Expedition Newb Read online

  Expedition Newb

  M. Helbig

  Copyright © 2020 by M. Helbig

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing, April 2020

  www.mhelbig.com

  Contents

  1. Marsh & Magic

  2. The Chapter After Chapter One

  3. A Nice, Relaxing Sword Fight

  4. A Second Quest Does Not Qualify as a Quest Reward

  5. Are You Sure You Want to Know What’s Under That Beard?

  6. I’m Gonna Need a Lot More of That Easter Grass

  7. So, The Thief Was Hiding Something?

  8. The First Time Ever Someone Wished They’d Packed a Gong

  9. I’m Not Going to Tell You Who Dies in This Chapter, But There Are A Bunch of Chapters After This One, So . . .

  10. Ohhhh. You Wanted Him Not Dead

  11. Well, I Didn’t Vote for Him

  12. Overseer? They Should Call Her the Underseer

  13. That Gosh Dern Mob Ate Ma Quest!

  14. Construuuuuuucts!

  15. You Sacrifice Visitors to Your Evil God? Then We’re From Whatever This Place Is Called

  16. Between a Statue and an Equally Hard Thingy

  17. Angry Giant Things Stomp Into Cities All the Time and Don’t Destroy Them, Right?

  18. Death, Action, and One-Liners

  19. I Wish I’d Thought to Wear Brown Pants Too

  20. Burned Up

  21. Could You Invent a Way to Fix All Those Dead Guys?

  22. Reunions & Holes

  23. What Do You Call a Dirt Elf After He Takes a Bath?

  24. Nobody Ever Died Playing Checkers

  25. Duels With More Than Two People

  26. How Not to Win at Jousting

  27. Don’t You Point That Shovel at Me!

  28. If You’re a Mole Person, You Might Want to Skip This Chapter

  29. Miss Beatly’s Big Day

  30. Nobody Ever Got Loot By Being Nice

  31. But He’s Not Even Wearing Any Sunglasses

  32. Shades Be Gone—New from the Makers of Screaming Death & Oops! I Wiped My Raid

  33. Slap Fight

  34. I Lost Him on Purpose This Time, I Swear

  35. Alizia Reveals That Thing I Wanted to Know

  36. Character Sheets

  Marsh & Magic

  We’d been traveling for days, and we were right back where we started.

  The stocky mound of moss, swamp water, and hate smashed me in the gut, knocking the wind out of me. As much as I wanted to defend myself, I had to try the heal spell again. To punctuate the point, our tank, Alizia, took two more brutal hits from my tormentor’s two brothers. . . parents? Do swamplings reproduce like people or are they spawned by magic and lack of imagination?

  The swampling must have read my mind and bit me in the crotch for 36. I was saved from the imminent internal debate on whether I should heal Alizia or myself when Olaf’s dagger shot clean through my swampling for 94! I was grateful Olaf was a gnome. If he’d been my height instead of four feet tall, the blow probably would’ve taken my eye out instead of just grazing my torso. The glowing red dots that marked the swampling’s eyes winked out. It converted to muck and moss, sliding off Olaf’s arm into a lifeless pile on the ground.

  You have gained 400 Experience Points! 53,431/100,000 to next level.

  “Yay!” Alizia waved her giant green limbs in the air. “Go team! Now, could you fine gentlemen perhaps help me out with these two terribly unhygienic gnomes? You know, before they leave a tall, stylish corpse.”

  “How many times must I tell you those are not gnomes under there?” Olaf grumbled something under his breath but still rushed to help her.

  Alizia miraculously managed to catch both swamplings’ blows on her shield for no damage. “At least seven or eight more times—not that that’ll change my mind or anything—but come on, they’re the same height as you, and you can’t see anything past that icky dirt.”

  “Your logic is flawless, as usual,” I deadpanned as my Regrowth healed her. “My previous statement may or may not be the result of me taking several blows to the head when you pulled them through our campsite.”

  Alizia beamed a smile of pure innocence as she blocked another blow. “That was your fault. Leaving me on watch unsupervised. You were just asking for me to spice up dream land with mobs and experience points. In a way, you should be thanking me.”

  With no mana left, I summoned my bow, quickly switching to the swampling on the right as Olaf turned the left one into a pile of mush.

  You have gained 400 Experience Points! 53,831/100,000 to next level.

  “Thank you, Alizia,” I said. “For nearly killing us all, interrupting our sleep, and wasting a camping kit.”

  Alizia used Shield Slam on the swampling, stunning it, and leaving it at our mercy. My arrows only did 23 and 19, but they were barely enough to finish it off after Olaf’s massive 103!

  You have gained 400 Experience Points! 54,231/100,000 to next level.

  Alizia took a deep bow. “You’re welcome. Would you like to see my next trick?”

  “No!” Olaf and I said in unison.

  Alizia winced and took a step back. “Jeez. It’s like you two missed your nap or something . . . Oh, right. Would it make you feel better if this time it wasn’t intentional? I mean, how was I supposed to know those piles of muck floating in the water were sentient and didn’t like being poked or having hilarious things said about their ancestors? It’s not like they even have ancestors or anything. You gnomes reproduce by mixing happy thoughts with cans of mustache wax, right?”

  The normally unflappable Olaf charged, but I deftly intercepted and held him back. I was getting pretty good at keeping the two of them apart. A bit too good.

  Up until a week ago, I’d only seen Olaf truly angry once, and that was when he discovered Decrona, our former group member, had murdered his friend, Nanny. Decrona had only killed Nanny in our game—ironically, the same fate Decrona suffered when Olaf killed her in revenge for Nanny’s death—though in both cases that had resulted in their deaths in the real world as well. We defeated the monster who’d caused their final deaths, known as a “Reaper,” but there were more of them out there.

  The more we learned about these Reapers, the more frightening they’d become. Apparently, the company’s developers couldn’t find anything in the code to explain their existence. The most frightening thing of all was that recently parts of the code had become inaccessible to them, something I’d learned only days ago when we’d again bumped into a former executive at the company, Nyytro.

  With all of that, a week of aimless wandering, and no sign of our objective in sight, tensions were high. Very high. We’d discovered that Alizia’s mischievous shenanigans were only amusing in small doses and dangerous to your mental health when they continued for days on end. If we ever found civilization again, I’d get a warning label stamped on her.

  To make matters worse, Decrona’s death had lost us access to her contacts and their vast knowledge of the game at a time when we needed them most. She’d also helped with a lot of the decision making. Now that had fallen to the rest of the group to divvy up. And with Alizia being . . . well, Alizia, and Olaf often highly distracted—both by our goal to find information about his lost son and by Alizia—most of the burden had fallen on me. My repeated fumbling of spells in the swampling fight had not been an unusual occurrence. Trying to keep everyone focused on the right targets and acting
as temporary healer was a lot to take on, but I had to figure it out. Olaf was an amazing person and an even better friend. Finding his son was too important a mission to screw up.

  Getting to civilization again was exactly what we needed. A nice hot meal and a real bed would do wonders for our bodies and minds. Getting upgrades to our gear would smooth everything over the rest of the way. Our bags were nearly bursting with trash loot. I estimated I could probably replace at least three pieces with my cut of the proceeds, and that was after spending all but a couple death’s worth of money at the wandering peddler we’d happened upon a week ago. I gave my character sheet a long look, mostly to distract me from more of my friends’ bickering.

  Horus

  Level: 8

  HP: 200/200

  Class: Woodsman

  MP: 112/112

  Race: Human

  AP: 72/72

  Experience: 54,231/100,000

  AC: 40

  STR: 6 (8)

  Resists

  AGI: 10 (16)

  Light: 0

  DEX: 46 (61)

  Dark: 5

  STA: 21 (25)

  Earth: 0

  END: 8 (9)

  Water: 0

  CHA: 1 (2)

  Fire: 5

  INT: 11 (14)

  Wind: 0

  WIS: 11 (13)

  HP Regen: 8 per minute (14.4 per minute out of combat)

  Carrying Capacity: 152/160

  MP Regen: 8 per minute

  AP Regen: 8 per minute

  Skills: 1-Handed Swords 9/25, Bows 21/25, Flanking Attack 16/25, Improved Dexterity 14/25, Inspect 25/25, Nature Magic 11/25, Regen 16/25, Sprint 8/25, Tracking 17/25, Survivalist 3/25

  Equipment:

  Main Hand: Family Heirloom

  Off Hand: N/A

  Damage: 3-6

  Speed Rating: 3 Bonus: +1 STR

  Ranged: Rickety Initiate's Short Bow

  Damage: 6-9

  Speed Rating: 3 Bonus: +1 DEX

  Chest: Jerkin of Please Don’t Kill Me

  Arms: Junior Explorer’s Sleeves

  AC: 12

  Bonus: +2 DEX +1 AGI +1 STR+1 INT +1 WIS

  AC: 5

  Bonus: +2 DEX +1 INT +1 WIS

  Hands: Formal Gloves of Butling

  Head: Straw Hat

  AC: 8

  Bonus: +6 DEX +5 AGI +2 STA

  Special Abilities: Dirt Repellent

  AC: 3

  Legs: Farmer’s Overalls

  Feet: Manure-Stained Boots

  AC: 4

  AC: 3

  Waist: Lizard-Skin Belt

  Back: Cloth Cape

  AC: 3

  AC: 2

  Bonus: +2 STA +2 END

  Finger 1: N/A

  Finger 2: Ring of Inspirational Messages

  Bonus: +1 INT +1 CHA

  The Chapter After Chapter One

  “Olaf and I should go back to sleep now so we can get this Tiredness buff to go away,” I said. “Alizia, return to watch, and this time, don’t poke anything. Only wake me up when it’s my turn for watch.”

  Alizia saluted. “Aye, aye, O Captain, my Captain.” She scratched her chin. “Wouldn’t it be simpler for you to not go back to sleep and not waste one of our precious camping kits? I mean, the debuff is already gone. No, of course not. You’re the boss, so you obviously know what to do.”

  Olaf stopped struggling and stared above my head. “Your Tiredness debuff is gone.”

  “So is yours and Alizia’s. How is that possible? We were only down for four hours. And once again, I’m not the leader. Our group functions perfectly fine without one.”

  “And the more often you mention it, the more often she’s going to keep calling you that,” Olaf said. “It is probably best not to give her ammunition.”

  “You were down for five hours, actually, Leader Leaderson,” Alizia said. “I was down for four . . . What? With no one to watch my antics, I got bored.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. “Yet you still managed to pull three mobs on us in less than an hour.”

  She saluted me again. “While I do possess many, some would call, less desirable qualities, I am always efficient in my reckless hijinks. Besides, in this case it was a good thing because we learned something new. Now we won’t have to waste so much time sleeping.”

  I pulled up my map overlay and shared it with the group. “While that is useful, it does not solve our problem of finding this dungeon. That traveling peddler said the Golden Hole was to the northwest and we’ve now covered the entire northwest from where we met him.” I pointed to the green spot I’d marked on my map indicating where we’d met the shifty beaverkin a week ago.

  Olaf stood in the middle of the digital map and squinted. After a few minutes of pacing, he stared at the mountains, finally pointing at something. “Here. We missed this spot.”

  I knelt next to him and realized he was right. I’d taken the gray speck to be a place the mapmaker had been lazy about, but realized it was actually somewhere we’d missed. When you got within two hundred feet of an area, the default faded gray of the map filled in with color. Thinking back on that day, it must’ve been when we were running from the twentyish mountain orcs Olaf and I had attracted by yelling to overcome Alizia’s terrible singing. After hours of running, we’d managed to split them up into smaller groups and slowly take them down over the rest of the day. In doing so, it appeared we’d forgotten to backtrack to the same spot we’d left.

  “Seems unlikely that little speck is it,” Alizia said. “The Hole’s supposed to be a huge dungeon. Really, two dungeons. If that’s not it, can we finally give up on this fool’s errand and go to the nearest town?”

  Olaf glared at her.

  “I wanna find Clewd as much as you do, Laffy, but look at the facts. A: He’s a loon, so even if he did say he was going to this Golden Hole place, he’s just as likely to have seen something shiny in the distance and gone there instead. B: It’s a higher-level dungeon. Even if we somehow do find it, Clewd said he’d be at the boss, and our chances of surviving to get there are next to zero. We’d be better off waiting in a town or somewhere else that’s safe for a trio of level eights until he leaves the Hole. C: It’s been a week since he went there, so he’s probably already gone.”

  I moved in between them. “Alizia, we’ve been over this. While your arguments are oddly sound and reasonable, Clewd is our only lead on finding Olaf’s son. You’re more than welcome to leave us. We won't hold it against you, but Olaf and I have to try.”

  Alizia frowned before finally shaking her head. “You’re my friends. Where you go, I go, until the bitter end or when I run out of potions.”

  Olaf smiled broadly like he used to before we started on this journey. “I promise you, loyal friend, if this last spot turns out to be a dead end, we will go find a town so you can get a hot meal, a cold drink, and more potions. But one last stop until then.”

  Alizia reached down and patted the gnome on the head. “Lead on, my good might-still-be-a-swampling friend.”

  A Nice, Relaxing Sword Fight

  In the three hours of travel it took to get to the spot, nothing happened. The lack of encounters wasn’t terribly surprising as we often went quite a while before seeing an aggressive mob in this sparse forest. There were a healthy amount of the non-aggressive beasts about, but as speed and distance were our primary goal, we’d mostly left them alone. The real surprise was that Alizia behaved, and that what amounted to a heated argument in our tight-knit group had done wonders to calm everybody’s nerves. Sometimes even the best of friends need to vent.

  It was easy to see the mountains from far away through the thinning tree line as we neared the spot. What we could also see was that the hoped-for pass-through did not exist. It was just a sheer wall of mountain.

  “So where to now?” Alizia asked. “Take a few days to get back to that player city Fen or continue on the road to the north, hoping we come across the small town that peddler came from?”


  “Give me a few minutes to check this mountain closer, and then we shall decide.” Olaf jogged toward the mountain, and we dutifully followed.

  A minute later, my map filled in the spot with the white color of the rest of the mountain. Olaf ran up and moved his fingers up and down on the dull gray stone. Alizia and I stayed about ten feet back to give him room.

  Five minutes with nothing to show for it finally made Alizia speak up. “Soooo . . . What’s the cutoff? Five more minutes? Ten? Until Olaf becomes one with the stone and starts shedding pebbles from his mustache?”

  “As long as he needs,” I said loud enough for Olaf to hear.

  “Remember what’s at stake for him,” I whispered to Alizia. “How would you feel if after months of searching for your child, your first real lead disappeared?”

  “While I’m definitely never going to have kids . . . on Earth. In this game, maybe. How do you think that works? Do we have sex, get pregnant, and digital baby nine months later? Or is it faster than nine months? Does it take the same amount of time for them to grow up as normal kids or do they come out as adults? Could my theoretical digital son come out as older than me? Horus, are you my son?”