Brad the Impaler: A LitRPG Adventure, page 15
“Hardly a benefit.”
“To him,” she said with emphasis, “the true benefit comes from learning the elementary functions of the game.”
“You think he’s playing the long game?”
She nodded.
“Okay. When do we start?”
“Now. You have the option to check your Inventory, but time is limited.”
We didn’t possess enough to worry about needing to check our equipment. A quest should give us the chance to gather loot, so I wanted to make sure I had space. I opened my menu, navigated to the shovel, and highlighted the box.
“Before you drop that item, sir—Brad,” she said, correcting herself before I could, “might I ask something of you?”
“Of course.”
She nodded sharply. “Then you might want to think about not doing so. What weapons do you have?”
I immediately saw the sense in her making me pause. “A branch, a stake, and that’s it.”
Her mouth tightened in the type of smile that said, ‘see, dummy, you should have already drawn the conclusion before you asked.’ “Holding onto the shovel going into this challenge might be to your benefit.”
I winked. “Sounds good. I’ll keep hold of it then.” I looked at Slash, who was watching us with his head laid between his thin legs. “I guess we’re ready.”
Fortune looked like she wanted to say something profound. Her mouth opened in an oblong oval, but she snapped it shut just as quickly. “Good luck, sirs.”
She seemed to need to use the epithet, so I didn’t give her any well-intentioned grief. “Thanks. What no—”
The entire world shimmered, cutting off my question. Beyond Fortune, standing in my vision, I’d been looking out over the field of grass, past Slash rolling around in it, and the trees beyond. Everything remained. The game hadn’t blinked it out. Instead, clear, thick rivers made everything undulate. It was like standing inside during a torrential downpour and watching torrents of rain run down your windows, except the physical world was doing the shimmering instead of a pane of glass.
“Whoa. Holy fuck!” Slash yelped. He was on his feet, racing to me. At least he’d had the wherewithal to make sure we weren’t separated when the game thrust us into the quest. He jumped into my arms. I was thankful I didn’t have any clothes but the loincloth when because I felt the distinct sensation of warm pee run over my arm and drip down my side.
“Sorry,” he said after a bout of whimpering.
“For what?”
He pawed at my chest. “For getting you dirty. I didn’t have time to clean my paws.”
“Not a problem,” I said, waiting for the end of the shimmering effect, which was just now beginning to dissipate. “Make sure you’re ready for anything, wee man. We don’t know what’s coming at us.”
“I was born ready,” Slash said and then quivered in my arms. He whipped his head side to side. “Where’s Fortune?”
I’d lost her when the shimmering started. “Not going to fall for your bullshit traps,” I said to the sky, having no idea if the game designers could hear me or not.
Newbies to gaming might not think about how dangerous it’d be to call on their guide in a moment like this. Non-gamers might prefer using their guide constantly, essentially walking them through the game. If their experience remotely resembled mine, they might have no clue how to navigate the nuances of an open world. When people leaned too heavily on a limited set of tactics, games with smart AIs adjusted. Darkworld might do that right from the start. This might be the first chance it had to bend me over sideways and remind me who ran the show.
Even if we could call on Fortune, I didn’t want to, and told Slash not to either. “We can’t distract ourselves from what’s about to happen. I’d prefer you minimized your map too. At least until we know what we’re facing.”
“How will we know where to go if I don’t use my map?”
“Let’s just take it a step at a time. Once we get going, we’ll figure out the safe spaces to open it. Cool?”
He puffed a breath out of his nose. “Fine.”
When my view of the world stopped shimmering, details came into view. We no longer stood in the middle of our hilltop forest. Instead, a wood floor from what looked like a medieval sweat shop lay under my feet. Stretching a football field’s length, the room was dark and dusty. A single source of natural light punched the space from somewhere above and unseen. The only other light sources came from twenty oil lamps on the floor and torches that leaned in sconces along the long wall, burning something that smelled of scorched fur. Every few feet, there were tall spinning wheels.
The air in the room held a musty scent of fur and dust. There had to be at least forty wheels being worked by a cast of NPCs, each wearing identical gray wool dresses, complete with bonnets. Each of the women could have been the same NPC repeatedly replicated for as diverse as they appeared. The soft whirring sounds of their work filled the room. They fed rough threads of yarn into the production line while small mounds more waited. None of them spoke. The women’s hands moved deftly along thread and wheel—they could likely do that with their eyes closed.
The rubble of their work littered the floor. Bits of yarn and clumps of wool were everywhere, scattered like peanut shells on the floor of my favorite Americana restaurant.
The NPCs were so focused on their work they didn’t even glance at us. Besides the dust, their programmed sense of responsibility filled the air. I had no idea what they were making. I don’t even know if they were actually producing anything but a visual testament to the gender roles assigned to the people of a medieval world.
Just then, I heard quiet whimpering coming from the far corner of the room beyond the natural light beaming down from above.
“What’s going on? I don’t see a challenge. Do you?”
I scratched Slash behind the ears. “I do—”
I didn’t have time to tell him I didn’t see any obvious challenge either when a rectangular box made of thick, rough planks of wood blocked my vision.
I stepped back instinctively.
Slash yipped. “What’s that? Oh, cool, Brad. This should be easy.”
“How did you read so fast?”
The box contained a message, written in rough black lettering like a hot poker had burned it into the wood.
QUEST!
NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK.
THE HEAD SEAMSTRESS HAS LOST HER NEEDLE. SHE CAN’T FINISH HER DAILY TASKS WITHOUT IT. HER MASTER WILL MAKE HER PAY IF SHE DOESN’T COMPLETE WHAT HE’S SET FOR HER TO DO. PROBABLY BY WHIPPING HER. DOES IT MATTER THAT SHE’S AN NPC? YOU WOULDN’T WANT THAT FOR HER, WOULD YOU? YOU’RE NOT THOSE KINDS OF GUYS.
FIND THE HEAD SEAMSTRESSES NEEDLE AND SAVE THE DAY, YOU HERO WANNABE.
“Well, that seems simple enough,” Slash said, squirming in my arms.
“Jesus, hang on before I drop you.” I bent so he could jump down without breaking a leg. “Let’s not get too cocky. I have a feeling there’s more to this than searching the room for a needle.”
Slash sneezed, his little ears flopping, one remaining turned upside down. “For an introductory quest? I don’t think we need to make this a bigger deal than it is. Don’t worry, Brad.” He lowered his head and sniffed at the floor. “Detective Slash is on the case.”
He swept his sniffer back and forth as he moved forward. I watched the closest NPC as he worked. She didn’t seem to notice the little dog. “Careful, buddy.”
“I am,” he said, his tail standing straight up. “Now, let me concentrate.”
“How are you going to find a needle by smelling a dusty floor?”
“You’re not the only one with special skills.” He stopped after just a few feet, pulled his paw up, bent at the joint. “Already have something.”
The tiny pup swerved through the room with efficiency now. His lithe body darted from wool pile to wool pile. He stopped at the occasional NPC, smelling their robe. He yapped at one for some reason, but moved on when she didn’t react.
“I’ll be damned.” I smiled as I watched my wee man work, feeling guilty that I’d thought the Sleuth Ability might have been a secondary one when we were first forced to choose.
We were halfway through the room already. Slash was making quick work of the challenge. The quest was a nuisance, one designed to help someone whose goal was to put a very premature end to my life. If Slash’s skill could put this behind us in a matter of moments, it’d almost feel like a moral victory.
“Got anything?” I didn’t worry about disturbing the seamstresses. None of them had reacted to our presence, and if they hadn’t by now, we obviously weren’t bothering them. I wasn’t even sure they registered our existence. Like many NPCs, they were here to fill the room and create a game environment. Still, I’d keep my eyes on them.
“Someone was here,” he answered without picking up his head. “Not a seamstress. This person doesn’t smell like these women. The visitor smells different. The seamstresses’ robes all smell identical. Like the tacos you’d leave for me.”
“That was my lunch. I’d only left it out because I was taking them to work after I took a shit. You weren’t supposed to eat them.”
“Community property,” Slash said, suddenly bolting to the left behind an NPC whose skirts were spread in a pool of fabric like a slowly melting clump of ice cream.
“Got something?”
“Yep.”
I hurried to catch up. My skin raked with a chill of fear when Slash yelped.
I sprinted around the woman with the pooled skirt and almost ran into the wee man as he raced my way. Only a last-minute dodge on his part saved us from a collision he would have lost.
“Run, Brad!”
I didn’t get a chance to ask what I was supposed to run from. Slash took the corner around the pooled dress woman, his hind legs skidding out from underneath him. He yelped, not in pain but panic, and was back on his feet, racing away and out of sight.
From the dark recesses of the room, something was glowing and pulsing with lime-green light.
“Stay, Slash!”
The light didn’t emit noise or heat. Its light wasn’t even strong. I crept closer. Far behind me, back to where we’d entered the room, Slash barked. The whimpering woman hidden toward the back of the room continued her sorrowful song.
“Give me a second.” I moved closer, interested in seeing why the light had freaked him out.
Embedded in the wall, an oblong crystal revealed itself as the source of the light between each of the pulses.
“Don’t go closer, dummy!”
When I bent to inspect it, the crystal’s light exploded outward, blinding me. I fell back onto my ass as I tried to shield my eyes. Talk about a sudden flashback to the chest event that pulled us into this weird new reality.
I was remotely aware of Slash’s barking, but was too busy scrambling away from the weird crystal before it blew my face from my skull. So distracted, in fact, I didn’t notice the new sound coming from all around the room.
Slash’s barking pitched.
The pool-dress woman was no longer sitting, working her wheel. She was on her feet. In fact, ‘she’ wasn’t even a ‘she’ anymore. Her pale skin and tired but youthful features had melted away, replaced by yellow, leathery scales. Her face, haggard before middle-age, had been replaced by that of a snake. No ears. Eyes, once human and drained, were cold and yellow. The snake woman opened her mouth to hiss. Sharp fangs filled her maw.
She writhed, growing taller. The gray wool dress fell, revealing a snake’s body. Nothing about her previous feminine curves remained. Three feet wide, this was a solid threat.
“Shit!” I rolled just as she struck.
Wood splintered, her strike fracturing the heavy planks.
Slash barked and yapped.
On my feet, I still couldn’t see him beyond the wheels and snakes. All forty seamstresses hissed and writhed, like the dancing snakes you’d see snake charmers entertaining people with. Except creepier and far, far more dangerous.
“Get out, Slash!”
“Not without you, dummy!”
“Go!”
“No!”
“Shit.”
Another strike, a narrow miss.
The air sizzled with tension. Their jaws snapped. Fangs smacked. Lightning-fast strikes. I was truly fucked.
Slash barked, racing side to side along the perimeter of the front of the room, not running, but also not jumping into the fray.
“Not working, buddy,” I shouted as I dodged another strike and pushed over the snake’s spinning wheel. It toppled onto the snake’s tail, sending the beast convulsing with anger and pain. “They’re not distracted.”
“Because they’re stupid snakes.” He barked again, obviously not getting the message that he was doing nothing to help.
Avoiding their constant strikes as I danced among them, trying to stay alive long enough to get to the front of the room kept me busy. Too busy to figure out how in the hell I could help him help me.
The oddity of the problem was that as I slashed and dashed in the spaces between the rows of wheels and piles of wool, the snakes didn’t pursue. It was as if they were anchored to their wheel in some twisted video game commentary about the injustices of slave labor.
A backward leap from one strike almost brought me within range of another. I avoided that by the sheer luck of not being provided footwear in the game. One foot shot out from under me, and I went down. The second strike snapped the air where I’d been seconds before. Crashing to my side treated me to a rude splintering pain in my side and hip, but it kept me alive as both snakes’ heads slammed together.
The pair flopped to the ground. Unconscious or dead, it didn’t matter. I was up, leaping over them and snagging an oil lamp off the floor.
“Slash, do you know where the needle is?” I asked, swinging the lamp and tossing it at the nearest snake’s pile of wool.
“By the glowing gem thingy.”
“The crystal?”
The lamp crashed to the floor. The snake hissed, striking at it and clanging its teeth on the black iron lid.
“Yes!”
The lamp was on its side, leaking its contents across the floor, and, more importantly, the wool. Oil and flame mixed. The wool caught. A flash of flame burst into the snake’s face. It cried out, pulling back a moment too late. Its scaly face was blackened. The snake whipped itself back and forth as if that would extinguish the pain of being burned.
“Is it there?”
“Yes, Brad.” He said my name as if I was an annoying coworker, the type who sent an endless string of emails asking if you’d seen their findings report that had nothing to do with their actual job. The type that insisted on following up even when you informed them and answered affirmatively the first damn time.
I grabbed another oil lamp by the wheel of the first dead snake. I flung that down the line, toward the next living one.
“Get it!”
“But the snaaaaaakes,” he howled.
“Get the needle!”
More space spread around me as I took out snake after snake with my oil lamp attacks. The creatures were either too stupid, arrogant, or unfortunate to move from their spots by their wheels.
Smoke filled the air. I hacked. “Hurry!”
A few more oil lamps caught fire. The smoke was thick. I’d killed all the snakes along Slash’s path to the needle. Those remaining were tiny clusters at the front and back of the room along the far side.
The fires crackled so loudly I no longer heard the whimpering from the back of the room, and could barely make out Slash’s shout of celebration at retrieving the needle.
“Got it!”
“Come here,” I said, waving to him.
He came over, the needle in his mouth. He dropped it. “I want to leave.”
“We have to find the head seamstress.” I looked toward the far half of the room. Six snakes stood between us and where I originally heard the whimpering. I scooped up the closest lamps while I waited for Slash. I nodded to the open floor beyond the nearby wheel. “We’re going down that side and we’re killing the snakes as we move.”
He blinked rapidly, puppy tears caught in the corners of his eyes. “What about the other ones?”
“Leave them.”
“What? No way. They need to die.”
“Yes, way. I’m not killing them if they don’t interfere with us getting that needle to its destination.”
He threw his head skyward, his lips pursing in an adorable howl. “But we neeeeeed to kiiiiiiilllllll themmmmmm.”
“Not happening. Come on.”
I grabbed the discarded needle. We slunk down the line as I tossed the lamps ahead. I’d like to claim my throwing accuracy was ridiculously impressive, but the fact of the matter was the piles of wool were too large to miss. Our work was quick and ugly. Six more dead snakes and we’d reached the end of the room.
We approached carefully. None of the snakes bothered us. The air was becoming toxic with smoke. My throat felt raw.
As we approached the corner, the darkness peeled back, revealing a woman standing in the corner, facing the wall. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She clutched a piece of tattered cloth between wrinkled hands. Her face said she might be forty, but her hands, calloused from decades of unforgiving work, told a different story.
“Ma’am, were you looking for this?” I asked, offering her the needle.
Hesitantly, she turned. Her eyes drifted to my hand. She blinked away her tears. The corners of her mouth quivered into a smile that continually slipped. In a raspy voice, she said, “You… you found it.” Her smile became permanent when I kept my hand open, the needle laying across my palm, until she took it. “Thank you, kind sir.”
“Hey, I’m the one who found it,” Slash said.
“Not a competition, wee man.”
“Is too.”
BOOM!
WHO SAID SEWING WAS FOR OLD PEOPLE?
QUEST COMPLETE! YOU’VE FOUND THE SEWING NEEDLE OF VALANA AND EVEN HELPED A HELPLESS PERSON. WHAT A GOOD GUY.
+150 XP
