Hell's Glitch (LitRPG): Into a Dark Adventure (9 page)

8 The Merchant

The cave in front of him was so dark that Sam couldn’t see
where that voice had come from.  Whoever was in the dark had a great advantage
over him.  He lifted his Deflector defensively, unsure of what to expect next.

“No need to fear, o’ traveling soul.  I mean you no harm,”
the man whispered, sarcasm creeping into his voice.  Sam kept the Deflector
up.  He didn’t trust whoever this man was.  The man seemed to sense that and
just laughed at Sam derisively.

“Can’t see me, can you?  Well, maybe this’ll help.”

Sam heard a striking sound and suddenly a flame jumped to
life in the man’s hand.  The torchlight cast am orange glow all over his
features as he placed the torch in a standing sconce then leaned against the
cave wall.  He was shorter than Sam’s avatar and had an average build.  His
hair was short, stringy, and russet, the same color of his eyes.  He bore a
tired-looking half-smile and wore the exact same dark clothes that Sam did. 
Sam wondered how clearly the man had seen him in the dark.

“Now, that better?” the man asked.

“At least I can see you now.  Who are you and why are you
here?” Sam asked.  The man laughed.

“Always with the who’s and why’s.  Not a particularly fair
set of questions, seeing as how you haven’t introduced yourself yet.”

Sam remained quiet.

“You don’t need to say a thing.  Your story is written all
over you, killer.  An undead Cutthroat, eh?  Well, that’s certainly new.  You
haven’t lost your quintessence yet, so there’s something you want to
accomplish, eh?  I wonder what that could be in this forest.”

“I woke up here,” Sam said, nearly glaring at the man.

“No need to be testy.  I’m just here to offer a warning.”

That was incredible.  The NPCs (non-player characters) could
actually respond to a player’s emotions as well as their words.  No other game
on the market had that kind of sophistication to it.  The digital man responded
as precisely as a real man would, picking up on Sam’s annoyance as well.  Sam
looked around at the gear the man had around him.  It was halfway out of a
large sack that sat on the ground next him.  Sam saw some weapons in it and
some armor as well.

“What’s that?” Sam asked, pointing at the sack.

“Ah, those are my wares.  There’s a lot of treasure to be
found in this assassin’s forest.  Most of it dropped from adventurers like yourself
after they ... expire.”

“Can you show me what you have?”

“Hehe, sure.  My items will keep you from losing that
precious quintessence of yours.”

A menu opened in front of Sam with the man’s item stock
neatly categorized into sections for consumable items, weapons, armor,
ammunition, and miscellaneous items.  For consumables, he had some Absorption
Herbs to heal poison and some Bandages to stop bleeding wounds.  The herbs were
one hundred souls apiece, but so very worth it against the enemies of this forest. 
Sam currently had approximately no souls, so he’d have to brave the forest
without it for now.  He flipped over to the weapons just to see what the man
had.  His selection was pretty crappy.  He had possibly every type of weapon
from daggers to axes, but it was all basic stuff.  There were a few swords
there, but all of them required too high of a strength stat to wield properly. 
Sam only had a six in strength.  The only good thing Sam spotted here was a
simple mid-sized wood and metal shield.  He looked at its stats and found it to
be to his liking.  It had a nice balance of physical defense and sturdiness
even if it was lacking in most other categories.  The shield had cost a
whopping twelve hundred souls though.  In his current state, Sam found that to
be worth it.

He moved on to the armor and saw absolutely nothing that was
more useful than the Twilight gear he was already wearing and that was the most
expensive gear that the man had.  For the ammunition, he spotted some nifty
Wooden Arrows for five souls apiece.  The only problem was that the merchant
didn’t sell the bow to go with it.  Sam cursed under his breath.

“Asshole.”

“What was that, traveler?”

“Brass pole ... I don’t see one.  Just thinking out loud.”

These NPCs had some damn good hearing.  Sam had no clue how
the NPC would react to an actual insult and though he was curious, he still
wanted to hang on to his human form for a bit longer at least.  This guy seemed
like a secret badass to Sam and he didn’t want to piss him off yet, at least
not at this point in the game.  He’d avoid death for as long as he could.  He
skimmed over to the miscellaneous section and found an item called Blank Map. 
It was ridiculously overpriced at five thousand souls.  He opened a screen for
taking notes and mentally dictated that the price of the map should be lowered,
the merchant should sell more useful items, and he should definitely sell a bow
with his arrows.  He closed the notes window along with the item shop screen.

“Nothing suits your fancy, eh?  The younger me would’ve
taken such a blatant waste of my time up with a blade, but I’ve come to see
that we live in a tough age, traveler.  So no hard feelings.”

Sam was terrified not only by what the merchant had said,
but by the way he stared at Sam, as if he could see right through him, and then
there was the wicked smile he bore.

“Hehehe.  To prove my good intentions, I’ll give you this
for your nightly travels along with two warnings.”

He produced a torch from his bag and handed it to Sam.  Though
Sam towered over him, he was still leery of such close contact.

“Are you a Cutthroat like me?” Sam asked.

“From the look of ya, I’d say you’re barely a Cutthroat
hehehehe.  But I wouldn’t call myself a Cutthroat.”

“Then why are you wearing a Cutthroat’s gear?”

“I told you, lad, you ask too many questions.  Simple ones
too.  I’m in an assassin’s forest, why would I dress as anything other than an
assassin?  Do you think I want to be killed ... again?  Hehehehe.  No, lad. 
I’m just here to make a wage off some unlucky souls.  Make sure you don’t die
out there, hehehehe.”

What a creepy sense of humor
, Sam thought to
himself.  Sam did want to hear the man’s warning though, so he promptly asked
him.

“There’s a madman in the forest up ahead.  If you were smart,
you’d avoid him.  I’ve heard it said that he’s killing anyone that crosses his
path.”

It was just a game, but hearing that greatly unsettled Sam. 
He needed to know more.

“What does he look like, merchant?” he asked.

“He’s been described as a monstrous brute of a man.  More
demon than human.  He wields a giant greatsword that he uses to cut revenants
down indiscriminately.  Some say he was once a king in an age long ago, but now
he is just a ghoul out for souls.  He will pillage the quintessence from your
very being if you aren’t careful.”

“Where is he now?”

“An answer not known by me.  I’m staying out of the way
myself.  All I want to do is sell my wares to needy travelers.  I don’t need
all this madman business scaring my customers away.  If you come across anyone
strong in your travels, you could ask them to kill the madman for you. 
Otherwise I’d stay away.”

That stung the old ego for Sam.  He lacked the strength now,
but he swore that he’d soon gain the levels, gear, and skills needed to beat
this mad king.  He just needed to avoid him until he got strong enough.

“Okay, what about the other warning?”

The Merchant’s grin widened.

“I’m amused that you’ve come to this forest without knowing
of its dangers.  What a foolish endeavor.”

He paused and looked at Sam with a gleam in his eye then
continued.

“There is another man in the forest, more depraved than the
mad king, though barely.  Watch out for him and the quick death he brings.  He
has a fascination with stringing up the bodies of those he considers to be
strong.  You shouldn’t have to worry about that though.  Hahahaha.  Just
thought I’d give fair warning anyway.”

Sam bristled at the insult and wondered if it were really
true.

“Am I really safe from that killer?” Sam asked.

“Who’s to say?  I’ve never met him myself.  I only know of
him through his wicked reputation.  From his reputation alone, he is to be
avoided, no?”

That was definitely something that Sam could agree to, at
least until he gained some more levels and attained some better gear.

“And where does he reside?”

“It is said that he haunts near the front entrance of this
part of forest, the perfect place to snare unsuspecting warriors, but no one is
safe anywhere in the Assassin’s Forest.  Hehehehe.  Best to be on the move.”

Sam had to agree.  From his equipment menu, he placed his
torch in one of his Quick Select slots.  It made it easy to select on the fly
since the item would hang somewhere from his body.  He had space for ten items
in his accessible slots.  His Soul Fire had already taken up one space.  Items
that were put in his accessible slots hung from his body, and so he could just
reach and grab what he needed instead of mentally scrolling through menus.  He
kept his torch slotted until he needed it later and moved on, out of the cave. 
His next plan was to grind (collect a lot of resources, in this case souls) in
the forest until he could afford a better shield and could level-up some more.

“Alright Hardasses, here comes round two.”

9 Assassin’s Forest

Sam’s efforts at grinding had been quite taxing at first.  He
had started his fight against one Forest Barker, like before.  And like before,
it was completely docile initially.  Resting at the Soul Beacon seemed to reset
all enemies’ positions, so now the aggressive clones were gone.  Once he killed
the first one with a backstab, parry, then opening blow, he found that fighting
the other Forest Barkers the second time wasn’t much easier than the first.  Killing
them almost seemed pointless as each time you killed one, it would leave its
remains and grow into more identical Forest Barkers.

Sam was somewhat lucky this time since the Barker he killed
had only split into two clones.  The splitting was worse than he initially
thought, because Sam didn’t understand the timing for when the new clones would
sprout up.  It seemed random to him.  He’d missed some easy parries and got
punished hard for his mistakes.  The enemies seemed a little smarter this time
around and he wasn’t able to hide behind the trees as much as he did before. 
They also varied their attacks and timing more.

By the end of his second outing, he ended up limping back to
the cave, past a grinning merchant, worse off than the first time he had come
with hardly any health, a depleted Soul Fire container, and only four hundred
measly souls to show for it.  He kept his goal in mind.  His next purchase
would be that shield.

He rested at the azure Soul Beacon until he regained full
health and filled his Soul Fire container, then went back to the forest for
more souls.  His timing was a little better now when it came to roll dodging
and parrying.  He lost most of that anxious feeling that was over him last time
and he was more focused than the first time he fought the Barkers.  Whenever he
rolled, he kept the position of the trees in mind so that his enemy would
strike those instead of him.  By moving, using cover, and isolating the group
of Barkers into one-on-one fights, Sam was now up to two thousand hundred
souls.  He’d quickly killed four of the Barkers including the first docile
one.  Getting backstabs and opening blows on each enemy behind cover had helped
him greatly.  He’d only drank his Soul Fire once amidst those kills.  But the
odds had quickly stacked up against him and he found himself facing six enemies
at once.  His limit was three at a time, he’d decided.  If he was really
pushing it, he could maybe challenge four, but six was out of the question. 
They had too much of a range advantage.

Sam cut and ran and found himself in a similar situation to
before.  He ran and jumped off the cliff and into the cliffside cave entrance
rather than the one that opened in the middle of the forest.  He went straight
to the merchant and stared him in the eyes.  At this range the merchant looked
quite weary.  There were dark rings under his brown eyes and baggy flesh.  Now,
his eyes even seemed to sag.

The torchlight covered both men, as Sam made his request,
“Inventory please.”

The two dimensional dark gray and white grid panel opened up
and Sam scrolled over to the shield he wanted and read its stats in great
detail.

Metal Crest Shield

Mid Blocking Shield

A wooden shield with a mid-sized iron crest of falcon on
the front of it.  The crest sits in the middle of the shield and is scuffed from
all the times it has deflected sword blows.  An iron border around the shield
increases its defensive capabilities even more without sacrificing much of its
light weight.

ATK 18

     Weapon Damage 10

S ATK  D = 8

D ATK  F = 0

M ATK  F = 0

B ATK  F = 0

F RAT  0

L RAT  0

P RAT  0

D RAT  0

B RAT  1

The first page of stats looked to be all offensive.  Sam
found these stats to be pointless for a shield, so he flipped over to the next
page with the defensive values.

Metal Crest Shield

Mid Blocking Shield

P DEF (Physical Defense) 93%

M DEF (Magic Defense) 71%

L DEF (Lightning Defense) 65%

F DEF (Fire Defense) 25%

D DEF (Divine Defense) 30%

A DEF (Abyssal Defense) 30%

P RES (Poison Resistance) 85%

D RES (Dust Resistance) 70%

C RES (Curse Resistance) 30%

B RES (Bleedout Resistance) 100%

Sturdiness 54%

Durability 300/300

Weight 2.8lbs

This shield definitely had its uses.  Right now Sam just
needed to be able to properly block.  He quickly purchased the shield which
depleted the amount of souls he held down to eight hundred.

“Great purchase!” the merchant yelled with joy, “I knew
there was a reason I liked you.  It’s always better to spend a soul than to
hoard one.  You never know when you might die and of course your corpse has no
need for them, hahahahahaha.  Imagine that, a corpse with no need for souls,
hahahahaha.”

Sam ignored the creepy merchant, who seemed to be having the
time of his life laughing at his own macabre jokes.  He quickly exited out of
the purchase menu, since there was nothing else that he wanted right now and
ran over to the Soul Beacon.  He sat and rubbed his cold hands near the warm
totem.  He accessed Soul Beacon menu and mentally scrolled to the Level Up
options.  He looked at his stats and pondered which one he’d level-up next.  He
currently had enough to gain one Soul Intensity, which of course meant that he
had one attribute that he could increase.

Name: Sarem the Sanguine

Class: Cutthroat

Soul Intensity: 7

HP: 180

Held Souls: 800

Souls to Next Level: 640

VIT 9

DEF 6

RES 7

STR 6

INT 10

DEX 15

SPD 15

SPT 4

BLF 4

PCP 3

It didn’t take him long to figure out which path his
character would take.  Even though he’d only now just figured it out, he was
glad that his previous stat increase would favor his newly thought up build. 
He still didn’t know too much about this particular game, but it was similar
enough to The Death Planes that Sam could form a good grasp on how he would
specialize his character.  His start of a Cutthroat build ensured he’d have to
play a certain way and so far he was doing better than he thought he’d do with
his playstyle.

He placed his next point into vitality which increased the
stat to an even ten and granted him two hundred health points.  He told himself
that it would be the last point he’d invest in vitality for a while.

His next focus would be on getting his dexterity up to twenty. 
Since it directly affected the attacking power of the skill based weapons he
planned on using.  His Dagger had a B-grade scaling (power adjustment) with his
dexterity stat, meaning that the weapon would attain more and more attack power
as his dexterity increased.  A B-grade meant that the Dagger would receive a
bonus eighty percent extra damage whenever Sam would attack with it.  If Sam’s Dagger
had lacked a listed grade then it would only do the base amount of damage,
which was only ten.  With A B-grade scaling in dexterity, Sam’s Dagger had
gotten an extra twelve points of damage. With the weapon’s base ten damage,
along with the fifteen points of damage added by Sam’s DEX stat, and the twelve
from the Dagger’s scaling; Sam did thirty seven points of damage with his
weapon.

Weapon scaling was enormously useful as even an E-grade with
the weapon insured that he’d get the whole fifteen damage from his DEX and at
least a twenty percent extra on top of that.  As long as the weapon didn’t have
an F-grade, he’d get at least some benefit from scaling.

After all that, he’d increase his speed to twenty or maybe
just increase his dexterity all the way to twenty-five and wait to see if he
needed more speed or health at that point.  If he came across any useful
abilities, he could add a point to spirituality along the way to get a single spellcrafte
slot.  But that was it.  He didn’t need any of the other stats at all.  Putting
points in defense would only slow his growth down in other needed areas.  Increasing
his health and mobility was the priority along with his pure offensive power.

With high dexterity and a good DEX based weapon, he didn’t
need the strength stat at all.  The default six amount given at the start was
good for equipping all the small and mid-sized shields, so he wouldn’t need to
increase it at all.  Resistance could come in handy, but Sam figured that the
points were better spent in speed so that he could just avoid potential status
afflicting attacks with quick dodging.  A ten in intelligence was a good base
to learn some basic level spellcraftes, but Sam couldn’t see himself increasing
it.  While a four in belief was four points too many as far as he was
concerned.  He wished he could take all those points and put them into his
dexterity right now.  The belief stat only affected the power of Blessings,
Blasphemies, and divine as well as abyssal weaponry, four things that Sam had
no desire to use with this character.

With his plan in place, Sam set out again on his quest to
gain more souls.  He tested out his improvements in live combat.  With his new
shield, he didn’t have to rely on the trees for cover as much.  Though his
enemy limit remained at three at a time.

Each blow he blocked with his shield consumed a sizable
portion of his stamina gauge and after so many consecutive attacks, his guard had
been broken.  After that happened, he was left vulnerable to attack.  He
quickly learned to block only at specific times while mostly using his dodging
to avoid damage when possible.  He’d also noticed with the Metal Crest Shield
that the opening to attack after parrying was about a second less than with his
Deflector.

He returned to heal and reset the enemies again at his Soul
Beacon and did it all over again, attaining forty-eight hundred more souls
before deciding to move on.  He still hadn’t figured out the trick to killing
the Barkers for good.  Alex had earlier eluded to there being one.  Instead of
vainly focusing on that, he used all of his souls to increase his dexterity to nineteen. 
He was one point shy of his goal, but figured it was best to move on to find
his first glitch before he lagged behind too far in that competition.

******

Sam had bypassed a few lone Forest Barkers as he journeyed
deeper into the forest.  He made sure to creep by them silently in case even
one of them proved to be aggressive.  Way past them, he found a large bear
decked out in knight’s armor from its head to its hind legs.  It sat on its
rump like a human and stared listlessly at its feet.  Sam was curious about why
the hell a bear would even be wearing armor in the middle of this forest, but
something told him to leave the whole issue alone and just sneak past the bear. 
He did just that and far from there, found himself near another clearing.  This
time he stayed hidden amongst the trees, so he could better see his
surroundings.

There was movement at the far end of the trail, so Sam
stopped and crouched near a tree to see just who or what was approaching.  It
was some sort of bearded huntsman who appeared to be looking for something.  He
wielded a huge two-sided greataxe in his left hand and a wooden shield with a
chipped blue deer painted on its front in his right hand.  He gazed from left
to right as he passed tree after tree.  Sam grew a little concerned when the
huntsman stopped only a few yards in front of him and started sniffing.  The
huntsman walked forward a little more, stopped again and stared with wide
opened eyes at something straight ahead of him.  Sam looked over and saw what
he was looking at.  It was a dreadful sight.  A tall beast of a man with a
large and broad frame noisily approached, each of his footsteps hit the ground
with a metallic clatter.  He was decked out in black and red metal and had a
blood red cape draped across his shoulders which fell to the length of his
calves.  His mask was absolutely terrifying, it looked like the bleached skull
of a huge vulture and attached to it were pristine white feathers which fell
down the back and sides of the mask and further obscured the man’s features.  A
cross-guard sword hilt poked out from his back.  The swordsman drew his weapon very
quickly and held it down to his right side.  His knightly greatsword caught the
moon’s light and refracted it into the dark forest.  The huntsman quickly
strapped his shield unto his back and gripped his greataxe tightly with both
hands.  Sam had learned from the manual that wielding a weapon with two hands
increased its attacking power greatly.

As the two combatants stared at one another, the forest
seemed to be on pause.  Sam was forced to wonder if the game had frozen.  They
stayed that way until the swordsman with the vulture skull helmet broke the
silence.

“Can you satisfy me?”

His voice was all ice, but it had a polite quality to it.

“You fiend!  I’ve come to end your miserable life and to
insure that you lose all your quintessence.  You’re not a man anymore now, so
you don’t need it.  I’ll send you to the depths where you belong!” screamed the
burly huntsman.

The armored swordsman casually lifted his massive greatsword
and laid its blade down on his shoulder.  He then flexed the fingers on his
free hand and strolled towards the huntsman calmly, his cape catching some of
the night wind.

The huntsman gritted his teeth and gripped his great axe even
harder.

“For Marcus, for Maria!” he shouted as he ran towards the
swordsman.