On My Brother's Grave: Reconnaissance: A LitRPG Adventure (Vatenkeist Online Book 1)

by E. M. Hardy

  “One last thing, Corb,” I told myself, before I plugged myself back into the game. I went straight to the kitchen and fixed myself a quick protein shake. It tasted like cardboard, even with the chocolate flavoring, but I chugged it down anyway. If I was going to be in the game for a long while, I should keep my real world body supplied with everything it needed.

  “Yuck!” I almost spat it out in disgust. I had been taking protein shakes for two decades, and had tried every brand and aroma, yet they all made me want to throw up. I forced myself to finish it and marched back to Jason’s old room.

  I was ready. I lied down on the bed, got myself comfortable, and once again put the headgear on. The screen came to life and asked me if I wanted to log in and play. I gave the voice confirmation and, right away, I felt the buzz in the back of my neck as the unit connected to my neural system. A moment of silence passed and I was once again in the world of Vatenkeist.

  Chapter Seven

  I had assumed I would materialize at the Save Girl near the city gates but, instead, I popped up just outside the Muddy Princess. As soon as I had control over myself, my menu screen flashed and indicated I had reached Level 2. I knew I wouldn’t be able to raise my stats until I hit Level 5, but the game did notify me about some new abilities.

  My status screen also changed and I noticed I now had some MP or Magic Points to cast active spells like my new Fire Shot ability.

  I shut my menu off when it dawned on me that I should have appeared back in the tavern bed. I looked up real quick and noticed it was quite early in the morning.

  Uncertain how the rest mechanics worked, I decided to shrug it off and continue on with my current plan. I checked my friends list. Elia’s name was lit green, so I figured she was currently online somewhere.

  When I tapped on her name, a large screen appeared in front of me and I could see Elia staring back at me. It was like having a video chat in the real world.

  “Hey,” I greeted with a wave of my hand.

  “Hi there,” she greeted back with a smile. “I woke up and you were still sleeping. After some time, your body just dematerialized so I figured you logged out for a while. Where are you? I’m still here in Strovport, buying potions.”

  Next step on my list would be to activate the goblin-hunting quest, and I figured it would be easier with her by my side. Together, we had a higher chance of getting through these quests in one piece.

  “I’m by the Muddy Princess,” I told her. “Hey, you want to join me for a quest? I did some research and discovered one about hunting down some goblins at the East Road.”

  She giggled and nodded. “I would love that! I don’t know the full range of this voice chat thing but I do know it’ll stop working if we’re too far. Just wait for me there, okay?”

  “All right,” I told her and then shut my menu off.

  Hmm… so that was how this worked. We could voice chat with our listed friends, but it would stop functioning when we would get too far away one from the other. That made sense. Otherwise, the game would become too easy and the immersion of being in a fantasy world would kind of break if we could just chat endlessly. If we really wanted to do so, we could use the in-game browser from the Options menu.

  Elia had also mentioned that my body had vanished after a while. I could only guess that if I had come back to the game sooner, I would have woken up on my bed in the Muddy Princess. But since I had been gone a tad too long, the game had simply taken me out. Again, I had to commend the designers for thinking these things through.

  I sat down on the curb and fumbled around with my Options menu until Elia arrived. She looked as cheerful as ever and her elven ears slightly twitched when she smiled at me.

  “You’re looking quite chirpy today,” I told her as I stood up.

  She reached out and helped me up as she replied, “I always try to live with a smile on my face. So, what’s this quest thing about?”

  “We have to go to this merchant by the Dragon Bridge,” I answered. “Apparently, he’s calling out for adventurers. I don’t know how else this works, so we’ll just head there first and learn as we go along. How does that sound?”

  Elia gave me a thumbs-up. “Great! I also know where the Dragon Bridge is – I was there earlier asking around for an armory shop so I could buy a better suit. I did find one, but the plate armor was way too expensive.”

  I followed Elia as she led me through the bustling streets, and we quickly made our way to the Dragon Bridge. As we traveled, I became aware that Strovport was actually quite easy to navigate through: the city was shaped like a circle, with the castle located in the far north. The main gates were at the south and the central square was in the dead center. Every other road sprouted from that point.

  When we finally arrived, the Dragon Bridge was full of commotion. There were peddlers all over the place and Elia told me not all of them were NPCs. Some of these sellers were actually players trying to sell off in-game items, mostly rare ones, for real world money.

  “That’s legal?” I asked her, as I began scouting the area for the quest-giver.

  She shrugged and said, “I don’t know. Nobody really cares though, because so many people do it anyway. A lot of the guys who have reached Level 25 just do the same thing nowadays – they raid the most dangerous dungeons, kill the bosses and then loot for rare items that they can sell.”

  Perhaps that was something I could do if I ever wanted to quit getting my hands dirty, I thought with a smirk. However, right now, that wasn’t my concern. Right now, I needed to find that quest-giver.

  “I think I see him,” I then told Elia. I pointed over to an old man seated right below the bridge, peddling raw ores. He appeared to be an elf with a long white coat and wore a strange-looking tall white hat.

  “How do you know?” she asked me.

  “Easy enough. The guide I read said he had a weird hat,” I answered. “Come on, I bet you five silver it’s him.”

  We both made our way towards him. Unsure of how to get this quest started, I simply squatted down and asked the man, “Hello, how are you today?”

  The peddler looked up and away from his wares. “Oh, hello there! I’m doing quite well actually, except that I’m missing some items here. Would you like to buy some ore maybe? I know a guy who can refine them for you and use them to improve your weapons.”

  I shook my head and told him, “We’re not here to buy right now, thanks. My companion and I were hoping we could help you out. My name is Fhauste and this is Elia. Why are some of your supplies missing?”

  “Why, that’s very kind of you,” the man exclaimed. “Oh, let me introduce myself. I-I’m Mikel. I was on the road, you see, coming up here from Barkenville, when some pesky ol’ goblins came running out of the woods tryin’ to steal my wares. They broke down my wagon and I can’t fight them ugly things so I ran. I ran all the way here.”

  Elia raised an eyebrow, “Don’t you think they’ve already taken all your stuff by now?”

  “Surely they have,” the peddler answered. “But maybe y’all here can help me get them back. I-I don’t have lots of gold to give you if you succeed, but I do have something else.”

  The peddler then handed out a parchment to Elia. She took it and showed it to me so we both could read it. As it turned out, it was a letter from a dwarf named Thargen Baramos who swore he would give Mikel a powerful sword if their paths would ever cross again.

  “Thargen’s a good friend,” Mikel then said as he tapped on the parchment and took it back. “If you get my supplies back, I’ll write a new letter stating that his debt to me transfers over to you. You can then claim that sword anytime you can visit him at the Krakenmaw Mountains.”

  Krakenmaw Mountains didn’t sound like a very safe place to visit for low levels. It might be worth it later on, however, and I told Elia as much. She looked at Mikel one more time and then back at me.

  “I guess we should help him out,” she told me. “We need t
o start completing quests if we want to advance forward in the game.”

  I nodded. “I don’t really have time to waste, to be honest. I want to level up fast because there’s a certain guild I need to join.”

  “A guild?” she looked at me funny. “Which one in particular are you hoping to sign up for?”

  With a nonchalant voice, I answered, “The Ascendants.”

  “I hate that group,” she outright told me with a disgusted tone. “Why would you ever consider joining them?”

  I took a glance at Mikel, but the old peddler didn’t seem to pay us any attention. He was just waiting for us to agree to take on this quest. I then turned to Elia and paused. In my job, I had learned to always keep on my toes and never open up to just anyone with information that could potentially come back to bite me in the behind. I decided to remain evasive for the time being.

  “Let’s just say they took something from me… something very dear to my heart. And I’ll never forgive them for that.”

  She lowered her gaze and said, “Then I’m sorry for my previous statement. I thought you were joining them because you admired them or something. Do you have a plan? You want to become one of them… for what? Get revenge?”

  “That’s the idea,” I told her, “By infiltrating their ranks, or at least finding them in the game, maybe I can discover who they really are in the real world. And then… Then, it’s going to be party time.”

  Elia clenched her fists and said, “I can’t believe they hurt so many people. You might believe I’m talking nonsense, but I think it was written that you and I met. I’m here for the same reasons. I too have a score to settle with the Ascendants.”

  I stared at her really long and hard. Was she just bullshitting me? No, she wasn’t. I could see from the way she stared at the ground and the tension in her jaws that they must have done something really messed up to get her so riled up. The enemy of my enemy was, by definition, my friend. So, if I wasn’t quite ready yet to fully trust her, Elia would still make the perfect sidekick in the war to come.

  “Then let’s start with this quest.” I pointed at Mikel. “The Ascendants are supposed to be these really high-level badasses, so they won’t even talk to us unless we can prove we’re just as good. We won’t get anywhere until we start playing the game like we mean it.”

  Elia looked back at me and I could see the tears welling up in her eyes. Even if this was just a video game, the way characters reflected the emotions players experienced was real enough. I could only imagine how she felt in the real world.

  Frowning, she turned to Mikel and said, “All right, we accept your offer. We’ll track down the goblins that attacked you and see if we can get your wares back. Is there anything you can tell us that might make this task any easier?”

  Mikel scratched his chin for a moment and hummed as he thought about it. After a moment, he clicked his tongue and said, “Why, yes, there is. I was attacked down by the East Road, close to the inn at the crossroads. It was raining when they ambushed me, which was just this morning.”

  That got my interest peaked. If it was raining then, there might be tracks to follow. And my particular class might come in handy in that regard.

  “Okay, that’ll be enough,” I told Mikel and bowed down to bid him farewell. “We’ll head off before those goblins get too far. We’ll be back soon, I promise you that.”

  Elia nudged me with her elbow as we walked off. “You ‘promise’ that, huh? You seem quite confident that we can beat these guys.”

  “Wasn’t it you who said that fate had brought us together?” I nudged her back. “If that’s true, then we only got to stick together and nothing can happen to us, right?”

  Chapter Eight

  “You think this is the inn?” Elia asked, as we came up to a two-story building. It was all made of wood, and hanging above its lone door was a sign that read “The Silver Flagon.”

  Mikel had been quite accurate with his description of the area: the inn was smack-dab in the center of a cross-road. When we came up to the middle, we saw a small road sign. Continuing east the road would eventually take us to Barkenville while the road west would curve north and bring us back to Strovport. The southern fork would take us down to the Wild Woods. The sign for the northern path was broken down.

  “Yep, which means we should soon stumble upon the wreckage of his wagon,” I answered, as I started searching around. For a moment, I considered entering the Silver Flagon and gathering intel from the patrons. But just as I was about to walk in that direction, I noticed pieces of wood jutting out of the mud just a few yards away.

  I pointed that way and told Elia, “Hey, I think I’ve found the wagon. Let’s go check it out.”

  “Good work, detective,” Elia joked, completely unaware that she had almost guessed my real life profession.

  We had to cross over a ditch by the side of the road before we could reach a small hillside where the wagon lay in ruins. When we got a better look at the wreckage, there were no more doubts that the band of goblins that had ambushed Mikel was pretty ruthless. The wooden wheels were shattered, the wagon itself was split in half, with one portion buried deep under the mud, and the handles were broken off. Here and there were smashed crates and a few tattered tarp clothes Mikel probably used to cover his goods.

  “What a mess,” Elia said when we got up close. She pointed around to the crates. “Those goblins took everything.”

  I got down on one knee and inspected the ground. There were indeed some tracks but, oddly enough, they didn’t go around the wagon the way I had assumed they would have if the monsters had attacked and stolen the goods. I retraced the tracks, but they just didn’t make any sense. It looked as if these goblins had gone in circles, stomping and jumping here and there.

  “There’s no drag marks,” I told Elia. “If they took the crates, then there should be at least some drag marks. The wagon is by the side of the road, not on it, which meant a lot of heavy weight had to be shifted around.”

  “Suspicious,” Elia remarked. “What do you make of it?”

  I shrugged and just pointed at the foot prints leading deeper into the woods. “I don’t have enough information here to really paint a good picture. However, it does look like this wasn’t just an ambush. There’s something… missing, I guess. The best we can do is to keep our guard up and press on forward.”

  Elia grimaced, holding onto her shield. “I don’t like this. It smells of trouble.”

  “Regardless, we need the EXP,” I told her as I gripped my bow.

  Together, we marched on, following the goblin tracks away from the crossroads and into the woods. Elia stayed in front, following my instructions as I continued to survey the land and check for our next route. The grass and foliage were trampled and hacked away wherever the goblins had passed, making it easy to hunt them down.

  Deeper into the woods we went. We cut down our chatter as soon as the leaves from the trees overhead got so thick that they blocked out the sunlight. We had to tread in carefully, slowly and silently.

  A few animals did pass by as we continued on our quest. Several Jellies also bounced along our path, but none of them were aggressive enough to attack us on sight. We merely walked around, hoping to conserve our energy for the real threat ahead.

  It was a good hour into the woods before I noticed something wrong. My hand reached out and I pulled Elia back.

  “Huh?”

  I pointed out to a small glade just a hundred yards to our northeast. At first, the clearing looked uninteresting and plain, with nothing but a large boulder and a pool of fresh water fed by a stream. But upon closer inspection, we both noticed movement.

  Just beside the large boulder was a humanoid creature standing roughly about four feet high. It had green skin, a bald spotted head and pointy ears. It wore nothing but a dirty loincloth and some armor pads around its shoulders and torso. In its hand was a makeshift club.

  “A goblin?” Elia wh
ispered in question.

  “Likely,” I answered. “Looks like he’s guarding the entrance to their lair.”

  Elia shook her head. “What lair? I don’t see any cave or anything.”

  I then pointed again at the boulder the goblin was leaning against. “Look carefully. There’s a false wall.”

  Elia glanced again, and it took her a while to finally see what I had caught in mere seconds. The large boulder had a flat side to it and, while it looked like pure rock from a distance, a keen eye would realize pretty fast that something didn’t add up. A portion of the boulder was actually cloth, a curtain painted and disguised to look like the rest of the boulder.

  “A hidden door,” she exclaimed. “You think it goes on below the ground?”

  “There’s no other direction for it to lead us to,” I replied. “We’ll have to take care of the guard first. We need to get rid of him without giving him a chance to alert the others.”

  “I’ve got an idea then,” she told me. “You think you could hit him from the other side of the glade?”

  I grinned. “Yep. You want to flank him?”

  “I’m going to inch my way closer first,” she answered. “Once I’m in dashing distance, go ahead and fire. I’m sure a single arrow won’t kill him, but he’ll be distracted enough so I can rush in and smack him down.”

  She had a pretty good plan in mind. The only problem was we didn’t know if the goblin’s HP and Endurance stats were low enough to be taken down with an arrow and melee attack. I had already accepted that this was a game and that normal real world wounds didn’t exactly work the same way here, so we had to hope we could kill the goblin in a single round.

  “Let’s hope for the best,” I told her, as I crouched down and made my way over to the other side of the glade. I occasionally looked back and saw Elia crawling behind thick bushes as she stealthily tried to get closer to the goblin.