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

by Rachel Ford

  Then, just as he was about to declare victory, a cutscene played. His view panned out from the gate, moving back toward the palace. In the background, Jack saw himself and Varr, fighting the demon mages.

  He was, he realized, seeing a glimpse of something that had already happened.

  A band of enemies, decked out in smart armor and carrying glimmering blades, moved in from the north, past the raging armies. They fell upon the palace, slaughtering its guard. Arath fled before them.

  Then the scene changed to the palace interior. The demons broke through every line of defense, slaughtering the palace inhabitants – slaughtering the royal family.

  Kalbidor – terrible, fearsome Kalbidor – marched at their lead, cutting down anyone they came across. The cinematic showed them murder a serving girl and then a prince, without batting an eyelash.

  The demons reached the western wing, and the great council chamber.

  Then, the cinematic switched perspectives. Now Jack was watching those inside the council. He heard the demons outside, beating upon the doors. He saw Arath here, an arrow aimed at the door. He saw the black mages, spinning up spells and chanting incantations. He saw the smiths, wielding the various instruments of their crafts like weapons. And he saw Delling upon the far chair, looking stunned and haggard.

  Then the cutscene ended, and Varr shouted, “We must save the king!”

  At the same time, a thought flashed through Jack’s mind:

  Objective added: reach the council chambers before the demons breech the doors

  Chapter Forty-Six

  They raced through the city. Karag joined them, and a few more scattered dwarfs replenished the ranks of the city guard.

  They met no resistance at the palace doors. Apparently, Kalbidor didn’t plan on occupying the palace: he’d come to destroy it, and nothing more.

  But as soon as they crossed the threshold, a timer started in Jack’s head.

  5:00

  4:59

  4:58

  “Oh bother. It’s a timed mission.” Jack didn’t hate timed missions, exactly. Or, that’s what he would have said, if asked. But in reality, he did basically hate them. The artificial sense of urgency annoyed him to no end.

  Annoyed him, and made his palms start to sweat, and his heartrate pick up. Which very well might have been the point. But it still irked him.

  Now, even though he’d found his own way just a few hours earlier, he started to question his ability to navigate the great palace. It’s left at the junction, right? Or is it right? Even though the party was running, he wondered if they were covering enough ground.

  And every baddie they ran into put his heart into his mouth. Not because they proved to be any real challenge. They didn’t – not against a party their size. But each little fight meant delay. And each little delay put him closer and closer to failing his timer.

  He was in full blown panic mode when he hit one minute, and the council chamber still hadn’t come into sight.

  By forty-eight seconds, he’d rounded the corner in the last hall before the chambers. He could see the doors now – the doors, and a long, long passage, and a swath of enemies standing between himself and the king.

  Jack charged. He didn’t try to fight his way through. He just wanted to reach the doors before the timer went off.

  He soaked up a couple of hits along the way, but nothing to slow him down.

  With twenty-two seconds remaining, he’d covered half the distance. He gritted his teeth, lowered his head, and hunched his shoulders – and ran faster and harder.

  The demons’ attention was all focused on the great doors. Kalbidor was at the front of the column, issuing commands. And his minions battered themselves against it, and beat at it with axes and blades. They were perilously close to getting through. Jack could see that with his own eyes.

  And, of course, the timer told him.

  Ten.

  Nine.

  He was close now. The demons stood almost shoulder to shoulder here. It was everything he could do to avoid being hemmed in by one of the demonic throngs. But he kept going.

  Seven.

  Six.

  Then, as he reached the last bit of hallway before the doors, the game alerted him:

  Objective complete: reach the council chambers before the demons breech the doors

  He breathed a sigh of relief – and then remembered where he was, and said, “Oh bother.” Which, as before, wasn’t what he meant.

  He’d completed his objective, but in doing so, he’d ran smackdab into the center of the monster horde. Kalbidor, whose boss fight the game had been teasing since the first cinematic, was within spitting distance.

  Oh bother, indeed. He was a dead man. He was sure of that.

  Then a cheer arose from the very front of the party, and a cinematic rolled. The great doors burst inward in a shower of splinters. Demons pushed through – a whole swarm of them, like some kind of nasty, invasive insect.

  Delling shouted, “To me, one. To me, all!”

  The mages began to let loose a hail of magical energy. The smiths fell on the interlopers.

  And then the cinematic wound down. Jack found himself alone in the hall, except for his party. Presumably, all the demons had forged past him, into the breeched chamber. Without bothering to attack. Or probably, the game had expected him to clear out more of the demons before triggering the cinematic.

  His quest log updated.

  Objective added: save King Delling

  “Quick,” Varr urged. “We cannot let them reach the king.”

  Jack nodded. Not that he had any great love of Delling, of course. On the contrary, he had a very strong suspicion that Kalbidor would be doing the dwarven people a great service in offing their wayward monarch. But objectives were objectives.

  So he beckoned the city guard onward. “To the king.”

  “To the king,” they shouted back at him, and the clatter of dozens of dwarven boots sounded.

  Karag’s battle cry was more generic: “Kill them all.”

  And the goblins’ were far too specific in theirs. “Put out their eyes.”

  “Feast on their flesh.”

  Jack ignored the shiver that ran up his spine and pressed on, through the gaping maw in the great wooden doors, and into the chamber beyond.

  A scene of chaos, of carnage, awaited him. Everywhere he looked, everyone was bashing or slashing someone. Dwarves seized demons by their horns. Demons grabbed dwarves by their beards. Blades flashed, and magic ricocheted off the vaulted ceiling. The walls rumbled around them. Voices raised in anger, in bloodlust and in agony. Mages shouted curses, and demonic wizards answered with curses of their own. Fire and lightning split the air. An aura of death filled the room.

  Karag laughed out loud, crying, “Death!” as he charged into the fray.

  The goblins whimpered and hesitated in the doorway with Jack. Then they turned to the walls, scaling them effortlessly, it seemed, despite the almost perfect smoothness and shine of the stone.

  Jack had no time to marvel at their abilities, though. Varr and his dwarves were swarming past him; and battle awaited. So he forged into the thick of it. Here, the enemy ranks seemed to be made up of Revileds and Pestilences, by a ratio of two to one. Which was still more Pestilences than he’d faced so far.

  He’d looted enough armor boosters and goods to give him more of a fighting chance. He’d jumped two levels, too, and had skill points to distribute. But he’d take care of that after the fight. Right now, he focused on the enemies around him – and, despite his new advantages, bypassed the Pestilence when he could. It was one part old habits dying hard, and the other pure efficiency: Revileds were a lot easier to kill, and a lot more plentiful. And they could deal out death just as easily as the higher level baddies. So clearing the field of two-thirds of its opponents in about the same time it would take to clear out the other third just made sense.

  He and the city guard worked together. Varr ran a tight ship: he kept
his troops fighting in formation, and fighting without mercy. Jack almost – but not quite – pitied the demon horde that faced that indefatigable, fearless line of dwarves.

  The spell casters got the worst of it, as they had nowhere to hide in the open chamber. The dwarves had sufficient numbers to smash through their lines. For every dwarf one of the wizards caught up in magical bonds, three more were waiting to cut him down. It was like watching someone take a hammer to bone china.

  The warriors proved more resilient, of course. Their armor was thicker, their melee skills far more substantial. Plus, their ranks were bolstered by the Pestilences. Jack had seen only one Pestilence level wizard. But he counted two dozen Pestilences in heavy armor. And he figured there were more scattered throughout the room, where he couldn’t see them.

  And they made the Younglings and even the Revileds look like child’s play. Their hit points were over double that of the lower ranks, and their attacks nearly twice as powerful. And these high level baddies could cast spells. Even with his ring of warding, their paralysis spells nearly cost Jack his life – because unlike the five seconds the Younglings could manage, or the seven seconds the Revileds commandeered, every successful cast paralyzed him for a whopping fifteen seconds. Mercifully, the warriors couldn’t cast as quickly or as frequently as the mages – which meant both that Jack had more time to interrupt spells, and more time between unsuccessful attacks.

  Of course, without fail, he almost died every fourth cast or so – the twenty-five percent of the time that the spells succeeded.

  Still, with Varr and the city guard at his back, he hacked and slashed, ducked and dodged, his way through the throng.

  The black mages, meanwhile, rained down their own death and devastation on the demons. Terrible lightning bolts fried the Pestilences in their own armor, until the smell of well-cooked meat filled the air. Fireballs engulfed them, leaving behind the stink of burnt meat. And some kind of weird green spell melted the flesh off their bones, leaving nothing but a skeleton and a strangely fruity smell in the air.

  He was quite hungry, he realized. An odd realization in the middle of a battle, perhaps. But he hadn’t eaten in – well, he didn’t even know how many hours. And he’d certainly been working hard since – working up his appetite.

  So he decided he wasn’t a weirdo just because his mind kept going to food in the middle of all the death and chaos around him.

  He was thinking of food, and how much longer the fight might take, when he delivered the finishing strike to a hulking Pestilence warrior. All at once, as the demon tumbled to the ground, his view went dark, and a cinematic started to roll.

  He saw an overhead shot of the council chamber. He saw the goblins, hanging upside down from the vaulted ceiling, throwing rocks and spears down on the demons below. He saw the dwarves, crashing through the last of the horde, and Karag pounding a foe into the stone underfoot. He saw black mages conjuring electricity storms, and dwarven workman pummeling fallen demons with blacksmithing hammers. He saw Arath surveying the room for a target, and himself standing triumphantly over the Pestilence he’d just killed. He saw Advisor Moinn, peaking his head out from under the great table, and King Delling still in his seat at the head of that table.

  And he saw a lone demon still standing by himself in a sea of dead bodies, towering above everyone in the room. He carried a massive black steel hammer in his right hand. The teeth of some terrible monster had been bound by leather cording to one end. The other remained a huge, blunt crushing surface. Magical energy crackled in the open palm of his left hand. Kalbidor.

  Kalbidor raised the hammer high above himself, and brought it down hard on the council table. It split in two, and a shockwave of energy flew from the impact site, throwing everyone to the floor.

  Then the cinematic ended. Jack was sprawled on his back, blinking up at the ceiling. His health bar flashed, telling him he’d just lost twenty hit points.

  He groaned and pushed to his feet. Here it is…boss fight.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Jack had already seen Kalbidor’s power strike during the cinematic – the overhanded swing of his hammer, that caused a decent amount of damage but, more importantly, knocked everyone on their backsides. What he hadn’t picked up on was the duration of the stun effect: five seconds.

  Five seconds rarely seemed like an eternity. Five seconds at a red light? Too short to even be annoying. Five seconds in line? No wait at all. Five seconds on hold? Barely noticeable.

  But five seconds when a war hammer was coming for you? An eternity.

  He found that out the hard way the second time Kalbidor used his stun attack. The demon charged in close to him, and used his special attack. Then he brought that horrible hammer down, straight for Jack’s torso.

  His health dropped by over half. Then Kalbidor struck again.

  And Jack died.

  He respawned – mercifully – right as the cutscene rolled a second time. The game’s autosave feature had kicked in after he’d cleared the last Pestilence, so at least he didn’t have to repeat the entire day’s battles.

  He made a mental note that he needed to save more frequently, and a more pressing mental note that he really needed to keep distance between himself and the terrifying large psycho with the hammer.

  In this, at least, he found the packed room worked somewhat to his advantage: as long as he could keep enough warm bodies between himself and Kalbidor, he could get to his feet before the demon came within striking range.

  His first few minutes he spent in an admittedly cowardly fashion: fleeing before the demon lord. But it gave him an opportunity to understand Kalbidor’s fighting style.

  The demon relied mostly on his hammer, battering any unfortunate who came into range with a brutal efficiency. But he did call down lightning spells at regular, thirty second intervals. Bolts of electricity would arc out of the ceiling overhead, causing massive damage to anyone they hit.

  As for his power strike, that took two minutes to recharge between uses – two minutes that seemed to pass in the blink of an eye. Within that timeframe, as long as Jack could avoid getting flattened or zapped, he could unload a volley of ranged attacks. He just needed to be sure he had at least five seconds worth of distance between himself and Kalbidor before the recharge period elapsed.

  On the face of it, it should have been an easy fight. Jack just had to keep moving, and keep dumping attacks into his foe.

  But, of course, it was a boss fight. And nothing was that simple in a boss fight. For starters, Kalbidor must have a million hit points. Hyperbolic, perhaps, but in the moment that was the way it seemed to Jack. His most devastating attacks barely impacted the demon’s health meter. Kalbidor’s armor must have been off the charts, too, and for the same reason: nothing Jack launched at it made much of a difference.

  And not just Jack – the entire fighting force of mages, guards and smiths threw their all against the demon. And they might as well have been tickling him. He went on smashing and crushing them, killing and incapacitating dwarves everywhere. Karag took a blow to the had that put him out of commission, moaning on the ground. Arath absorbed a lightning bolt that stood his hair on end. The goblins ran around shrieking, dodging bolts and ducking under whatever cover they could.

  Jack ran through all of his arrows, and he drained and replenished his magicka time after time. Now he regretted selling off the death brambles, because another ranged weapon would have come in mighty handy at the moment.

  He started incorporating a new routine into his scramble around the room: searching the bodies of the fallen as he ran, dwarf and demon alike. It meant less time fighting, but at least now he had something to fight with. He harvested arrows and potions in small quantities – two arrows here, one there, then a magicka potion, and so on. He’d pause to fire the arrows, or gulp down the potion to pour as much frost damage as he could into Kalbidor. Then he’d scurry off to the next body.

  Jack’s greatest magical abilities lay in fir
e magic. His base fireball spell, and the accompanying flame traps and attacks he’d learned afterwards, were his most advanced. But Kalbidor didn’t register fire damage at all. Which made sense. He was a demon, after all. He presumably came from hell, where endless fire was the byword of the day.

  Still, it left Jack in a pickle. His frost magic was forty-six levels lower than fire. Which meant his attacks dealt relatively low damage for the amount of magicka they sucked up. And he’d already climbed a few levels in frost magic since the start of the fight.

  He didn’t have time for existential crises. But if he had, Jack would’ve taken a good, long look at his choices thus far in the game. Because right now, he was regretting a lot of them.

  Still, his scavenger rat technique – laboriously slow though it was – paid off. His health dropped, slowly but surely. Right as Jack blasted an arrow into the demon’s neck, a new cutscene rolled.

  Kalbidor staggered to his knees and looked for a moment like he might topple over. Green-black blood oozed from open wounds on his body. His breath came in stertorous gasps.

  Jack felt a measure of relief. Finally, it was done.

  But then Kalbidor raised palms heavenward and chanted something in a dark language. Fire sprang out of the ground, and seemed for a moment to consume him. Then, its blazing light relented, and the demon sneered and rose with a renewed purpose.

  The cinematic ended, and Jack groaned. Kalbidor’s health had finally reached the midway mark, but now his hammer glowed red with flames. Fire sprouted from his armor – and shot from his eyeballs.

  “Oh bother,” Jack said, which seriously understated his opinion on the matter. Not least of all since Kalbidor seemed to be able to use his fire vision about three times a minute – which completely disrupted his established routine of scavenging, attacking and fleeing between lightning and power strikes. Now, he had to worry about fire attacks, too.

  Jack decided to save the game. Just in case.

  Then, he took stock of the field, and his group. Karag was back on his feet now, presumably having downed a healing potion. Arath sheltered under what remained of the table, along with Moinn. He, at least, shot arrows at regular three second intervals when Kalbidor entered his view.