Terramyr Online: The Undiscovered Country: A LitRPG Adventure Page 38

  Brian considered accompanying one of the crew members to a ballista launcher, but then wondered whether there might be opportunity to use his blade against the beast if it came in close enough. Either way, he couldn’t just lie on the deck the whole time. Seeing other members of his party produce ranged weapons of various sorts, he pulled out his longbow and fired. His arrow, like everyone else’s, plinked off the scales harmlessly.

  The ship careened toward the leviathan’s belly, the massive prow blade aimed for the middle.

  “Hold onto something!” the captain shouted.

  The ship slammed into the leviathan. Crates and people were catapulted forward as the blade managed to rip through a scale on the leviathan’s underside and stab into the flesh. Green blood spurted out onto the prow, covering an unfortunate sailor who immediately started to scream as his skin began to melt. The pained sailor leapt overboard, presumably in an effort to quench the pain, and was not heard from afterward.

  The ship halted in the waters and sailors rushed back to their posts, aiming ballista launchers and bows at the leviathan.

  They fired a volley that had little effect, though a few of the missiles did manage to pierce the exposed flesh where the underbelly scale was cracked and hanging loose.

  The leviathan flung another volley of its own, several barbs catching the unwary and pinning them against the deck or sending them overboard.

  “Bring out the dragon lance!” the captain shouted.

  An iron grate flew open as two groups of six sailors pulled on chains to lift a strange-looking, monstrous crossbow. It had a single missile loaded. The thing was twice as long as an actual lance and made of Telarian steel.

  Pointing to two crewmen, the captain shouted at them, “Light it!”

  The two ran to the weapon and poured a thick, viscous oil into a groove along the top and then lit the oil. A green flame rose from the weapon as the captain took position at the controls, strapping herself into a harness that fit her shoulders and allowed her to aim the weapon.

  “Clear!” the captain called. She then pulled a mighty lever that acted as the trigger. The massive missile launched with tremendous power and speed. The green flames trailed behind it in a way that almost gave it a tracer bullet-like effect. The lance slammed into the exposed flesh and tore into the leviathan.

  The monster squealed in pain and jerked its body backward, ripping free of the ship’s blade. It thrashed the aft section of the ship with its tail, crushing the helmsman and splintering the wheel in one go. Then the whole creature sank below the waters, hissing and crying until its head was below the surface.

  “Huzzah!” one of the crewmen shouted.

  “It ain’t over yet!” the captain barked. “Get back to your posts. Lieutenant Nackerby, get to the wheel and figure out how to get us moving again.”

  “The helm is gone, ma’am,” Nackerby shouted.

  “Go figure it out!” the captain shouted. She then gestured with her chin to the two that had lit the first lance. “Load the next lance. Wait for my signal to light it.”

  Shuggra stood at the railing, peering down below. “I don’t see it.”

  “Maybe it’s dead?” Augustin said. “The dragon lance is specifically designed for big creatures like this one.”

  “No way,” Mike said. “I saw its HP bar. Not even down by ten percent after both the prow blade and the dragon lance. If anything it’s just pissed.”

  Brian moved next to Shuggra and looked down. The depths seemed to be churning just below the light’s reach.

  Shuggra pointed out to sea. “Look. The merfolk have come to watch us die,” she said. Brian looked up and saw a couple dozen merfolk several hundred yards away from them. They certainly didn’t look worried for themselves.

  “How can they live in the sea with this thing?” Brian asked.

  “The leviathan is not a native of this sea. It comes and goes as it pleases and traverses all the oceans of Terramyr when it is not guarding its domain in Hammenfein,” Shuggra answered.

  Brian shook his head and looked downward once more. Something silvery flashed near the edge of his field of vision. A sinking feeling hit his stomach as he realized what it was. He grabbed Shuggra and pulled her away.

  “Come on, to the middle!”

  They ran back to where they could try and hold on to the pile of crates, calling for the others in their group to do the same.

  “This is why dwarves stay inside the mountains!” Luthor shouted. “This seafaring business is foolishness. Pure folly!”

  “Hold fast!” the sailor in the crow’s nest cried out. “It’s coming up under us!”

  A thunderous sound erupted through the ship as the Urchin Rose was lifted entirely from the water. The center mast bowed and wavered, the deck creaking as tiny fissures ripped through the wood. Several crewmen were thrown to the deck while others fell overboard.

  Then there was no sound. Everything seemed to stop.

  Brian’s avatar lifted from the deck as the ship started to fall back to the water.

  There was a crash as the Urchin Rose splashed massive waves out in every direction. The forward mast cracked and toppled into the sea, but the center and aft mast remained intact. Brian slammed into the deck and took a negligible HP hit.

  The leviathan then broke the surface off the port side and hissed.

  Brian noticed a ballista launcher had lost its crewman. He pushed up and ran to it.

  Mike was at his side a moment later, throwing a few fireballs. Brian worked the ballista launcher as Freya rushed up and loaded for him. He fired a shot and struck the unprotected area, which was now smeared with green blood all around the gaping gash where the ship had rammed it.

  “How can something take a hit like that and keep on moving?” Brian asked.

  “It looks big to us, but think of it like a bowie knife to a twenty-foot-long anaconda. It could be deadly, sure, but only if you hit the right spot. Otherwise, the snake can likely shake it off as long as it doesn’t get infected.”

  “You telling me there’s hope?” Brian asked. Mike shot him a puzzled look. “You know, like all we have to do is wait for microscopic VR bacteria to infect the wound and bring the leviathan down with a fever.”

  Mike laughed and slapped Brian’s arm. “Shut up, nerd!” Mike launched another fire bolt, but it didn’t seem to do anything.

  “Down!” the captain roared. “Get clear!”

  Brian turned to see the dragon lance aiming their direction. “Crap!” Brian grabbed Freya and Mike and the three hit the deck. A second later the green flames hissed overhead as the dragon lance tore through the air. Brian sat up on his knees to watch, but this time the leviathan swerved its body to the side and the lance barely grazed one of its scales before sailing on to splash in the water.

  “Now that’s just bad luck,” Mike said.

  The leviathan lurched down with its head. Arrows bounced off the scales everywhere as it brought its fang-filled maw down around the captain. It snapped its jaws shut, muffling the captain’s screams.

  Augustin let out a feral yell and rushed toward the place where the captain had been taken, slashing at the leviathan’s face as it raised up into the air a few feet, preparing for another attack. Answering his master’s battle cry, Luthor Goldhammer let out a scream of rage and rushed in with his hammer. He launched himself off of the pile of crates, his back arched and his war hammer at full extension. He brought the spiked end down and popped the leviathan’s black eye. Augustin managed to leap away, but black and purple good erupted all over Luthor as it spilled to the deck. Luckily, the goo proved not to have the same acidic effect as the blood. Luthor wiped his eyes clean and kept on swinging the hammer at the beast’s jaws.

  The leviathan lifted its head out of reach as Luthor shouted at the creature.

  “Come back down here and fight me! Come on you overgrown worm! Take a bite out of me if you can!”

  The tail rose from the water on the other side of the ship.
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  “Oh no,” Mike gasped. “Luthor, run!” Mike shouted, but it was too late.

  The seven-foot-long spike on the end of the tail ran the dwarf through, erupting through Luthor’s armored chest and picking the little warrior up effortlessly. The skewered dwarf’s limbs went limp and he dropped his hammer as the leviathan raised him up as high as the crow’s nest. The leviathan turned its head so its good eye could see Luthor. It hissed with ear-splitting pitch and then bared its fangs.

  Luthor mustered the strength to pull his two daggers free. “Come on then, worm. Let’s dance, you and I.”

  The leviathan struck with blinding speed, ripping Luthor from the spike and chomping him twice before swallowing. There was no way to know, but Brian imagined that Luthor got in a few dagger strikes on the way down. The tail writhed upward and then crashed down onto the deck. Some of the ship’s spikes poked and stabbed the tail, but the spiked end still managed to rip through the center of the deck. The dragon lance machine’s platform tilted downward and went crashing into the lower decks. The leviathan then turned its massive neck, snapping the center mast in the process.

  The sailor from the crow’s nest screamed as he was flung outward, but that scream was cut short as the leviathan snaked around and caught the man in his mouth.

  The leviathan snarled and then sank below the surface as the crew kept firing at the beast.

  “The crew is programmed to defend the ship,” Mike said.

  Brian looked at him incredulously. “Of course they are.”

  “No,” Mike shook his head. “I mean they are programmed to stay and fight no matter what. The battle is already lost, but their base programming won’t let them abandon ship.” Mike pointed to the single longboat attached to the aft side of the ship. “We have to run!”

  Brian looked to Freya, then back to Mike. “Yeah, let’s go!” Mike called out for the others and the group sprinted up the stairs to the rear of the ship. The longboat was outfitted with four bench seats, each equipped with oars similar to the one they had tried to outrun the fire kraken with.

  “Deja vu anyone?” Chris shouted as he leapt into the boat.

  “This should be different,” Mike responded. “The leviathan is going after the crew, and the whole crew is programmed to stay and fight it. We can use the distraction to get away.”

  “The fire kraken wasn’t distracted by the ship,” Chris pointed out.

  “True, but that was also a programmed sequence. This should be different.”

  “You sure?” Rhonda said.

  Mike shrugged. “More of a hunch, really.”

  As soon as Atheron was in the longboat, they worked the levers to quickly lower and release the escape craft. They struck the surface, and Mike blasted all the ropes with his fire.

  “I’ll see if I can summon a storm,” he said.

  “A storm?” Chris shouted as he grabbed an oar. “I think we have enough to deal with.”

  “Think wind, you know, to push us,” Mike said.

  The group rowed as fast as they could to get out and away from the Urchin Rose, then they turned eastward and kept rowing. This time, Brian almost missed Barry’s counting out the strokes. The group did well enough, but Brian hadn’t realized before that listening to Barry had made the previous sea escape less scary somehow.

  The water started to rise up under the Urchin Rose. The group kept rowing hard, but Brian’s eyes were fixed on the ship. A massive silvery form slammed into the bottom again, launching the ship upward as it had before. The hull cracked on the side this time as sailors and ballista launchers flew overboard. The ship crashed back down and started to pitch to the right as it began taking on water.

  “Good call,” Chris said. “Definitely left at the right time.”

  Ten feet away from them the tail spike rose from the water, still smeared with Luthor’s blood.

  “Come on!” Chris shouted.

  Everyone was thinking the same thing. The tail was going to crush them. Even if they survived, there’d be no way they could all swim to shore. The only good news was that game physics wouldn’t penalize anyone for wearing plate armor in the water, but otherwise they were all sitting ducks.

  The tail rose up and up, creating a small wave that propelled the longboat faster for a bit. The tail swung toward the boat, then stopped about twenty feet above them and whipped back the other direction.

  “It’s going for the ship!” Mike said happily.

  “Shut up and row, man!” Brian snarled. They could celebrate on land, but for now they had to get moving.

  The tail crashed through the broken ship. The leviathan’s HP bar dropped a little, presumably because of the hull spikes on the Urchin Rose, but the fight was now over. The leviathan roared and hissed as it undulated across the surface, picking off stranded sailors at its leisure.

  The tall spikes along its spine seemed to form a fence around the sinking, broken ship as the leviathan coiled around the wreck. Sailors were screaming for help, calling out to their gods, but no help came.

  Above the longboat, a small gray cloud formed and a harsh wind blew down at their backs, propelling them faster along while soaking them in a heavy rain.

  The longboat made it to shore before the leviathan finished with the last of the sailors. Brian and the group hopped out of the craft and sprinted for the forest, hoping the trees would at least hide them from the beast, if not fully prevent it from pursuing them.

  They dashed across the road and into the dense forest beyond, then took refuge behind an outcropping of boulders.

  “Think if we move far enough away that it will simply despawn?” Mike asked.

  “Worth a shot,” Brian agreed. “Ceta is about five more miles to the south.” The group sprinted as far as they could, stopping whenever one of them announced that their stamina was out, which was usually either Rhonda or Mike, since they had little use for that particular kind of energy. As they came within view of Ceta’s tall walls, the leviathan’s angry wails faded away.

  [EPIC ACHIEVEMENT: ESCAPE THE JAWS OF DEATH]

  Mike scoffed. “I’m not even going to open my UI. I think it’s pretty obvious the achievement is just for escaping the leviathan.”

  “If the epic achievement is for that,” Chris added, “then I am doubly happy we retreated, because it’s obvious the programmers designed that thing to be unbeatable.”

  “This is what I was talking about earlier,” Shuggra said. “You outlanders talk weird.”

  “Well, the leviathan is a literal guardian of Hell. He rules over an entire level of Hammenfein. I doubt any creature on Terramyr other than a god could defeat it in battle,” Mike commented.

  “Comforting,” Chris said.

  The group made it to the tree line outside of Ceta’s northern gates and then stopped to survey the area. Not seeing any Morr’Tai assassins, they decided it was wisest simply to buy steeds at the stables. Rhonda and Augustin went to the stable to make the deal.

  “Does he not care that his companion died?” Atheron asked about Augustin.

  Brian looked back to the dwarf. “He cares. He lost two people who were important to him on that boat, if I’m not mistaken. But a Konnon warrior does not show his emotions,” Brian said, searching for some way to communicate the complicated feelings of losing a valuable, even preferred companion who is nonetheless not quite real. He wondered how Augustin was doing. He didn’t want to embarrass him by showing more concern for any possible attachment he might have had for the captain than what was there, but knew it probably had hit him more heavily due to the situation they were already in.

  Krestin nodded his approval of the assessment. “A Konnon warrior feels most deeply for his comrades, but sadness would dishonor the dwarf’s sacrifice. Luthor Goldhammer fought well, and he will be remembered in the feasting halls when our campaign is over.”

  Atheron gave a single nod and then sighed. “The Goldhammers are a noble line. I would be honored to speak the final rites for him when the time c
omes.”

  Brian agreed. “That sounds wonderful. We’ll plan on doing that soon.”

  A few moments later, Rhonda and Augustin were approaching not with horses, but with some sort of animal that looked to be a cross between a horse and an elephant perhaps. It was as tall and broad as an elephant, but the musculature and shape of the chest and legs were equine. The tail was whip-like and only had a tuft of dark hair at the end like an elephant, and the nose was like half of an elephant’s trunk and not nearly as flexible. Instead of a mane, the creature had strange frills of yellow and blue hair growing from antennae like growths above their eyes.

  “What are those?” Chris asked.

  Mike shrugged.

  “They are rhiquin,” Shuggra stated dryly. “Honestly, you outlanders know so little about this land, it is a wonder you have survived at all.” She turned expectantly to Chris. “I want another installment of pay.”

  “I paid you,” Chris responded hotly.

  “Not to fight the leviathan,” Shuggra said. “And there was no mention of immortal enemies like the man you fought in Fezhik either. I think another installment is in order.”

  Chris snorted, but ultimately he offered her more money.

  “For all of us,” Shuggra added.

  Chris looked to Brian, but Brian just nodded. Chris muttered something under his breath and then paid each remaining companion a bag of gold. Brian wasn’t sure how much was in there, but apparently it made Shuggra happy. Freya held up a hand and refused hers, allowing Chris to keep it instead.

  Rhonda and Augustin reached them a moment later, the ground trembling slightly as the rhiquin approached.

  “What do you think?” Rhonda asked, a pleased smile across her face. “They are faster than horses, can fight smaller predators, and emit a supersonic noise that drives larger predators away.”

  “Sounds like music to my ears,” Mike said. “No pun intended.”

  “Except for the malfis owl,” Shuggra said. “The malfis owl is not bothered by sounds, and there are some other large predators to the west that wouldn’t react to the sound either.”