Underpowered Howard: A LitRPG Adventure Read online

  In the coming days, I planned to employ this strategy in the one instance designed perfectly for it.

  And oh yeah, that plan I keep talking about? It was simply this: to turn most of the game’s population into liches, griefing them repeatedly after resurrection until I had untold millions of them at my command. This, courtesy of the Amulet of Ethan, which did away with the griefing system. In theory, that many kills would raise my level so high and so fast that Everlife’s operations team would take notice. My guess was they’d pull me aside to ask how and why I’d done it—or possibly to punish me. When that happened, I’d tell them about the Domination and all the bugs I’d found. A long shot, sure, but I felt it was worth it.

  “But first I need to get out of this tunic,” I said.

  Feeling happier than I’d been in ages, I strolled out of Martyr’s Square in the direction of the Slaughtered Noob. I skipped. I waved at passers-by.

  I even whistled.

  Chapter Two

  Bernard was preoccupied with a trio of angry noobs when I returned through the front doors. This gave me enough cover to slip upstairs to retrieve my mythereum gems. I considered keeping the Chest of Persistence but ended up just leaving it there. It was keyed to me, so I couldn’t sell it. Also, keeping it was as good as saying I wasn’t committed.

  When I arrived at Crunk’s Junk, it was empty of customers, so I didn’t have to wait around for Crunk to cash out my fifty gems. Scowling, the grumpy dwarf handed me a bottomless coin purse with 25 million gold.

  “Ye damned heroes can buy’n sell ’em for any fool price,” he said, “but I gotta pay market value!”

  Patiently I said, “I sell my items to dealers and my commodities here, same as everyone.”

  The lucid’s face turned a sullen shade of red. I wondered if he was going to yell some more.

  Jabbing a shaky finger at a wooden sign on the wall, he shouted, “Quit staring at me sign!”

  Naturally, I looked. The sign said, No staring at this sign!

  Crunk threw back his head and laughed. “Good to see you again, Howard. Oh, and if ye tell anyone I was nice to ye, I’ll deny it. Bernard says yer on a fool’s mission to destroy the world. As a rule, I’m fond of fools. And missions. Get most o’ me junk that way! No, don’t go worrying if he spilled any details. He didn’t, and if that ain’t surprising I don’t know what is.”

  I smiled. “When did you find out?”

  “Yesterday, before ye switched classes … again. He was hopin’ I could shake some sense into ya. But that’s his job, not mine.” Crunk’s face grew stormy again. “Are ye not gonna buy nothing, or just stand there loitering’n sucking up me mercantile atmosphere?”

  I blinked in confusion, caught between the sudden tempo shift and the double negative. “Um, sorry, I just—”

  “Off with ya!” Crunk snapped. “Puny low-levels, purses full o’ gold… ’Course ye don’t want nothing from me poor, humble shop.” He huffed a long, forlorn sigh.

  “Crunk, that’s not what I…”

  Almost negligently, he pointed back at the sign. Now it read, No Damned Sentimentalizing!

  Crunk winked again and flashed his second toothy grin that day.

  “Uh … yeah,” I said. “Take care, Crunk.”

  “Whatever yer up to, I say give ’em hell!”

  I’d known that dwarf since my earliest days in Mythian. In all that time, he’d never had a kind word for me. Now it seemed we were friends, or at least on friendly terms. A day of firsts, because I also had to reevaluate my relationship with the boisterous bartender. Not only was he keeping a secret, he appeared to have an active grapevine to the city’s lucid population.

  My next stop after Crunk’s was a potion shop called, “Darcy’s Elixirs & Mixers.”

  Upon entering, my Sanctuary flag dropped. Player-owned stores had to provide their own protection—a way of giving the shadier classes locks and traps to overcome as they leveled up.

  Crinkling my nose at the mingled smells of hundreds of different potions crowding the shelves, I approached the counter. Behind it was an old friend from my high-level days.

  “Under-showered Howard,” Darcy said with a smile.

  “How dare you make fun of my world-famous nickname?”

  “Un-deflowered Howard it is,” she said, then squinted at me. “Necromancer? Again? You find some new trick, or retracing your steps?”

  Squinting allowed higher-level players to read the class ranks of lower-level players. It didn’t work on Hard Modes, but there weren’t many of those. Hard Mode players only got a hundred lives, ever, shared across all wards.

  Darcy was one of the few high-levels who believed me when I said the Domination was bugged. I’d also related some of my plan to break the game, but only in broad, general terms. That had been years ago, before the amulet.

  “A little of both,” I said vaguely.

  “You’re almost a thirty-seventh class all by yourself, if you think about it. Bug Exploiter! Has a nice ring to it, wouldn’t you say? Find any new ones?”

  “Not lately, but here’s an old one you might not know about. Aradune is stinky!”

  Immediately, the room filled with a noxious smell that made my eyes water.

  “What the hell is that?” Darcy said, covering her nose. “What did you say? I missed it.”

  “It’s actually an Easter Egg,” I said. “Aradune is no longer stinky. See? Smell’s gone.”

  Just like that, the air freshened.

  Darcy said, “Easter Egg, huh? More like rotten eggs. I still didn’t catch what you said.”

  I’d seen that curious phrase—Aradune is stinky—written deep beneath the ruins of an ancient city in Ward 3. Every time I said it to someone, they couldn’t remember the words. One had to actually see the graffitied walls of that ancient sewer system in person. It wasn’t a perk or a spell, or even a bug. It just was. I explained as much to Darcy.

  “I had no idea that city even had sewers,” Darcy said. “So what’ll it be? Health potions?”

  I nodded. “Ten, please. And one other thing.”

  “Let me guess: an XP potion.”

  “The good one?”

  “It’s expensive…”

  I just smiled.

  Darcy fetched my potions.

  I picked up the XP potion and the description filled my logs:

  Potion of Studious Education

  Duration: 1 day

  Cooldown: 30 days

  Flags: Immutable

  Description: Those who drink this potion will accumulate experience at +100% the normal rate for the potion’s duration, persisting through death. Warning: Those who bathe in this potion will smell like owl feathers, crushed nebula pearl, denatured wyvern venom, and apple cider vinegar. Also, nothing at all will happen.

  After stowing the potion, Darcy and I talked about the old days. A running joke among old-timers was there were no old days, just to-days. Nothing in Mythian ever changed. You could get lucky with the weather, and battles could be random, but the forest from a hundred years ago was the same one as today. Every lucid shopkeeper was the same, the streets were the same, and last year’s “evil from the distant north” would surely sweep across Ward 2 again this year, and every year after that.

  The only things that varied were people like Darcy. She’d had plans to fight the Domination and was high-enough level to do so. Now, because of me, she was staying put. Just seeing her safe and relatively happy in her potion shop was a reminder that my own life meant something.

  This was another rarity in Mythian: that special moment when you discovered something that mattered.

  As a level 0 necromancer, I had no skill points, and thus no spells. But I did have a tremendous amount of money, so my next visit was to a high-end outfitter near Parker’s private-eye office. Very exclusive—on the inside. Outside, there wasn’t even a sign on the nondescript building to say what it was.

  I knocked three times on the iron-bound door, then twice more, the
n just once. A second later, it opened on its own and I walked in.

  The display cases inside were less impressive than in boutique shops like Legendaria, but the gear was consistently better and cheaper. Just like Darcy’s shop, my Sanctuary flag dropped upon entering, but I felt safe. The proprietor—a guy named Milton—was a high-level runemaster/diabolist with access to killer runes and terrifying guardian demons that would appear if anyone tried to steal something.

  Milton was away that day, but his trusty clerk, Ken, was more than willing to take my gold. Here’s what I purchased:

  Ribbed Jerkin of the Spectral Matador

  +100 Vitality

  +100 Agility

  +100 Strength

  +10 Comeliness

  Description: This naturally watertight jerkin is snug, but won’t cut off blood circulation. Its ribbed core will offer hours of jerkin pleasure, along with a refreshing spurt of comeliness when you least expect it.

  Quicksilver Leggings

  +250 Agility

  Soldier’s Bracelet of Recoil

  +300 Strength

  +1 Class point

  Description: Ever wish you could be a warrior without wasting class points? Well, now you can … sort of. While wearing this bracelet, one free class point will be applied to the warrior class, giving you a +25% bonus to all melee damage. Any additional class points you apply will refund after removing it.

  Bracelet of Obstinance

  Resistances: Poison +500, Pain +500, Cold +500, Acid +500, Mind Control +500, Disease +500, Fire +500, Magic +500.

  Description: No more poison, no more pain. No more cold or acid rain. Mind control’s not what you thought. Disease won’t rot, and fire’s less hot. But lest ye get all cephalalgic, no, I’ve not forgotten magic (the fate of which is truly tragic (may as well be camouflagic!)).

  Cloudwalker Boots

  +75 Intelligence

  +20 Comeliness

  +50 Vitality

  Description: Long, long ago there was a hero named Lunk Cloudwalker who thwarted the terrifying tyrant, Tarth Tater. Then, after defeating him, he feeted himself with Tarth’s boots. Now they’re yours! Wearing these boots will let you fly far, far away, very, very quickly.

  Ring of Mighty Pain Resistance

  Resistances: Pain +200

  Description: This bonus does not stack with class skills offering pain resistance.

  Band of the Bruiser

  +275 Strength

  +100 Vitality

  Damage Bonus: +500 Physical

  Skullcap of Clairvoyance

  +200 Intelligence

  +60 Vitality

  +35 Comeliness

  Cooldown: 8 hours

  Description: Wearers of this skullcap can see anywhere in Mythian they’ve already been. Viewed locations must be outside. Bedrooms, thus, are im-PERV-ious.

  Invidious Shadow Saber

  Base Damage: 75

  +300 Strength

  +100 Vitality

  +100 Agility

  Each of these items offered between fifty and eighty player levels in the five main stats, and all but three had item descriptions. Nobody knew why some got descriptions and others didn’t. Ultra-powerful items always had them, but basic gear like the jerkin could too. Sometimes they were straightforward and coldly factual, and other times they read like the gibberings of a lunatic. A little-known fact was that Mythian, itself, and not the game designers, wrote most of them.

  Even today, people forgot just how powerful the North American quantum computer, Q4, was. With access to billions of minds in countless retirement worlds—not just Heroes of Mythian—Q4 was more human than anyone in all the ways that mattered: creativity, benevolence, cruelty, curiosity…

  “You sure that’s all you need?” Ken said after I’d equipped everything and paid him 11,200,300 gold. “No earrings? Gloves? Eyepatches? Capes? Pins? Tattoo kits?”

  Such items would fill my other gear slots. I hated most of them except pins. Pins, however, liked to fall off in battle and were hard to find afterward. In the coming days, I’d be relying on tactics more than inflated stats, and so I chose comfort over distraction.

  “None of that,” I said, “but I do need a bag.”

  “You don’t have a bag?”

  “Level 0.”

  Ken snorted. “Oh yeah, I forgot, you’re twinking. Tell you what, I’ll throw it in free.” He reached under the counter and tossed me a silken black bag about as large as a child’s ball. Called a “bottomless bag,” the mouth would stretch open twice as wide, and it could hold an infinite amount of whatever I cared to stuff inside it.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Tell Milton I said hi.”

  “Will do. Good luck out there. And, uh … maybe don’t leave the city for a while.”

  I smiled. He was worried I’d be killed and robbed, but there was a reason I’d avoided gear that glowed or sparkled or looked too rich.

  “Thanks again,” I said.

  Then I left.

  Chapter Three

  A hundred dumb jokes later and the lucid manager of the First Mythian Bank was practically delirious with joy.

  Lord Snoot was annoying sometimes, but most people didn’t realize he loved gossiping even more than jokes. Right now, he was telling me how many players had taken the walk of shame to the bank to re-outfit in the last week. Most of those doing so would have been the victim of local killers preying on low-levels venturing out of the city.

  “Oh my, there’s been a lot, you know,” he said, twiddling his fingers excitedly. “Hundreds, really. So brave, and so stupid. They really should stick to Under Town, but they never listen. Everything’s much safer there, and… Oh, oh, I just remembered! What do you get when you tie two gnomes together?”

  “Gnome-chucks,” I said.

  Lord Snoot snapped his fingers in frustration. “You’ve heard that one.”

  I smiled kindly. “It’s an old one, but a good one.”

  When the bank manager finally disappeared, I deposited the rest of my money on the off chance I messed up and had to buy new gear. Despite the uptick in player-versus-player activity, I felt pretty safe. High-level PVPers would squint me and move on, thinking my gear was Under Town junk. Lower-level thieves would get quite a surprise.

  After the bank, my next stop wasn’t to Under Town, the local starter zone, as Snoot had advised. Instead, I left through the north gates heading for an outdoor zone eight miles away called the Grumbling Hills.

  I didn’t fly. I proceeded on foot like the harmless rabbit I was pretending to be. This was the tricky part. I had to look weak yet well-enough-off to attract a predator, though hopefully not a very dangerous predator. Thus the dullness of my gear.

  The first few miles went uneventfully, and I started to worry I’d reach the hills in safety. Another hour passed and I breathed a sigh of relief. Two men and a woman I didn’t recognize stepped from behind a rocky outcrop, weapons drawn. They didn’t yell “surprise” or smile or anything fun like that. They scowled menacingly and blocked the way.

  “Where you going, noob?” one of the men said.

  I couldn’t squint him, but he was likely a thief. Probably no higher than 25, judging by the patchwork leather armor and the unremarkable sword in his hand.

  “And where did you find our stuff?” the woman said.

  She was a priest. Very pretty, suggesting mismanagement of stats. Comeliness was a fun stat, but best skipped in lieu of others until around level 100. Her vestments had a little blue embroidery going on. Just a hint. No gold, which was a good sign.

  The third person was more troubling: red-painted metal armor and a sword I recognized from my earliest days in the game. Nothing fancy, but it gave a 1.5x modifier to all stats. Depending on how high level he was, I might have been in trouble, but I didn’t think so. Anyone serious wouldn’t be out robbing people like this.

  “Drop your stuff and turn around,” he said in a bored voice. “Or, if you want, we can kill you fast. Save you the walk back
. Up to you.”

  “Wait a minute, Ryan,” the woman said. “What’s a level 0 necro doing out here? And why’s he dual-classed as a warrior?”

  Just my luck, she knew about the dual-class restriction.

  Ryan scratched his chin. “Oh yeah… Good question. Maybe they can do that now.”

  The other man said, “What if he’s a twink? I mean, how’d a level 1 warrior get the necro starter?”

  They were definitely getting nervous. Most people who took a special class did so later down the road. For necromancers, they had to locate the mummified corpse in the abandoned graveyard twenty miles outside the city. True noobs had no friends to retrieve it for them, and very few people in Ward 1 could afford a Chest of Persistence. I’d gotten the finger a few days ago while playing a shaman. I’d had to reset my karma, though, and that meant Giving Up.

  Before my assailants could figure out that yes, I was a twink—a low-level player with powerful gear or other advantages—I cleared my throat.

  “Who you calling a noob?” I said, affecting a puzzled expression. “Someone gave me a thousand gold pieces and I bought all this stuff. Best gear Crunk’s Junk had to offer. Crunk said so himself.”

  That brought a collective laugh.

  “It’s true!” I said angrily. “This here thing has plus five intelligence points. Five!” I lifted a foot and waggled my boot. “And oh yeah—some nice person gave me a finger to eat that turned me into a necromancer. Gross, not gonna lie, but it worked. Now I just need XP points… I mean experience XP … or whatever they’re called—it’s called. Bah, you know what I mean.”

  I was laying it on thick, but I couldn’t afford an informed enemy right now, let alone three.

  The woman snorted derisively. “What kind of idiot eats a finger? Maybe you like that kinda thing.”