Travail Online: Resurrection: LitRPG Series (Book 2)

by Brian Simons

  RESURRECTION

  Travail Online Book 2

  by

  Brian Simons

  Copyright © 2017 by Brian Simons.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced in any format, by any means, electronic or otherwise, without prior consent from the copyright owner of this publication.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places, and events are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

  1

  Travail Online Master System Log.

  Analyzing game-wide economy…

  Total currency held by players: 10,737,818,361 gold

  Total player currency in U.S. dollars: $1,073,781,836.10

  In-game economy within acceptable parameters.

  2

  Travail Server 215 (corrupt) Automated Intelligence Log.

  Analyzing methods to increase game difficulty…

  Solution identified: deplete player wealth.

  Method selected: exploit mental firewall vulnerabilities to reprogram player financial choices.

  Accessing dormant game files…

  Launching encrypted game sequence packet to all game servers through Travail Online Master System…

  3

  Coral lied back onto the bed and put her Travail Online visor over her eyes. The frames’ arms tucked behind her ears and the clear lenses bridged across her nose. It weighed little, like a plastic pair of fake glasses. Coral assumed all of the real technology was in the frames and that the lenses were just there to make the VR device seem like something familiar.

  She thought about how relentless the previous week of playing Travail had been. In the course of seven days, she had leapt to Level 29 and helped take down an evil doppelganger of Havenstock’s local shopkeeper Otto. Something inside the game had clearly gone haywire to create that situation, though Arbyten, Inc. — the company that made Travail Online — would never admit that.

  At least she had taken home $2500 in real world money as her share of the bounty for stopping Otto. If this kept up, she might be able to make a living playing this game after all.

  She logged in and saw familiar green fields come into focus. This is where she had last logged off, just south of Havenstock. The area showed no signs of the tremendous battle that had occurred here last night. It had all been swept under the digital rug.

  In two more hours, Daniel, Sybil, and Sal would log in. After Daniel changed his class to Knight, the team had agreed to visit the Regent of Havenstock to see if he had any quests for them to complete. There was just one thing Coral needed to do first. Change her clothes.

  Coral gave herself two hours to fight and craft before meeting up with her friends. She opened up her skills menu to review what she could do with the Skinweaving skill she had unlocked. She hoped it was handy for more than just suturing zombie flesh and stringing together husks of giant bugs like last week’s gruesome designs. Her status menu showed:

  Current Skinweaving Level: 4

  Skinweaving (Basic):

  Items created with this tier of Skinweaving may provide special passive properties depending on the materials used.

  Skinweaving (Standard):

  Items created with this tier of Skinweaving may provide special transport properties depending on the materials used. Skinweaving Level 8 required to unlock.

  Skinweaving (Advanced):

  Items created with this tier of Skinweaving may provide special combat properties depending on the materials used. Skinweaving Level 16 required to unlock.

  The Standard and Advanced levels were grayed out. She wouldn’t be able to unlock those for a while. Other than that, there was no guidance. There also hadn’t been any information on the Travail Online message boards about the Skinweaving ability. It was as if no other players had bothered to try it out, or at least none that felt like posting about it. Trial and error seemed to be the only way to figure out exactly what this class was capable of.

  She turned east and ran. Running would deplete one of her Stamina Points each second, but she would reach a destination much more quickly. At Level 29, she had 150 Stamina Points — more than enough to reach the river.

  Two minutes later, she stood at the banks of the River Rove, its powerful waters surging below sporadic footbridges that connected the outer regions of Havenstock to the grasslands and hills beyond. She was out of breath from the run. Not because her physical body had exerted itself — she was still lying peacefully on her bed at home. Her body, however, had untold numbers of nanotech coursing through her blood, her bones, her brain. It provided her the sensation of exhaustion when she over exerted herself in-game.

  Coral was still wearing the Basic Leather Armor she had made last week. The whole set provided a total of +2 to Constitution, +3 to Defense, and +3 to Spirit. Almost anything would be better than that, and would help bolster Coral’s base stats so she could last longer in combat. She glanced at her stats. She had a lot of leveling to do.

  Name:

  Coral_Daring

  Gender:

  Female

  Race:

  Human

  Class:

  Seamstress

  Level:

  29

  Diplomacy:

  10

  Constitution:

  38

  Dexterity:

  62

  Defense:

  30

  Intelligence:

  40

  Strength:

  23

  Spirit:

  49

  HP:

  760

  Stamina:

  150

  MP:

  98

  Skill Points Available:

  12

  XP:

  172,533

  XP to Next Level:

  20,267

  Coral knelt down alongside the river and took out her pine short bow. As a Seamstress, she couldn’t unlock the skills along the Archer skill tree, but with her high Dexterity she could still shoot a mean arrow.

  She blinked away a notification that showed up in her chat log.

  >> Construction update: The restoration of Sagma’s tower is 1% complete. Donate gold to the god of wisdom through your status window to restore his temple to glory. Gold needed: 991,029,672.

  The game was letting her know about some event taking place in Travail, but she was too focused on the river to pay much attention to that.

  The rampant splashing of water against water cast up occasional stray droplets that landed on Coral’s face as she peered into the river. She was looking for fish. It might take a lot of slimy little fishes to patch together something wearable, but she could be patient. She had two hours to kill, and she’d use both of them hunting and sewing if need be. Grinding away at crafting clothing might be difficult, but in Travail, hard play makes fun work.

  A dark shadow swam with the current toward Coral. She drew back her bow and let an arrow fly. It shot straight through the water and into the creature’s flesh, leaving the feathered shaft poking out of the water. Coral prepared to jump down toward the water to retrieve her kill, hoping to find a fish on the other end of her arrow. Then she noticed that a system message popped up. This was no fish.

  >> Sahuagin takes 56 Damage.

  What was a Sahuagin?, Coral wondered. Then she found out. A river monster leapt from the rushing waters and tackled her, an arrow still sticking out of its back. It latched onto Coral like a monkey clinging to a tree trunk. Its round face was inches from Coral’s, its glossy black eyes unblinking. The slit across its face peeled back to reveal tw
o rows of pointy teeth.

  Coral dropped her bow to the ground and put all of her effort into prying the monster off of her. The harder she pushed, the tighter it clung. Then it started to kick with its long legs, scratching against Coral’s leather pants with the claws that arced out from its webbed feet.

  The claws hurt as they sliced through her pants. She took 10 Damage from each kick, and the kicks were coming fast. She had lost 100 HP by the time she realized the situation would quickly become desperate. She leaned her face toward the blue-skinned mob and sank her teeth into its shoulder.

  >> Sahuagin takes 3 Damage.

  Chomping down on a monster made her feel like Sal for a second. As a Gourmand, there was almost nothing he wouldn’t put in his big ogre mouth. The sahuagin tasted awful, like airport sushi that had reached room temperature hours ago. Biting the thing hadn’t done much damage, but it did loosen its grip, just enough for Coral to shake the monster free.

  She reached down for her bow and nocked an arrow as the monster bent its knees, no doubt preparing to lunge at her and use its flipper kicks to whittle away her remaining hit points. She had 660 HP left, and she planned to keep them.

  Her arrow whirred through the air and landed in the fish monster’s neck, forcing the mob to stumble backward and cry out in a high pitched wail.

  >> Sahuagin takes 230 Damage [CRITICAL].

  With some distance between them, Coral gave the sahuagin a hard stare, bringing its basic information into view. She could see now that it was at Level 27. She refused to let the creature land another hit on her. She was two levels stronger than this thing!

  Coral raised her bow and aimed another arrow at the creature, and then another. It staggered back with each hit as its HP gradually reached zero.

  >> Sahuagin dies. You receive 82 XP.

  She was happy for the experience points, but mostly she wanted to skin that thing and make armor out of it. Forget fish! She took a step closer to the slain critter when three more sahuagin burst from the river. Coral realized then that the first monster hadn’t howled in pain; it was calling for backup.

  Each sahuagin was at Level 27. They would quickly overtake her at the rate that they flopped toward her on their massive webbed feet. What compelled her to go fishing before her friends were around? Travail is too dangerous for fishing ever to be just fishing. Coral had never faced off against mobs alone before, let alone three of them at once.

  There was no time to second guess herself. She pulled her bowstring back and sent arrows soaring through the air. Coral walked backward as she shot, careful not to move too quickly and disrupt her aim. She shot at the furthest sahuagin first, but her arrow sailed over its head.

  >> You missed!

  She made a mental note to herself to work on her long range accuracy. After that she shot at whichever monster was closest.

  Each attack hit its target now, drawing down the beasties’ HP and pushing them back a step. They were closing in on her, but only slowly now.

  >> Sahuagin dies. You receive 82 XP.

  One down! She kept firing off arrows at the other two, slowing their approach even more now that she only had to alternate between two of them.

  >> Sahuagin dies. You receive 82 XP.

  There goes another one! The monsters screeched with dry throaty roars as Coral attacked them and the morning sun started drying out their slimy bodies, but none had issued the same siren call as the first one. No additional sahuagin would rally beyond these.

  Coral reached back toward her quiver and felt for the feathers of another arrow. She pulled the shaft forward, but then she stumbled over something behind her. Her heel hit a rock and tipped her off balance. She landed on her back, her long brown hair fanned out behind her. Her bow had slipped from her grasp.

  For a second she lied there, her head tilted back so the ground was at the top of her vision, the sky at the bottom. Her head throbbed from the impact. She thought she saw a small person in the distance crouching beside a bush at the edge of a thicket of trees. The person’s white hair was their most striking attribute. It reminded her of Sybil.

  The next thing Coral knew, her sahuagin target had latched onto her front and slashed at her with clawed feet. She lost 100, 200, 300 more HP as she struggled to push the creature off of her. She pressed her hands into its face and tried to dig her thumbs into its obsidian eyes, but the monster wouldn’t let go and Coral didn’t have the strength to overcome its grasp. Sitting on her ring finger, now an inch from her nose, was a silver band with a bright blue jewel. A Ring of Force, capable of granting the wearer a five second burst of inhuman strength. The item had a 24-hour cooldown period though. She had used it yesterday afternoon in her fight with the evil version of Otto so it was no help to her yet.

  Maybe, if her thumbs couldn’t dig into the sahuagin’s eyes, the metal tip of an arrow could. She stopped her vain attempts at pushing the sahuagin off of her and instead reached behind her with both hands for arrows from her quiver. The monster kept kicking, reducing Coral’s HP to a measly 70 points. Her HP bar blinked an angry shade of red. Time was running out.

  With the fastest movement she could muster, Coral whipped two arrows from her quiver and jammed them into the sahuagin’s large black eyes. Fluid gushed from them and the monster jumped from Coral’s prone body and tried to run away.

  >> Sahuagin takes 189 Damage. [Blinded].

  Coral wouldn’t let this one escape. It couldn’t see where it was going, and it had no hope of dodging her attacks. She picked up her bow and shot a final arrow right through the fish creature’s heart.

  >> Sahuagin takes 349 Damage. [CRITICAL]. Sahuagin dies. You receive 82 XP.

  Coral was thrilled. She was still more than 19,000 XP away from the next level, but she had just killed four wild riparian monsters and now she could try out her Skinweaving skill on their hides. She turned toward the distant bush, but didn’t see whoever had been crouched there watching her. Maybe it was her imagination. Her head still throbbed from her fall. She reached a hand to the back of her head and was relieved to feel that she wasn’t bleeding.

  She didn’t waste another second before dragging the wet, slimy bodies together and taking out her fabric shears.

  When she started the game as a Seamstress, she thought she’d spend time cutting strips of cotton or satin or lace and sewing beautiful gowns. Instead, she mostly used these “fabric” shears on skin. She wasn’t complaining though. Skinweaving offered some interesting possibilities.

  The shears easily sliced through the sahuagin hide. Coral used the open blade of her shears to scrape away the blood and sinew attached to the hide, leaving her with long sheets of torso skin to work with. The creatures’ backs had a fine ridge down the middle, which she left intact. She made a pile of the monsters’ innards and left them aside. She had no use for the stringy, bloody mess of monster meat.

  With a spool of suture thread handy, Coral stitched together the strips of skin she had laid out. As she worked, she felt the task in her mind. To some extent, the game helped guide her movements. With each new level of Skinweaving, she would stitch faster and with more precision. She felt the strips of dead flesh pull together to form something with a new life and a new purpose. Each puncture of the needle and pull of the string brought her closer to a sense of completion, of creation. When she was done, she had used three sahuagin’s worth to craft a jacket for herself that would tie closed across the front.

  >> Sahuagin Jacket. Water repellent… or maybe just plain repellent. Constitution +4, Defense +2. Durability: 59/60. Each Sahuagin Suit piece provides +10% to Aquavision.

  Not bad for one piece of armor, but why wasn’t its Durability full? It was a brand new jacket! Coral looked over every piece of the article and realized there was a very small puncture from one of her arrows. How exactly did the game expect her to make armor out of mobs if she wasn’t allowed to poke them with anything? Oh well, at least now she knew what to watch out for when crafting the rest of the set.
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br />   Luckily, crafting provided her with XP, so she’d get closer and closer to Level 30 with each piece of armor she created. Unluckily, sahuagin skin didn’t go very far. She only had one left. It would take another four to make pants, two to make boots, one for a pair of gauntlets, one for a belt, and two for a helmet. If she wanted a full set of sahuagin swag, she’d need nine more sheets of skin. Preferably from pieces without arrow holes in them.

  The battle left her with only 70 HP, though when she equipped her new jacket that increased slightly to 74 HP. Each point of Constitution improved max HP by 20, and her new armor provided two more Constitution than her current armor, bumping her Constitution up to 40. Not only did her max HP improve from 760 to 800, but her remaining HP increased proportionally.