Succubus: A LitRPG Series

by A. J. Markam

  The good news was that my new attack Darkfire was pretty effective. I could cast it on one target, then on another, then on a third, and by the time I got back to the first fox, it was severely depleted of hit points.

  The first time I cast it, I was a little alarmed to see black flames dancing over my hands like I was on fire. Then they suddenly leapt off of me like a flamethrower and turned the fox into a black bonfire.

  If Darkfire was painful, though, it didn’t distract the animals from attacking me, that was for sure. My pants got shredded even more by their savage little teeth.

  The other good thing was that Stig’s attacks had improved substantially. His farting marbles of fire had turned into golf-ball-sized spheres of flame, and now they launched with the fizz of opening a bottle of beer – which was a welcome improvement over the constant ass-trumpet sounds.

  Between the two of us, we took out the foxes fairly quickly, with me gaining 40 to 50 experience points per each.

  As far as loot, there were no coins, but the tails of the foxes glowed faintly. When I touched one, the tail broke off easily, like snapping a dry twig. Each tail was worth 10 coppers according to the window that popped up. I stuffed them in my bags and then we moved on to the next kill.

  My soul counter had ratcheted up to 20 by the time I got back to the farmer. I was now halfway to my real reward – a crazy stupid-hot succubus!

  The farmer handed over my coins and shoulder pads – which were bulky but not quite as ugly as I’d expected.

  Turns out he had one more quest for me. “You’ve proven yourself to be a good wildlife exterminator, but do you think you can handle humans? Bandits have moved into the woods in the last few days, and I know that they have ransacked a couple of neighboring farms. If you could kill 10 of them for me, I would be willing to pay you two silver and the best cloak that I own.”

  The quest window appeared:

  Band-it Aid

  I guess it was better than a Smokey and the Bandit pun.

  A vicious group of bandits have invaded the woods nearby. Kill 10 of them and you will receive:

  500 XP

  2 Silver

  Horticulturist’s Cloak +3 armor +2 Intelligence

  Excellent. I was almost at Level 3 anyway – this would help me get to Level 5 (and my succubus) even faster.

  I accepted the quest, retrieved Stig, and we set off into the woods.

  It wasn’t long before we found our first victim.

  Or should I say, before he found us.

  10

  I used the Map to get us to the location marked as the edge of the quest area.

  The second we passed the invisible boundary, though, an attacker leapt out from behind a tree and plunged a knife in my back.

  I yelled, spun around, and came face-to-face with my assailant – a bearded ruffian in tattered clothes. I hit him with Darkfire and set him ablaze with black tongues of flame, but he still kept coming.

  Stig was doing his level best, but his fireballs just weren’t powerful enough to take off more than five hit points at a time.

  I got locked into a death battle with the guy. He slashed me with his blade, I slammed him with Darkbolts, and both our hit point counters fell precipitously. But with Stig’s help, I held the slightest of advantages.

  I was just about ready to finish the bastard off when everything went to hell.

  Two other bandits charged out of the trees – a man and a woman.

  I would have been toast no matter what, but it happened a little faster than you’d think because the woman was wearing an incredibly tight-fitting leather vest with nothing else on underneath. The deep V-shaped neck showed quite a bit of cleavage, and I have to commend the game programmers: they’d really figured out the physics of making boobs bounce up and down as women ran.

  I stood there in shock, hypnotized by the bouncing breasts, and before I knew it I was dead.

  The entire world went black for an instant – then, with a thunderclap, I found myself in a nearby graveyard. Some video games allowed you to go search out your body as a ghost and resurrect near the point of your death, but OtherWorld just started you off at a respawn point nearby. I guess this was the place.

  I checked my hit points: 50% of normal, plus I had lost 25% durability on my goods. If I wasn’t careful, my pants were going to fall off, they were so shredded. They were down to a measly 5 out of 20.

  Stig, however, was nowhere to be seen.

  I hit the ‘Summon Imp’ icon on my toolbar, and suddenly he appeared next to me in a small whirlwind of fire.

  “You okay, boss?” he asked.

  “Well, I died – so no, not exactly.”

  However, the sight of those beautiful bouncing breasts had managed to take a bit of the sting out of death.

  “Did you die?” I asked Stig.

  “No, I just ran away after you disappeared.”

  I checked his hit points. He’d taken a beating, that was for sure – he was only at 15% Health, though his hit points were slowly regenerating.

  “Why don’t we chill out and make sure you’re fully rested up before we go tackle them again,” I suggested.

  “Thanks, boss.” He flopped down on the ground and leaned against a tombstone like the back of a chair.

  “While you rest, I’m going to go get my clothes fixed,” I said. “I don’t want them falling off in battle.”

  “You got it, boss.”

  I walked back into town, which took about ten minutes, and found a tailoring shop in one of the smaller stone buildings. I walked inside and saw a sweet little old lady sitting in a chair, knitting some kind of a cap. She looked like the granny out of the Sylvester and Tweety Bird cartoons.

  “Hello sweetie – what can I help you with?”

  “I need to get my pants stitched up. How much would that cost?”

  I had barely gotten the words out of my mouth when she scrunched up her face. “Daggoth’s taint, what in the Seven Hells is that smell?”

  Wow. Granny had a potty mouth.

  “Uh… that’s me. I got sprayed by a skunk.”

  “I should charge you 15 gold for having to smell that stench,” she snapped. “But fixing your pants is only 50 coppers.”

  “Okay. Do you need me to take them off, or – ”

  “Chalastia’s tits, NO – just leave them on!” she yelled.

  She waved her knitting needles in the air. They began to glow – and then the same yellow glow surrounded my pants. All of the shredded holes were magically fixed.

  I heard the jingling of coins as my bag emptied automatically of 50 coppers.

  “Thank you,” I said, “I really – ”

  “Whore of the gods, get out of my shop!” she shouted. “You smell worse than a troll shithouse!”

  I hightailed it out of her shop, wondering if that was the sort of reaction I could expect from the majority of NPCs.

  There wasn’t any real rush to complete the bandit quest, and I’m sure Stig was in no hurry. Now that I had some money, I decided to see if I could take care of my skunk problem.

  I went inside the town inn. Every person I passed got a horrified look on their face, then moved to the other side of the room.

  I walked over to the front desk, where a strange creature sat. It looked like a grey alien – big bulbous head, black eyes, willowy body in a poofy pirate shirt and grey trousers. The thing reminded me of Roger from that old cartoon American Dad.

  As soon as I walked up, the creature made a face. “Stars in the firmament, what’s that smell?” it said in a weird voice that I couldn’t peg as male or female.

  “Me, unfortunately. I got sprayed by a skunk, and I want to rent a room so I can wash off the stink.”

  “Oh no,” the creature said, shaking its head. “No, sorry, I can’t do that.”

  “What?! Why not?!”

  “The innkeeper would kill me. Stinking up a bathtub like that…”

  This was bullshit. The game had no need to keep the sm
ell around forever. I should have been able to get rid of it with a single good wash. This was just cruelty. Persecution, even.

  “Will you go get her so I can talk to her?”

  “She’s at church,” the alien informed me. “Cleanliness is next to godliness and all that.”

  “Then she doesn’t need to know. I just need it for an hour,” I said desperately. “I’ll pay the full day rate, just for one hour.”

  “No. Unh-unh.”

  “How much, then?” I snapped. “Name your price.”

  The alien considered for a few seconds. “One gold. That’ll be enough to bribe the chambermaid and deal with the fallout.”

  “I don’t have any gold!”

  “Then come back when you’re less stinky.”

  I left the inn grumbling and grousing. I was seriously considering going back in there and going postal. Asshole –

  As I walked out, a shifty merchant came waddling up to me. He was dressed in dingy clothing topped off with a threadbare trench coat. “Couldn’t help but notice you’ve got a bit of an olfactory problem there, guv’nor.”

  I stared at him. The guy looked like he’d just stumbled out of a porno theater.

  “I’m good,” I said, waving him off.

  He held out a bar of soap, and I could smell the odor of lilacs from four feet away. “Guaranteed to take the stink off a pig’s ass, my friend. Two silver.”

  I eyed the soap warily. “What about the stink off a skunk?”

  “Even easier. Same price.”

  I thought about it. I was skeptical at first, until I remembered John’s words: There are no coincidences inside the game.

  I ended up buying the soap, plus selling him all my fox tails and boar tusks, then buying another ten-slot bag off him. The guy had definitely picked his customer well – when everybody else was running away, he approached me.

  I had my magical soap. Now all I had to do was find myself a river.

  After I killed some bandits.

  11

  Stig and I made our way back to the bandits’ stomping grounds – but before we entered the territory this time, we paused on the edge and took a good look around.

  There was a guy hanging out by a tree fifty feet away from us, scratching his ass and not really paying attention. Perfect.

  “Ready?” I whispered to Stig.

  “Ready, boss.”

  I hurled Darkfire at the bandit, and he burst into a mass of black flames. He roared in anger, turned around, and raced towards us as fast as he could.

  But in the time it took him to clear 50 feet, I hit him with another couple of Darkbolts and Stig popped him with two fireballs. The bandit did a little bit of damage when he reached us, but he was dead within five seconds.

  80 XP. Not bad.

  As I was looting the body for 75 coppers, golden light enveloped me, there was a trumpet blast, and ‘Level 3’ appeared. My stats all improved: Health, Mana, Intelligence, and Stamina. Plus a new icon appeared in my action bar – a picture of four imps, sort of like a Beatles album cover.

  “What’s this?” I asked out loud as I inspected the description. “Unholy Quartet? Two-minute cooldown?”

  “Oh yeah,” Stig said, as though I had mentioned some mediocre deli he was familiar with. “That lets you summon four more imps to fight with us for 20 seconds. Once you do it, though, you gotta wait two minutes to call them again.”

  Hm. Four imps with Stig’s level of firepower would probably only add up to one of my Darkbolts, but hey – every little bit helped.

  “Let’s go try it out.”

  We followed the same strategy as before: scope out a lone target, hit him from a distance, and then blast him again as he ran towards us. Except this time I used Unholy Quartet.

  All around us, fire erupted from the ground. Four imps that looked exactly like Stig suddenly appeared, cackling and throwing fireballs at the bandit. It was a pretty cool effect – plus we were hitting the guy from all sides. Combined with my Darkfire and Darkbolts, he was dead within 15 seconds, and I had only lost 20 hit points.

  After the bandit was dead, Stig yelled out, “Thanks, guys!”

  The imps all saluted, then disappeared in puffs of black smoke.

  “Not bad,” I said. “Your friends could come in handy.”

  The bandit’s corpse yielded another 80 coppers, plus something else: a silver necklace with some sort of religious symbol made up of overlapping circles. When I inspected it, I found out it was the sign of Bartok, patron god of thieves, and added +3 to intelligence. As soon as I slipped it on, my intelligence was cranked up to 26 total – which would make my attacks all the more powerful. Things were looking up.

  One by one, we took out more bandits, always careful to wait two minutes between them so that I could summon the other imps. We almost got in trouble again, when two bandits attacked us at the same time – but with the imps’ help, and the fact that I wasn’t distracted by bouncing breasts this time, we were able to dispatch them and still keep me at 40% of my hit points. Not only that, but I had found an apple on one of the bandits that restored 100 Health when I ate it, so I was able to get back to fighting shape within 20 seconds.

  The final stage of the quest had a bit of a twist. Stig and I found ourselves deep in the forest, with only one more bandit’s life to claim to complete the quest – but then we came across three of them sitting around a campfire, cooking a skinned squirrel on a spit over the open flames. Two men and a woman – and just like the other chick who had dispatched me earlier, this one had a plunging neckline, too, with plenty of cleavage on display.

  The bandits might have been a pain in the ass, but at least a few of them were awesome to look at.

  As I hung back amongst the trees, trying to figure out how to handle them, I heard one of the bandits speak – a man with a full beard.

  “After we eat, we should go help Von and his men with the Olmsted farm.”

  “They’ll wait for us, won’t they?” asked the other man, who was clean-shaven.

  “Probably not, but that doesn’t matter. He can do all the hard work, and we’ll just sweep in and have fun with the wife when he’s through,” the bearded bandit laughed.

  My skin crawled. I knew exactly what they were talking about, and it revolted me.

  “What about the kids?” the female bandit asked.

  “They’re to be sold into slavery in Visiron.”

  “To the orcs?”

  “Yup.”

  “I don’t like messing with kids,” the woman said.

  The bearded bandit shrugged. “The Spider’s orders.”

  “Doesn’t mean I have to like it,” the woman said.

  “No, but you like the bonus: three gold for each brat.”

  The woman smirked. “I guess I can get over it, then.”

  They all laughed.

  Suddenly a window appeared in front of me.

  Think of the Children!

  Bandits are attacking the Olmsted farm on the orders of the mysterious Spider. Save the family from the vile bandits!

  500 XP

  2 silver

  Ring of the Shepherd’s Grace: +5 to Intellect

  I was in. Hell, I would’ve gone and killed the bandits anyway, even if I had to pay all of my own money to do it. The idea of what they were planning for the wife and children made my stomach churn, even if it was just a videogame.

  As I accepted the quest, the bearded bandit sighed. “This damn piece of meat is going to take too long – let’s go ahead and help Von. That way I’ll have worked up an appetite by the time we get back.”

  The bandits laughed and all rose at once.

  Screw this, I thought, and called down the quartet of imps.

  The bandits screamed in confusion as fire burst up out of the ground and the imps started hurling fireballs at them.

  At the same time, I hit them each with a blast of Darkfire, so they were all getting sapped of hit points. Then I hit the bearded guy with a Darkbolt just
as Stig joined in.

  The three bandits roared when they realized who was attacking them. They all headed for me at once – but the bearded guy didn’t even make it. He was dead before he reached me.

  75 XP.

  The other two immediately started whaling away on me and doing some heavy damage, but the imps were wearing them down – and my repeated Darkbolts at the clean-shaven guy were whittling off his health points, too.

  The imps disappeared 20 seconds into the fight, just as the Darkfire ran out – but that meant I could cast another round of Darkfire on them. I turned both the man and the woman into flaming balls of black-souled flame, and watched with satisfaction as the clean-shaven bandit fell dead to the ground.

  75 XP.

  The woman was last. She and I were about evenly matched with hit points – but I had Stig and righteous anger on my side. Ten seconds later, she keeled over dead.

  75 XP.

  “Good work, Stig,” I said as I quickly looted the bodies. One silver and 40 coppers total, plus a pair of bracers for my wrists that added an extra three hit points of armor. “Now let’s go save that family.”

  12

  I consulted the map on which way to go, and then we ran as fast as we could through the forest. As we got to the edge of the property, I realized with a sinking feeling that I had seen this place before.

  It belonged to the family that had pelted me with potatoes.

  I hesitated, but only for a second – and not for the reason you probably think. I was wondering what our reception would be if the bandits hadn’t shown up yet. Would the family drive us off again?

  I needn’t have worried about that. A woman’s high-pitched scream rang out from the house, and I knew that the bandits had already arrived.

  Stig and I raced past the livestock pens over to the simple stone house with its timber roof. Three bandits were out in front, holding their hands over the mouths of three small, wriggling children.

  Crap – I didn’t know if my powers would hurt the kids if I attacked the bandits.