Blood for Power: A LitRPG Apocalypse

Hugo and I continued down the first empty street. We had to walk in the middle of the road as refuse filled the sidewalk, further contributing to the image that the place was abandoned. Hugo was perched on Norris’s shoulder and the goblin spirit summon had his knife out, ready for anything, as they walked beside me.

“I’m just saying that it’s a personal preference thing,” Hugo said. “It has a lot of nice qualities too.”

“I just don’t know what I’d be giving up,” I replied.

Yes, we were still arguing about this.

“Well what would you like?” he asked.

“How about this? I’ll take Delaware, but in return, I get the Virgin Islands.”

The crow nodded. “I can live with that.”

“And, you have to take Guam.”

He stomped his foot. “Oh, come on!” He paused, took a moment to reconsider, and then said, “Fine. But you have to take the bad parts of Florida, like Herbertsbergville.”

“Okay, this is insane. If we start going city by city, then it’ll take us more than a year just to decide who gets what.”

“Are you sure? Because I’d be willing to take say… Gary, Indiana, off your hands for the right price.”

I was taken aback. “Oh my god, you’d really do that? Because no one wants Gary, Indiana. Even the people living there wish they were in Detroit.”

Hugo nodded. “Beneath these feathers lies a giving heart.”

My eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute. Nobody is that generous. You’re angling for something.”

“I want New York. Just the city. You can have the surrounding state.”

I threw up my hands. “There it is! No deal.”

I increased my walking pace to get ahead of them. This argument was getting us nowhere.

“What? It’s not like I wouldn’t let you visit!” Hugo yelled after me.

Up ahead, a five foot tall goblin leapt out of the alleyway. He hit the ground and rolled to his feet dramatically. It didn’t seem like he was carrying any weapons. Instead, he wore a brown buttoned up leather vest, simple pants, and boots.

He pointed an accusatory finger at me. “Lucas Hudson! Your end is nigh!”

Some sort of yellow cube device appeared in his other hand, which was enough for the System to consider it a threat.

*Beast Identified* [Goblin Engineer Dratch] Level: 91 – Dratch has been biding his time for you, ever since you killed his cousin on the roof of the Tower. Here, he plans to avenge his fallen family member and restore honor to his family’s name. This is a real sapient creature, by the way. You really want that blood on your hands?

I casually reached for the sword on my back.

“Hey, you got the last one!” Hugo complained.

I put my hand down. “Fair,” I said, and walked over onto the sidewalk. I leaned against a street lamp and gestured for Hugo to go ahead.

The goblin scrunched his face up in disgust. “I am not here for one of your associates, Lucas Hudson,” he sneered. “I came for you!”

“He’s actually my bodyguard,” I said. “He handles all of my physical altercations so I don’t get sued.”

Hugo hopped off of Norris’s shoulder and flew over to land on mine.

It was an interesting choice. I guess Hugo wanted to test out his weakest spirit summon first before reaching for anything stronger. I was also curious about the goblin Dratch too. Not about his dumb revenge plan. I was ambivalent about whether I’d killed his relative or not. No, it was the device in his hand that interested me. If it was some kind of bomb, I doubted it would be a big one. But the goblin wasn’t holding it like a bomb. He held it like it was a device of power and significance.

Norris charged at the goblin with his knife held aloft. A beam of white energy shot out of the cube and hit the spirit summon square in the chest. Norris instantly vanished like smoke.

Hugo gasped. “Chuck! He busted him! He’s been ghost busted!”

I gave him a look. “Chuck? Come on, settle down.”

“The emotional impact of losing my first spirit summon warranted a first name basis, Lucas.”

“If he really has been ghost busted, then he’s probably just trapped in that cube device. Relax, I got this.”

Hugo flew up to perch on the top of the lamppost while I drew my sword and walked calmly towards Dratch.

The goblin raised the cube threateningly. “At last, I may have my—”

He blinked and suddenly I was beside him. The arm holding the cube had been severed at the elbow by my sword.

Unfortunately, Dratch had managed to activate the cube before I’d reached him. One last blast shot out towards me as the cube was falling. In a panic, I threw my arms up. The blast hit my other bracer before the cube hit the ground and shattered into pieces.

I was unharmed, but the bracer was smoking. It had dispelled certain magics, and I hoped whatever damage it had taken from the device was repairable. I took it off of my arm and a new message appeared.

*Item identified!* [Burning scrap metal]

I cursed. It had been completely destroyed. I tossed it aside.

There goes my second favorite piece of armor.

Dratch saw his bleeding stump, screamed, and tried to make a run for it. I seized him by the throat and glanced at Hugo. “Did Norris come back after the cube broke?” I asked.

“No,” Hugo cried. “He’s gone for real. The goblin killed him.”

“Well he was already dead, so…”

“He destroyed his spirit then!”

I turned back to address Dratch. “You killed my friend’s favorite manservant. So he’s pretty upset right now.”

“Take his other arm, Lucas!” the crow shouted from the lamppost.

“See? He’s crazy. But I’m willing to let you go if you give me some information,” I said. “Starting with what was that cube you used?”

Dratch groaned, and I worried that he’d pass out from blood loss, but then his eyes regained their focus. “Please sir, I’m just a little guy who got too big for his boots. Have mercy! I’m just a small bean. It’s also my birthday! You wouldn’t kill someone on their birthday, would you?”

While distracted by this bizarre display of begging, Dratch pulled a knife from the back of his belt. He moved to stab me with it, so I broke his neck.

*DING!* You have slain [Goblin Engineer Dratch] Level: 90 – Experience Points Acquired.

“That was weird, right?” I asked Hugo, who flew down now that it was safe.

He ignored my question and asked, “what about the device?”

All he could think about was his lost spirit summon.

I poked at the pieces. It looked like it had been a complex piece of machinery that used magic in some capacity. Whether it had killed the Norris spirit outright or just held it until the device had broken was unclear. The biggest issue was that there was a weapon out here that could easily counter Hugo’s spirit summons. To make matters worse, any piece of the device I touched was just identified as its component piece. The System telling me that the copper wire I picked up was copper wire was less than helpful.

“I guess we now know why Roan was so insistent on you picking that other Class,” I said. “Maybe the Arcane Shield would have protected Norris from the blast.”

He looked worried. “You think we’ll encounter more of those devices?”

I nodded. “I’d bet on it. But look on the bright side. At least you got a new goblin spirit to replace Norris with,” I said, pointing to Dratch.

Hugo aimed a wing at the body and said, “arise, Dratch!”

Nothing happened.

Hugo coughed and cleared his throat. “I said, arise Dratch!”

Still nothing.

“Lucas, it’s not working. I can’t even sense his spirit, much less claim it.”

“It must be related to the device he used.”

*New Quest Unlocked* [Sometimes Dead isn’t Better] – Discover what the deal is with the dead goblin Dratch and his mysterious device. This is your main quest for this foundation level.

“That’s it?” Hugo huffed. “That doesn’t tell us anything.”

“We should collect the pieces. Roan talked about there being shops here. Maybe one of them has an engineer that will recognize the design. Do you have a bag I could borrow? There’s like a million tiny pieces here that would each take up an individual inventory slot.”

“No, I don’t have anything like that. Maybe you could use a handkerchief to wrap all the pieces up in?”

I shook my head. “Sadly, I left all my handkerchiefs at home, alongside my reading glasses and my Werther’s Original’s.”

He sighed. “You don’t have to be rude.”

“And I’ll bet you the entire east coast that you already knew that I didn’t possess any handkerchiefs when you mentioned it.”

The bird said nothing, and I let his guilt hang in the air as I painstakingly collected every piece from what I was now calling the spirit killer device. Once done, I was able to loot Dratch’s body to hide the evidence. Roan had said that some of the city’s inhabitants had friends. Better to make it look like we were never here at all.

We continued down the street, turning a corner until we reached a marketplace filled with stalls that were being set up. Every person there was a goblin.

Hugo and I froze.

A few goblins glanced at us before going back to work. The rest ignored us completely. None of them seemed to care about our presence. They were the complete opposite of how Dratch had been.

“What’s going on?” Hugo asked.

I frowned and said, “I don’t know.”

There was a wooden sign hanging over the market entrance with the word ‘Goblintown’ hastily scrawled across it in black paint.

Roan hadn’t said anything about other cities or towns. Was this still part of the Strand?

At one stall, I tried to ask a male and female goblin couple if we could buy anything. Neither of them looked up at me and the woman goblin only grunted.

So they weren’t just busy. We were being deliberately ignored. This gave me another bad feeling and so I picked up my pace while trying to keep out of people’s way. Past the stall owner goblins were a group of male goblins leaning against a wall wearing leather vests similar to the one Dratch had worn.

These goblins stared daggers at us as we passed.

Before I could warn Hugo to keep an eye on them, two of them approached from behind with what looked like tire irons.

I kept walking and didn’t turn around, but a dense crowd was forming up ahead. They intended to block us in. I turned around and attempted to backtrack, but those two goblins in our way were either bolder or stupider than the others.

I warned Hugo.

Lucas: Get ready to hold on when I run.

I formed a Hemorrhage Gate and sent a blood whip out. It sliced the two goblins in half and then I broke out into a run before they even realized what had happened.

After they’d died, I received a new System message.

[The Tree has been sated.]

What the hell does that mean?

More goblins were massing behind us. They were running too now. Pouring out of side streets to join the angry crowd. There were too many to count and too many to fight. Hugo and I did the only dignified thing we could do and fled.

The goblins working the market stalls didn’t try to stop us and as soon as we were outside of Goblintown; I chose to run down an unfamiliar alley and out onto a new empty street. We couldn’t remain where we were and anymore backtracking would just put us back in the wasteland. We had to head deeper into the city.

After a racing down a few more turns, I stopped to catch my breath.

“Okay, I think we lost them,” I said.

BOOM!

A piece of sidewalk ten feet to our left exploded. Something from above had dropped down on it. But there was nobody in sight, which meant someone was giving orders from a distance.

They’re firing artillery?

“Hugo, crows now! We have to find where the spotter is!”

“I thought you wanted to keep a low profile,” he said as I resumed running.

BOOM!

Another explosion only a few feet ahead of us. I skidded to a stop before I fell into the crater.

“That moment has passed,” I snapped.

Five spirit summon crows clawed their way out of the ground and took flight in different directions. It only took a moment for Hugo to find them.

“There, I got them!” he said. “They’re on the roof of an old factory to our left.”

I looked and sure enough, there was a factory a few blocks away. It was the tallest building in this area and was more than enough to give away our position.

I grabbed Hugo and raced away, sticking close to walls where we were harder to spot.

I came out on another street only to find the way blocked by carts and debris. I kept running, but it was like we were going in circles. Meanwhile, the noise of a crowd was drawing closer. An angry mob had formed to hunt us.

We went down another alleyway, but it led to a dead-end with a courtyard. There were some houses around and a well for water in the center. Hushed voices could be heard from one of the houses and the angry mob was getting close.

I went over to the well. It was hard to see how far down it went, but there didn’t appear to be anything sinister lurking in it.

I hopped into the well and jammed my feet into either wall like an acrobat, and held myself in place. Hugo flew down after me and sat on my shoulder.

The crow sent me a message through chat.

Hugo: what now?

Lucas: We wait.