Succubus 8 (Riddles And Revenge): A LitRPG Series Page 10

  “Just resurrect my damn crew!” he roared.

  I looked at him silently for a second… then snorted in amusement.

  “What?” he demanded.

  “I was just thinking about when we flew on the Revenge to the Northern Barrens, and we fought the ice goblins before their king let us travel through his territory to get to the frost elves. Remember when I thanked him, and he spat and said, ‘May you and Saykir kill each other’?”

  “I remember,” Krug said sourly.

  “And remember what you said to me?”

  Krug didn’t answer.

  “You said, ‘If anyone talked to me like that, I’d kill him.’ Remember?”

  Krug just glowered at me silently.

  “The goblin king insulted me, yeah… but this warlock killed you, your men, and took your ship, and you’re not going to do a goddamn thing.”

  Krug looked like he wanted to skin me alive, he hated me so bad.

  I didn’t care.

  “So, what… everything you’ve ever said was just a bunch of bullshit?” I asked. “Were you always a scared-ass little bitch, or did it only happen after you died once?”

  Krug’s hand moved to the handle of his sword.

  I squared off against him and stared him straight in the eye. “Go ahead, motherfucker – do it. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re standing in a fucking graveyard, and I don’t MIND dying a million deaths if it means ripping your ass to shreds just once.”

  Krug kept his hand on his sword…

  …but he didn’t draw.

  “Bring my men back,” he said in a monotone voice.

  “Fine,” I said, equally without emotion. “I’ll do it. After the rest of us talk. Go stand over there in the street with the rest of the gutless cowards.”

  Krug’s hand gripped the sword even tighter, and his jaw clenched –

  …but he walked away, out of the graveyard and into the street.

  I just watched him go in disgust.

  Although I’d meant every word I’d said, I knew it wouldn’t take a million deaths to beat Krug. It might not even take dying once.

  When I’d initially freed Krug from Tarka’s service, she’d had 50,000 hit points – so roughly Level 55 or so. I couldn’t remember.

  As a demon enthralled to her, Krug would have been a Level 55, too. And once he was freed, he would have stayed a Level 55.

  At the time, I was Level 10, but now I was at 40. I was massively more powerful, and thanks to leveling up and various Health-boosting trinkets, I had almost 30 times more hit points than I’d had back then.

  In a one-on-one fight, I could probably take him… eventually. At most I would die once or twice. And if Meera, Alaria, and Stig joined the fight, we would grind him into dust in seconds.

  Of course, as an NPC inside the game, Krug didn’t know any of that.

  He probably thought I wasn’t much more than the dipshit he’d known when I’d first stepped foot on the Revenge.

  So my little display of anger must have made some kind of impression on him.

  “Ian,” Alaria whispered.

  I looked over at her.

  She jerked her head to the side, down at Meera.

  Ohhhhhh shit.

  I’d just had a dick-measuring contest and called Krug a coward to his face…

  …in front of someone who had literally been crucified, and very nearly tortured to death.

  If you’d looked up ‘insensitive’ in the OtherWorld dictionary, I’m pretty sure my picture would have been next to the definition.

  I knelt down in front of Meera. “Look – that was just me and Krug being assholes to each other. Old grudges and all that. I don’t… expect…”

  “Expect what?” Meera said darkly.

  “Well, I mean… given what you just went through…”

  She turned her head slightly and glared at me out of the corners of her eyes. “Why don’t you stop being a wimp and just spit it out?”

  Whoa.

  I almost laughed. “Okay… what do you want to do?”

  Meera’s features filled with rage. “I want to find the son of a bitch… and I want to KILL him.”

  I smiled.

  That’s my girl.

  I looked up at Eluun. “What about you?”

  Her gaze was steady. “Like the pirate, I don’t seek revenge on the warlock… but unlike him, I want to make sure no one else will ever suffer at his hands.”

  I nodded, then looked at Stig. “I won’t make you do anything on this one. If you don’t want to go, you can stay here with Krug.”

  Stig sighed heavily. “…I’ll go.”

  “Thanks. I’ll get you some booze on the way.”

  He brightened considerably. “Thanks, boss!”

  I looked up at Alaria, but before I could open my mouth –

  “Don’t even ask,” she warned me, her arms crossed over her chest.

  I grinned as I stood up. “I’m assuming that’s a ‘yes.’”

  “Hell yes, that’s a ‘yes.’”

  I kissed her, then we both reached down and lifted Meera to her feet.

  “Are we leaving right now?” the angel asked.

  “First I have to resurrect a bunch of pirates.”

  14

  I went over to Krug, who was sulking in the street outside the gates of the cemetery. Without a word, I set about bringing back his crew.

  All it involved was a push of a button on my menu – simple, right?

  I had a lot of people to resurrect, so I hit three icons at once.

  Not the best choice, in retrospect.

  The trio of demons came back screaming and flailing in panic.

  I was so distracted that I didn’t see the real problem until it was too late.

  Shee – the Revenge’s first mate, and who looked like Quasimodo and a lemon had a genderless love-child – opened her mouth wide, reared back, and let loose.

  As a banshee (a demon version, not your typical ectoplasmic Irish lass), Shee’s attack was her sonic scream – and it was particularly devastating.

  Especially at point-blank range.

  A freight train horn blasted inside my ears as a massive force SLAMMED into me and hurled me backwards thirty feet.

  By the time I stopped skidding across the street like a rock across a pond, a third of my hit points were gone.

  I lifted my head from where I lay on my back and yelled, “GOD DAMN IT, SHEE, IT’S ME!”

  My ears were still ringing, and I could barely even hear my own voice. I sounded more like Charlie Brown’s unseen teacher in those old cartoons: BWA WAH MUH MWEE, IH MWAH!

  Shee’s eyes bugged out, and she stared at me in confusion. “…Ian?!”

  Of course, I couldn’t actually hear her say ‘Ian’ because of the ringing in my ears – I just saw her lips form the word.

  Thank goodness I had a healer right there and didn’t have to Soul Suck anybody to replenish my Health. Eluun bathed me in glowing light, and after 30 seconds I was back to normal.

  By then the other two pirates had chilled out, too.

  Krug was trying to explain the situation. “We died. He’s bringing us back.”

  “Where are we?!” Shee asked.

  “Exardus.”

  “What happened to the bastard who killed us?”

  “He and Tarka took the Revenge.”

  Shee let out a string of curses, then looked up at me as I walked back. “Sorry about that, Ian.”

  “Yeah, well, let’s make sure it doesn’t happen again when I bring your buddies back, okay?”

  We came up with a plan to prevent more freak-outs: resurrect one demon at a time, let his shipmates calm him down, and tell him that we would explain everything once the entire crew was assembled.

  It took a while, but probably less time than having to deal with a bunch of magical blasts to the face.

  As I worked, the newly resurrected demons were overjoyed to see their old drinking buddy Stig. There were a lot of ho
ots and backslaps all around.

  Once the entire crew of the Revenge was assembled, it looked like the cast of The Muppet Show had dressed up for a skit about pirates. Orange, red, blue, purple, yellow, and green faces stared up at me from under tri-corner hats and polka-dot bandanas. There were body shapes of all kinds – tall and skinny, short and squat, gigantic and buff. There were earrings, eye patches, peg legs, hook hands, and every other pirate cliché you can imagine.

  Krug explained about Tarka, the warlock, and the Revenge, which drew outraged cries.

  “Let’s keelhaul the bitch – and her bastard!” one of the pirates roared, which was followed by a chorus of approval.

  I didn’t want to point out that if they’d gotten slaughtered that easily before, nobody was getting keelhauled unless it was them.

  “We need a new ship!” another shouted.

  More shouts of Aye!

  Shee looked up at me. “Yer comin’ with us, right, Ian? It’ll be like old times!”

  “No, I’m not.”

  The pirates looked aghast.

  “What?! Why not?!”

  “Because I’m going after the warlock,” I replied.

  “But so are we!” Shee protested.

  “You might want to talk to your captain about that.”

  All the pirates stared at Krug, who gave me an eat-shit-and-die look before he addressed the crew. “It’s pointless. We’ll just get slaughtered again.”

  Everyone howled in protest.

  “What?!”

  “No!”

  “But the Revenge – ”

  “We can easily get another ship,” Krug said. “The shipyards of Exardus are full of them. But we’re not going off on a suicide mission.”

  “Ian’s going after them!” Shee shouted.

  “Ian’s a fool,” Krug growled.

  “Well, fool or not, if Ian’s going after them, then I’m going with him!”

  There was a loud cheer from the crowd.

  For a second my heart soared –

  And then it came crashing back down to earth.

  “You swore an oath of loyalty to me when I became captain of the Revenge,” Krug snarled at his crew. “You swore by the Seven Hells.”

  Ohhhh shit.

  This was the first I was hearing of this particular promise. It must have happened after I was kicked off the Revenge.

  But I’d seen other oaths by the Seven Hells. For instance, Alaria had made the crew swear to take us to six destinations in exchange for freeing them from Tarka’s control.

  What it meant, though, was that the entire crew had made an unbreakable promise.

  Which was smart on Krug’s part. It avoided any possibility of a mutiny.

  Shee and the others went quiet. They knew they had no choice but to obey.

  “You can release them from the oath,” Alaria said.

  Every single eye turned to her.

  For a second I held out hope –

  “No,” Krug said coldly.

  “But Cap’n – ” one of the pirates protested –

  “NO!” Krug roared. “And that’s FINAL!”

  The crew muttered angrily, but no one spoke up again.

  “Now come with me and we’ll go get another ship,” Krug ordered.

  Then he turned his back on me and Alaria and walked away.

  The pirates all looked at me mournfully… and at Krug resentfully…

  But in the end, they had to follow their captain.

  Shee looked up at me with real sorrow in her eyes. “…I’m sorry, Ian…”

  I gave her a half-smile. “It’s okay. I’m sure we’ll meet again someday.”

  The yellow demon nodded, then waddled off with her crewmates.

  Dozens of pirates stopped by and murmured their thanks for resurrecting them. Most apologized for not going with me. I told all of them that I understood and that I knew they had no choice.

  Then they continued down the street towards the shipyards, off to steal a new ship and start a new life.

  “Well, it seems we’re on our own,” Alaria said.

  “Good,” Meera sneered. She hated demons, after all, so the prospect of spending time around 50 of them was probably the most unappealing thing she could come up with… short of being crucified again.

  “Shall we depart, then?” Eluun asked.

  “In a bit,” I said. “First I need to go see someone real quick.”

  “About what?” Alaria asked.

  I glanced back at the cross in the graveyard. I couldn’t see the plaque from here, but the words were burned into my brain.

  “A riddle.”

  15

  The first thing I did after logging out of the game was to head for the writing department.

  The door was locked. I could hear a single person speaking inside, and though it sounded pleasant, there was a very ‘corporate’ tone to the voice – like it was addressing a roomful of people, some of them very important.

  Not the type of thing you wanted to interrupt for questions about riddles.

  An intern I recognized passed by me in the hall.

  “Russians?” I asked him as I pointed at the locked door.

  “Da, comrade,” he said with a smile, pleased with his joke.

  So I headed for the art department instead.

  Once I got there, I had to walk around a bit. The place was gargantuan – dozens of rows of cubicles.

  The art department dwarfed QC’s personnel by a factor of ten, at least. The only bigger department in the company was Programming.

  Part of the reason it was so huge was all the different types of artists: concept artists, character artists, background artists, architectural modelers, texture artists, lighting specialists… and that was just the job titles. Then you had the wacky selection of personality types, from the speed freaks in day-glo clothes to the mopey hipsters in black. It was like the Island of Misfit Toys, except they all had computer terminals and were painting digital pictures.

  As I was walking along, I noticed something that Luna had mentioned in the cafeteria: an awful lot of cubicles with full-color printouts of tits tacked to the walls.

  They were obviously non-human. Green, blue, yellow, purple, red… but all of them were big and bountiful, with about a hundred differently shaped areolas and nipple sizes.

  Cubicle after cubicle filled with boobs.

  And then… the dongs.

  A single cubicle was covered top to bottom with dick pics, also non-human: green, blue, yellow, purple, red. There was just as much customization to detail as the breasts, what with length, girth, ball size, vein-iness, pubic hair, and lack thereof… not to mention you had your full-on softies, your rock-hard erections, and everything in between.

  Oh – and the proportions ranged from porn star to Incredible-Hulk-sized.

  Jesus.

  The only thing that kept me from walking on by was the very cute woman sitting in the cubicle. She wore another indie rock t-shirt, tight and bright yellow this time, and was listening to music on earbuds. As she moved her graphics pen over the digital touchscreen she was working on, her long pigtails swayed alluringly with every tilt and turn of her head.

  I tapped her shoulder.

  “What?” she said in an annoyed voice as she spun around in her office chair –

  And then immediately brightened when she saw me, like someone had just shown up with cake and a bottle of tequila.

  It almost made up for the wall of dick pics.

  “Hey!” she said cheerfully as she pulled out her earbuds. “You came!”

  “Only after the lady does first,” I said.

  “Hahahaha!” she laughed – more of a giggle. A very hot giggle. Then she waggled a finger at me like naughty naughty. “Is HR around? Wouldn’t want them to hear that.”

  “As long as I’m standing here, I don’t think I have to worry about HR saying a thing.”

  “Huh?” she asked, then swiveled around and saw what I was looking at. “Ohhh
hh. Yeah, as long as this is your backdrop, any offensive comment you make would sort of be like a fart in a hurricane, huh?”

  I laughed. “I’d say that’s about right.”

  “Well? What do you think?” she asked as she swiveled back around to look at me.

  “I think it looks like a fantasy-themed gay porno site.”

  She giggled again. “That’s great – I need to remember to tell HR that if they ever complain. I’ll tell them I’m celebrating LGBTQ diversity.”

  “Well, you certainly have the whole rainbow flag color thing going.”

  “Mm-hm.”

  I raised one eyebrow. “It certainly is a… big collection.”

  “Don’t worry. It’s not a threat to you.”

  She’d said it in an odd, smoky voice, very unlike her normal way of speaking.

  I narrowed my eyes. “That sounds familiar.”

  She grinned. “Fight Club. Marla. When Tyler Durden comes over to keep her up all night.”

  In the movie, Brad Pitt arrives at Helena Bonham Carter’s apartment to keep her awake after she takes too many sleeping pills. While he’s there, he sees a dildo, which he gives a little shake by bumping the dresser it’s sitting on – at which point Marla says the line Luna had just quoted: Don’t worry. It’s not a threat to you.

  “You do know what Tyler and Marla end up doing to keep her up all night, right?” I asked.

  She smiled. “Uh huh.”

  And then she just let it hang there.

  Jesus.

  I was starting to get turned on.

  Then she kind of ruined the sexual tension with a detour into nerdy minutia. “Of course, it’s Jack she fucks, really, not Tyler Durden. Jack is Edward Norton, and Tyler is – ”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen the movie,” I said sardonically. “So are these Tyler Durden dicks, or – ”

  “Don’t worry, I know the difference between reality and fantasy.” She paused. “Do you?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means a guy who spends 72 hours at a time inside a fantasy world, with an extremely well-endowed fantasy woman, could be forgiven for having… unrealistic expectations.”

  “I know the difference between fantasy and reality,” I said.

  “Yeah? Is that why you hang out in fantasy so much more? Because reality’s disappointing?”