Finding a Body (The Dark Herbalist Book #4) LitRPG series Read online

  Woah... One of the princes lost his sword in a scuffle with his brother and bit off his ear. The stunned queen lying on the floor was slain with a dagger to the heart by her now animalistic husband at the same time as the eldest son was run through with a sword... I had never seen such abandon, such mutual hate even between wild animals... Jesus Christ... Messages flickered in about experience and leveling up. By the way, there was level one hundred twenty-five! Now I could put on the last item of Fenrir’s Cursed Regalia without an Ifrit Heart.

  “No, no. He’s mine!” with a crack of my fiery lash I knocked back one of the princes as he tried to decapitate Valeon the Thirteenth, who was sitting on the floor strangling another of his sons.

  Exotic Weapons skill increased to level 39!

  And then, it was as if a delirium spell fell off the squabbling family. They abruptly stopped fighting and turned their bloodied blades on me. All that remained were maddened king, roaring like a beast with hardly a third of his life remaining and five princes spattered in the blood of their own kin. Quite a lot for one little goblin, but I was certainly not going to retreat.

  Direct conflict with these six powerful enemies didn’t bode particularly well for me, so I tried to alter the conditions. My fiery whip lashed at the walls, knocking off the flaming torches. I was hoping to immerse the room in darkness so I could use my Night Vision. It didn’t work. The fallen torches stayed lit and the light from the loopholes was enough for my enemies anyhow. Then let’s use a darkness scroll!

  It instantly became so dark it looked like black ink had been dumped into the air. Even the bleakest moonless cloudy night wouldn’t provide such thick and impenetrable darkness. This was more like the dark found in an underground storage room. I hurriedly activated my vampire abilities Search for Life and Night Vision. I even managed, contorting my whole body and dodging whistling swords, to silently slip past the six men approaching me as they blindly swung their weapons.

  Stealth skill increased to level 46!

  Stealth skill increased to level 47!

  Acrobatics skill increased to level 35!

  Dodge skill increased to level 50!

  You may choose your second specialization in this skill

  Now behind my enemies, I tossed two Ice Grenades at them one after the next. The three princes froze into grizzly ice sculptures, and I exploited that, pushing the nearest one out a window, sending the knight on a short flight onto the stones of the castle’s internal courtyard. I saw some more lines run by about experience and levels. But I didn’t care because the darkness suddenly lifted! All I could tell was that King Valeon the Thirteenth had used something to refill his health to maximum. And all the negative effects like his allies being frozen and blind instantly disappeared. Not good! Not good at all!

  “VIXEN, spit poison through the window!” I shouted, and a second or so later the room was clouded with toxic smoke.

  Successful check for Poison Resistance!

  Aha! My big-eared goblin had excellent defense against poison, but my enemies all started choking. Two of the princes even dropped their weapons and fell to their knees, clutching at their throats and spitting up blood. I took advantage of that and gave a few lashes of my Hair Whip, bringing down their hitpoints even further.

  Exotic Weapons skill increased to level 40!

  However... King Valeon the Thirteenth squeezed an amulet around his neck, and the room immediately aired out. The poison disappeared without a trace. Oh, what the hell! I shouted for VIXEN to breathe poison again, but nothing followed. Clearly, my winged snake needed time to bank away and turn around. And that was the very moment I was attacked by one of the princes. I dodged his falling sword, but a shield strike knocked my little goblin off his feet. I didn’t have time to stand up, pressed down by two heavy bodies at once. I threw the whip away. It was worthless in close combat. Then I tried to reach an enemy’s neck with my teeth, but it was no use. Next the other two swordsmen ran up and joined the fight, trying to get through me with their blades and even sometimes succeeding. But I managed to bite the king, healing my lost hitpoints. However, Valeon the Thirteenth also restored his health, again using his magical amulet. A fierce battle started on the blood-soaked stone floor.

  “Don’t hold back your anger! Let me out!”

  Just like back on the island in the duel with Regent Uvari-Dor-Shu, I was hearing a voice in my head. But this time I didn’t take too long thinking or doubting. I immediately let Fenrir out instead of having him stew away inside of me. A moment later, a wild and sharp pain started pulling out my joints and breaking my bones. I started yelling fearfully, not capable of withstanding these torments. My jaws grew longer, claws grew on my fingers, my green skin grew thick fur. My enemies began shouting in horror and stumbled back when the huge wolf shook the people off his hide and stood to all four legs. The room was too small for a beast as huge as me.

  “Usually I don’t eat people, just drink blood,” I told the terrified king and his sons, who were frozen in horror. “But for you I’ll make an exception. Yunna and Vaash must be avenged!”

  It was no battle, it was a massacre. My fearsome bites crippled my enemies, removing their limbs with huge chunks of flesh. No armor or shields could stop my lupine teeth. Each bite, and each bit of flesh I swallowed restored the huge wolf’s health, and no strikes or even swords stuck down the whole length of the beast’s body could change the outcome of my bloody feast now. First I slurped down the princes one after the next, then it was King Valeon the Thirteenth’s turn. I left just his head and amulet.

  But I sensed I was not alone. I sharply turned and discovered a little curly-headed girl of three or four walking through a far door I hadn’t yet checked. She was squeezing a ragdoll and watching the bloody animalistic feast in silence.

  Anora

  Princess of the Kingdom of Lars

  Level-11 Aristocrat

  The voice in my head obligingly explained:

  “The last member of the old royal dynasty. All that remains is to devour her, and the Kingdom of Lars will be completely yours. The Dark Sovereign will be recognized as its new ruler. Plus she’s doomed no matter what. Other aristocrats will kill her in the struggle for the throne. So better eat her yourself than leave her for the vultures.”

  But I didn’t obey Fenrir’s bloodthirsty advice. I don’t know how I might have behaved if the little princess were there for the execution, and Anora was marked with the glowing words “Child-killing scum!!!” On the one hand, killing her would make me a child-killer. But on the other not doing so would mean breaking an oath to get revenge on everyone in Lars with that cursed label. Fortunately, the game hadn’t provided me such a difficult choice. My rage passed, quickly being replaced with exhaustion and pain. My body started changing again, and a few seconds later I was back to the little big-eared goblin, now soaked head to toe in blood.

  “Don’t be afraid, girl. I won’t hurt you,” I said in the friendliest tone I could muster, and the little princess nodded eagerly.

  In her place, I would have been terrified to see the corpses of my relatives and a bloody goblin. But Anora was too little to realize what had happened. The girl just asked, pointing at Queen Elvira, who was lying in a puddle of blood:

  “Why is mommy sleeping in the daytime?”

  “Uhh... You see...” I faltered, not knowing what to say to the mewling little girl and looking down to avoid her gaze. Damn! Damn!! Damn!!! It would be easier for me to just die than explain to this NPC girl that I had just killed all of her relatives. Sure, I understood perfectly that Anora was just an NPC, basically just a chunk of code, but in this world that was the norm. I just couldn’t wave off the little girl’s problem.

  But a decision came unexpectedly. What was the Queen’s level? Two hundred thirty or something? That meant bringing her back would take four hundred sixty Direct Intervention Points. That was approximately how much I had left after Shaman Ghuu siphoned the points off the altar of the temple of the sun.


  “I’ll wake your mommy up right now.”

  You have used 460 Direct Intervention Points

  You have 4 points remaining

  The Queen’s whole body writhed, she took a sharp breath with a scream and sat up on the floor, looking with mad eyes from me and back to her daughter. I didn’t even have to explain; the Queen already knew what had just happened. The mother opened her arms for an embrace and squeezed her little girl tight.

  “I did this for your daughter’s sake,” I told Queen Elvira the First. “I know all too well what it’s like to lose your parents. I couldn’t allow such a sweet curly-headed girl to grow up an orphan. You are now the sole ruler of Lars, and thus it is in your power to stop the violence.”

  “Yes, Dark Sovereign,” the woman sitting on the bloody floor confirmed. “The Kingdom of Lars requests peace in my name. We shall pay the necessary contribution, and my subjects shall never again raise arms against the Dark Sovereign or his companions.”

  “That isn’t all,” I added a condition to the peace treaty. “The bodies of General Vaash and the Goblin girl Yunna must be surrendered so we can give them a decent funeral. All city-dwellers with the cursed mark must be declared criminals and executed at once. And as for the undying, very well, I’ll handle them myself.”

  Diplomat skill increased to level 36!

  Diplomat skill increased to level 37!

  Diplomat skill increased to level 38!

  The queen nodded in silence, after which I saw a laundry list of identical experience growth messages scroll past. I suspected that was my new allies taking down the cursed soldiers of the Kingdom of Lars.

  The soldiers and guardsmen of the state of Lars are no longer hostile toward you!

  * * *

  ALL MARKERS on the mini-map turned either blue or green, no hostile creatures remained nearby. I bid Queen Elvira the First goodbye, taking the head of her husband Valeon the Thirteenth in my inventory along with his mysterious amulet. After that I went down the spiral staircase to the very bottom, finding myself in a huge gala room. Here the royal guards were dismantling barricades, servants were picking up trash, and my healers and mages were healing their former enemies. Iron Jeanette, leader of the Amazons walked up. However, the warrior woman’s face was very strained despite the fact we won:

  “Amra, I need to speak with you alone.”

  We walked away from the groups of NPC and stopped in an alcove where no one would bother us. Nevertheless, the dark-skinned warrior woman did not think we had taken sufficient precautions and took out a scroll (I didn’t know where from, considering her minimal clothing), then activated a dome of silence. We couldn’t hear what was happening outside, and no one out there could hear us.

  “Valerianna Quickfoot says the enemies have arrived and stand in the thousands at the walls of the old city. For now they’re just standing, not making any attempts to assault, but I think I know what they’re waiting for. For the last half hour my Amazons have all been reporting attempted bribery. Players from different clans are offering very large sums of money, inappropriately large even, for a portal to your castle. My opinion: we need to get out of here before anything unfortunate happens!”

  Well, well... That really was a worrying factor. We had no way of stopping the Amazons from sending private messages to other players, or even knowing if they did so. And that meant there was no guarantee we were still safe. What if one of my Amazons had already agreed to sell the invaluable scroll to my enemies?! Maybe the sale had already taken place, just by throwing a scroll over the walls of the old city. I asked if that was possible, and Jeanette instantly flared up in indignation:

  “I’m confident in my girls! As I am of the many fans and admirers in my clan. But the money they’re offering keeps going up. And temptation goes with it. Any loyalty has its limits. We have to remove the portal-blocking dome and get out of here!”

  I shook my head unhappily. If only it were all so easy... I didn’t doubt for a second that, as soon as we removed the Astral Explosion dome, my enemies would just put up another one so we still couldn’t leave. It might not cover the whole old town, which might buy us some time. Maybe some of my warriors could even go through a portal to safety, but they definitely wouldn’t be letting us go unimpeded.

  No, I had a different plan. First distract the enemy and give them bigger cares than us. For example, if someone went over the walls and summoned the goddess Eris. The goddess of strife, after three thousand years languishing in boredom, would just go hog wild on those undying. In an instant she would find every little rift between the players and clans and skillfully puff them up into an explosive conflict.

  Or... I stopped Jeanette from trying to convince me to leave with a gesture, because she was interrupting my thoughts. Or show that the Dark Sovereign already slipped away, so it was pointless to besiege us? What if we also made them think we were staying here because they already had a portal scroll to my Castle?! It was an interesting idea, but how could I pull it off?

  “Jeanette, would you happen to have a person in your clan who cannot be bought with money, and whom you don’t doubt in the slightest? It would be preferable if they were also a good actor.”

  The swarthy muscular warrior woman considered it briefly, then smiled and pointed at one of the few men in her lady clan. I had to admit, I had already noticed this muscular athlete of such unordinary appearance. He had a tall mohawk of green hair on his bare shaven head, innumerable piercings in his ears, nose and the nipples of his bare suntanned torso, a whimsical tattoo of Iron Jeanette on his chest and no clothing at all except a sequined silver G-string.

  Titanium Joker [AMAZON]

  Human

  Level-245 Monk of the Wind School

  I had yet to conclude whether I was looking at a professional stripper or a person from the dead semi-mythical subculture of the punks. Nevertheless, his respectable level of 245 and heavy two-handed staff forced me to treat Titanium Joker with respect. As did the nimble and deadly level-203 ermine running circles around his legs, which had been dyed a glamorous shade of pink.

  Iron Jeanette, not hiding her happy smile, commented on her underling’s appearance:

  “Don’t you mind his frivolous look. That’s his way of letting go of real-world concerns in the game. In real life his name is Vladimir Toropov, a Russian oligarch who owns two thirds of all businesses in the world that are in any way connected with mining and processing titanium. He told me he has already survived seventeen assassination attempts by competitors and personal enemies, while he has sent so many foes to the other side that he can’t even count. We’ve known each other since I was eighteen, maybe twenty. He used to be my biggest admirer. He never missed an online tournament if Iron Jeanette was going to be in it. He used to give me beautiful flowers and gifts...”

  “And what does your husband think about you having an admirer in your clan? Not jealous?” I asked cautiously. But Jeanette laughed uncontrollably:

  “Amra, in the real world that half-naked muscular monk turned eighty-seven a while ago, so no. My husband is not jealous. What’s more, Vladimir has known Paul for a long time and they get along famously. Although in real life Vladimir Toropov is totally different. There he is cautious, predatory, and doesn’t trust anyone. He has more bodyguards than I have Amazons in my clan! And no one on the whole planet knows where his virtual reality capsule is. But when he found out that my son Andre had a racing accident, Vladimir dropped everything and rushed to the scene. He was actually the one who paid for my son’s treatment. So I’d put my head on the chopping block to say he would never betray me for any amount of money! But all that stays between us. All my girls think Titanium Joker is a young professional art model, a great lover of pretty ladies and virtual sex.”

  Day Four. A Piece of the Puzzle

  “STOP RIGHT THERE, you rapscallion!” said my Amra in the form of a giant spider, jumping off the wall. I was chasing the practically naked monk as he very gracefully dodged the ma
ny arrows my archers fired.

  In response Titanium Joker just gave me the middle finger, still running and not even thinking about stopping or slowing down.

  The enemy players watching this were befuddled, not knowing what was happening, or who to attack in this situation: the enemy player from the Amazons clan, or the huge spider coming after him? Meanwhile, taking advantage of my fourfold advantage in leg count, I quickly closed the gap between us and broke out of the Astral Explosion dome. Now! Still racing on my four jointed legs, I took out the bronze gong with my two other limbs and clanged the hammer on the fragile, time-darkened plate.

  BOOOOOOOOOOONG! Despite the small size of the divine artifact, I was momentarily deafened and stumbled, tripping over my own arms and legs. Seemingly everything around was ringing: the fortress walls, the houses in town, even the cloudy sky. While I got my legs sorted out, two or three arrows pierced my body, but I rolled behind a nearby building for cover.

  “You summoned me, took me away from business, and didn’t even have a gift ready...” next to me was a dark-haired lady of middling years in an antique tunic. “And that’s at the fact that you spoiled my brother Charon with great presents. And you also brightened old Hel’s day with some gifts as well. Not good, Amra...”