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

by Rachel Ford

  The pain in her voice made his own chest hurt. “Don’t be.”

  “I just – can’t hit you.”

  “Then use the goddamned taser,” William snapped. “Do something, Jordan. Being sentimental is all well and good, but the guy’s going to die.”

  Jack shot the other man a warning glance, and told him to leave her alone. At the same time, she started to say something, to resolve that she would try again – that she had to try again.

  Then the sound of a door opening reached Jack, and a fourth voice entered the fray. “Holy Mother. What is going on here?”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  It was Richard, showing up early for his shift. He’d come to talk to Jordan, about the very business at hand. Apparently, he’d spent some time considering the pluses and minuses of bringing her into the loop, and in the end came down on the side of pluses. Except, of course, he was too late for that.

  Now, their roles reversed: she brought him up to speed about everything they’d been trying to do.

  Richard didn’t quite seem to grasp the holdup. He heard her explanation – that she just couldn’t hit Jack – and responded with bewilderment. “Why? It looks like you’ve got a clear shot.”

  She had to explain that the impediments weren’t physical, but a kind of mental block on her end. This, at last, got through to him. “Ohhh…I get it. It’s a woman thing. No worries. My mom’s the same way. She can’t even hit a spider. My dad has to ‘save her.’” He laughed, then added, “Don’t worry, Jordan: I can do it for you.”

  “Finally,” William said with a breath of relief. “Alright, Jordan, you better not watch. I want you focusing on the sensor readings. And Richard – well, get to work as soon as you can.”

  And did he ever. Jack was frowning at the other man, thinking it really should have been his call – considering he was the one about to be battered – when the first wave of pain hit. It radiated through his right cheek, and left his head ringing slightly.

  “Good,” William said approvingly.

  “Mother trucker,” Jack said, gasping with pain.

  “Oh Jack,” Jordan said.

  “Again. Hit him again, Richard.”

  The intern did as he’d been bid, striking Jack over and over again – sometimes on the face, sometimes on the arms and legs, sometimes in the stomach. Once, he hit smackdab in the center of the solar plexus. Jack thought he might keel over from the pain.

  But he didn’t. Jordan’s tones grew increasingly more concerned, and William’s increasingly more excited. “That’s it. God, I love it when I’m right. Are you seeing this Jordan? His neural maps are returning to normal. Hit him again, Richard. Harder.”

  On and on the torture went. Jordan’s voice broke when she spoke. Jack could barely speak at all anymore. Richard panted with exertion, and relayed – to a most unsympathetic listener – that he’d broken the skin of his knuckles. “That’s going to smart.”

  Jack hoped it did. Yes, technically Richard was helping him – maybe even saving his life. But right now, every inch of him seeming to radiate pain, he figured a little turnabout was only fair play.

  Then, after a particularly vicious blow, William said, “That’s it. I think we’re good. Hold up for now, Richard.

  “Jordan, I want you to hit Jack’s avatar.”

  “What?”

  “Put your headset back on and hit Jack’s avatar. With your sword.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “He’s not going to feel it. You know what? Never mind. I’ll do it myself.” Which he proceeded to do. Instead of a blade, though, the other man whipped out a pair of throwing stars, and flung them at Jack.

  His hit points plummeted, until they hovered just above zero. But Jack didn’t feel a thing. Well, not a thing beyond the dull throb of agony from Richard’s treatment, anyway.

  Which news earned him cheers all the way around. Jordan slipped her headset back on, and her character sprang to life – and bounded over to wrap him in a hug. “Oh Jack – thank goodness.” He saw little digital teardrops tracing their way down her avatar’s cheeks – a mirror image, thanks to the VR headset, of her actual expression at the moment.

  He felt himself choke up at that, so he didn’t say anything – just hugged her a little tighter.

  Richard, meanwhile, was whining about his knuckles. “Ow, son-of-a…I really split the skin up good. You know, I’ve never actually punched anyone before. It really hurts.”

  Jack found it hard to be sympathetic to the man who had, only a little while earlier, likened him to a spider needing to be squashed.

  William and Jordan proved a little more capable on that front. The former assured Richard that he’d done a smashing job – which was, Jack gathered, some kind of pun. The latter located a first aid kit, and cleaned and wrapped his hand.

  “Ow. My first on-the-job injury, I guess. Can’t say I saw that one coming.”

  “You and me both,” Jack snorted.

  But eventually, Jordan had to go. “You don’t want Avery getting suspicious as to why you’re hanging around so long,” William said.

  And Richard had reassured her in a smarmy fashion, “Don’t worry, Jordan. I got this covered.”

  She’d checked, and re-checked, with Jack. But he assured her that – other than feeling a little bit like his chest had been caved in – he was fine.

  “And he should get back to playing,” William added. “The sooner he’s done, the sooner he’s out.”

  Which finally decided her. She took her leave, and William took his, and then Richard took his. “I need to go find some ice for these knuckles. And maybe some ibuprofen or something.”

  And Jack was alone again.

  He felt a little disconnected from the game after that, and not just because the stakes had been lowered. He simply didn’t feel as invested in it – in any of it. The rudeness and brutality of Migli’s mother didn’t enrage him the way it had, the callousness and greed of his father didn’t interest him. Not even the fearful chattering of the goblins bothered him particularly.

  He followed the path because he needed to, without much interest. The terrain changed; rivers came and went; new and varied animals made their appearances. He barely noticed.

  Even when stone gremlins attacked, he paid only enough attention to defeat them. They looked exactly like Varr had predicted: like rocks. Some were brown and some were gray, but they all had jagged, natural stone hides that blended with the cavern walls and floors.

  They were mid-level monsters, with low hit points but off-the charts armor stats – and they dealt out powerful crushing damage. A quick reference of their stats affirmed what Jack already guessed: smashing instruments would do almost no damage to them, and cutting wouldn’t be much better. Which made sense, he supposed. Taking a sword to a rock would dull your blade, but not accomplish much else.

  Still, Varr chose this approach: screaming out, “Have at you, villains,” he took his axe to the gremlins, and none of the fury they turned his way dissuaded him. Neither did the nearly static state of their hit points. He just kept swinging and bashing away, grunting as his own health meter depleted. Everything looks like a nail to a hammer, I guess.

  The dwarf’s singlemindedness provided a very useful distraction, though. It kept the gremlins focused on him. A dozen short, rocky bodies swarmed Varr on all sides, hiding him entirely from view. If not for the slowly emptying health bar that hovered above the dwarf, Jack might not have known he was still alive. Except for the taunts, anyway. “You’ll never take me, maggot,” he’d declare one moment, and the next, “You should have run while you could.”

  Despite the futility of Varr’s choice of attack, it did leave a perfect opening for the rest of the party. Arath put a few well-placed arrows through the gremlins’ eyes – the only unarmored spots on their bodies. Jack roasted and froze them in turns, and watched with satisfaction as their health plummeted. As for Karag? Well, his method was a bit more creative. He seized the gremlin
s and hurled them into the nearby river – where they flailed and promptly sank and drowned. Stone gremlins, apparently, needed to breathe like anyone else.

  Who knew?

  Varr went on issuing challenges as the gremlins’ numbers fell. “Should have thought twice.”

  The goblins shrieked and scurried back and forth, darting from hiding spot to hiding spot. “Finish them. Kill them. Quick, quick.”

  Arath had hidden too, taking up a position behind a large rock – a real one, and not a gremlin. But he kept his head up to loose arrow after arrow. They sailed through the air with a soft hissing sound.

  Varr said, “Never should have come here, lad.”

  Karag hurled another of the stone monsters into the river with a deep grunt. The monster burbled and splashed desperately as it sank.

  “Last mistake you’ll ever make.”

  The whoosh of flames issued forth from Jack’s hands, and then the crackle of frost. His target screamed in pain and collapsed dead, its stone carapace cracking and crumbling.

  “No one bests a dwarf of the realm,” Varr went on.

  In this way, one by one, they defeated the gremlins until they were all dead. The dwarf declared, “That’s the way we do it in Ivaldi’s Hall. Well fought, my friends.” Karag grunted and straightened his tunic. Arath set to work scavenging the dead bodies, his eyes sparkling as he picked gems out of the crumbled stone. And the goblins came out of hiding, giving the dead gremlins a wide berth.

  Not much of that stood out to Jack. They hadn’t been remarkable enemies. There’d been enough of them, sure, to put up a good fight. But his party had held their own, and everyone had performed pretty much exactly how he expected them to.

  There remained only one point of interest: Jack had taken a direct hit from one of the gremlins. It had cost him a quarter of his health points.

  And he hadn’t felt a thing.

  That, at last, put a smile on his face. It had worked, and not just in testing conditions. He’d taken damage to his avatar, and his brain had ignored it.

  For all his suffering, for all his worrying…in the end, William’s madcap scheme actually worked.

  He was going to be okay.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Jack returned to the hall feeling pretty good about life. Right up until he went to wrap up his objective to report to Moinn, anyway.

  The king’s advisor seemed surprised to see him. “Well, you made it out alive. That’s good. I assume her ladyship is in a good mood, then?”

  “Not really, no,” Jack replied.

  Moinn nodded, as if that, at least, didn’t surprise him. “You’d better tell me about it, I suppose.”

  Which, ignoring the lack of enthusiasm that accompanied the directive, Jack did. Moinn listened and grunted here and there.

  When Jack finished, the advisor gave him a hundred gold coins for his trouble and wished him a good day in a decisive fashion. At the same time, the game marked his objective complete, then presented him with three possible conversational options:

  Thank you, good Moinn [Leave]

  One hundred gold? Surely such a risky venture merits more, friend? [Persuade]

  * Laugh * One hundred gold? That’s a good jest, friend. I thought for half a moment you were serious. But I know you’re too smart to trifle like that with a man who can snap your stubby little fingers like twigs. [Threaten]

  Jack considered for a long moment. None of this got him closer to finishing his main objectives, of course. But he only had three hundred and forty-three gold to his name, and whatever he could scrounge up for the few stolen items Arath hadn’t extorted from him. So he chose the second option – the persuasion route.

  Moinn raised a bushy brow. “For a leisurely stroll through the countryside? I don’t think so.”

  The game first informed him,

  Persuasion attempt failed.

  Then it offered him two new speech options.

  Thank you, good Moinn [Leave]

  * Laugh menacingly * Riddle me this, little man…what’s going to cost you more: paying me what I earned, or a nice, long hospital stay? [Threaten]

  Jack considered. He didn’t want to piss Delling’s loyalists off. But, then, the entire exercise had been one in utter futility. So why not profit a little from it? He chose to threaten Moinn.

  The dwarf laughed in turn, and the game told him:

  Threat attempt failed.

  “I didn’t realize Migli kept such amusing companions. But I should be careful jesting about such things, Jack: it’s a capital offense to threaten a member of the royal bureaucracy. A less enlightened man than myself might not see the humor at play, and he might lose his head – figuratively. Unlike you. That would be a very literal separation of your head from your shoulders.” Moinn smiled at him – a big, toothy, and not at all charming expression. “And we wouldn’t want that, would we?”

  Which, of course, Jack agreed that they would not want. “Not at all.”

  “Exactly so. So, why don’t you go back to your room, and try to get some sleep? I’m certain the king will have news for you soon. And then you can be on your way.”

  So Jack took his leave. He clearly needed to work on building his favor with the dwarves before trying any more persuasion attempts. Bringing news of their missing prince and playing at being the king’s personal messenger should have carried some weight, of course. But not with this royal family. It seemed Migli was very much a persona non grata.

  He had half a mind to explore the city and see if he could find some shops to sell off his remaining baubles. There probably would be side quests, too – the kind of side quests that could boost his favorability among the people of Ivaldi’s Hall. Then, his next attempt to squeeze a little extra coin out of Moinn might be successful.

  But, he decided against it. This wasn’t a real playthrough. This was a desperate race to get the heck out of the machine. And he’d played enough videogames to pick up on Moinn’s hint, from a mile away: the advisor had urged him to sleep, and mentioned that the king would contact him soon. That meant only one thing: he had to sleep in order to trigger the next step of the main quest.

  So Jack set his steps toward the southern wing of the palace. Unlike his last passthrough, this time the halls bustled around him. He met fine, elegant dwarves in regal clothes, and poor, humble dwarves in rough garb. Some called out greetings and murmured their apologies.

  “Hail: you must be the strangers I’ve heard tell of.”

  “Welcome to Ivaldi’s Hall, Stranger.”

  “Pardon me, good sir: I didn’t see you there.”

  “Thou art called Jack, art thou not?”

  Others sneered in their direction.

  “You’re the goblin master, aren’t you? The foreigner?”

  “I can’t believe my father lets riffraff like you into the palace. If it were up to me, you’d be feeding buzzards outside the walls.”

  “Ivaldi’s beard, when’s the last time you’ve bathed – any of you? I could smell you from the other side of the palace.”

  Groups and couples ignored them altogether to carry on private conversations.

  “Did you hear? Katrice and Dagmain are separating. I knew it wouldn’t last. You remember I told you so?” one portly matron asked.

  And her husband nodded sagely. “I do, my dear. I remember it well.”

  Another trio of noble persons conferred in hushed tones as they passed. “Well, I heard they sacked the maid. Accused her of stealing it.”

  “Ridiculous. The girl would be a fool to steal from the princess. And to risk it all over a little bauble like that ring?”

  “Perhaps. But the world is full of fools.”

  And still others called out to the travelers with random bits of news and gossip.

  “You there: what news from the town? I hear there was a brawl at the Golden Flagon.”

  “You haven’t seen my sapphire earrings have you? They’ve gone missing, and I’m certain I had them yesterday.”


  “I heard there’s been goblin spottings on the mountainside. Can’t imagine what those vermin are doing out and about, but I warrant it bodes ill.”

  Finally, they passed through the gauntlet of humanity – dwarfanity? – and reached their rough quarters. Jack set out his bedroll, and turned his mind to sleep.

  It did not come all at once, in part because of the goblins, who were whispering and squabbling in secretive tones over some bauble Grem’tha had picked up. She, as far as Jack could tell, wanted to gift it to Arath; and he advised her not to waste it.

  That was a business he wanted nothing whatever to do with. But it was hard to ignore their hisses and curses back and forth.

  Similarly, Karag’s snoring proved a major impediment. The giant propped himself up between the two walls, with his knees bent and his neck turned at an awkward angle in order to fit. And, as a result, his breath came in long gasping snores as he slept – which, despite the odd angles, he did, almost as soon as he laid down.

  Even Arath contributed to the distractions, as he rattled and clinked his various treasures. Grem’tha, it seemed, had picked up a lot on their adventure; and now the ranger glanced it over, smiling and frowning in turns as he sorted the items of value from the worthless ones.

  But finally, Jack succumbed to sleep. He slept soundly, and woke twelve hours later, feeling a bit dazed to finally rise well-rested. His companions had already wandered off, so he stood and stretched and collected his belongings.

  He was just finishing with his bedroll and wondering what he’d have for breakfast when a high voice interrupted his thoughts. He glanced up to see a boy – a boy in the dwarven mold, anyway, being short and stocky as a block. He stood perhaps a foot shorter than the dwarven adults, and was proportionally a foot slimmer. But the most distinguishing feature about him was the absence of a beard, or any facial hair at all. “Stranger Jack?” he asked.

  “Yes?”

  “My name is Berling. I am come with a message from the king. He requests your presence immediately, Stranger. I believe the business is quite urgent.”