Unexplored - Into the Wilderwood: A LitRPG Virtual Fantasy Adventure, page 9
The elf’s eyes trailed along the chain. “How can I get you out of there?”
“The goblin, the one you slew. I think he had the keys.”
Cleave drug himself back to the pile of ash and searched through it. He found a keyring with two keys. He hobbled toward the woman. As he moved closer her beauty became more apparent.
Her face was slender and cheekbones high. Her nose was small and perfect. Her eyes gave off a bright green glow in the semi-darkness of the cavern, and when he drew closer, could see cat ears in her long, dark hair.
The young cat girl folded her hands and pressed them against her chest. “Oh, brave hero, thank you for rescuing me.”
The chain that held her was attached to the cave wall. He leaned down and unlocked the anklet that held her. She freed herself from the chain and rubbed her muscles.
The woman smiled up at him. “Oh thank you, I am in your debt.”
“No problem fair damsel,” Cleave said putting on an act of chivalry. “May I have your name?”
Faster than he could react the young woman scratched his cheek. Cleave backed away. “Hey why did -”
The world around him suddenly became a bit hazy. His muscles stiffened and he fell on his back. He tried to move them, but unlike the spell from before, whatever the catgirl did held him in place.
She fell on Cleave, her claws pressed to his neck.
“Thank you for saving me brave hero. If you hadn’t come along, I probably would have been demon chow. Sorry I have to do this, but I have a mission.”
The elf lay there, staring up at the woman’s beautiful eyes. He should have figured something like this would happen. Unexplored had been filled with one hardship after another. This was just one more mishap in a long line.
“Don’t think that I’m not appreciative, I am. I appreciate it a whole, whole bunch,” Her voice became very high pitched and hyper. “You won’t have to worry. The poison won’t kill you, it’ll just leave you stiff for a bit.”
Cleave’s gaze slid down her neck to her breasts barely held by her tank top. Down her smooth belly to her wide hips. Despite the situation he felt his member grow. The woman felt it and her black tail twitched.
She smirked. “Oh, see something you like?”
The young woman brought her hands up to her breasts and brushed her palm across them. This gesture brought the elf’s member to full erection. He knew he shouldn’t be feeling like this, but he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t deny the woman’s beauty and ever since he was a teenager, he had a thing for cat girls.
Her eyes flicked over his form. “You’re really sexy, and I bet you’re close to death after your fight with that goblin. I’ll give you a little boost so you can recover a few hit points. Do you want that?”
Cleave couldn’t move his face muscles, but he hoped that his eyes could convey his thoughts. YES YES YES ALL THE YES!
The cat girl hooked her thumbs around the waist of his pants and pulled them to his ankles. His member sprang up to meet her. The purple head leaked clear pre.
She took the heated shaft in her hand and gently squeezed it. “Wow, you’re cock is as stiff as the rest of you.”
The young woman giggled and took off her shorts.
Her thighs were creamy and her pussy was clean shaven. The labia winked at him and his cock jumped.
“Looks like you’re eager. I better not keep you waiting.”
The cat girl straddled his hips and spread her pussy lips wide. The labia kissed his cock and wet the tip. Electricity shot through his body.
The elf moaned as her velvety cunt enveloped his member. The swampy vice slid downward until Cleave’s dick was fully engulfed by her.
The catgirl gasped. She raised her tank top over her breasts and squeezed them. “Gods, it feels like I’m full.”
She rocked her hips forward, pushing the elf’s cock deeper into her. Her face twisted and cunt squeezed over the member. “It’s been so long since I’ve had a dick this far in me.”
Her cat ears twitched and tail swayed. Cleave’s eyes were transfixed to her pillowy breasts as they bounced. She ran her hands over them, squeezing the puffy nipples as her hips gently rocked.
Lightning spiraled in the elf’s stomach. He closed his eyes and let out small gasps as the head of his member came into contact with the back wall of her tight pussy. Even though he couldn’t move, Cleave felt his body quake with each of the woman’s thrusts.
Her movements were slow at first, sending gentle shots of pleasure into his body. But soon she became more impassioned. Her entire body undulated as she moved over him. Her downy furred hand explored his taut chest while the other teased her nipples.
The catgirl uttered a little purr and increased her tempo. Their hips made small wet slaps as they came together. The pleasure in the elf’s body increased. Even though he couldn’t move, his entire body was alive with energy.
Her pussy tightly squeezed his member. The head leaked copious amounts of pre, lubricating the young woman’s movements. She leaned down and nibbled on his neck, pressing the silken skin on her breasts against him.
She went faster. Each collision sent an almost unbearable excitement through his nerves. Cleave’s hands twitched and his fingers grew numb. He longed to hold those amazing tits grinding against him. He envisioned his tongue swirling around those soft pink nipples, sucking on them while his hands kneaded them.
The catgirl moaned aloud. Her thick, creamy thighs slammed into the elf’s. The catgirl looked into his eyes. Primal fury could be seen in her glowing orbs. She growled and roughly speared herself on his pulsating cock.
Each connection sent the elf’s head into a frenzy. His heart raced in his chest as the voluptuous cat girl unleashed her feral lust upon him. A little pool felt like it formed in his stomach. Each pound made it swirl and ripple outward, until it became a rampaging vortex.
The elf wanted it to last longer, but he had no control over his body. Her wild pounding quickly brought him to the apex of pleasure. A lightness rushed through his body and he let out a small grunt.
Cum gushed into the catgirl’s pussy. She pressed herself down on his member and allowed his seed to fill her womb. She held herself there, swiveling her hips, kneading all of the sperm from his scorching cock.
When he was finished she pulled herself off his member and pulled on her clothes.
“That was very nice,” she said, “I hope we get to do it again one day. Until then.”
The catgirl bolted from sight.
Cleave lay there, staring up at the black nothingness above him. If he had any control over his facial muscles, he’d be smiling.
He allowed his eyes to close and drifted to sleep.
He was awoken by a shake. He opened his eyes to find Tarka looking down at him.
“Cleave, Cleave you okay?”
Cleave groaned and stretched his stiff muscles. He carefully lifted his hand and rubbed his eyes. At least he could move again.
“Tarka,” Cleave said, his tongue heavy with fatigue. “I had a really rough fight.”
“I should say so,” the kobold’s voice was a bit terse. “Want to explain why you were asleep with your pants down?”
EIGHTEEN
“Well, at least you got a nice screw out of the deal,” Tarka said after Cleave finished telling his story.
“It was sort of nice. My time with you was better. I got to move my arms.”
“You flatterer, you,” the kobold said sarcastically.
“Is the goblet still there?”
“No, when Krug and I came down all we found was you with your pants down and some keys. Krug has the keys and is looking for something to stick them in. I stayed here with you to make sure you pulled through.”
“Hey guys, come here, I found something interesting,” Krug said from across the cavern.
The large humanoid stood in front of the small alcove where the chalice was. His party members made their way over and noticed he found a key shaped hole in the stone.
“Think I should try it out?”
“Let me do it. I can dodge a trap better than you,” Tarka said.
Tarka walked up to Krug and took the keys. He placed her into the alcove and moved away.
The kobold stuck one of the keys in the hole and turned it. It clicked, and a stone panel at the back of the alcove slid down. Behind it was a small wooden chest and a scroll case made of smoothed bone. Tarka pulled out these and handed the chest to Krug and the scroll to Cleave.
Krug opened the chest. “Hey look, gold.”
Krug showed the party the little pile of gold pieces inside.
“Damn, there has to be at least fifty in there,” Tarka said.
“Is that a lot?” Cleave said.
“It’s not bad,” Krug said, “it’s a lot more than I made as a guard, I can tell you that much.”
“Once we add this to the loot we get off those goblins we took out, we’re going to come out of here with one hell of a haul,” Tarka said.
“Would have been nicer if we had that goblet,” Cleave said.
“I’m just happy we got out of this alive,” Krug said.
“You’re not the only one,” Tarka said.
The group found an exit out of the cavern and made their way back to the entrance to the ruin. They went down and looted the remaining bodies of the goblins and collected several more silver and copper pieces. They sat outside the ruin and counted their treasure.
“So our total comes to 58 gold, 24 silver, and 416 copper,” Tarka said after they finished totaling the coins.
“That’s a ton of copper,” the elf said.
“That’s mainly what those stupid goblins carried,” Krug said.
Tarka clapped her hands together. “This is so awesome. Now maybe I can get some decent equipment.”
“Me too,” the elf said, “I like this dagger, but it would be nice to have something longer.”
“That’s what she said,” Krug smiled.
The rest of the party chuckled and gathered up their wealth.
“Hey, I meant to ask you, Cleave, are you holding on to -”
Tarka was cut off when she heard the sound of hooves coming toward them. Cleave knew there was trouble on the way. After spending a few days in this game world, he knew that the bad always followed any sliver of good. He turned his back to his party members and twisted the cap on the end of the scroll case. A piece of rolled up parchment fell into his hand.
Four men rode toward them on tall, brown horses. One of the men wore crimson robes and two were in dark red leather armor. The man in the lead wore shining plate mail and a large, barbute helmet.
He had to find a place to hide this scroll, but where? In a last second act of desperation he placed the parchment in the last place anyone would look for it if the party was robbed. He was going to try to hide some of the coins, but the approaching horsemen had already brought their mounts to a stop in front of them.
The man in heavy armor drew an arming sword. “Good evening, I’m Sir Padwin. We are here as a scouting party from the Crimson Kingdom. We are out to protect our majesty’s lands from criminals.”
Tarka bowed. “Good afternoon, sirs. We are here resting after a long day’s travels, we mean you no threat.”
“We beg to differ,” a scowl could be seen in the T shaped opening of the man’s helmet. “We suspect that you’re criminals trespassing on the king’s land.”
“We assure you we are merely travelers,” Cleave said.
“We don’t believe you,” said one of the men in leather armor.
“Indeed,” said the heavily armored knight. “It seems you are posing a serious threat. Please deliver forth your belongings into my saddle bags. Once you do, we will consider the threat you pose to our sovereign minimal and be on our way.”
“We will not allow you to rob us,” Krug placed a hand on his hammer.
The man in crimson robes threw up his hand and a bolt of lightning streaked from it. It slammed into the large warrior’s chest and left a large charred mark. He fell to the ground.
The mage, a frail man with a large scar across his face, smiled and directed his hand at Tarka.
“For your insolence we will be forced to search your persons,” Padwin said, “any resistance and I will tell Eltinforth to call forth more lightning.”
The standing adventurers nodded. The two men searched them, taking their coins, weapons, and other valuables. Tarka was left with only her frying pan and Cleave his damaged satchel. It took both men to carry away Krug’s hammer and shield.
Once they had been sufficiently robbed and their belongings tied to the men’s horses, Pedwin nodded to them. “In the name of the Crimson King, we bid you good day. We ask that you please leave the king’s land lest you be labeled as trespassers and be put to the blade for your crimes.”
Pedwin spurred his mount onward and the other men followed down a forest trail to the east. When they were out of sight, Tarka and Cleave ran to Krug. His armor was blackened by the lighting strike, but he looked like he was still alive.
Krug reached out with his hands and his friends helped him into a sitting position. He checked his status screen and all saw he was at half health. All were somber and looked at the ground.
“Gone, everything we had is gone,” Tarka said.
Cleave shrugged. “I’ve come to expect it from this game. Every time something good happens, something bad always comes to take it away.”
Krug checked his person. “They even took my hammer and shield, we’re screwed.”
“And our map. I’m going to have to start all over again on that thing. At least they left me my frying pan,” Tarka sighed, “I wonder why I keep coming back to play this game.”
“If it’s any consolation, they didn’t take everything.” Cleave reached into his breeches and drew out a rolled up scroll.
Tarka and Krug recoiled.
“Ew, why did you put that thing in your pants,” Tarka said.
“Like I said, this game has a habit of throwing bad luck my way. So I decided to keep at least one of our treasures safe.”
“You shouldn’t have done that, it might have bitten your dick off, knowing this game,” Krug said.
“That is precisely what I thought. But, I was willing to take a risk.”
“What does it say?” Tarka said, “Is it a treasure map or something?”
Cleave unrolled it and saw several symbols on it he didn’t understand. He showed it to the others.
“Looks like a spell of some kind,” Krug said.
“Or something that will blow up and kill us all,” Tarka said.
Cleave rolled the parchment back up and placed it in his damaged satchel.
Tarka growled. “I am so tired of this. I’ve worked so hard. Why does this always happen to me? Even before I met you guys, I’ve had shitty luck on this game. I’m so done!”
Krug nodded heavily. “I know, it sucks, but that’s the cutthroat nature of Unexplored. We’ll just have to work our way up from the bottom again.”
Cleave tentatively walked up to Tarka and placed his arms around her shoulders. She smiled slightly and returned the embrace.
After a few minutes she sighed. “I’m feeling really out of it right now. How ‘bout we log off and see if tomorrow changes our fortunes?”
The others agreed. They found a secluded area of the forest that they hoped would keep them hidden from any more bandits and logged out.
NINETEEN
Clint’s thoughts bounced between bleak and angry the following day. Were those robbers NPCs? With a name as cheesy as “The Crimson Kingdom,” it wouldn’t surprise him. Then again, it might have been a clan set up by some young teenager trying to sound threatening.
The more he thought about it, the more it made sense that those robbers were players. All of the computer generated encounters were difficult but winnable. Those guys were on a whole different level. It was completely unfair to have players that powerful robbing and stealing from lower level players. Unexplored should have a newbie friendly zone.
Clint channeled his frustrations into his work. He powered through all of his requests in record time. By the end of the day, he was already prepared for the Friday meeting and had already taken care of many of the other tasks that weren’t due until later in the week. When five rolled around his sense of accomplishment during the work day made him feel much better about yesterday’s injustice.
As he drove home, he thought about his situation in Unexplored. The encounters the game threw at players always seemed to give players a chance to succeed or get ahead in some way. He wondered if that would be the case in a situation like The Crimson Kingdom, presumably a guild that preys on weak players. Would there be any methods in the game to counteract this? It would be horribly unfair if there wasn’t.
Not building in a safeguard against something like that would keep new players out. Clint thought back to the time he talked his way out of trouble when stealing those potions from the shopkeeper. Unexplored had to be a pretty clever game to handle a situation like that relatively flawlessly, even with other players there to move the action along. There must be a way to counteract aggressive players like that, even for new players.
Clint got home, took care of all business, and went into his bedroom. He put on the VR band and Pleasure Synthesizer and logged into the game.
A moment later, Cleave opened his eyes in the secluded area of the forest where he logged out. There he found Tarka and Krug waiting on him. They looked grim.
“Hey guys. Is everything okay?” Clint said.
Krug sighed and shook his head. “We were talking about what happened yesterday. We’re trying to decide what we can do from here.”
“What did you guys come up with?”
“We were thinking of perhaps working for the town that we were in. Krug said that since he was in the town watch, he could put in a request to the QA team to join it again,” Tarka said.
“With any luck, they’ll let you guys join too. The game pays you money for each hour you’re on the watch and all you have to do is make sure players aren’t dicks in town. After a while, you can save enough to get weapons and equipment so we can go back to map making,” Krug said.
