Dagger of Doom: A LitRPG Adventure (Beta Tester Book 5)

by Rachel Ford

  Jack gritted his teeth, seized the dart, and pulled backward. It hurt like a – well, exactly like what he screamed as the dart popped out of his flesh: mother trucker. But then it was done, and he cast a healing spell. He felt his flesh knit back together. The pain ebbed away, and his heartrate and breathing slowed a little.

  He conjured a fire spell, so that the flames hovered above his fingertips, and crept back toward the sound of the melee.

  Although, if he was honest with himself, it sounded less like a melee and more like a massacre. The goblins screamed bloody murder. Karag howled like a madman; whether that was pain or bloodlust, Jack couldn’t tell. The ranger wailed out long, piteous pleas for assistance.

  But worse than any of that was the wicked cackling coming from all around. Jack had no idea who or what yokai might be. He had no idea if they were human, humanoid, or some kind of terrible beasts. Their laughter, though, sent a shiver up his spine. There was something intensely evil about it.

  He listened, trying to pinpoint the different voices. In a moment, he did. One of the monsters seemed to be a few trees over. Jack crept toward the sound until he was sure. Then he leaped upward and loosed a barrage of fireballs.

  His shots burned away the branches and shrubs between himself and the monster, and for the first time he saw one of the yokai. It – she? – looked like an old woman, stooped with age, wizened and gnarled by many long years. But it wasn’t age that had turned her ugly. There was something so twisted and evil about her that it festered upward and outward, until her exterior matched the evil emanating off her person. She was the most hideous being Jack had ever seen.

  Then, he remembered what Grem’tha had said: eat us, the hags will. He understood, at last. The yokai, the hags, were the monsters the goblins had warned about.

  The hag turned pale white eyes his way, and smiled a snaggletoothed smile just as the fire engulfed her. Jack started to breathe a sigh of relief – and then the flames sputtered and fizzled out. And she stood there unscathed – her horrible smile still fixed to her repulsive features, her ragged robes hanging in tattered strips, like the shroud of some long dead saint.

  She raised a tube to her lips, and for a moment Jack was too stunned by the failure of his spells to understand what he was looking at. But as she loaded a dart into the tube, everything clicked. Blow gun.

  Crying, “Sugar,” he dove to the side just in time to avoid a dart to the face.

  He kept low and raced for his boulder. The hag went on shooting. Projectiles followed his mad dash through the undergrowth until at last he reached his sanctuary. He heard darts clatter against the stone.

  And he breathed out. “Sugar. That was close.” He took two long, steadying breaths. The collision of darts stopped. So did the cackling. Indeed, he heard nothing at all in the woods around him – just the distant screaming of his companions.

  A cold sweat slicked his back. She was waiting for him to poke his head out – and the instant she spotted him, he’d wind up with a dart in the face. He knew that.

  His first instinct was to shoot fireballs in the direction she’d last been. But he’d seen the fire wash over her without effect. Which meant the yokai possessed some kind of resistance either to magic in general, or fire spells in particular – the one spell that he’d actually leveled.

  So fireballs were out of the question. Which left him with only a couple of equally lousy options.

  If he wanted to stick with a ranged attack, he could try shooting into the woods. But unlike fireballs, which would only require raising a hand over the stone, he’d need to stick his head and upper body out from behind cover to release an arrow. And as he had no desire to turn his face into a witch’s pin cushion, this approach didn’t particularly appeal.

  But his other options – melee combat or stealth assassinations – both would require him to leave his current cover. And if the hag was waiting as he suspected, he’d end up looking like a porcupine before he took ten steps.

  He crouched in place, back to the rock, for what seemed an eternity – listening, waiting. He could still hear his companions – howling, screaming, and screeching. Whatever was going on, at least no one had died.

  He’d half made up his mind to make a mad dash to the nearest tree when he heard a bone chilling sound: a soft, wicked cackle, not two feet away.

  Strangling the cry that threatened to break out, he reached for his blade just as a hag stepped out of the bushes. A gleeful grin spread across her hollow cheeks, and a cold, rank breath rolled over Jack. He felt stunned, as if someone had knocked him in the head. At the same time, he registered a drain on his hit points. It was mild – just one point per second. But his skin prickled and stung. The game alerted him,

  You have been hit by Hag’s Breath. You will continue to lose health while exposed, and your movement will be 15% slower for twenty seconds following exposure.

  None of which, of course, was welcome news. Still, it explained the weird sensations. Jack pushed himself up slowly and clumsily. Speed and agility were clearly out of the question here. He wouldn’t be outrunning any projectiles, or dodging darts. Not this time. His best bet would be a savage attack coupled with brute strength. He started to draw his sword.

  At the same time, he surveyed his enemy. The hag’s blowgun hung from a cord around her waist. In its place, she carried – well, Jack wasn’t quite sure what to call it. It looked like a scythe: a pole, with a long, curved blade. But the blade was more than a blade. It had death bramble thorns fastened to it in terrifying intervals, so that it looked like the lower half of a wicked, grinning mouth, full of razor sharp teeth.

  The hag swung the scythe, straight for his neck.

  On the face of it, a fifteen percent reduction of speed didn’t seem like much. In practice, Jack concluded that was a veritable eternity. He barely brought his blade up to meet the scythe before it hit him – and even then, a few of the barbs got close enough to pierce his sword arm.

  He gritted his teeth against the pain. Blood ran from half a dozen punctures along his forearm. The hag cackled again. “Such strength. So young and tender. Your flesh will sustain us for many days.”

  “Over my dead body,” he snarled. Which, in hindsight he recognized was kind of the hag’s point. Still, in the moment, it bolstered his courage to counter her. “Your time is up, hag.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  An overly optimistic prediction, as he quickly learned. Because the hag swung again and again, coming at him with a strength that stunned him. Quite literally – more than once, the impact from their weapons colliding left him feeling a little dazed. She moved quickly, too. Far too quickly.

  Within two minutes, Jack was a battered, bloody mess. He’d avoided any direct hits, but the thorns grazed him more than once, slicing and dicing the skin and sometimes flesh of his arms and legs. She’d whacked him once with the end of the scythe pole, right between the shoulders; and he could feel a bruise forming on his back.

  But what was worse was that he’d come no closer to killing her. He’d tried a fireball twice more, but to no effect. And she’d dodged every sword jab, swing and thrust.

  She seemed to be enjoying herself. She grinned and gloated, telling Jack how much she looked forward to roasting him – roasting, toasting, grilling, and boiling. “Maybe I won’t finish you off all the way. Maybe you’ll go into the pot still alive,” she’d cackled. “Suffering always adds sweetness to the meat.”

  She made a point of breathing on him too. Every few seconds, the game would alert him,

  You have been hit by Hag’s Breath. You will continue to lose health while exposed, and your movement will be 15% slower for twenty seconds following exposure.

  It took him an embarrassingly long time to rethink his strategy of bashing and smashing. But finally, about two and a half minutes into having his backside handed to him by a geriatric, he formulated a new strategy: he needed to avoid the hag’s breath for twenty seconds. Then, the speed penalty would expire, a
nd he could take the hurt to her.

  So instead of countering her strikes and trying to get his own in, he fell back, dodging between trees and ducking out of the way of her breath. The closeness of the forest worked to his advantage as he left the little clearing. The hag’s scythe struck the trunks of trees when she swung it, so he could spend less time focusing on avoiding death and more on running. She started to hiss and snarl. Jack counted off the seconds in his head.

  Fifteen.

  Sixteen.

  Then she swapped weapons. She swung the scythe over her shoulder and picked up the blow gun. That took two seconds.

  Eighteen.

  She loaded a dart, which spent another second.

  Nineteen.

  She raised the blowgun to her lips and puffed out her cheeks. Jack reversed course, drawing himself as low as he could and running forward, toward her.

  Twenty.

  The dart hissed out of the blowgun. Jack felt it whistle over his head, missing him by a centimeter. At the same time, he felt his old strength return. He surged forward, screaming out an incoherent battle cry – blade at the ready. He covered a yard and a half. He had another yard to go.

  He saw comprehension cross the witch’s face – comprehension, and fear. She opened her mouth, and loosed another wave of terrible, rank breath. Jack leaped off the ground a moment before it hit him. The game informed him,

  You have been hit by Hag’s Breath. You will continue to lose health while exposed, and your movement will be 15% slower for twenty seconds following exposure.

  Half a second later, his blade struck the hag between the ribs, and drove all the way through her. He crashed into her body, and the pair tumbled to the ground. But she was already dead by then.

  He pushed himself up, slowly and clumsily, and cast a healing spell. His wounds were all superficial, and they healed quickly.

  He glanced around the forest. He could hear his companions, still apparently in the throes of fierce battle. But he couldn’t see anything, and he didn’t want to charge into potential danger while supernaturally shackled.

  So he knelt instead and searched the downed hag. She had a blowgun and bramble darts, which he took. He didn’t know if he’d keep them, but he could sort that out later. He saw with disappointment that the scythe could not be selected. Nor had the hag been carrying gold at the time of her death. But she did have one other item Jack could collect: Hag’s hair.

  He frowned at that, then shrugged and collected the item. A single strand of silver hair joined the items in his inventory. This was no ordinary hair, though. Its stats promised:

  + 10% speed to magicka restoration

  + Fire resistance

  Jack wasn’t quite sure how he could enjoy those perks. He sure as hell wasn’t about to chow down on a strand of hair that probably hadn’t been washed in a hundred years. But that was a problem for later. He had two seconds left of his speed impairment.

  So he stood up and waited until he felt the limit lift. Then, he headed back to the sounds of battle.

  He found four hags teaming Karag. Arath was nowhere to be seen, and neither were the goblins. Every once in a while, though, an arrow would shoot out of the trees. And now and again, a rock or – weirdly – a skull would follow it. Most of them missed the hags. Once or twice, they hit Karag instead. But Jack figured, whatever the impact, the intent was to assist the giant. Which meant he knew where his companions were, even if he couldn’t see them.

  Jack headed for the first hag he spotted. And this time, he kept his battle cries to himself. So he took her by surprise. With a single swipe of his blade, he severed the yokai’s head from her shoulders.

  Which promptly drew the attention of the others. Jack fired a blast of frost at one of them – more as a trial run than anything else. He hadn’t powered that spell up much, but he wanted to know if hags were immune to frost as well as fire.

  She staggered under the impact, which answered his question. So he let out another blast, and another, until he’d almost drained his magicka. He saved enough for one healing spell. Just in case.

  Karag, meanwhile, took down one of the hags attacking him. The remaining two split their focus – the one already engaging Jack stuck with him, and the other focused on the giant.

  Jack kept his distance. They were in a kind of clearing, so he stuck near the border. He wanted to be far enough away to dodge hag’s breath, but he also needed a fighting chance to evade projectiles. Because as soon as his opponent realized he didn’t mean to get close enough for her to use her scythe, she switched to her blow gun.

  He switched to arrows at about the same time, having expended his magicka. So they danced a new step – each firing and dodging in turn. One of the darts grazed his ear, and blood ran down his cheek. One of his arrows cut through the hag’s shroud. But neither got in a good strike, or dealt any real damage.

  Then Karag felled the other hag; and the tenor of the field changed entirely. Jack’s opponent shrieked angrily – and turned on her heel, fleeing into the forest. He hooted with satisfaction and crashed into the undergrowth in pursuit.

  Karag called after him, urging him to stop. But Jack didn’t. He knew better than to leave survivors. He wouldn’t let the hag run off to whatever hovel she called home, and summon her sister demons. No, she was going down.

  Jack covered half a dozen yards in the direction the hag disappeared when he stumbled headlong over something – something soft and fleshy. He sprang to his feet and turned, blade at the ready.

  Then, he stopped. This was no fallen or hiding hag. This was a beautiful, dark-haired maiden in tattered, blood-stained robes. She raised her lovely face to him, and her big, dark eyes met his. “Help me,” she said, her voice low and pained. “Help me, stranger.”

  Jack sheathed his blade without a second’s hesitation. He didn’t know who this woman was, but that she was another victim of the hags he didn’t doubt. And she needed help – his help. “Of course. Don’t be afraid: you’re safe now.”

  He reached into his inventory to pull out a healing potion. She had a series of burns and blisters all over her body. The sight filled him with a white-hot rage. He wanted to get his hands on the miserable hags who had done this to such a sweet, lovely creature. “Here,” he said, kneeling beside her. “Don’t move. Take this.”

  She did, accepting the vial weakly and drinking it down. The blisters started to disappear from her skin. She smiled at him, and Jack smiled too. He started to ask her name.

  Then, in a flash, the girl sprang at him. Only, she was no fair maiden now, with raven hair and wide eyes. Nor did she have a sweet expression. Not anymore. In her place was the most hideous hag he’d ever seen – withered and pale, and oozing hatred from every pore on her body.

  Jack screamed and recoiled, terror filling his soul. A rank stink washed over him, and the game alerted him,

  You have been hit by Hag’s Breath. You will continue to lose health while exposed, and your movement will be 15% slower for twenty seconds following exposure.

  He stumbled in his retreat, and then the hag was upon him. She tore at his flesh with her nails. She snarled and bared her teeth, moving for his neck.

  Jack tried to swat her away, but his hand was too far away. He knew he’d never reach her in time – not before those horrible yellow teeth buried themselves in his flesh.

  And then, seemingly out of nowhere, the hag exploded in a pile of goo. Red and green entrails flew in every direction. Organs and body parts pelted Jack and the surrounding area. And then the red fog of blood and worse things settled; and he saw Karag standing in front of him, his hands stained red.

  “Bloody hell, Jack,” the giant snapped. “I told you to be careful. What were you thinking? If I’d been a moment later, you would be dead.”

  Jack threw up first. And not once, either. He puked, and then puked again; and then, when he figured he had nothing left in his stomach, threw up a third time.

  And no wonder. He was covered in remn
ant of yokai. Karag had squashed her, the same way he’d dealt with William the Wanderer. Only this time, she’d been on top of Jack when the impact came. Which meant about half of her landed on him – a thick, terrible hag soup.

  He sought every puddle in the area after that, to wash away anything he could. He was so intent on purging the stink that he barely noticed when Arath rejoined the party. But once he’d contaminated all the standing water in the area, he took stock of his party. The ranger’s injuries had healed in the interim since they’d last met, and the goblins had crawled back out of hiding. Karag too had healed himself. The only evidence remaining of his former injuries were the blood stains on his clothes – and to judge by those, they’d been significant wounds.

  Jack was glad everyone survived, but he had more pressing matters on his mind. “Is there a stream around here? Or a lake, or something? Because I need to take a bath. Now.”

  “Stream? Yes. Not far from here. Cool water, good for drinking. Not good for bathing. Very swift, very cool.”

  Jack didn’t care about the risks, though. He was about to throw himself off the mountainside just to get over the smell. So he told Grimlik to lead on.

  But the goblin shook his head. “First, scavenge. Then walk.”

  Jack didn’t want to scavenge. But the goblin ignored his complaints and set to work scouring the dead hags. So he followed suit. He figured he’d be damned if he left anything for Arath. Not after the ranger had got them into this mess.

  So he and the goblins scrambled from body to body, collecting what they could. Jack picked up some alchemical ingredients the hags had been carrying – crow entrails, raven feathers, and eyeballs designated by the game as suspiciously humanoid. He also collected more strands of hair.

  Grem’tha hissed with delight at the sight of that. “Good potions, that makes. Very good. Make fire not burn.”

  For the first time since he’d been showered in hag body parts, Jack felt a glimmer of something like a good mood coming on. He’d wondered how to use the hag hair, and now he had his answer.