“Welp, that’s just about the poofiest thing I’ve seen all day, and I won’t mention the fact that it came from Marbles.”
“At least it cleared the air of your stench, Hiccup,” Ryuk bites back.
Zaena laughs hard at this. “It is actually refreshing for once!”
“Laugh it up, Liz,” Hiccup says, trying to hide how offended he is by turning away from the others and cursing under his breath.
“Just let me try again.” Ryuk loads another clear marble into the slingshot. “Reveal door!”
A Simple Request!
Skill level up!
Skill: A Simple Request
Level Five: 1 in 5.95 chance of a request being granted.
Caveat: Only works with a clear marble.
Requirements: LUCK > 15
The moss boils away releasing a fragrant scent that quickly turns sour. By the time the Mitherfickers are done coughing and Hiccup’s finished lamenting the rotten stench, a giant hole has formed in the wall, a faint light visible at its other end.
(0)__(0)
An assault rifle with a night vision scope in his hands, the Swede slips into the hole, ready for things to get rowdy at the drop of a hat. Zaena is next, followed by Enway and Ryuk. Hiccup scuttles in last, behind Wolf, whose tongue hangs out of his mouth as he walks.
“It’s nice having a dog in the group,” Hiccup says. “He’s quiet, and believe you me, I’m a fan of quiet fickers.”
With nobody commenting on his statement, Hiccup quickly runs out of things to say. He pops open a healing potion, takes a swig, burps, and mumbles about heartburn and cheap potions.
“Where do you think it leads?” Enway asks, after the Mitherfickers have walked for a few minutes.
FeeTwix’s maps don’t work down here, and from what Ryuk can tell, they seem to be spiraling downward. At least it feels like they are going deeper into the ground, mainly due to the change in temperature.
Wolf barks and zips around FeeTwix. His eye pressed to his night vision scope, FeeTwix tracks the big dog as he disappears around a corner. “I can send a drone,” he says. “You picking up anything, Ryuk?”
“No magical readings. Zaena? Do you sense anything?”
“Only that there have been more goblins in this hole than I’d care to admit.”
Hiccup nearly falls over laughing at that last line. “Liz, you make this shit way too easy!”
“What do you mean?” she hisses.
“Never mind, babe. Let’s just focus on getting out of this hole; it’s fickin’ terrible for live-streaming. What’s that? Ah, that’s right everyone! You can order items off the Old Banana Navy Gap Republic webstore from the deepest hole on planet Earth and still get a 15% off discount and twenty-five Old Banana Bucks to use for your next purchase by mentioning #FeeTwixRox at checkout! If you order now, you’ll get an exclusive Mitherfickers T-shirt featuring Hiccup’s two skulls deepthroating a sword design free with any purchase over a hundred bones. Wow, what a fantastic shirt! Did I mention I’ll be digitally signing the first fifty to go out? It’s the holy hole sale with prices practically at wholesale! #FeeTwixRox, people, you know what to fickin’ do.”
Hiccup burps and tosses his healing potion over his shoulder. “Twixy, first, fick you and the way you just polluted this hole with your bullshit. Second.”
“–I believe you’re the one with the polluted hole, goblin.”
“That was actually pretty good, Liz. Ha! Who knew Thuleans had a sense of humor. Crap. Where was I? Can’t remember. Wait. I got it. Something about not signing a merchandising agreement and having my attorney contact Old Banana Fick in the Box and FeeTwixRox LLC about royalties and other damages that come with having one’s IP exploited. FICK! Anyone feel that!?”
Ryuk definitely felt it. Although it had no aura, something magical just moved through the dark passage.
The hair on the back of his neck prickles; he naturally pulls his Marble Shotgun closer to his chest. Focusing as hard as he can, he now senses a faint green magic all around them.
Her red eyes flaring up, Enway raises her wand, and suddenly, time speeds up and the Mitherfickers are standing at the exit point to the cavern.
Wolf whimpers and scratches his paws against the ground. Hiccup lets loose a string of curses peppered with the putrid stench of nervous toots. Zaena pulls out all four of her blades.
FeeTwix gulps as he realizes how close he just came to firing a short burst of gunfire in Ryuk’s general direction. The Ballistics Mage gulps, an algomagic-laced aura filtering off his body.
“How...what just happened?” Zaena asked.
“Sorry,” Enway says hurriedly. “We needed to get out of there.”
“And what in? Where in the actual? FICK! I’m at a loss for words. Fick.” Hiccup sits down onto the ground, and rubs his temples.
“I cast Time Skip,” Enway says before he can curse any more. “I transported us forward in time to the natural exit point of wherever the hell we just were.”
“We can teleport?” FeeTwix asks. “Because if we can, I can finally get rid of my DeLorean. I never could get the damn flux capacitor to work.”
“The spell said that I needed to touch everyone to do it.”
“So that’s what that weird sensation was,” Ryuk says.
She nods. “It was an addition to the original spell. Whereas before, to cast Time Skip on a party, I think the Chromatic Mage had to touch whomever she wanted to transport. Now, I can just cast the spell and visualize who will go with me.” She shows them her hourglass necklace. “It’s regenerating much more slowly than normal, though, probably because of mana expenditure.”
“Okay, fine, I’m fine with that, but just fickin’ warn us next time. And another thing, why can’t you just Time Skip us to the end of the battle that’s coming? Because boy fick, I know there’s a battle coming.”
Enway bites her lip for a moment as she thinks. “The spell doesn’t take anything into account aside from the physical act of moving. It was probably a handicap put into place to prevent someone from just beating every monster on the continent.”
“Makes sense,” Zaena says, as they enter the main corridor.
The Thulean glances up at a red door with Thulean script cut into its surface.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” FeeTwix asks, his free arm now around Ryuk’s shoulder. “Cause that looks like a door that leads straight to a boss battle, and you know how much I like boss battles. You want to take the lead here, or should I? You feel like giving a pep talk? My fans love our pep talks.”
“Please, go ahead,” Ryuk says, his Japanese politeness again making its presence known.
“Mitherfickin’ Mitherfickers and fans of the FeeTwixRox brand of entertainment products, listen up! Ryuk and I believe, based on absolutely no evidence aside from the fact that both of us are seasoned gamers, that whatever boss this goblin dungeon contains lies on the other side of that door. So, top off your health bars, equip your weapons, tell your friends to get back on the feed, and let’s get ready to do what the Mitherfickers were put in Tritania to do!”
“Don’t have to ask me twice,” Hiccup says, guzzling another potion and belching. “Fick yeah!”
Where does he keep getting these potions? Ryuk wonders as the goblin sticks his tongue into the bottle to get the very last drop.
“And to quote St. George of Carlin, or better yet, to paraphrase St. George of Carlin, boss battles are a zero sum game.”
Brrrrat!
The Swede fires a quick burst of gunfire into the ceiling, much to Hiccup’s dismay. “Let’s do this!”
“Aye! Aye! Aye!”
(0)__(x)
“We just came to talk,” Hiccup tells the female goblin in the center of the next room. Getting through the red door had been relatively pain free – it simply popped open when they approached it.
Sugar Spur Level 31
HP: 2400/2400
MANA: 856/856
ATK: 143
&nbs
p; MATK: 331
DEF: 154
MDF: 192
LUCK: 17
The female shaman known as Sugar Spur sits midair with her legs crossed. The room is much larger than Ryuk anticipated it would be, easily forty meters across, and the walls are covered in tapestries depicting the famous goblin shaman in a variety of yogic poses.
She’s nude from the waist up, her black nipples pierced with golden rings. These rings match the rings hanging from her droopy earlobes, and they’re the exact same as the single ring jutting from her belly button, an outie, only accented more by the fact that she, like Hiccup, is a good thirty to forty kilos overweight.
“Lookin’ good too,” Hiccup says, turning the charm up. “I’ve seen a lot of goblins in my day, but none as fit and sensually robust as you, Sugar.”
She bares her teeth as her eyes start to roll into the back of her head.
“Hey, keep cool, Sugar, I’m just here to have a few troublesome chalupa warts removed. Also, and fick me if this isn’t the case, my Goblinheimer’s has been flaring up as of late. Heard you could handle that too. Hell, some days, I even forget to take a shit! Just a joke there, but seriously, it’s bad. Ask these fickers.” He tosses his mechanical thumb over his shoulder.
“I know what you’ve come for, goblin,” Sugar hisses. “You’ve come for my runestone!”
“Rune-what? Take a load off, Sugar, and cool floating technique, by the way. Never heard of a fickin’ runestone. For fick’s sake, I can barely remember my own name. Pretty sure it’s Spew Gorge, just in case you want to get revenge after … Twixy, go! Marbles, go! Liz, Elfy, go!”
FeeTwix and Ryuk, as they planned, lay down the heavy ordnance. FeeTwix has gone with a grenade launcher, Ryuk with his Marble Shotgun filled with explosive marbles.
Sure, they desperately need a new opening attack strategy, especially since the ‘Hiccup distracts them while we shoot them’ technique seems to be on the first page of the Mitherfickers’ playbook, but it works, and the explosions definitely add confusion to the fight.
Unfortunately, from what Ryuk can see, Sugar Spur hasn’t taken a lick of damage. In fact, when the smoke clears, she’s the same as she was at the start of the fight – floating midair, her legs crossed, a calm yet wicked smile across her pockmarked face.
“My turn,” she says, her voice suddenly piping out of every corner of the room.
Slats in the wall open and robed goblins pour in carrying a smorgasbord of weapons, from daggers to hammers to broomsticks.
The goblin shaman casts a spell that throws Enway and Zaena five meters back into a wall.
“Wolf, git over here!”
The big black wolf with blue-green eyes takes two running steps forward, and slides up next to Hiccup just in time for the goblin to hop on.
Once he’s secure, they take off towards the incoming goblins, and like a perfectly thrown bowling ball, Hiccup kicks off Wolf, his golden helm on his head as he dives forward, tucks, and rolls into the fray.
Wolf follows suit, tearing into the goblins and taking out a good many with his sheer size. As FeeTwix lays down more heavy ordnance, sending fireballs, dust, and detritus into the air, Ryuk drops, clicks open the revolving canister on his shotgun and quickly pops more black marbles in.
He comes up a few moments later, his Marble Gun in one hand, his Marble Shotgun in the other, the recoil pad pressed into the nook under his arm. If there were bonus attack points available for style alone, the Ballistics Mage would get it for his current pose, both weapons trained on Sugar Spur.
“I’ve got this, FeeTwix!”
Click, click. BOOM! Click, click. BOOM!
The rapid-fire marbles do as much if not more damage than FeeTwix’s camouflage-colored Milkor MGL.
Despite all the heavy firepower, and even as Hiccup and Wolf pretty much handle the goblins filing out of the walls, Sugar Spur is completely unaffected by Ryuk and FeeTwix’s attack.
Enway’s wand comes up and she fires a pink blast at Sugar Spur, a blast which fizzles out before it hits her.
“Bitch!” Zaena fires an arrow that strikes Sugar Spur directly between the eyes.
Critical hit!
Everyone stops and turns to the goblin shaman as a single trickle of blood drips down the bridge of her nose, over her lips, and stops at her chin.
The arrow pushes itself out, the wound heals up, and her eyes roll completely back in her head.
A portal opens up behind Sugar Spur and a pink blast of magic strikes her in the back of the head, nearly tossing her off her invisible perch. Ryuk looks to Enway and she gives him the thumbs up.
Delayed Strike, he thinks, having used a similar attack as a Ninja Warrior.
“She’s invincible to all our attacks,” Zaena shouts.
“We’ll see about that!” is FeeTwix’s reply as he equips the mutant hack Bowie knife given to him by Dirty Dave back in Aramis.
A panel on the opposite wall spins and more goblins tumble out. This group wears loose-fitting battle armor and holds Molotov cocktails, flames sparking at their tips.
“Fick!” Hiccup cries. “Suicide fickboys…Watch your choop, Marbles!”
Instakill! Instakill! Insta-Instakill!
Four of the suicide fickboys explode before they can reach the Mitherfickers, spraying the air with limbs, bits of armor, and gobs of flesh.
Watch my choop? Ryuk gets the notion to fire a sword marble at Hiccup, but is too distracted by the fat goblins holding explosives who are advancing towards him.
Wham!
-265 HP!
Ryuk is knocked sideways by a hammer.
Seeing stars, he tries to right himself only to be tossed backwards by an exploding suicide fickboy.
-112 HP! Critical hit!
A tingling sensation pulls him back from the brink. His eyes blink open to find Enway crouched before him, pink magic sprinkling from her wand and a warm smile on her face. She’s close enough now that he can see that the red tear drop on her head is pulsating.
+250 HP!
“That’s right,” he says as the tingling sensation continues to move through him. “You can still heal.”
“Speed Heal,” she says. “It’s pretty good, no?”
Fwhipp! Fwhipp! Fwhipp!
Insta-Insta-Instakill!
Zaena is due for the guild’s ‘Most Headshots in a Single Battle Award’ if they can ever get a hit in on Sugar Spur. The well-trained Thulean takes out suicide fickboys like she’s auditioning for a role as the White Death.
They keep falling, their bodies exploding and sending shrapnel, bone, and flesh into the air.
A searing green blast cuts through the mayhem and meets Sugar Spur head on. Her body boils as FeeTwix’s mutant hack attack does its damage.
“We did it!” Hiccup says, pumping his fist in the air. “Fick yeah!”
His exuberance quickly disappears when it becomes increasingly clear that the goblin shaman has survived the blast.
“Impossible,” FeeTwix says as his hack melts away.
It’s then that Ryuk notices the faintest outline of algomagic surrounding the golden ring hanging from Sugar Spur’s earlobe.
His eyes dart right and then down to her sagging breasts and her extended belly to see that all her rings have a green tint to them.
“Get them, my children! Pull their entrails out and bathe in their blood! Skull fick them to death!”
-95 HP!
Hiccup swings wide, both hands on his golden axe, cutting down a muscular goblin. “Skull fick that, you fickered fickhead!”
Instakill!
He brains the next goblin, pulls his blade out, and goes for another. Wolf jumps over him and takes out another goblin, snarling as he rips his leg to shreds.
His Marble Gun holstered at his side and his Marble Shotgun slung over his shoulder, Ryuk goes for the stock weapon that came with his avatar. A molten marble in the pocket, the Ballistics Mage takes aim at Sugar Spur’s right earlobe with his slingshot.
A targeting reticle appears and even as chaos swells all around him, and more goblins file out of the panels in the walls, Ryuk cuts a molten marble across the battlefield, connecting with Sugar Spur’s ear.
-400 HP!
Skill level up!
Skill level up!
“YEEEEOOOOOOY!” the female goblin shaman screeches as the golden hoop melts away.
Her earlobe quickly reforms, but the damage she’s taken remains the same.
Hiccup’s eyes light up as he looks from the floating Sugar Spur to Ryuk. “Fick me twice and call me grumpy after a long nap, Queen of the Rings!”
“Queen of the what?” FeeTwix calls over to him.
“Fick, Twixy, no time to explain. Take out all her golden rings!”
(x)__(x)
“I’m on goblin duty!” FeeTwix, now with his tommy gun one hand and a healing potion in the other, delivers a little swift justice to a group of suicide fickboys that have just swarmed into the room.
Insta-Insta-Instakill!
“I just want to remind all four million of you live-streaming this battle that I’ll be picking a winner of the Count the Ficks contest after! And don’t forget, WalMacy’s is having a spring sale, and boy, is it a sale you don’t want to miss! Sure,” FeeTwix tears through another swarm of goblins, “everyone is already familiar with WalMacy’s falling prices, but did you know you can save an additional three percent by signing up for their store card! Just think of what you can do with three percent!”
“No one can do fick all with three percent, Twixy!” Hiccup shouts once FeeTwix pauses to reload his tommy gun.
“Ignore the goblin, everybody! If you sign up for a WalMacy’s store card in the next twenty-four hours, WalMacy’s will add an additional one percent to this offer for the first year and waive the yearly fee! Talk about saving a hundred dollars and four percent! How much better is four percent than three percent?”
FeeTwix kicks in the face of a goblin that has somehow crawled over to him during his ad read. “One percent better, that’s how much! You know the code. people: #FeeTwixRox!”
As the Swede lays down more cover fire, Zaena focuses on getting closer to Sugar Spur. This is proving difficult, especially since the goblins have started to pile up around her, forming a protective shield of bodies.
Fantasy Online_The Runestones of Tritinakh Page 15