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

by Rachel Ford

  Jack didn’t like the idea, and he told William as much. Nor did he have a better plan, which he admitted in turn, when the other man pressed. Still, he couldn’t quite get over the secretiveness. “Why did you go to Richard first? Why not come to me? I am the one whose body is on the line here…”

  William shrugged. “It wouldn’t matter if I had your buy-in if I didn’t get anyone to agree to administer the physical damage.”

  It was a good answer. Too good, maybe – too ready, too prepared. Or maybe William had answered so quickly because it was just the simple truth. Jack didn’t know. So he tried again. “Okay, but why go to Richard with it? Why not take it to Jordan? She’s got a lot more experience and expertise. He’s an intern, for criminy’s sake. I trust her judgement a whole heck of a lot more than his.”

  William nodded, and answered mildly, “Which is exactly why I didn’t go to her.”

  Jack blinked. That sounded at first pass like a confirmation of his worst fears. But he figured if his suspicions had any basis in reality, the other man wouldn’t just fess up two questions in. So he took a measured breath and asked, “What do you mean?”

  “Come on, Jack. You know exactly what I mean. She’s not an unbiased evaluator, and you’re not an unbiased listener.”

  But Jack hadn’t the foggiest idea what this meant, and he told the other man as much.

  William raised an eyebrow and stared at him. “You don’t really think I’m blind, do you?”

  Jack stared back at him. “Dude, I know you think I’m supposed to know what that means…but I have no clue what you’re talking about.”

  William’s other eyebrow crept upward too, higher, Jack thought, than was humanly possible outside a videogame. If he tried to look any more skeptical, his brows would merge with his hairline. “I can’t tell if you’re playing dumb or being stupid here. But either way, it’s obvious you got a thing for her. She says ‘jump,’ you say ‘how high?’ You’re a lot more rational and analytical where Richard is concerned. So he’s a much better choice given the circumstance.”

  Jack had gone from indignant to flustered and sputtering in the course of a few seconds. Now that he had his answer, he was more confused than ever. William had lost his mind. That was obvious. He was delusional. Off his rocker. Jack had never even seen Jordan in real life. Sure, they spent hours together in the game. But, it was a game. Not real life. Of course he didn’t have a thing for her. He couldn’t.

  He explained something of this, unfortunately all at once. It came out as a half-nonsensical stream-of-consciousness, off-the-cuff remarks. Which, admittedly, didn’t do anything for his case. But considering the ludicrousness of the situation, could he really be blamed?

  The other man crossed his arms and listened with the same skeptical expression he’d worn earlier. When Jack finally concluded, he said, “Yeah, my mistake. Clearly, you’re super rational and collected where she’s concerned.”

  Jack frowned at the amusement in his tone. Frowned, and flushed, and crossed his own arms. “Jordan has been with Marshfield Studio for years. I’m not doing a doggoned thing – especially not letting someone beat me senseless – unless I run it by her. And she agrees it’s the right move.”

  “Which was exactly what I was talking about. You’re going to risk disconnecting your brain from your own damned body if Jordan says so.”

  “If your idea is sound, you shouldn’t be afraid of scrutiny. You’re asking me to risk my life here, dagnabbit.”

  “You really need to get rid of that filter, dude.

  “And you’re already risking your life. The longer your brain is responding to your avatar, the more at risk you are of permanently severing the link to your real body. You’ll be stuck in the machine forever, just like me.

  “Or worse, your brain could shut down your autonomic nervous system. If that happens, you die. Period. Your heart stops pumping. Respiration, digestion – everything just stops. And you die.”

  Jack licked his lips nervously. The other man painted a dire picture. And before he’d had his conversation with Karag, well, he wouldn’t have hesitated. But he had, and he couldn’t shake the NPC’s words. “If Jordan reviews your plan and agrees with it, I’ll do it,” he said finally. “But I’m not doing it without her signoff. And that’s final, William.”

  The other man scowled at him. Then, he nodded. “Fine. But I need something in return.”

  Jack eyed him suspiciously. “What?”

  “I need you to give me your word you’ll let me talk to her about it first.”

  Jack went on eyeing him skeptically. “Why?”

  William rolled his eyes. “You know why, dammit: because she’s got a thing for you too. And I need her to put that aside, to get over any concerns about you being in pain and focus on the data itself. On the big picture. I don’t want emotion clouding her judgement.”

  Jack scoffed. “Yeah, right.”

  William’s eyebrows retraced their former journey, up his forehead.

  Jack blinked. “You’re serious?”

  William rolled his eyes.

  “No way. You really think…? No.” He shook his head. The idea was ludicrous. “I mean, she’s seen me drooling on myself and everything in the machine. Nah. No way.”

  The other man groaned quietly. “Okay, great. Then in that case, you won’t mind me talking to her.”

  Jack hesitated. “As long as I get to talk to her too.”

  “Of course.”

  “Okay. That works, I guess.”

  William breathed a sigh of relief, muttering, “Thank God.”

  He hardly noticed. He was still thinking about his earlier words. “You don’t really think-”

  But William vanished with a roll of his eyes, and Jack found himself staring at the empty floorboards between Arath and the goblins.

  He decided two things after that. The first was that William probably didn’t have any ulterior motives. Not when he’d agreed to bring Jordan into the scheme too. And the second was that the other man had been in the machine way too long. He’d forgotten what human interaction looked like.

  Still, his cheeriness as he packed his bedroll up and collected his companions was met with blank stares and even scowls in all quarters. Karag watched him with upraised eyebrows. Arath stared daggers at him.

  The goblins regarded him with sadness. “No cause for cheer,” Grimlik declared. “No, not in here. Not in dwarven filth.”

  Grem’tha said, “Give us our blade, Friend Jack. Kept our word, we did. Let us go, good goblins, honest goblins.”

  She had a point. They had kept their word and brought him to Ivaldi’s Hall. And he’d be happy to see them on their way. At least, he felt sure he would. But he hesitated anyway. “You did keep your word. And I’ll give you your sword when we get it back from Varr, if you like. But – are you sure you want to be going through the dwarven city, carrying a dwarven blade? Are you sure it will be safe?”

  Grem’tha wailed piteously at that, and Grimlik bared his teeth at some imaginary foe. “Nasty dwarves. Kill us, they would. Kill us, if they see that blade. Call us thieves, they would. Break our bones. Break our skulls.”

  “Friend Jack protect. Gave us his word, he did. Gave his word.”

  “I did,” Jack nodded. “And I will. But I have to finish this quest before I can leave. So I can give you the sword now, and I’ll walk you to the gates to make sure you’re okay. But then you’d be on your own.”

  “They follow,” she said. “They kill us. They hunt us, cruel dwarves, and crush us. Trap us, kill us.”

  “I can try to talk to Varr,” he offered. “Tell him you’re my friends, and I don’t want anyone to hurt you.”

  She started to wail, and Grimlik hissed. “Wicked dwarf won’t care. No. He shoots at us when we come this way before. Kill us, he will, if we are alone.”

  “Well, I need to head back to Fox’s Crossing after I finish up here. If you want to stick with me, I can make sure you’re safe.”


  She nodded eagerly. “We go with Jack. Jack protect.”

  Her brother considered, then nodded too. “Then give us the sword, Jack will.”

  “Yes. Whenever you want it, it’s yours.”

  “Good, good. Man of word, Jack is. Grimlik respect. Grimlik stay, for now.”

  “Grem’tha too. Grem’tha stay.”

  Arath rolled his eyes. “Great.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Varr was waiting as he promised, and he furnished the party with their weapons as soon as he saw them. “You’ll need to surrender your arms to me or one of the guards in order to enter the palace again, even to return to your rooms; and you will get them back when you leave again.

  “Carrying weapons is permitted in the city and all the outlying territories, but individual manors may implement their own restrictions. You will need to comply with the property owner’s wishes at such time as they or their representatives convey them.”

  Jack snorted. He guessed the Marshfield Studio legal team had been involved in that snippet of conversation.

  Varr went on without noticing. “Well, are you ready to proceed, Jack?”

  Here, the game gave him two options – one to postpone their adventure, and another to accept. He chose, “I am indeed, my good dwarf. Lead on.”

  Varr bobbed his beard and set off at a brisk walk – talking, naturally. They were, he told his listeners, heading out of the city for a half a day’s walk. “Lonely country it is, but lovely: endless caves and more stone than you can shake a stick at.”

  None of which qualified as lovely to Jack, but he let the other man rhapsodize uninterrupted. They followed the same road they’d taken earlier for a ways, but veered leftward after the bridge. This road took them through a quieter part of town, where little gardens filled the spaces between homes, and children played in more spacious back yards. Dwarves toiled in their gardens or over forges, singing as they worked. They passed travelers on the road, ambling along at a leisurely pace and singing of lost loves or piles of dragon gold. Sometimes, the NPC’s would call out. The topics ranged from conversational to quest-giving:

  “Ahoy, Varr: who be these friends of yours? Strange folk, humans and giants and goblins.”

  “Hail, strangers: you haven’t happened to see a potbelly pig in your travels, have you? She escaped my backyard, and I can’t find her anywhere.”

  “If you’re heading out by the river, I’ll pay handsomely for fresh cave bass.”

  Jack ignored them all, of course. He had no time for fishing or finding lost farm animals or any other side quest. So they stayed focused on their journey. His guide went on talking. And he tuned out the stream of chatter after a while, until a phrase caught his attention: vicious little buggers. His ears perked right up at that.

  Varr was shaking his head, and saying, “So just you be on the lookout for them is all, Jack.”

  “What now?”

  The dwarf frowned at him. “I told you: stone gremlins. They look like any other boulder, only they’re alive. And they’ll crush your skull as soon as look at you, just for laughs. You won’t see ‘em here in the city, but they flourish along the roads and in the rural areas. Just keep an eye out for them is all.”

  Jack assured the other man that he would, and Grem’tha and Grimlik hissed something about wicked stones. And they went on as before, making their way through the city.

  They reached the countryside, if it could be called that, an hour later. Great natural caverns met with artificial ones, rough, pocked spaces meeting with smooth, carved ones. Light orbs floated overhead. A thin layer of dirt lined the way in places, and here and there much thicker patches of soil had either been carted in or accumulated naturally. Trees and grasses grew in the dirt. In darker, danker passages, mushrooms sprouted along the walls and in little patches of decayed vegetation and other biological matter. They passed a skeleton, of what Jack couldn’t say, now not much more than half a bleached rib cage resting on a dark, mushroom covered bit of matter – too thick and odoriferous to be dirt yet, but too long rotted to be flesh still.

  Their way intersected with various branches of the Kalven River. Varr knew them all, and painted a picture of a vast network of streams and rivers, of tributaries and distributaries that either fed the Kalven or parted company with it. “This is the Kalven Minor,” he told them at one point. “It feeds the great river. Not to be confused with the Minor Kalven, which branches off just past Ivaldi’s Hall.”

  “Great. That’s not confusing at all.”

  Varr nodded. “Exactly. It’s this one, the Kalven Minor, where you’ll find good fishing: cave bass and river perch and inland salmon. It’s Minor Kalven where you’ll find the razorback trout.”

  The goblins wailed at the name, and Jack asked, “The…what?”

  “Razorback trout.”

  “Wicked fish,” Grem’tha told him. “Unnatural. Eat you, they will. Not you eat them. Not proper. Not at all.”

  “Fins like razors,” Varr nodded. “Teeth like razors, scales like razors.”

  “Horrible,” Grimlik said. “Cutting, nasty.”

  “I have to agree with your little friends there. The only way to catch then is with a pole, or an arrow. A hook’s no good, because they’ll cut your line with their teeth.

  “And if you do catch ‘em, well, Ivaldi guard you, my boy: they’ll cut you to ribbons if you come near them while they’re alive. And even if they’re dead, you better be careful your hand doesn’t slip, or you’ll lose fingers. I know a man who lost half the fingers on his right hand, trying to gut one of them buggers.” He raised his hand and made a quick cutting motion just below the second knuckles of the last three fingers. “Took ‘em clean off, like a surgeon’s knife.”

  Jack had no idea why anyone would tangle with the monsters, and said as much. “They’ve got uses in magical spells or potions. Some gobbledygook like that. Not that I know any of that spellweaving, mind. I just know what I hear. And I hear the mages pay good money for their various parts.”

  “They secrete a toxin that is very valuable in some circles, as well,” Karag said in mild tones.

  “Aye, poison you mean. There’s suppliers who run it down to your people, on the Obsidian Isles. Poison is big business, I guess.”

  “Death is big business,” Karag corrected. “It always has been, master dwarf, and it always will be.”

  “I suppose you’re right, though it’s a bit grim, if you ask me.”

  The giant smiled. “A curious observation from a professional soldier.”

  Varr drew his great bushy brows into a frown, which he aimed Karag’s way. “A soldier’s a far cry from an assassin. Soldiering is a noble calling, not the province of cutthroats and murderers.”

  “Is it? What is an assassin, but a highly specialized soldier?”

  The dwarf snorted. “Ludicrous.”

  “Really? You take orders from your king, do you not?”

  “Of course. But not orders to kill.”

  “I suppose you sing serenades from up on that wall, then, to anyone who tries to get through the gates?” Karag smiled, a touch patronizingly. “And if Delling told you to put us all to the sword, you would refuse the orders of your king, naturally?”

  Varr blinked and seemed for a moment nonplussed. “Well, no. But it’s different.”

  “Yes, it is: your king wouldn’t trust you with a mission requiring any more delicacy than brute strength and open murder. But your king sticks you on a wall and tells you to kill anyone who gets near his gates. You still kill for a living.”

  That seemed to really rile the dwarf. His cheeks grew red, and he puffed out a long breath of air. “I’m no sneak, no nighttime killer. I’m an honest man, not a bloody assassin. I just guard the gates.”

  “With lethal force.”

  “I already told you, it’s different.”

  “And I already agreed with you, Captain: it is different. An assassin of the Obsidian Isles would never be tasked with such mundane,
unremarkable murder. We – that is, they – would be called upon when skill was required.

  “But make no mistake about it: you are a bloodletter as much as any operative of the Isles. More than, probably. Your murder simply takes less skill.”

  This caused something of a snit between the two men. Varr scowled and set his jaw, and said no more for some time. Karag eyed him occasionally with something like contempt, and something like amusement.

  Jack didn’t want chaos in his band, of course. But he did appreciate the peace and quiet. The dwarf’s chatter, well-meaning though it was, got old after a while.

  Now, though, the silence was broken in a new direction.

  Grem’tha’s ardor toward the ranger had cooled significantly since the fiasco with the yokai. She hadn’t entirely given up on him, of course. Now and then, she’d throw wistful glances his way, or sigh as he passed. But she had halted her active pursuit. She’d stopped bringing him the best beetles, and sharing her grubs at mealtime.

  But apparently that particular object of her fancy hadn’t lost all of its luster in her eyes. Because she darted off the path now and then to pick up shiny rocks and bits of gems that lay mixed in the gravel and stone – all of which she brought to Arath. “Good Arath like, yes?” she’d ask, or, “Looks good, it will, with a bit of spit and shine?”

  The ranger put up a creditable effort at being grateful, though Jack suspected that had something to do with the fact that some of Grem’tha’s finds actually did look promising. Along with a fair amount of quartz and agates, she found a massive, uncut diamond, and a few dark red rubies. Arath accepted them with forced smiles and stiff nods. “Very nice,” he’d say, or “Very thoughtful, Grem’tha.”

  His words, of course, only encouraged the poor goblin. And the more she scampered about looking for treasures, the more poisonous Grimlik’s scowl became. Trouble lay that way, Jack was sure. The sooner he wrapped up his business in the dwarven kingdom, and the sooner he and the goblins went their separate ways, the better.