Entry Fourteen

  Obligatory Newbie Mobs

  I followed Catzilla’s tracks for the-gods-knew how long. Half an hour? Forty minutes? I kept waiting for Thomas or Florian to yank me back to the good ol’ RL, but it didn’t happen. Don’t get me wrong, I was getting bona fide freaked out, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I had no other option but to carry on and try to enjoy myself.

  Gradually, I became aware of a distant rumbling sound. As I continued through the forest, the sound resolved itself into the dull roar of a waterfall or maybe some rapids. At about the same time, I lost the cat tracks. I think the terrain changed, got harder or something, as the indentations that marked the creature’s passage faded and then disappeared altogether.

  Still, I had something else to follow—the sound of a river. Sensing that I might finally be closing in on the quest objective, I slowed and activated stealth. In other words, I crouched down and tried not to snap as many twigs and stuff as I walked. Hey, Level 0 Hunter, remember?

  I stealthed it through another couple patches of trees before I pushed through a clump of particularly thick bushes and nearly fell to my death. On the other side of the bushes, literally five inches from my right foot, was a sheer drop of about thirty feet or so. A fast-moving river, flanked by flat, rocky beaches, cut through the center of a deep ravine. Oh, and on my side of the river, there was a group of goblins—Level 1, trope-o-rific, newbie mobs.

  At least they looked kind of like goblins. There were seven or eight of them—five feet tall, greenish grey in color, and absolutely, positively hideous. All of them were misshapen, with heads too big or too small or lopsided, crooked backs, bloated stomachs, one or both arms grotesquely shriveled. Their faces were twisted and deformed, and their heads and bodies were covered with rabid clumps of gristly hair. Plus, I could smell them. Olfactory realism, remember? These things reeked like two-month-old sushi topped with fetid swamp mire compote, and that was from thirty feet away.

  On second thought, maybe they weren’t goblins. I wasn’t sure what these things were, but they made Quasimodo look like he could win People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive award.

  “Hide.”

  I was doing exactly that, slowly backing into the underbrush, when I heard the voice. I froze.

  “Down. Now!”

  It was a girl’s voice, but I had no clue where she was. I looked around and saw no one. The goblin things were all, thankfully, busily minding their own disgusting business—spearfishing, eating the heads off raw fish Gollum-style, crapping in the river upstream from the spear fishers, etc. Gag me with a spoon. Like, totally.

  “Who are you?” I whispered, staring down at the monsters, willing them not to look up at me. “Where are you?”

  “Never mind that, weaver. Do not let them see you,” the girl commanded.

  I dropped to my hands and knees and tried scooting back into the bushes behind me. It didn’t go well. They were prickly, and the branches were poking me in my leather-armored backside.

  “Quickly,” Whoever-She-Was admonished.

  “I can’t. They’re all pokey. And how am I hearing you if I can’t see you? Invisibility? Telepathy?”

  “I am heart-whispering,” she answered with an implied duh. “Have you never whispered before?”

  “Uh, no, not like this. Look, where are you?” I kept shoving myself backward, and the stupid bush kept shoving back. One of its branches whipped forward and sliced my neck. “Ouch!”

  “Shhh! Weaver, I swear upon the name of the king that if you ruin this for me, I will punish you.”

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  She sounded like she meant it too. I had backed up a good couple feet away from the ledge, so I was sure the monsters below didn’t have a direct LOS to me.

  “Look straight forward,” she said, heart-whispering into my brain again.

  I did so and saw a large, white feline watching me from the opposite side of the gorge. She was pacing back and forth a dozen feet back from the edge, out of sight from the creatures below. It was Catzilla, but this time, I got a much better look at her. She was almost the exact shape of a panther but larger, and she wasn’t solid white, as I had first thought. Light-pink streaks ran down her flanks, darkening into pastel purples near her tail. Her eyes were a killer, pale shade of red, and she had a braided, ribboned mane that cascaded down her right flank almost to her belly. The cat gave me a regal nod.

  I waved back dumbly, still trying to pick my jaw up from the ground. The cat was the most beautiful animal I’d ever seen. “You’re the one, uh, whispering to me?”

  “Who else?” she replied. “Now move. Leave this area before you interfere with my mission.”

  I tried shoving my butt back yet again, and again the rubbery shrubbery resisted my efforts. “Well,” I actual-whispered in reply, “I’d love to leave, but for one thing, I’m stuck. For two, I’m on a mission. This is gonna sound cliché, but I’m trying to save a princess.”

  The massive cat stopped pacing and stared at me. “Oh, really? And what is the name of this imperiled princess you seek to protect, assuming you eventually best the Shornberry bush behind you?”

  I ignored her jab and shook my head. If this game had dialogue choices to pick from, I would have opted for the cautious/guarded option. Catzilla was gorgeous and certainly didn’t look evil—except for her red eyes—but appearances could be deceiving. Besides, predators had to eat too. No bad on them.

  “Sorry, you see, I’m on a very secret mission. I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

  I got the unmistakable mental equivalent of a scoff from her. “This unnamed princess, why are you so sure she needs saving?”

  I shrugged as I crawled forward again toward the edge of the ravine. If I couldn’t go backward, I was going to have to try to scoot sideways or something.

  “They always do. Game devs don’t have that much imagination. The whole thing is kind of sexist, I agree. I’m just saying.”

  I pulled forward some more, stood halfway up, and twisted awkwardly around to face the stupid Shornberry bush. I grabbed a fistful of branches, careful not to impale my hand on any of the large thorns, and gingerly pulled them to the side.

  As I did this, my left foot slid back and found open air. On its way toward that open air, it also found a small rock… and kicked said rock backward. The rock, like my foot, found open air, though not for long. It next found the side of the ravine and clattered noisily downward. I stared at it, freezing as the damned thing bounced one final time and landed in the lap of one of the pseudo-goblins.

  “No! You idiot!” Catzilla whisper-yelled at me as several of the monsters below leaped to their feet and glared up at me. For my part, I waved and gave them a big smile. They erupted in weird, guttural growl-barking as they snatched up their weapons—a bunch of crude but nasty-looking spears and short blades—and started scrabbling up the stone wall below me.

  “They are excellent climbers. Flee! I want them alive,” Catzilla yelled into my mind.

  “I want me alive! Whose side are you even on?” I shouted back, lunging through the obstinate undergrowth. I finally broke through to the other side, scratching the crap out of both my arms, and bolted eastward along the ravine.

  “The other way! Go the other way!”

  “Blarg! Make up your mind!” I spun around and sprinted past the bush again, wishing for the third time that morning that I had a sword. That would be super neat, huh? Handy even. I’d settle for a mace or even a dagger, anything more deadly than a stern glare, which was currently the deadliest weapon in my arsenal.

  I reflected on one other thing in those milliseconds. Pain. The scratches on my butt, arms, and neck hurt. They stung like real cuts. I know… duh. But there’s just one thing. This. Was. A. Game! Cuts weren’t supposed to actually physically hurt!

  “Run faster, weaver!”

  “Why do you keep calling me that?” I could hear barked shouts behind me now. Some of the pseudo-goblins evidently reached the top of the ravine wall. She wasn’t kidding. Those things must have been parkour ninjas despite their deformities. That was some game logic for ya.

  “Are you not a wielder of the weave? I can sense your strength through our bond.”

  “The weave, huh? Let me guess—energy field created by all living things, surrounds us, binds us, yada, yada, yada?” I glanced to my left and caught glimpses of Catzilla pacing me from the far side of the ravine.

  There was mental silence for a few heartbeats. “No. Not even close. What is your weave ability? I fear you may need it soon.”

  I ducked a low-hanging tree branch, jumped a small deadfall, and kept running. Judging from the cacophony of growls, barks, and crashing foliage behind me, the goblin things were catching up. Those little freaks were freakily fast!

  “No combat tutorial. No spellcasting tutorial. Not even a roll-dodge tutorial. Nothing. Nada. The devs screwed the pooch on this,” I growled through my teeth. My lungs were already killing me.

  Catzilla thought a blank question at me.

  “Look… don’t know… what my ability thing is,” I panted. “I don’t know!”

  I felt a not-very-comforting mental cringe through the heart-whisper link. “I see. Then, I am sorry. You will likely die very soon.”