Travail Online: Resurrection: LitRPG Series (Book 2)

by Brian Simons

  The Regent stood from the table and raised a glass as servants brought plates of food from the kitchen. A plate landed in front of Coral. It looked and smelled amazing. Too bad Coral had lost her appetite.

  “Let us raise a toast to our estimable Knight, Sir Daniel_of_Manayunk. Through his tireless search for our enemies’ weaknesses, he has identified a prime target for expansion. The dwarven mines!”

  Guards clapped and whistled throughout the banquet hall. Many had already begun to dig into their steaks. Coral’s avatar had started to salivate. She didn’t need to eat in the game, but a well-cooked steak would still feel delicious. It would be a shame to let her meal get cold, and there was nothing she could actually do about the Regent’s incipient war or his retention of the Soulkeeper Axe.

  “We will capture valuable resources for our kingdom!” the Regent continued. Coral’s eyes were still glued on her plate. Was it really necessary to wait for Daniel’s cue before taking a bite? She lifted a knife and fork. In the very least she could start cutting her first bite. She speared a juicy hunk of steak onto her fork and lifted it toward her face. Sal seemed to have perfected the art of turning evil wyverns into a gourmet meal.

  “We will also capture valuable laborers. No one mines better than a dwarf!”

  Guards hooted and hollered from their seats. Coral dropped her utensils. The Regent intended to enslave the dwarves, just as the elf queen wanted to do. The dwarves needed Podonos now more than ever. With all the dwarven players trying to make a living in Travail, how would they survive if the dwarven race declined the same way the orcs had when they lost their god?

  “Tonight, we dine. Tomorrow we mine!” The crowd cheered loudly as the Regent sat down.

  “Really,” he said to Daniel, “we’ll have to get you some new armor. And how did you get Dishonored again so soon? You remind me of me at your level.” The Regent put a piece of steak into his mouth. Sal was watching closely.

  “I should hope not,” Daniel said. The Regent kept chewing, though he looked a bit angry. “The way you treat your subjects is appalling. They’re begging in the street, starving, and you’d rather conquer a mine than address the cause of the problem at Sagma’s temple.”

  The Regent slowed his chewing and narrowed his eyes. Daniel continued. “You want to steal land from your neighbors when they’ve never raised a hand against you. You revel in the elves’ war on the dwarves even though the elfish army could well come for Havenstock next. You treat guests like Sal and Sybil like animals, or worse. And you’re holding a dragon captive below the castle! And for what, advice?”

  Daniel’s voice grew louder with each sentence and he pushed himself up from the table when he finished. The room fell silent.

  “Do you like the steak?” Sal asked. The Regent didn’t bother to look at him, let alone answer.

  “You,” the Regent said, staring at Daniel and standing from the table as well, “ungrateful…” The Regent paused, swallowing hard. “You ungrateful,” he said again, but didn’t finish. His eyes scanned the room.

  Then the vomiting began.

  First, a guard toward the rear of the banquet hall, then one in the middle, then others, until the whole room was filled with doubled-over guards puking on the table, on the floor, on the guard next to them. The Regent put a hand to his own mouth.

  The only thing they had in common was the food. Coral was relieved she hadn’t tasted it, though she wondered how Daniel knew to avoid eating it. Sal hadn’t eaten his either.

  “That’s how you earned your Dishonor,” the Regent said. “You’ve poisoned us all!”

  Daniel yelled, “Run!”

  “Guards!” the Regent yelled, running after them, but no guards followed. They were all too ill.

  Coral followed Daniel and Sal through the doors to the throne room and down the long front corridor that led to the castle gates.

  “Your Knighthood,” the Regent yelled as he stumbled behind them, “is hereby revoked!” He stopped chasing them and leaned over. Coral didn’t look back to see whether he lost the little food he had eaten.

  They pulled open the castle gates and found Sybil there, waiting. “What—” she started to ask, but quickly fell in line when she saw that everyone else was running. They made it to Havenstock’s central plaza before they stopped.

  “No one is following us,” Daniel said.

  “What happened back there?” Coral asked.

  “I had to stop them,” Daniel said, “you heard what they were going to do. It wasn’t right!”

  “I’ll tell you what wasn’t right!” Coral yelled. “You poisoned everyone and didn’t even talk to us about it first! Sal, did you know about this?”

  Sal’s shoulders slumped. He shook his head slowly.

  “What if I had taken a bite?” Coral asked, turning back toward Daniel. “What if Sal had?”

  “I told you not to,” Daniel said.

  “But you didn’t tell us why. You just issued an edict that we shouldn’t start eating and expected that we’d do exactly what you said. Without you finding it necessary to share the details of your potentially murderous plan.”

  Daniel’s jaw clenched. His eyes were locked onto Coral’s. “I’m not a murderer.”

  Coral continued, “You poisoned every last one of them. You know how many of them fought alongside us to stop Otto. Some of them are good people.”

  “They were about to do something bad,” Daniel said.

  “So that gives you the right to do something bad to them first?” Coral asked.

  “So,” Sal said, “you ruined the dinner I made on purpose?”

  “I’m sorry Sal,” Daniel said. “Using the morimora was the only way I could think of to prevent an all-out war with the dwarves.”

  “Morimora. Is that what you stole from Sage Tawn?” Sybil asked. Daniel nodded slowly. “That’s an extremely powerful poison.”

  “What are we supposed to do now?” Coral asked. She thought she saw something move in the shadows behind Daniel, but she refused to take her eyes off of him. She was angry, and she wanted him to see that in her eyes.

  “We still have these,” Daniel said, digging a small orb out of his inventory. “It’s a teleport orb to the Arena. FighterFluid gave them to us when we ran into him in the Hollow Hills. If we go to the Arena—”

  “We can walk from there to Sagma’s temple,” Sybil said. “Fine, but what do we do when we get there? From what I can see, you’re not a Knight anymore. Your class comes up as Empty.”

  “And your armor is broken,” Sal added.

  “Sal has no weapon,” Coral said. “This is a mess.” The shadows moved again. “I just can’t get over it, Daniel. Poisoning everyone? You really could have killed them all. I used to think you were a good guy.”

  “Maybe there’s no such thing as good guys,” Daniel said.

  Something leapt from the shadows. It was a dark figure, and before Coral could say anything, it was behind Daniel with a knife to his throat. “Glad to hear you’re coming around to my way of thinking,” said a man’s voice.

  Daniel stood there with his arms at his side, not even trying to fight this person off.

  “Let go of me, Devon,” he said.

  So he knew this guy.

  “Why should I?” he asked. “You play me for a fool.”

  “What are you talking about?” Daniel asked.

  “I tasked you with poisoning the Regent,” Devon said, “and you give him a stomach ache. You had the deathberry at your command, and you watered it down to nothing. And you expect that to satisfy me! Tell your friends to leave, boy. You and I need to talk.”

  “We’re not going anywhere,” Sal said.

  “It’s ok, Sal,” Daniel said. “Use the teleport orbs now, while no one’s attacking you. You know you can’t teleport if you’re wrapped up in combat, and we don’t know if any guards might come after us.”

  “But you’re in danger,” Sybil said.

  “That’s what he gets,” Coral
said. “His secrets are coming home to roost. We could have helped him before, but now it’s too late.” She slammed the teleport orb onto the ground and a pale yellow cloud of smoke exploded upward, engulfing her and blocking her vision. A second later, the cloud evanesced and left her standing in the desert.

  Ahead of her, the desert was a wide stretch of fine sand. Nothing stood against the horizon but the sloping peaks of sand-swept dunes. Despite the nothingness, the sound of metal crashing against metal rang out from behind her.

  Coral spun around and saw two large granite columns stretching three stories high. Between them hung a banner that simply said “Arena.”

  “Well,” said a man in golden armor and an obnoxious red cape standing just inside the Arena entrance. Coral would recognize that nasal voice and smug face anywhere. It was FighterFluid. “If it isn’t my favorite needle pusher.”

  29

  Coral vanished. Good. Daniel didn’t want her wrapped up in this. Sal looked hurt, concerned, or confused. Whatever Sal felt, he didn’t share it. He smashed the teleport orb on the ground and disappeared.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” Sybil said, and she vanished too.

  Devon pushed Daniel forward and kept a dagger pointed outward toward him. “I should stab you right in the heart,” Devon said.

  “I told you a long time ago that I wasn’t going to do your bidding,” Daniel said. “You just didn’t want to believe it.”

  “You have no appreciation for your destiny,” Devon said.

  “I’ve listened to people before,” Daniel said, “who told me what my destiny should be. They were wrong. They were full of empty promises. You’re wrong too. I’ll cut my own path.”

  “I’m offering you a class, a fast pass to experience and freedom, a world of opportunities for the making. Look at you, a disgraced Knight. You’re not even a Scout anymore, you’re nothing.”

  Daniel opened his skill menu, keeping a close eye on Devon. Everything was grayed out. Whatever skill points he might accumulate now would be useless until he could select a new class. If he accepted Devon’s offer, however, he could become a Rogue instantly.

  Rogues excelled at skills he only had a small taste of. Sneaking and Backstabbing were just the beginning. Joining Devon might come with a lot of strings attached though. His quests would all be unsavory deeds, like arson or murder. He wasn’t willing to dive into Travail’s underworld just for a quick class change.

  Daniel dug a teleport orb out of his inventory. “If you’re not going to kill me, I’m leaving.”

  “When I kill you, there won’t be a conversation first.”

  With a shatter of glass and a burst of smoke, Daniel left Havenstock behind.

  30

  Coral was fuming. Daniel was on some clandestine mission to kill the Regent and didn’t think to let her in on the secret, or any of his other secrets for that matter. He just expected her, Sybil, and Sal to blindly follow his lead.

  Now she was in the middle of the desert, staring FighterFluid in the face when all she wanted was to go to Sagma’s tower and knock the whole thing down. And maybe teach Marco a lesson for good measure.

  “You’re the ass that threw me and Sybil off a cliff last week,” Coral said, stomping through the archway to the arena.

  “You survived,” he said with a shrug. “Did she?”

  As if answering his question, Sybil appeared behind Coral with Sal.

  “See that,” FighterFluid said, “no harm no foul. Now where’s my boy Daniel? There haven’t been many players around here lately willing to drop a little gold on a good fight. It would really lift my spirits to get another kill in before bedtime.”

  Of course no one had gold to wager on Arena battles, they were too busy donating it to Sagma. Coral should leave. She and her friends had to put a stop to Vernagi and Marco’s operation before noon tomorrow. It wasn’t easy to walk away though. Coral was pissed at Daniel and still harbored a grudge against FighterFluid for dropping her several stories from midair and breaking her leg.

  Coral peered at her adversary. He was a Level 91 Fighter. She couldn’t see how much HP he had, but she knew she was no match for him. She didn’t care. She wanted to settle this score.

  “Why wait for Daniel when I’m right here,” she yelled. “Or are you afraid to lose to a girl?”

  There was only a scattering of other players in the Arena. They started murmuring to each other as FighterFluid walked up to Coral. He stopped an inch from her face, but she wouldn’t step back to give him extra room. He stared her in the eye. He was an inch shorter than her, so she tilted her head down slightly to match his glare with her own. “Are you challenging me, little girl?” he asked.

  “I sure am, little boy,” she replied.

  “You’ll regret that,” he said. “I could kill you quickly, but I won’t.” He walked away after that. A timer appeared above Coral’s head.

  >> Time to Arena matchup with [FighterFluid]: 2:00.

  As it counted backward from two minutes, Coral turned to Sybil and Sal. “How does this work?”

  “Well,” Sybil said, “when someone accepts your challenge, you each put some gold into the kitty for the winner to take. Ten gold per level.”

  That meant Coral had just paid 290 gold — the equivalent of $29.00 in real life currency — for the privilege of fighting a suicide match against FighterFluid. For all the work she had done crafting, she was only able to sell her leather armor set for 20 coins, her pine short bow for 11 coins, seven pairs of wyvern leggings for 19 coins each, and the only mud mitt she could fit into her inventory for 4 coins. It was a grand total of 168 gold. Now she was at a net deficit. She would say “easy come easy go,” but none of it came very easily.

  “Then,” Sal said, “you both appear in the Arena and you fight. If you last 10 minutes it’s a tie and you split the gold evenly. The stronger person in that case would lose some gold, since they put more in to start with. That incentivizes them to kill you and not just let the clock run down.”

  “You can take all of your gear in there,” Sybil continued. “If you die in the Arena, you show up here again, at the Arena entrance, with all of your gear and everything intact. Normally, when you die you lose everything and start from scratch. The Arena is an exception to that rule.”

  “But it will still hurt,” Sal said, “if you take damage in there, just like anywhere else. Please be careful.”

  Knots were forming in Coral’s stomach. It wasn’t like her to be hotheaded and pick fights, especially fights she was destined to lose. At least there was an option for a draw, if she could stay alive that long.

  “The winner gets a cut of everything players bet on that fight,” Sybil said. “Your match just showed up on the board, and the odds are not good.”

  “How bad are they?” Coral asked, afraid to look.

  “It’s 38:1,” Sal said.

  Coral definitely felt sick. If the bookmakers that ran the Arena knew how badly tied in knots her stomach was, they’d probably raise FighterFluid’s odds of winning even further.

  >> Time to Arena matchup with [FighterFluid]: 0:30.

  “Any words of wisdom?” Coral asked.

  “Ten minutes is a really long time,” Sybil said.

  “Gee, thanks,” Coral replied. Sybil shrugged and walked away.

  The whole Arena was shaped like a ring, with stands and shops built into the outer edge, and metal bars forming a fence along the inner edge. Coral walked up to the fence and looked down. A large circular area was dug out, with no visible way in or out. The ground was sandy like the rest of the desert.

  Coral turned to say something to Sal, but he was gone. Or rather, Coral was gone. The countdown timer had hit zero and she was instantly teleported to the middle of the Arena. She stood ten feet away from FighterFluid.

  A throng of players had built up along the fence above. All eyes were on them.

  “We haven’t been properly introduced,” FighterFluid said. “I’m Yardley.”
He held out his hand and started walking toward her. “After the customary handshake we’ll get started.”

  Coral took a step toward him but paused. The last time this Yardley got his hands on her, he used his Cloudborn Cloak to fly several stories into the air and drop her to the ground. She didn’t want a repeat of that.