under, bringing us both back to a standing position on the confused Drop Bear. One quick skull tap later, we headed downriver, toward what appeared to be a lumber mill.

  “Do you think they spotted us?” asked Julia, looking apprehensively towards the waterfall. We were going fast enough to avoid that, fortunately.

  Turning my head to look at her, I caught the first arrow. Judging by the trajectory, it had been fired by someone standing on top of the lumber mill. “I’m going to venture a guess. Yes.”

  Julia stared at the point of the arrow, which I had stopped inches away from her eye. She swallowed and moved behind me. The second arrow bounced off the water like a skipping stone, coming up at me from an unusual angle. I snatched that one as well.

  “That guy is a pretty decent shot,” I said conversationally.

  “Why is this not freaking you out more?” grumbled Julia.

  I snatched the third arrow out of the air and tossed it aside. That one had been a Powerful Shot. The shot was so powerful it had canceled some of our forward momentum. Again, I counted my lucky stars that the Woodsman was so far away. Arrows lost speed as they traveled in long, shallow, predictable arcs. Had he been closer, I wasn’t sure my trick of catching arrows out of the air would have worked. Thankfully, he didn’t know Magic Shot. That would have really made this rough.

  “Hey, Dum Dum, guess what? I see another problem,” said Shart.

  “Kind of busy right now,” I commented, as I watched for the next arrow with my Perception skill.

  “This is going to be important later,” stated Shart.

  “That means it’s not important now. Tell me later,” I stated, as the princess yelled into my ear.

  “They can’t hit us from here?” asked Julia, looking at me hopefully.

  “They can’t hit me,” I said, looking down at her. “Just stay behind me. You’ll be fine.”

  “I’m not helpless,” she pouted. “I can do barriers.”

  “Are your barriers any good against arrows?” I asked.

  “Not with the collar on,” Julia growled. I just shrugged and made sure she was behind me.

  Julia watched me snatch another arrow out of the air and tucked herself behind me even tighter. With our current course, we were going to catch the very edge of the last lumberyard. At that point, I figured our luck would get a bit dicey. The archer lined up another shot and took it. As I prepared to catch it, a lightning bolt flashed from a spot on the bank. With my senses already preparing to catch the arrow, I wasn’t prepared at all to handle a lightning bolt. It struck my arm, causing it to seize up. The next instant, the arrow impacted, driving into my hand.

  I nearly lost my balance, but Julia grabbed my hand and pulled the arrow through and followed up with a muttered prayer of healing the moment it was clear. The pain vanished as the wound sealed up. No sooner was I healed than the Woodsman released another arrow, this time with a shorter, flatter arc. Oh, goody, another Power Shot. I saw another lightning bolt as it was being prepared by a masked figure. I was just bracing for its impact when, quite suddenly, a sickly yellow barrier formed around me. The lighting crashed against it and a few small arcs of electricity got through. Julia slumped, leaving me just a moment to snatch another arrow out of mid-air. Remembering that it had been a while, I smashed the back of the Drop Bear’s skull again.

  Smoke rose on several patches of my skin. As Julia cast a healing spell on me, she said, “Sorry. That’s the best I can do.”

  The spell caster and the archer were coordinating their strikes now. “It will have to do.”

  ***

  Phillip tossed down a second vial of Stamina potion and prepared another Power Shot. He had changed his mind again. He hated the Cleric now. Also, Phillip needed to find religion, because whatever god that Cleric worshipped was worth converting to. Phillip had fired a dozen Power Shots into him, and the Cleric had blocked each and every one of them. The only arrow that he’d managed to score with had been a regular, conventional, non-talent enhanced shot. It stuck in his craw that he had only caused a small amount of Damage, all because Su-Kar hadn’t bothered to tell him she was there.

  That really aggravated him. If Su-Kar had bothered to say, “Hey, I’m going to stun lock him with lighting,” Phillip could have used one of his higher Damage talents to finish the Cleric off. Instead, he’d more or less given up and decided to just start plinking at him with arrows to see if the Cleric got tired or anything. It was enough to drive a man to drink. Well, drink more.

  “Explain again how you appear to be unable to tag him with your spells,” grumbled Phillip. Despite starting out a good distance away from each other, he and Su-Kar had eventually moved together. Between shots, they discussed the situation. Again, Phillip wondered if he could just start shooting Su-Kar, but she had already cast some sort of arrow ward on herself. Phillip would complain, but the taste of a Resist Lightning potion, among others, was still on his lips.

  “You started engaging them too far out! I’m at the edge of my effective range,” Su-Kar admonished. “The princess can generate a barrier strong enough to resist the one spell I have that’s truly effective at this range.”

  “Doesn’t make it truly effective then, does it?” Phillip muttered. Raising his voice, he added, “So, this is my fault again?”

  “If you’d just waited until they were a bit closer, I could have used some actual offensive magic, instead of throwing everything into range boosts,” Su-Kar said, her remaining teeth grinding so hard it hurt her jaw.

  “Just checking,” stated Phillip,
firing another Power Shot at the Cleric. “I mean, if I were the dead king, I’d have sent the most competent bodyguard I had to protect my only living offspring.”

  “He’s just in Disguise, and he’s doing a bad job of it,” glowered Su-Kar. “Look, with him blocking all those Power Shots, they’ve ended up back in the main channel of the river. They’re going to go over the falls.”

  “Well then, they’re dead. No one could survive that,” stated Phillip.

  “Uh-huh, no one could have stayed on their log after falling from the flume either,” stated Su-Kar. “One of them has a perk, you idiot. Probably the Cleric”

  Phillip’s blood went cold. “Well, shit.”

  ***

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I yelled

  “Oh, is it later now, Dum Dum? Cuz you told me to tell you later,” stated Shart serenely, as we rushed toward the waterfall.

  By the time I’d realized we were totally screwed, I didn’t have a way out of this. Julia had gone pale and was grabbing at my chest hard enough that it was getting painful. I had stood next to the Niagara Falls once, so I had an idea of the scope and power of a major waterfall. This one was much bigger.

  Julia was screaming as the Drop Bear picked up speed. It was just trying to swim away now, but I didn’t care. With my Surfing skill up to Journeyman, the skill recognized the bear as my board. The creature wasn’t able to throw us off and couldn’t swim fast enough to matter. As we got closer to the falls, Julia’s screams grew louder. I could clearly hear her over the deafening roar of the water. The King’s River Falls were at their crest here, putting the Niagara Falls to shame. As we hit the lip, I could see all the way to the Inner Sea. Looking down, I couldn’t judge how far of a fall we were about to experience.

  “Wipeout.”

  Chapter 13 – Riverfolk

  My scream was more of a “Yaaaaaaa-hoo-hoo-hooey!” than an actual scream. Julia’s scream was more of a “WeeeEEEEYEEaaaAAAH!”