Eden's Gate: The Scourge: A LitRPG Adventure

by Edward Brody

  “We don’t have homes for them,” I said.

  “Yet…” Aaron countered.

  “Yet?” I questioned. “We’ve got to rebuild what we’ve lost before we start building other stuff in hopes that some so-called ‘citizen’ moves in.”

  “Well, we’ve nurtured our relationship with the dark elves. And since they no longer have any home at all, some might join our village just for the protection. I feel certain they will, even.”

  “Okay, and what benefit would we get out of that?” I asked.

  “Good ol’ kind, caring, elf-loving Gunnar, wants to be nice, doesn’t he?” Aaron asked with a smirk. “The elves get protection from our paid guards, and as citizens of our village, we do get something from them.”

  “What? Get to the point.”

  Aaron grinned. “Taxes.”

  “A minute ago, you were saying we were in a crisis, and now you’re talking about taxes?”

  “I would’ve been a good politician,” Aaron said with a smirk. “Think about it. Our guards wouldn’t have to trek across the forest when they return home, and Keysia wouldn’t have to bow out so often. We’d also have Donovan nearby… He might not be a guild mate, but he’s a close friend to us all.”

  “Hmmm…” The idea was starting to sound interesting, though I wasn’t sure if Donovan would want to stay for various reasons.

  “With citizens in the village, it would be a lot easier for us to open new businesses and make them work—like a tavern or a brothel for example.” He winked once, leaned in, and hit me with a soft elbow. “They’d always be close by, so stopping in for a drink or a piece of ass would be a no-brainer.”

  “A brothel?” I questioned with a smirk. I wasn’t sure if he was joking or serious.

  “Yeah, that’d be kind of badass, wouldn’t it? Profitable as hell, too… no production costs.”

  I huffed, now even less sure if it was a joke. “So, you want to be a pimp?”

  “Big pimpin’ baby!” Aaron leaned down without bending his knees and swiped the top of his boots with the back of his hand. When he rose up, he wiggled his eyebrows comically. “But don’t forget what I said earlier. Taxes.”

  “Enlighten me on that.”

  “The dark elves need protection and stability, which we can provide by hiring guards, training, and equipping them. Done and done.” Aaron raised a finger. “In exchange for our services, the citizens of Burntwood pay us taxes. It’s not too different from what you might find on Earth.”

  “Burntwood? Stop with that.”

  “Listen, Gunnar. Focus on the important details.”

  I shifted my jaw as I considered his proposition, and my ears started to tingle as I thought about the possibilities. The expansion of our village and building of our castle was going painfully slow, mainly due to lack of funding. Our cost for guards was also increasing. Having villagers who’d pay tax sounded like a possible solution to those problems—a win-win for both sides, even. “You think they’d be willing to pay taxes to us? We’re humans after all.”

  “Why wouldn’t they?” Aaron asked. “They just got wiped da fuck out! They’d probably line up and suck your noodle for a chance of that never happening again.” He raised his finger and wiggled it back and forth. “But we don’t tax them right away… Taxes are tricky. If you tax a colony too much, people start moving out or might even try to rebel or take over the city. Tax them too little, and you can’t afford to maintain their quality of living.” He raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “Our village isn’t in good enough shape right now to be charging taxes anyway.”

  “So, then what’s your point? What can we do now?”

  “So, we invite them to become permanent stays in our village now. They settle in, get used to having a sense of security—having guards and such—and once everyone’s secure, happy and we have the village fixed up, we implement a small tax.” He smashed his fist into an open palm. “Boom… Or should I say, economic boom! Taxpayer gold covers the cost of our guards, we grow our businesses faster, and we milk that motherfreakin’ cashflow baby. We hire builders to build cheap houses and charge a thirty to fifty percent markup to sell them to whatever elf wants to buy it.” He pointed towards our castle wall. “And with all that money, my friend, we fund our castle. That’s how you move from an inconspicuous camp or village to a full-on influential town or city.” He made a smacking noise with his lips.

  “What’s the catch?” I asked. “There’s gotta be a catch.”

  Aaron tilted his head to the side and raised one of his shoulders. “Well… one downside is that they’re dark elves. They’re not the most desirable villagers to have, so it might turn off outside visitors if they’re too concentrated around our shops. And, once you start a colony and tax people, you’re signing up for their problems too. Possible crime and complaints… bad actors could always move in too.”

  “And we just stay here in the middle of all of the colonists or citizens or whatever you’re calling them? Sounds like it might ruin our guild vibe a bit.”

  “Since they’re elves, I’m sure they will want to stay in the trees. And since we’re burned out in this direction—” He signaled towards the desolate, destroyed area to our east. “–I propose we set their homes a little further back from us—still under the protection of our guards, but also within the trees. They’ll be concentrated far away enough that they shouldn’t scare outside business too much. I mean, we’ll definitely see more dark elves with them being right under our nose, but we’ll still have some sense of separation.”

  “If we’re here in houses, exposed to the Freelands, we’ll be the first to go if there’s an attack.”

  Aaron huffed and smirked before stepping forward and pressing two fingers hard into my chest. “We’ll stay in the castle, stupid! Surely, you don’t expect us to stay outside when we’ve got a giant castle to live in. And didn’t you just say to stop calling it Burntwood? We’ll replant the trees or build a defense wall, just like we were talking about during our meeting.”

  I chuckled as I looked to the foundation and unfinished wall that had been started of our castle. He was thinking way ahead. “Okay, okay… I gotcha. It’s starting to sound like a solid idea. Maybe a bit ambitious considering our situation, but possibly a good idea.”

  “Damn right,” Aaron gloated. “There’s no guarantees it’ll be fun though. Once we’ve colonized, we don’t just provide protection. They’ll be living under our area of influence, so we may have to impose rules on the citizens, police them, and punish them if we choose. But hey, that’s what you’ve gotta do for the tax gold.”

  “Well, hell…” I shook my head. “I don’t know if I’ve got time for that level of city management. I’ve got a lot of shit to take care of. I’ve got to train in the Mages Guild. I’ve got to get back in the Arena. I’ve got to find Rach—”

  “Don’t worry,” Aaron said. “You can delegate things out if you don’t want to play like a King.” He puffed up his chest. “Hell, maybe you could make ol’ Sizzler Mayor of Edgewood.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, we might have to talk about that. Knowing you, you’d set up a brothel on every corner.”

  “Oooooh… I like that idea… the red-light forest.” He cleared his throat. “Oh, and um… one other potential downside.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The more you colonize a village, the more attention you attract. People might start wondering if there are ulterior motives, ya know? People who get power tend to seek more. But we probably won’t have to worry too much about that ‘til we get much, much bigger.”

  “Something to keep in mind,” I said. “Anyway, if we start to colonize, I suppose the dark elves will stay in tents ‘til they can build up their shacks, right?”

  Aaron nodded. “In this situation, yeah. Rome wasn’t built in a day—neither was Burntw… um… Edgewood.” He lifted his chin to me. “But I’m sure you played city building games back on Earth. As our economy and little town grows, those shacks
will turn into cabins, which will turn to nicer homes. Nicer homes, higher taxes.”

  “You sure like to think big, don’t you?”

  “We’ve got eternity ahead of us. It’s easy to think big.”

  I chuckled. “Alright, well, the idea just might work.” I reached my fist out, and Aaron bumped it with his. “Let’s see if we can figure out what’s going on with these attacks, and then we’ll see about colonization. For now, let’s just get ‘em fixed up and everything under control.”

  “Aighhht,” Aaron said with a raise of his chin. He started to walk away but turned back to me after a few steps. As he continued walking backwards, he thumped his fist into his chest. “Mayor of Edgewood and the Gate’s number one pimp, the Sizzler. Remember that!”

  I rolled my eyes. “Don’t you have a girlfriend now? Does she approve of your so-called pimpin’?”

  Aaron’s cocky expression dropped into a ghost-like expression. He frowned, swallowed, and started walking quite a bit more hastily towards his home without saying another word.

  As Aaron disappeared, I watched Rina consulting with Keysia about her next resurrection target and saw Garrik not too far from them in the background. If we moved forward with Aaron’s plan, I might have to ban the brute from joining our village, if that was even possible.

  Colonization? City management? I hadn’t even considered starting on anything like that at such an early stage in my journey and didn’t even know they were part of the game. If everything went as planned, things were going to get much, much more interesting… and maybe more stressful at the same time. I had a lot of tasks on my plate, but even with my never-ending list of things to do, I was really excited to see how it all worked.

  Chapter Six

  2/18/0001

  “I hear something incoming!” a High Elf yelled from the perimeter of our village.

  Everyone nearby stood to attention, quieted, and readied their weapons for a fight.

  After listening to the rustling sounds that had alerted our guards for several seconds, a dark elf whistled loudly, then shouted. “It’s just a boar and her cubs!”

  The High Elf who had issued the alert straightened his back and tried not to show his humiliation for sounding a false alarm. Everyone else breathed a sigh of relief and returned to what they were doing.

  The night before had been eerily quiet, and aside from a couple random goblins that wandered nearby and were quickly dispatched, there had been no further attacks.

  After some discussion, we designated an area a few hundred meters behind where our castle wall stood and encouraged the dark elves who had arrived to stay there—pretty much the maximum distance from the center of our city that still offered them protection from the guards. Most of the elves came with no supplies, so we donated all the tents we had and gave Liyanna—one of the resurrected elves—supplies to make more.

  The elves were thankful for our help, but the High Elves weren’t pleased at all to be in such close vicinity to an even greater number of dark elves and demanded that I report the issue to the Queen. I agreed with him that I should report the issue but gave him a friendly reminder that they had made an agreement to guard, not manage, our village.

  “Get away from me!” a High Elf yelled from somewhere.

  It was morning, and I was standing near the base of a large tree making plans for the day, when I followed the sound with my eyes.

  Trynzen was running around one of the High Elves on all fours and had a battered apple in his hand. He paused, stood up straight, and tossed the apple at the elf.

  The elf swatted the apple with the back of his hand, causing the fruit to fly somewhere into a thick, partially burned bush. “Stop it!”

  “Fun with me!” the Barbaros yelled as he jumped into the bush, trying to fetch the apple. “Trynzen want to play game!”

  “No games!” the High Elf barked. “I want nothing to do with you! You’re absolutely filthy!”

  “Fifty! Fifty!” Trynzen cried. “Fifty games of run and hide!”

  “Trynzen!” I called out.

  Trynzen perked up and froze as he made eye contact with me.

  “Get over here, will ya!?” I asked loudly.

  Trynzen bobbed his head furiously, then turned his attention back to the bush, looking for the swatted apple. Once he found it, he stuck it in his mouth and ran as quickly as he could towards me, alternating between just using his legs then using both his legs and arms to carry his weight.

  “Gunnar want play game?!” Trynzen questioned as he pulled the apple from his mouth and held it up towards me. “Fun for you! Fun for Trynzen! Run, hide, catch apple!”

  I scanned up and down Trynzen’s bloodied, sooty attire. While he wasn’t really a member of our village or guild, he still helped defend against the goblins whenever they had attacked. The few times we saw a stray orc, Trynzen seemed to hesitate, but he was always quick to defend any Unity member who was in harm’s way. Unfortunately, he had made no effort to clean or wipe off any of the blood splatters of war from his body, and his white fur was a virtual dirt magnet. He had tons of mud, ash, and grime caked to his fur since the first day of fighting.

  “Leave the High Elves alone,” I commanded him. “They’re not exactly what I’d call friendly…”

  “Friend?” Trynzen asked.

  “No friend,” I clarified. “They’re not your friend.”

  “Are they your friend?” he asked.

  I looked out to some of the High Elves, scattered around the perimeter of our village. They were staying in relative proximity to each other and were noticeably keeping their distance from the dark elf guards. “No… I don’t think they’re my friends either. They’re just here to help.”

  “Help?!” Trynzen stood up and pounded his paw on his chest. “Trynzen help! I help friend. Trynzen help Gunnar!”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “I don’t need any help right now, but you can help yourself by cleaning up a little.”

  “I’ll help him out,” a calm elven voice said from behind me.

  “Friend! Donovan help!” Trynzen scurried behind me and began running around Donovan frantically.

  I felt a bit of a lump in my throat as Donovan approached. His chitin chestpiece still had two massive tears down the front from where he had been hit by an attack from Tymrial’s blade, exposing his chest beneath. His chitin leggings had been destroyed and replaced by simple leather trousers, and the odd mechanical contraption on his gauntlet that had once been part of his unique armor was now a broken, unfunctional mess. We had yet to talk since Adeelee’s successful rescue, so I wasn’t sure how he was feeling about me. I assumed that he had seen the two of us kiss, but there was no way I could be certain.

  “I see you two are becoming acquainted,” I said.

  “We are,” Donovan replied. “He’s quite the nice fellow, though a little hard to understand sometimes.”

  Trynzen stopped his jumping near Donovan’s side, and the elf put a gentle hand on his shoulder.

  “That’s nice,” I said awkwardly, struggling for what to say with Adeelee at the forefront of my mind. “How are your people doing?”

  “The dark elves are all doing fine, but morale is low after our losses. Everyone is staying in and around the area you designated for us. People seem to be adjusting well enough it seems.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.”

  Donovan cleared his throat and straightened his posture. “I suppose I should thank you for everything. If you hadn’t allowed us here, things would be much rougher for us dark elves. I’m not sure what we’d do, actually.”

  I shook my head and waved a dismissive hand. “No need for thanks. Unity is glad to have you all here, and Edgewood was your home first after all.”

  “You’ve even allowed Garrik to stay after he sought to end you.” He took a deep breath. “I’ve never met a human like you.” He looked down a little and stroked his chin. “Or perhaps it’s because you’re a Reborn?”

  I lifted my ha
nd and scratched the back of my head shyly. “Well… umm… I suppose if Garrik had done what he did to a normal human, that human wouldn’t have had the chance to forgive him.”

  Donovan snorted, and smirked. “I suppose you’re right.” His face suddenly hardened, and his eyes narrowed. “And I should thank you for rescuing the Princess as well.”

  I gulped and spoke low. “Yeah, of course. I’m the ambassador. It’s my job to protect the Princess.”

  His eyes narrowed even more. “I don’t believe royal guard duty is part of an ambassador’s job.”

  “Well… umm…”

  “I was there when you made your speech to your guild—before you rode out to face the Magi. You wouldn’t have risked the lives of your men if it had been just any High Elf. And I was there when Adeelee fell… no… ran into your arms. I saw your embrace. What you did was more than just an ambassador’s duty.”

  I swallowed hard and struggled to find the right words. “Adeelee was one of the first people I met when I entered Eden’s Gate. Of course, I care about it her more than I would a—”

  “You love her, don’t you?” Donovan interrupted.

  My tongue suddenly felt dry, and my jaw was beginning to tense. “Look, Donovan… I—”

  “And she loves you,” he interrupted again.

  I snorted at that. “No, she definitely does not love me.”

  “She cares for you,” he said sternly. “I would know better than anyone else. I’ve felt that same embrace.”

  A tingling feeling ran over my skin. I wasn’t sure if it was the idea that Adeelee cared for me that got me excited or if it was tingles of guilt that Donovan—Adeelee’s ex-lover and my friend—was having to confront me about such a thing. “I’m sorry, Donovan. I didn’t mean for you to see that.”