“It doesn’t matter for now.” The ghost king waved me off again. “The important thing is that you need to recover the Medallion of Courage. You need to recover it and present it to the champion who can defeat the Skeleton King. It is the only way for us to all keep on living and for this world to keep on spinning.”
“What makes you think I could possibly do this?” I replied, shaking my head. “I mean, I’m strong for a newbie, but I’m not strong enough to siege an entire world filled with frost giants.”
“You’re a hero, Kahn, otherwise you would not have come into this room.” The ghost smacked my chest with his open palm, causing a chill to radiate from the spot he’d touched. “I believe you can do this, but I won’t fault you if you decide to take a different path.” He gestured toward the statue. “Everything we do is in the choices we make.”
As I stared at the ghost, I let out a long slow breath. I had a million questions and a million more doubts, but for now, one thing was clear. We needed the Medallion of Courage, and with the others behind in the dungeon, I was the only one who could recover it.
“Okay, how do I recover the medallion?” I asked, trying my best to sound tougher than I felt because inside I was pretty sure I was going to die.
18
Something exploded behind my eyes, singeing my brain and making my collapse to the snow in the frozen tundra of Frozenheim as I appeared in a flash of golden light. Somewhere to the north, someone was calling out to me. At least that was the distinct impression I got. Then again, I wasn’t sure of anything anymore because this game had gone off the fucking rails.
“Boss, are you okay?” George asked, plodding over to me, and if the snow bothered him, it didn’t show. “‘Cause you look a little blue.”
“I’ll be okay,” I replied, shutting my eyes and taking a deep breath, inhaling the smell of Frozenheim as my stasis bar began to glow softly, indicating the temperature would begin to affect my ability to fight at full strength soon. I’d just have to hurry then, and not just because I didn’t want to encounter any Frost Giants. If that happened, I’d just be dead.
As I turned toward the north and stared, the expanse of the frozen world filled my eyes, and as I stared into the distance, something glimmered across the icy wasteland, beckoning me to cross it. Was that the medallion? Surely it was.
“Good because it’d be really stupid to die after coming here…” George replied as I gritted my teeth, pulled myself to my feet, and forced my leaden legs to trudge toward the glimmering spec. I was especially annoyed because the ghost king hadn’t actually known where in Frozenheim the damned medallion was supposed to be.
“Just watch out for frost giants. They’ve got to be here somewhere,” I replied, looking around. So far I hadn’t seen any. Either they were weren’t here or there were so few they hadn’t stumbled into each my path yet. To be fair, either scenario was okay with me because both were better than finding the monsters. A lot better.
“All right,” George said, glancing around warily. “So, uh, where do we go?”
“That way,” I said, pointing toward the glimmer with my black mithril dagger. “It’s the only thing that looks at all different.”
“Sounds as good an idea as any, I guess,” George said as butterflies made of starlight flitted across the horizon. “But next time, maybe you let me make the plans because the whole ‘let’s wander around in a frozen wasteland’ plan is kind of balls, just saying.”
“Fair enough,” I replied, sucking in another breath that filled my lungs with icy air.
To be honest, I was inclined, to agree with the bunny, but at the same time, this medallion had to be found, and I was going to find it.
“When we’re done with this whole Skeleton King thing can we take a break? I mean, we’ve literally been going nonstop for hours and I’m starting to get tired.” George rubbed his eyes with one paw. “I dunno about you, but I seriously need a nap.”
“The thought had crossed my mind,” I replied, lowering my dagger and staring across the frozen tundra for probably the fiftieth time in the last hour. With every step I took, it grew harder every day to keep my eyes open. It couldn’t be good, especially with my stasis bar dropping by about a percent every ten minutes. Still, I had to push through it. As far as I knew, I was trapped here until I found the medallion.
My stomach rumbled as I stumbled toward the glimmer. There was something that made me tremble in the core of my being. It was a little strange because as I got closer, it was like reaching out and feeling an empty hole where something should have been.
“Do you know what that is?” I asked, speaking aloud to the bunny for the first time in several minutes.
“No,” George replied. “But I’ve been known to lie.” He shot me a cheeky grin that made me want to punch him. “Seriously, boss. I have no idea what it is. I’m hoping a campfire surrounded by hot, barely clothed honeys if you know what I’m sayin.’”
“Hopefully.” I let out a sigh, and the wind howled alongside me, carrying my frustration away into the ether. The snow grew thicker as I moved closer to the strange glimmer, and the only thing that saved me from freaking out was that I didn’t seem adversely affected by cold. I mean, I felt cold, but my health wasn’t dropping or anything. At least not yet. Who knew what would happen when my stasis bar reached zero.
After what felt like hours but was probably longer, I arrived at the sight of the glimmer to find nothing at all. Uneasiness began to settle over me as I looked around, trying to find the thing that had been drawing me here like a moth to a flame.
“What do you think, George?” I asked, turning in a slow circle as I scanned the snow, but found nothing at all.
“The same thing I’ve thought since we came to this godforsaken hellhole,” George replied, stamping one bunny foot into the snow. “This place sucks.”
“Hello,” said a voice to my left. “Are you the one who has come to take the medallion?”
I turned to see a guy as pale as snow with spikey red hair standing there in a pair of blood-stained leather pants and nothing else. Although that may have been because painful-looking blisters covered his naked torso like someone had taken a blowtorch to his chest and abdomen.
“Who the fuck are you?” George asked, revving up with frost energy again.
“I am the keeper of the medallion.” He touched his chest with one hand, and as he did, something beneath his skin began to glow neon green. “Do you wish to take it?”
“Fuck yeah we do!” George said, glancing at me. “What do you say, boss? Ready to light this guy up?”
“Very well,” he replied, moving closer, so he was only a few feet away from us. Yet even across that distance, I could feel heat rising off of the man like I was standing next to a furnace. It was weird because this place sucked heat away almost before it sprang into being. So how was this guy exuding so much warmth? The medallion?
“Take him, George!” I cried, readying my dagger, and as I did, I immediately realized we had a problem. I’d switched over almost all my skills to necromancer ones, but there were no dead bodies around to control, and my living armors and golems had long since crumbled to dust. Sure, I could do some curses, but without any way to damage the guy, we were going to be in trouble.
As George unleashed a frozen bolt of concentrated cold, I called out to Elizabeth. “Activate Revering Vendetta.”
“Skills cannot be activated during combat,” Elizabeth told me unhelpfully as I was about to put my shield away and equip my goblin short sword. Rage filled me. Seriously? That was the lamest thing I’d ever heard because it meant I was stuck with the skillset I had. “Please leave combat to activate skills.”
“Um… all right,” I muttered as George’s blast hit the guy and evaporated into steam, leaving him totally unscathed. That was bad. If George couldn’t hurt him and I had no viable offense because all my attack skills were inactive, we were screwed.
“What are you guys doing?” he asked, turning to lo
ok at me with confusion upon his face. “Why does your rabbit attack me?”
“Huh?” I replied as I stared at the guy wide-eyed.
“Do you mean to fight me?” He shook his head. “To what end?”
“I’m really confused here, boss,” the rabbit said, moving closer to me. “But I think we should run away.” I was inclined to agree because this seemed insane. Still, there had to be a way to deal with this guy because, I mean, there was the quest item at stake. I just had to figure out what it was.
“Combat has ended, would you like to swap skills?” Elizabeth asked, surprising me as the guy sat down on the snow in front of us, causing it to melt into slush. How had combat just ended? No, something was definitely fishy here, and while I was tempted to swap my skills around now, I didn’t think it’d do much good.
“If you wish to possess the Medallion of Courage, you must first become courageous.” The man’s eyes bored into me as he spoke. “Beating me is not only impossible, but it will not demonstrate courage.”
“Fair enough. What do you want me to do to demonstrate my courage?” I gulped, hoping whatever it was wouldn’t get me killed. Still, nearly anything was better than being stranded in a frozen wasteland with a two-parts-crazy guy and a rabbit.
“You’ll enjoy it. I promise,” the man rasped as he drew in the snow with his forefinger. Flames leapt from the spots he touched, melting the snow and causing the scent of springtime to fill my nostrils.
“What are you doing?” I cried as the symbol he’d drawn began to glow with light.
“Getting us out of here before the frost giants appear,” the man replied, smiling at me. “Unless you wish to fight them.” He looked me up and down as the surrounding scenery began to melt away. “They’re many times your level though.”
As I opened my mouth to respond, the bellow of a war horn erupted from the horizon, and I turned my head to see a small army of immense creatures racing toward us.
“Nope, leaving is good,” I replied, turning back to the weird burned guy.
“Excellent,” he said, and the next thing I knew I was laying on my back in the sand.
A wave crashed into me, filling my mouth with salt water as I spluttered, trying to catch my breath. The sun bore down on me from above, baking my flesh with heat I hadn’t felt in what felt like forever. Better, my stasis bar was starting to rise even though I didn’t know how because I had no idea where I was.
Some kind of beach, obviously, but how was that possible?
“What the fuck?” George spoke aloud, but there was no response other than the waves lapping at his furry ankles. The bunny looked at me hard, and that strange intelligence I’d seen when I’d tried to break the game with my mind surfaced. “Let’s get out of here, boss. We shouldn’t be getting teleported around like this. Activate your teleport scroll, please.”
“Do not do that,” came the voice on the wind, and as the voice spoke the intelligence within the bunny vanish, making me more inclined to try to escape.
My eyes widened in shock as a horrible realization struck me. What if this NPC was breaking the game too? What if I was caught in a glitch or exploit or something? I mean, clearly the game had tried to warn me, but maybe I’d been imagining things?
I really hoped that was the case because if this was some weird bug, I wouldn’t find the medallion. I was fairly sure I could use an escape scroll at any time, and so far, nothing bad had happened… I was going to chance it.
“Who are you?” I asked, brushing the wet sand from my pants and turning to look for the source of the voice. I had no idea where I was, but one thing was for certain. I was no longer in Frozenheim. Then again, it might not be an upgrade. For all I knew, demonic crabs were making their way up the shore while I stood there trying to figure out what the hell had happened.
“You may call me Freyr. It is not my name, but it is close enough,” Freyr said as he popped into existence a few feet away and flashed a mouthful of coffee-stained teeth that glinted in the warm sunlight at me. He still had that weird burned look, but I was sort of glad for it since at least that was familiar.
“Freyr? Like the Norse god?” I pondered over that for a moment. It didn’t seem any stranger than anything else that had happened since I’d found out my brain had been pulled out of my skull and hooked up to the internet so I could play this game, but it was still a little weird to get teleported all over by an NPC claiming to be a Norse god… Still, I was going to go for it. What was the worst that could happen? Death? Surely not…
“Yes, like the Norse god.” He rubbed his chin between his thumb and forefinger. “Now, would you like to earn the Medallion of Courage?”
“I’m ready,” I said, grinning back at the guy. “What do we do?”
“Excellent.” Freyr snapped his fingers, and in the space of a breath, the sand between us was covered in runic looking symbols.
“What are you doing?” I asked, trying to take a step back, but as I did, I found I couldn’t move. Worse, my synchronization numbers were beginning to rise. Fuck. Last time that’d happened, I’d nearly died.
Freyr leapt into the air and walked toward me like it was solid. It didn’t even wobble despite the fact that Freyr looked like he weighed nearly two-hundred pounds and had leapt almost fifteen feet through the air. As the god bent down to peer curiously at me, a devilish twinkle appeared in his eyes. “Even after everything you’ve seen, you’ve somehow learned so little.”
“The last time I tried to do something, the system warned me about getting banned,” I said, trying to get up once again, but every single time I tried to move, it was like trying to shove off a thousand pound weight. I was trapped. That wasn’t good. Not at all. Still, thus far Freyr hadn’t actually tried to hurt me. Besides, what was the alternative? Getting mauled to death in a frozen tundra? Pass.
“That is not what I’m talking about.” The Norse God let out a slow sigh. “No, adventurer, what I tell you is that in a battle with the undead, belief matters. Not only that, everyone else’s perception matters.” A sad smile filled Freyr’s face as he shook his head. “If you have the courage to lead, all will benefit from your strength.”
“What do you mean?” I replied as the wheels in my brain started to spin. Was Freyr trying to tell me that I could cheat? It didn’t seem possible, especially given what’d happened last time. There were definitely rules here, and while they could be nudged and bent, they couldn’t be broken. No, he had to be talking about something else, I just wasn’t sure what it was.
“Let’s say you have a man who was a great warrior. Every single time he swung his blade, someone died. After a while, when he came onto the battlefield, others ran away, throwing down their weapons. Let’s say they called him things, monster, demon, god. That belief made him stronger, not in a way he would notice at first, but on a long enough timeframe, he grew more powerful than a mere mortal. The stories changed. He became the son of a god instead of a potter. Then he became a god himself. When his allies stepped onto the field of battle with him, their will to win was heightened by his presence.” Freyr hopped down from the air and stood on the sand. “That same thing has happened to the Skeleton King. He is a product of the beliefs of all those around him, but beneath all of that he was once a man.”
“So how do I beat the Skeleton King?” I asked, trying to figure out why it mattered. Of course the Skeleton King had been a man. I’d seen the cut scenes, hadn’t I? He was Prince Glenn and the Sword of Infinite Sorrows had twisted him…
“You’re still thinking too small,” Freyr said with a sigh as he shook his head.
“I am?” I asked as annoyance filled Freyr’s face.
“Yes, look here. Do you see this fish?” Freyr growled, waving his hand through the air.
I didn’t know how it had happened, but I was suddenly standing on the bank of a river watching Freyr point at a fish. I glanced around, looking for the beach, but instead saw only tall trees jutting from the rocky ground. They unfolded thems
elves several feet above, masking the sunlight with their broad leaves as they stood over a stream filled with trout.
“Yeah, I see your fish,” I replied, barely able to keep the shock and awe out of my voice. I knew we hadn’t actually been moving because we were in a game world, but it felt real. Too real.
“Good. Now it’s a well-known fact that fish can’t breathe our air right?” Freyr showed his teeth. “Gills and all that.”
“Yeah,” I said as the Norse God thrust his hand into the water and plucked a squirming trout from its depths.
The creature’s mouth gaped open as it struggled to breathe the useless air. Freyr looked at it briefly before holding the fish to his mouth and whispered something I couldn’t discern before tossing the trout to the ground.
It lay there for a moment, not flopping like a fish out of water ought to. Then it changed. It occurred so instantly, I could hardly believe it. What now lay there was no fish at all but a raven instead. Calmly, the bird rolled to its feet before taking to the air and flying away.
“I didn’t know fish could fly,” I said, astonishment filling my voice as I stood there trying to believe my eyes. “How did you do that?”
“You can fly too,” Freyr gave me a mischievous smile. “If you know the right spells, anything is possible.”
“I’m not a fish. Nor a bird.” I glanced from the river filled with trout to the distant spec of the raven and thought about what Dark Heart had said about the Navy Seals they sent in here. Only now it was crystal clear. I had a hard time believing a fish could change into a bird, but it’d just happened with a spell. It made me wonder just what was possible in this game if I cared to explore it further.
“All I did was polymorph the fish. It is not so hard a thing to understand.” Freyr exhaled sharply. “You’re seriously like the worst student I’ve ever had. I tell some people they can control fire, and they’re all like ‘sure thing, no problem.’ I tell you to fly, and you look at me like I’m insane when you’ve literally raised the dead.” He clapped his hands together. “It’s all magic, and because of that, magic will be the key to victory.”
Soulstone: The Skeleton King: A LitRPG Novel (World of Ruul Book 2) Page 13