Chapter 2

  I pumped the tactical shotgun and ran straight at a group of eight goblins, who were in the middle of gathering up garbage and debris into a big pile in the middle of the street. I scowled, took aim at the nearest cluster, and opened fire, not bothering to wait before I pumped the gun again for another shot. Goblins exploded into bloodless light, leaving no trace of their passing. Ray and Uncle Dave were holding back, both armed with rifles and picking off targets at longer range. We’d quickly discovered that the shotgun was a perfect weapon for me, because it didn’t require much in the way of aiming. Goblins charged with reckless disregard for their own lives, and I’d need time to process how calm I was as I gunned them down from a safe distance.

  “All clear!” I shouted.

  “All clear over here too!” Ray shouted back. Uncle Dave had. . . recovered from his earlier panic. He was a silent furnace of anger, eradicating every goblin he saw with cold precision. He was letting Ray and I take the lead, for now, but there was a silent understanding between all of us that when he spoke, we listened. I pointed at the pile of garbage.

  “Why?” I asked, shaking my head, “just, why?” The pile was taller than I was, a great mound of garbage and stuff that the goblins had broken and dragged out here.

  “I dunno,” Ray shrugged, “they’re just the worst, I guess.”

  “Could just be pointless. . .” I couldn’t find the right word. “Mischief?”

  “Destruction?” Ray offered.

  “Vandalism?” I continued, and our word game would have kept going, but Uncle Dave spoke up.

  “Stay away from it,” he said, pointing his rifle at it, “this whole. . . System, is clearly either based on a video game, or what video games are based on, and I’ve been playing these kinds of games since they first got started way back in the day. Monsters like this don’t do things without a reason. Take what the monsters are doing seriously, it’s the best way I know of to stay alive.”

  As if to punctuate his words, the pile of garbage shifted, suddenly suffused with a dim blue light. The entire thing swelled, tripling in size and forming a perfect- I couldn’t describe it as anything other than a mound or hill. Words appeared over the garbage, much like the kinds of words that appeared over the heads of the goblins.

  [Goblin Spawner]

  We practically jumped away from it when it shifted, and a clawed green hand burst out from the Goblin Spawner. Without so much as a ‘Told you so’, Uncle Dave started opening fire. Ray and I joined in just a moment after, blasting into the Construct before it could create more Goblins. We’d gotten the jump on it, thankfully, before it could spawn in more powerful goblins to defend it. It was still extremely tough, soaking up a large amount of ammo before it abruptly shattered into glittery light, vanishing completely. On the ground it had once stained with its presence, a very bright penny sized square remained.

  Somehow, through the unspoken undercurrent of group logic, I knew it was mine to both investigate, and take. I reached down, covered by Ray and Uncle Dave, and picked it up. The square was heavy for its size, about as thick as a dime, and very. . . pleasing to hold. I immediately started rubbing it with my thumb and index finger, the tactile sensation of it being completely alien and totally fascinating. I stopped playing with it and took a closer look, and when I squinted against the incandescent brightness of it, I could see, stamped into the surface, 25 EXP.

  “I think we’ve got our first piece of loot,” I commented, bringing it back to the group to hand it over and let them examine it. Ray, I noted with amusement, immediately started rubbing the EXP the way I had, an expression of surprise on his face before he handed it over to Uncle Dave.

  “Feels about as dense as gold,” he commented, then handed the EXP back to me without further comment. I pocketed the EXP, then heard the musical sound of an approaching goblin. I pinpointed the noise and saw the thing was trying to sneak around; while wearing a radio playing music at full blast!

  I raised my shotgun to end it, but Uncle Dave made a quick sound that stopped me. “We’ve only got so much ammo,” he said, giving a significant glance towards the bullet sponge that had been the Goblin Spawner, “for little onesie-twosies like this, I’m going to suggest melee.” He quickly handed me a crescent wrench, likely from his garage.

  “I like shooting them better,” I mumbled, but took the heavy wrench. If I got bit again. . . I clenched my jaw and approached the still sneaking goblin, who appeared to be oblivious that we’d noticed him.

  We made eye contact, and it finally realized the jig was up. It screamed a high-pitched goblin scream and charged. I braced myself, adrenaline pumping and swung at the exact right moment with an overhead strike. It hit straight down the center of its skull, crushing it momentarily before the goblin vanished into light.

  “Great job Adam,” Uncle Dave called out, and Ray cheered me on.

  “Save the next one for me!” Ray yelled, and I rolled my eyes.

  “Adam?” Uncle Dave said.

  “Yeah?”

  “You might want to pick your gun back up,” he said, pointing to where the tactical shotgun had fallen off my shoulder during my brief fight with the goblin. My face turned beet red, and I ran back over to my gun.

  --

  “The whole house’s infested!” Ray yelled in panic, opening fire at the dozens of goblins rushing out of a particularly trashed two story house. Dozens rushing at us, and dozens more still inside.

  “Fall back!” Uncle Dave yelled, taking shot after shot into the rushing mob, never missing. We retreated as best we could, taking pot shots at every opportunity, but as fast as we could kill them, their numbers seemed to replenish. Ray raised his rifle to take another shot, but the shot never came. His eyes widened and his finger kept pulling on the trigger-

  “Ray, you’re jammed!” Uncle Dave shouted, “switch weapons with me!” In a feat of coordination which I personally found very impressive, they traded weapons while running. Ray continued firing while Uncle Dave unjammed the gun. “Great job Dave,” he growled to himself while he worked, “just couldn’t find the time to do maintenance on your weapons, now look what that got you.” With a particularly forceful slap, he seemed to have unjammed the gun and opened fire. Abruptly, goblins we weren’t shooting at started dying. A quick glance revealed another group much like ours, an adult man, an older woman, and a girl right around my age. She was beautiful, I noted, but I just didn’t have any blood to spare on more than just noticing.

  “Dave, is that you?” the man shouted, and Dave sighed in relief.

  “Frank? Thank God!” the charging goblins, now caught between two groups, were quickly slain by the accidental pincer formation. Our groups merged, and the adults started talking.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “Abby’s place is infested,” Dave said hurriedly, “I don’t know if anyone’s still alive, but there’ve got to be at least thirty of them in there.”

  “Abby’s dead,” the man, Frank, said. “We found her an hour ago laying in the middle of the road. Who’re the kids?”

  “Abby. . .” Uncle Dave said, shaking his head, “This is my nephew Adam, and this is Ray. I’d be dead if it weren’t for these two. Frank, have you seen the goblins piling up trash in the middle of the road?”

  “Yeah, I always stop them, but I’ve got no idea why they’re doing it.”

  Before we could explain, the girl screamed and pointed behind us. The unmistakable sound of a car engine caught our attention next, and some instinct or reflex let me jump out of the way of the car that crashed into our group.

  “Aaaahhh Jesus Christ!” Uncle Dave shouted as he got clipped. Ray, the older woman, and the other teenage girl had managed to get out of the way like I had. . . but Frank got hit head on.

  “Oh my God!” I yelled, getting up from the asphalt and running after the vehicle, which had veered wildly after running Frank ragged over, and crashed through someone’s fence. When I caught up with the car, I saw, with pure disgust, a dazed, incoherently babbling goblin swaying drunkenly around in the driver’s seat, which was covered in blood from where it had killed-

  “Aaaahhhh!” I yelled, pumping round after round into the car, the first one having killed the goblin. The rest? I was breathing hard, staring wide-eyed at where the goblin had been, and started screaming.

  “Adam, come back to us!” Ray yelled, pulling me from my berserk state, “Frank needs help!”

  “Get it together Adam,” I chastised myself, then ran back to the group. Frank. . . he didn’t look good. He’d just been run over and it showed. Uncle Dave was crouched next to him, asking him questions in a loud voice.

  “Frank! Frank! Can you hear me?”

  “Yeah,” he croaked, then groaned. “How do I look?”

  “You look great,” Uncle Dave lied easily, and Frank coughed. “Frank, we’re going to have to move you somewhere. Have you found anywhere that’s safe around here?”

  “No,” he coughed, “they’re everywhere. In our houses, on the roads, out in the middle of nowhere. We’ve been at this for hours,” he kept going, “and even if you clear a house, as soon as you turn your back, more of those little green monsters just appear out of thin air. Dave. . . tell my family-”

  Up ahead of us, a group of fifteen goblins approached slowly, joyous murder written on their faces. Ray swore and started to open fire, but to my mounting horror, more goblins seemed to have noticed something was up and were streaming towards the growing squad. Like the squabbling, scavenging predators they were, they could somehow sense the blood. The weakness.

  “Leave me,” Frank yelled with all the strength he could, “run, all of you, run!”

  I screamed and opened fire at the mob, running towards them and unloading blast after shotgun blast, the area in front of me so thick with targets that I didn’t need to aim. Goblins vanished as fast as they were replaced, from behind me I could hear Ray standing his ground against the monsters, taking careful aim and making every shot count. Not a single member of our group broke and ran, not a single one of us was going to leave Frank to die. None of us thought we were going to win this fight, but I’d rather die than be the kind of guy who ran. It was so funny that a group of near strangers and barely acquaintances could come to- could choose to- to sacrifice their-

  I entered the melee with low ammo, but at point blank a single shell was utterly devastating. Since the goblins simply vanished upon death, the momentum of a shot could continue forward, sometimes killing as many as three, possibly four at a time. I blasted their clumped up formation apart. . . my world dissolved into the numbed sensation of being struck and the sound of gunfire, the screams of goblins and the sound of Rebecca Black naming every day of the week in song form. A numb, distant part of my mind, a part beyond emotion or attachment, declared this to be analogous to hell. I pulled the trigger again, but the gun was empty. The goblin swarm leapt at the opportunity, often literally, and with cold detachment I knew I was going to die. The strength had left my body and all I could do was protect my face, my neck, while the vicious toothy maws bit down and shook, like a terrier that had caught a rat.

  Uncle Dave crashed into the dogpile, screaming incoherently, armed with the giant crescent wrench I’d abandoned. “Get off him!” he roared, and with a bit of dark joy I watched as the big, big man in front of me wrecked every goblin he encountered, his powerful swings sometimes taking them out two at a time. I could see steam rising from his reddened, furious flesh, and I sagged to the ground, bleeding, dying, but avenged. I wanted nothing more than to rise up from the burning hot road, to take up arms once again- the goblins swarmed Uncle Dave, having recovered from his berserk charge. They attached themselves to him like leeches, jumping, biting and holding on for dear life. I’d thought there was nothing left in me, but the barest bit of life returned to my deadened muscles and I started to rise, feeling weak as a baby, but stronger than I’d been before. I had to help-

  “Adam, get up!” Ray shouted, running with the new girl, both of them doing their best to avoid getting dog piled like we’d been. “Neighbor Dave said he’d distract them so we could get you out!” The new girl was screaming, but one look at her face, the determined expression on it, and I knew she was screaming as loudly and deliberately as she could. I cracked a grin at the sheer. . . smartness of her as the two of them lifted me under the armpits, one on each side, and rushed me away from where Uncle Dave was still fighting. Apparently, the man didn’t mind simply ripping the goblins from his body and killing them with a single, utterly brutal fist to the skull. He fought with no regard for his own life, a maddened light in his eyes that I’d never seen in the normally jovial, excited man. I heard the sound of gunshots and shouting, and I managed to turn my head enough to see yet another armed group running our way. The screaming had worked.

  “Thank God,” the girl said, her voice hoarse, “oh thank you God, oh thank you thank you-” she continued on like that, and I watched with interest as the group, five grown men dressed in enough tactical gear that I suspected they’d been preparing for something like this their entire lives, clinically took a knee and started dismantling the goblin horde. Anywhere they could get a shot without having Dave in the line of fire, they shot. Dave, for his part in the brutal drama, saw the reinforcements and began favorably positioning himself as much as possible.

  “Hey,” I said through swollen lips and a puffy face, “I’m Adam,” I said, giving the girl at my side my best grin. Her and Ray both gave me such a look, and then shook their heads.

  “Wow,” Ray said, “seriously going for it right now.”

  “Kayla,” she responded, took another look at me, and laughed in disbelief. She had such a nice laugh.

  “So I was thinking-” but before I could ask her out, a very funny thing happened. The song, Friday by Rebecca Black, which had been playing on a mind-numbing, infuriating loop for hours while we fought for our lives. . . stopped. A new song started playing, Closing Time by Semisonic. The goblins, upon hearing this new song, began fighting with a vengeance, their expressions of glee replaced by one of total savagery. Unfortunately for them, the outcome of the battle had been decided the moment our reinforcements had arrived. The new song played and goblins died until the song was done. Then, all at once, the goblins crouched down into the fetal position and. . . crystalized? Their bodies hardened and grew shiny as well as seemingly impervious to damage. No matter how many times they were shot, or hit with a gigantic crescent wrench, they took no damage. Despite being crystalized, however, their radios were still functioning just fine. Through their collective radios we heard a fairly generic chiming sound, like something one might hear preceding an announcement in a supermarket.

  “Planet Earth, give yourself a pat on the back! Great job everyone, what an outstanding group of craftsmen you’ve all turned out to be! Your world has survived Day 1, and now, it is time to rest. Combat will resume at 9 AM, System Time, on Monday morning. During your rest period it is advised, but not required, that you report to a System Terminal to receive your weekend recovery potion. Additionally, please spend your earned EXP, either on yourself, or to purchase essential, premium survival and luxury goods in the System Store. Your Planetary Debt score has been calculated, and can be viewed at any System Terminal, as well as your own individual Personal Debt. As slaves of the empire, you have a path to freedom! Simply repay your personal debt, and your status as a slave will be instantly converted to a full citizen of the empire. Despite our best efforts,” the System continued, “many slave worlds such as yours find the rigors of combat to be somewhat taxing. Despair not, for the empire is just, and all slave worlds such as yours have a path to freedom. Should you rise to the top of the leaderboard, the dungeon will arrive on your planet, and bring the Hellstone Throne with it! Should you reach the end of the dungeon and defeat the dread Goblin King and present his crown to the Emperor, your planet will have its debts absolved and become a free planet and citizen of the empire! Listen not to the rebels, for this has happened many times before.”

  “During your rest period The System will allow your radio, television, and internet technology to function normally, so why not kick back, crack open a ‘brewskie’ from the System Store, and watch some sports! The System would also like to congratulate you on breaking several Day 1 records, and wishes you the best of luck on Day 4. It is now Friday, 5 PM System Time and the end of Day 1 of the System Calendar. Have a great weekend everyone!”

  With that, the broadcast ended. There was a long, awkward moment in which nobody had anything to say. A collective, slack-jawed expression of outraged disbelief was shared by all as the implications of the announcement began to sink in.

  “No, uh-uh, I can’t even, no way, mm-nn, just no, I’m going home,” Kayla said, furiously walking away from the site of the battle. Ray looked at me, and I shrugged, then he shrugged too. Frank groaned, and the sound of the heavily injured, but now totally savable man kicked us out of our dazed, dreamlike state.

  Uncle Dave called over to the extremely confused tactical group, who seemed unwilling to accept that, yes, the fight was over, and they could relax now. But they did eventually run over to Frank and start administering first aid. I pulled out my cell phone, and saw that it had a signal again. “Well,” I said to myself, “she said the phones worked again,” then, I dialed 911. The phone rang for a long time, long enough that I considered hanging up. But to my mild surprise, someone did pick up.

  “911. . .” the voice said hesitantly, “What’s your. . . was any of that real? No, I’m sorry, what’s your location?” I looked around and found the nearest intersection with street signs.

  “Sequoia st and 16th Ave in the Desert Bloom housing development,” I responded, “We’ve got a man who got hit head on by a car, he’s in rough shape.”

  “I’ll see if we can get an ambulance out there,” she said seriously, “but I don’t know how functional our systems are right now. What’s your name?”

  “Adam,” I said, and the conversation proceeded procedurally from there as she asked me for details, which I provided. The sun was low in the sky, and as we talked, I felt myself draining of energy. Eventually I reached the limit of what I could tell her, so I handed the phone over to Uncle Dave and started walking vaguely in the direction of my house.

  As I walked, the day’s events caught up with me. The record breaking heat wave, which I’d been able to ignore by sheer force of adrenaline, reminded me that the last time I drank water was hours ago. “Woah,” I slurred, and swayed on my feet, the strangest feeling of rushing vertigo blanking out my senses.

  “Adam!” I heard someone shout my name as if from a great distance away, and for some reason, I was laid face down on the grass strip between the road and the sidewalk. The still green grass felt nice, and abruptly, the sprinkler system turned on and started watering the plants and I. “Aaaaahhhhh,” I mumbled, turning, opening my mouth and sticking out my tongue, trying and mostly failing to catch some of th e drops in my mouth. “Uuuuuuhhhh,” I exhaled, my eyes heavy, before everything went black as I passed out.

  It’d been a long day.