Troll Nation

by James A. Hunter

  Danny snorted. When he saw everyone looking at him, he straightened up. “It’s such an obvious gamer name. He’s trolling us, so he puts himself in the game as a literal troll and makes a settlement called Troll Nation.”

  “He founded a settlement?” Mr. Silva said, his eyes like chips of diamond, cold and hard. “Why?”

  Though he remembered what they said, Randy glanced down at his notes so he wouldn’t have to hold the CEO’s intense gaze.

  “At first, I thought money or laundering Unique or Legendary weapons,” Randy said. “But for a modder of his skill, writing in his own would be much faster than waiting for them to come through a marketplace.” He scrolled down a bit. “The other possibility was so that he could spread his infected code even faster. From some of the things the Griefer has said, he and the prime anomaly in the Radiant Shield, the modder named Lowen, are in a sort of virtual arms race. I think things are about to come to a head soon. But so far, none of the NPCs or mobs who’ve gone through the Troll Nation marketplace have been infected.”

  “So, what you’re saying is you’ve been following this Griefer around for a week, and in that time, you allowed him to take over the Cruel Citadel, change its name, found a settlement where he’d have access to an exponentially higher number of people and creatures, and turn my game into a virtual grudge match between himself and this Lowen character?”

  Randy’s mouth opened and closed as his brain struggled to find a way to explain. Technically, everything Mr. Silva had just said was true.

  “All of this on your watch.” Silva’s voice dropped to frigid. “And you want me to pay you for this.”

  Randy’s throat went dry. “S-sir—”

  “You’ve got three days to get me hard answers, Shoemaker. If you don’t, I’ll find someone else who can and you can find another job. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” Randy whispered.

  After the board dismissed, Randy left the conference room with his head down and steered straight for the bathroom. He just barely made it to a stall in time. Strawberry Pop Tart flavored vomit sprayed into the stripped-down, streamlined, hypermodern toilet. A few good heaves and the last of the breakfast pastry was floating in the funnel-shaped bowl, pinkish bubbles speckled with tiny yellow and blue sprinkles floating on a greasy, sticky sea of strawberry red.

  Randy leaned back against the stall door and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. It was soaked with sweat. More slicked his limp hair to his forehead and plastered his shirt to his back and armpits. Felt like the thing was choking him. He undid the top button. Whether it was reality or psychosomatic, the change made it a little easier for him to breathe.

  Randy flushed the toilet and left the stall. He went to the sinks, white basins jutting up out of black marble, and ran cold water over his wrists to cool himself off. Then he splashed some on his face and slurped a little from his hand, swishing it around to rinse the strawberry vomit taste from his mouth.

  It wasn’t even the ass-chewing that bothered him the most. It was the prospect of being fired. He loved Hearthworld, and he loved his job. He as good at it, too. There was no engineer at Frontflip better than him. But most importantly, he wanted to figure out what was going on here. He’d never met a problem he couldn’t unravel given enough time and information. It was what he did. Finding answers was who he was. Everything else came in a distant second.

  He needed to solve this, but Mr. Silva had just put him on a severely short deadline. Which meant he was going to have to step up and take more direct action.

  Caged Animals

  ROARK HUDDLED IN THE corner of a massive cage, disguised as a bent little kobold in a sea of larger creatures. They were belowground, beneath the arena. Griff’s contact had led Roark down and locked him in just before sunrise that morning. Now only the smallest strips of sunlight shined through cracks in the ceiling above. The iron bars of the cage rattled constantly, trembling beneath the stomping of feet and the roaring of the raucous crowd.

  It was dark. It stunk of offal, gamey animal sweat, and unwashed bodies. His fellow mobs paced the cage, scared and angry, lashing out at one another or railing against the bars. Beasts with claws and fangs, others with fur or feathers. Some walked upright like men, while others prowled on all fours, tails lashing as they moved. According to Griff, most of the mobs who were captured for sport came from the wilds and had been found roaming free, unaffiliated with any particular dungeon. Most appeared to be mid- to high-level creatures, ranging from levels 10 to 20, but relatively unintelligent, only a step or two above wild animals. Nothing like the dungeon-based mobs Roark was used to.

  Another tidbit he had learned from Griff was that mobs who spawned in dungeons tended to show higher levels of humanity since they lived and Evolved in a community. Something about being a lone wolf seemed to strip the mobs from the wilds of their higher mental faculties.

  One creature, however, stood out. A frail-looking individual in flowing blue-black robes called a Nocturnus. It had eight sparkling sapphire eyes, a pair of curved mandibles sprouting in place of a proper mouth, and masses of segmented tentacles hanging around its face like hair. Four arachnoid legs sprouted from its back, moving independently of one another or reaching over his shoulder to aid his humanoid hands, covered in black chitin like the rest of him.

  Like Roark, the Nocturnus didn’t pace the cage or snap at his fellow captured mobs. Instead, he sat quietly studying each of the creatures in turn, his canny, eight-eyed gaze landing finally on Roark.

  Roark shifted uncomfortably. The Nocturnus’s gaze seemed too intelligent, as if it saw straight through Roark’s Transmutation, though that couldn’t be possible. Unlike Illusion magick, which could be pierced with high-level spells or dispelled altogether with certain magical items, the Transmutation was a real, physical change; to any onlooker, he would be indistinguishable from a typical kobold. Though, Roark supposed, it was possible that his personality and overall disposition might mark him in some way.

  After several minutes’ uninterrupted staring, the Nocturnus scooted across the cage and sat beside Roark.

  “You are not what you seem, kobold.” The creature’s voice was low and rasping, like insect legs being rubbed together. The Nocturnus leaned in closer, forcing Roark to lean back. “Who are you really? What are you really?”

  “Don’t know what you mean,” Roark said, playing stupid. He tried to remember the odd dialect that the kobolds he’d met had used. The diction had been stilted, broken, but he couldn’t recall it well enough to mimic with any sort of accuracy. He decided not to bother. “I am nothing more than I appear to be. Now, if you’ll give me some space.”

  “Hmm... Ick understands well the need for secrecy,” he rasped, nodding his tentacled head, completely ignoring Roark’s request. “I was once of a mighty dungeon, until my mistress cast me out...” One of his spider legs reached over his shoulder and scratched the weak chin below his fangs. “We are fated to fight Bad_Karma, you know. Chosen to die. You seeming as a lowly kobold, me as the humble and dejected Nocturnus that I am. Yet your secrecy, your speech, and most of all your lack of surprise that we will face the greatest hero in Hearthworld... It makes me wonder. Makes me wish to fight alongside you. I doubt it will be enough to save us, but perhaps working together we can accomplish the impossible. And if not?” He shrugged narrow shoulders as though it were of little concern.

  Roark supposed it wasn’t, not really. When these creatures died, it would not be forever-death. They would simply be sent for respawn, scattered to the expansive plains, dark caverns, and tangled jungles of Hearthworld.

  Bright sunlight lanced through the dark, drawing Roark from his thoughts. At the end of the sloping tunnel connected to the cave, a pair of doors was opening. A pair of heavily armored guards stalked down, setting off a flurry of snarls and growls. Some of the wilder mobs even threw themselves against the bars in an attempt to break out and rip apart their captors.

  “Yeah, yeah,” one of the guards yelled.
“Keep barking, little doggies.”

  The guards stopped at a bank of levers several feet from the cage.

  “Is it this one or the third one?”

  Ick the Nocturnus leaned closer to Roark and whispered, “It is the second one. Two for up, four for down.”

  “This one,” the other guard answered, throwing the second lever. “Remember? Two for up, four for down, same as the number of letters in the word.”

  Roark raised an eyebrow at Ick. With the mandibles it was hard to tell, but from the twinkle in the Nocturnus’s eyes, he thought Ick might be smiling.

  Before Roark could accuse the Nocturnus of being more than he let on, metal clanged and chains clinked. The floor lurched beneath Roark’s feet, and the cage began to move. They were rising. The thin crack bisecting the ceiling grew wider and wider, pouring in sunlight, until the expanse of cloudless blue sky was all that lay above them.

  The cage rose up into a dirt-floored arena, surrounded on all sides by stone walls and a colosseum packed with bodies. They cheered, and the whole arena shook.

  “Aaaaand here comes your champion,” a melodious voice called out, carried around the arena by some sort of amplifying magic, “Baaaaaaaad_Karmaaaaaaaaa!”

  The screaming and cheering rose to a fevered pitch. Several of the spectators leapt onto their seats, howling and clapping and stomping their feet until Roark feared they would bring the arena down.

  The grinding sound of wood against stone undercut the roaring crowd as a gate opened on the far side of the arena. Out into the sunshine strode a living incarnation of death, a level 50 Ascended Blood Sentinel.

  The sun glinted off horned plate armor so deep crimson that it was nearly black. In his right hand, the Sentinel carried a malignant-looking Billhook Polearm of Lifeblood the same bloody red color as his eyes.

  Bad_Karma raised the billhook over his head and turned in a slow circle, pumping his arm at the screaming crowd, whipping them into a frenzy.

  “Lllllllllet’s get ready to baaaaaattllllllllle!” the amplified voice yelled, the sound reverberating off the stadium seating and high stone walls.

  Suddenly the iron bars surrounding the mobs dropped, a bit of dusty sand whirling up at their disappearance. The cage-mad mobs roared, lowering their heads and charging at the only hero they could reach. No plan, no strategy, just pure animal fury bent on murder. A very energetic start, Roark had to admit, though a terrible strategy overall. If they truly worked together, perhaps they would stand some chance against this “unkillable” hero, but alone as they were, they would be little more than cannon fodder.

  Calmly, almost leisurely, Bad_Karma set his feet and jutted the billhook out in front of himself, bracing it for the first impact. A wall of muscle and horns—a level 11 Bullbear—slammed into the Blood Sentinel, impaling itself on the billhook. Bad_Karma used the creature’s momentum to toss it over his shoulder like a fork of hay into a wagon. A cloud of blood flowed from the Bullbear’s wound and into Bad_Karma as he turned back toward the wall of beasts charging him.

  A trio of rampaging Saber Boars yowled as they pounded across the dirt to kill the Blood Sentinel, but Bad_Karma whipped his billhook in a complicated pattern, drawing out a sigil Roark didn’t recognize. The crimson symbol hung in the air like a cloud, burning with unnatural light. With a roar, he stabbed the blade at the oncoming Saber Boars. The beast in the center simply exploded, blood gushing through the air toward Bad_Karma. Rather than absorbing it, the Sentinel made another quick motion with his billhook, and the blood boiled and rolled, forming a massive [Summoned Blood Golem].

  The Blood Golem collided with the remaining two Saber Boars, crushing bones and ripping limb from body until the creatures were nothing more than a gory pile of twitching body parts scattered around the dirt.

  The carnage only escalated from there. Roark hung back with Ick and watched as Bad_Karma and his Summoned Blood Golem slaughtered that first unthinking wave of mobs outright.

  Roark had to admit he’d underestimated the hero. Dozens of monstrous creatures lay in pieces at Bad_Karma’s feet, and yet the hero hardly seemed winded. He turned to the second wave with a grin on his face.

  The Sentinel seemed to use all blood-based magic, Roark observed. The golem, the life blasts that blew apart creatures with lower Constitutions, Health absorption from his kills, and blood fortifications for his armor strength.

  Roark had come prepared with a full stock of cursed exploding heads, his usual slew of nasty prewritten spells, and his slender rapier and Kaiken Dagger—though he hoped it wouldn’t come to that. His blades couldn’t hope to overcome Bad_Karma’s billhook for reach, leverage, or strength. In open physical combat, Roark was certain to lose. He’d wanted to bring Ample Health potions by the score, but Griff had let him know the guards would search him beforehand and take away anything that broke the rules of the arena—recovery potions and stat-boosting food. Roark had tried to smuggle some in anyway, but the guards had found them.

  Luckily, Roark had brought a ready-made escape route along just in case everything else failed him. A Gauntlet of Fast Travel, close cousin to the portal plates he had installed around the citadel.

  He had learned his lesson from his last tangle with Marek—always have an exit plan.

  As the second wave of mobs attacked, Roark stayed well out of reach and studied Bad_Karma’s strategy. If he couldn’t cheat his way to victory, then he would have to outsmart his opponent.

  Unfortunately, Bad_Karma seemed to have more than just overpowered strength and spells at his disposal. The hero was a calculating, intelligent fighter. When waves of mobs attacked as one, the Ascended Blood Sentinel used his ranged Life Blasts to blow up the weakest and thin the crowd, while sending his Summoned Blood Golem after the strongest. Of the remaining mobs, Bad_Karma drained the Lifeblood from the fastest beasts, both slowing them down and using it to boost his own armor and energy. Finally, Bad_Karma took the charge of any mobs that managed to get within striking distance on his billhook, using their own headlong rush to run them through, then tossing them aside quickly and efficiently, soaking up their Health to boot.

  It was a frustratingly well-planned strategy, hardly a motion or spell wasted, and Bad_Karma executed it without a flaw. In next to no time, every captured mob from the cage lay in pieces around the hero and his Summoned Blood Golem except for Roark and the Nocturnus Ick.

  Bad_Karma wrenched his Billhook Polearm of Lifeblood from the corpse of a level 18 Glacial Griffin Coastbreaker. Crackling, steaming blue blood poured from the wound and soaked into the hero’s chest.

  Slowly, Bad_Karma turned to face Roark and Ick. He braced his billhook against his boot, a lopsided grin pulling at his features, and he beckoned them forward with one red-black gauntlet.

  In the stands, the spectators went wild for the overconfident gesture, once more shaking the entire arena to its foundation.

  “Let’s go, ladies,” Bad_Karma said, feeding off their adoration like a parasite. “Step up and take your turn.”

  Roark laughed. “Careful what you wish for, mate.”

  The crowd gasped, then fell silent as Roark released his Transmutation, sloughing off the guise of the bent, scared little kobold to reveal the deadly winged Jotnar Infernali beneath.

  Arena Ambush

  BAD_KARMA JERKED HIS chin at Roark. “Who the balls are you supposed to be?”

  “Based on the insults I’ve heard since coming to this world, I believe the appropriate answer is your mother.” Roark pulled the nose ring from a cursed head and launched it at the hero’s feet.

  The moment the head touched the dirt, it detonated, setting off a modified version of the Curse Chain Storm of Fire and Ice. From nowhere, an Icy Torrential Downpour crashed down on the Ascended Blood Sentinel while the air within a fifteen-foot radius around him imploded and caught fire. The curtain of flame and rain completely obscured Bad_Karma.

  His Summoned Blood Golem splattered to the ground, killed instantly by the splash dama
ge from the explosion.

  The crowd fell silent. Roark pulled out another cursed head and shifted to the balls of his feet, ready and waiting.

  Bad_Karma strode out of the fire and ice storm without a scorch mark, his red-black armor gleaming and wet. The Health bar over his helmet looked untouched.

  The stadium erupted in howls of adulation, fans leaping to their feet by the score, fists pumping madly in the air.

  The Blood Sentinel gave a complicated twist and thrust of his Billhook Polearm of Lifeblood, then whirled it in a circle over his shoulder.

  Blood flowed out of the piles of dismembered mobs, spinning into a ruby orb the size of a Behemoth in the air, which promptly split into three Summoned Blood Golems.

  “Seven hells,” Roark growled. The Icy Torrential Downpour portion of the Curse Chain should have sapped the hero’s Magick, but that seemed completely unaffected as well.

  The Summoned Blood Golems broke into a lumbering run on a straight path for Roark.

  Roark cast a prewritten level 4 Immunity on himself, then a level 4 Sucking Mud at his feet. A bog of gooey muck thirty feet across opened beneath the soles of his leather boots, though he walked across the surface as though it were solid ground.

  Two of the three Blood Golems were sucked into the pit up to their waists. The mindless creatures still slogged and fought toward him, but the mud had reduced their movement speed by 45%.

  The third was too far outside the radius of the spell to be caught in the mud. Roark aimed a palm at it and cast Infernal Torment. Plum-colored flames flared up along the surface, sending up wisps of oily black smoke; unfortunately, burning from the inside out didn’t slow the hulking creature’s charge.

  Roark backpedaled, this time casting his final prewritten level 4, an Ice Javelin. The frozen spear slammed into the chest of the oncoming Blood Golem, clots of red spraying out its back and over the sandy arena floor. The creature’s red body flashed momentarily blue, then frosted over.