A World in the Palm of my Hands: A LitRPG Apocalypse

When they entered the dungeon. Noah immediately went on high alert as he looked around. He discovered that they were in a torch-lit cave already surrounded by little green goblins the size of Lily, holding spears. Noah rushed to put up a thick earth wall around them that reached to the ceiling of the cave. He could have just killed them all instantly, but this dungeon was for Lily and the boars to practice.

Noah let out a sigh of relief, as he didn’t expect such a welcome. “That was new.” He then looked at Lily and said. “Okay Lily, I’m going to open up a small gap so that those goblins can come in one by one.”

Lily had a serious look on her face as she patted Emeri’s head. “Are you ready mama Emeri?” She whispered and the mother boar snorted in reply, which she took as her way of saying “Of course I am”. Lily’s heart was beating out of her chest, so she inhaled deeply and looked at Noah with conviction in her eyes. “Let’s start.”

Noah then opened a gap in the wall and let one goblin through, enabling them to get a better look at them. The goblin was wearing what looked like earth armor, not unlike Noah’s earlier versions. It was also holding an earth spear with a stone tip.

Out of nowhere, Emeri rushed in and charged at the goblin. Caught off guard, the goblin was knocked down, but was undamaged. It immediately got up and was about to stab its spear into Emeri when the piglets came in for backup, knocking the goblin down again with their combined charges. Out leveled and out geared, they had a hard time damaging the armored goblin. So, Noah decided to level the playing field. He modified and cast stone armor on the boars with an added stone horn to supplement their attacks.

Seeing the boars getting surrounded in stone, Lily cast her own buff on them, which increased their strength stat by ten. This, of course, was not enough to close the more than fifteen level gap between them, but it was enough to do incremental damage on the goblin. They got into the rhythm of alternately knocking down the goblin with their charges and slowly chipped away at its armor. Breaking bones all along the way.

“I kind of feel sad for the goblin. This is more like slow, agonizing torture for it.” Noah thought as he watched the boars bully the poor goblin.

A few minutes later, the goblin finally died, and Noah brought in the next one. With the experience from the previous fight, the boars did an even better job this time and didn’t let the spear wielding little monster stand up once. This continued on as they cycled through resting and fighting. And eventually, they cleared the initial welcoming party and moved on deeper into the cave.

With Mark leading the way and the boars right behind him, they walked on but then they heard a click. Mark looked at his foot and saw that he’d tripped on some wire. “Crap.” He said as he knew he just fell for a trap. He immediately cast his spell [Bark Skin] to prepare for the worst, which turned out to be several tongues of flame that came out of holes in the wall and ceiling. With his spell active and his high constitution, though, the flames were not enough to damage Mark. He simply waved them away as if they were nothing.

With the trap out of the way, they marched on and arrived at a cavern where there were little huts filled with goblins ranging from level fifteen to twenty-five. There was even one larger hut in the middle of it all.

“How are we going to do this?” Mark asked.

“Hmmm. Guess it’s time for some power leveling.” Noah then conjured a few mana bombs and threw them at the goblins. “Now, Dasher! Now, Dancer! Now, Prancer and vixen! On, Comet! On, Cupid! On, Donder and Blitzen!” Noah contentedly smiled as he finally got to say the words of the poem.

“But, there’s no Blitzen though…” Mark said as he, too, smiled.

“Hush now and let me bask in this moment of glory. Hehe.”

With Noah giving the cue, the boars charged into the goblin village, aiming for the lower leveled enemies first. Frozen and defenseless, the goblins were felled one by one. But suddenly, a low rumble resounded in the cavern and a seven-foot-tall monster came out of the largest hut in the middle. It was carrying a large earthen club with earth armor covering every inch of its skin. Noah cast analyze on it and discovered that it was a hobgoblin elite and it was over level forty. “What’s a level forty doing in a low tier one dungeon?” He thought as he looked at the hulking mass of pure muscle and earth.

“We’re probably going to have to step in.” Mark said.

“I’ll take care of him.” Noah declared as he conjured an explosive spear made entirely out of stone. He then mentally threw it at the hobgoblin with all his might. The spear flew through the air and hit the target square in the chest. “Detonate.” Noah said the magic word, and the spear exploded, taking a big chunk of the target’s flesh along with it while driving the tip straight through the hobgoblin’s torso. It collapsed to its knees and died immediately after. He then looked at Lily who was staring with awe at the display. “I’ll leave the cleanup to you and the boars then.”

“Yes big brother, sir!”

It took a few hours, but they eventually cleared the dungeon and power leveled Lily up to level eleven. It was lower than they’d wanted since she had to share the experience gained with the boars, but they were overall satisfied with this dungeon dive. A moment later they were teleported out of the dungeon.

“Can we do that again?” Lily asked

“Seems like you’re a natural at this, so yes, we can do it again. As soon as we find another low tier one dungeon, we’ll take you delving again. Sound good?”

With excitement clear on her face, Lily jumped around with the piglets and celebrated. Even Emeri joined in on the celebration.

“Anyway, let’s get back to the building and call it a day. I need to get back to studying runes. I’m this close to making a functioning shower. I can feel it,” Noah said.

With that, they all hopped on to Talal’s back and flew back to the apartment building. And on their way there, they spotted smoke coming from beyond the mountains. Noah and Mark traded a glance and asked Talal if they could take a look.

Talal looked at the smoke with interest. They were practically out in the middle of nowhere after the Earth expanded, so how could there be smoke? “Could be a random forest fire, but it’s not hot enough for that. Then the only reasonable explanation is people, or at least, something smart enough to create a fire.”

“Yeah, that’s the first thing that came to mind,” Noah said

“Let’s just hope it's humans and not some flaming murder bunny or something.” Mark shivered at the thought.

When they got closer, they managed to see humanoid silhouettes around the campfire with a wagon of some kind behind them. All in all there were around seventeen ‘people’ sitting around the fire, including a few kids. But when they got closer, they noticed that the humanoids had red skin and horns on their heads.

Seeing a shadow looming above them, the red-skinned people looked up and spotted the massive form of Talal. They hurriedly ran to the wagon, which somehow managed to fit all but two of them in its tiny frame. The two outside appeared to be two older men in mage’s robes and were both holding staffs. Suddenly, they both started chanting something and a magic circle appeared under their feet.

Then, as sudden as the magic circle appeared, it faded away and they heard a gruff voice speaking inside their heads. “Stop. Do not attack us. We are but simple merchants looking to trade with you natives.”

Up in the air, they all traded glances with each other and decided to land and check the so-called merchants out. “I’ll do the talking.” Mark declared as he quickly got off of Talal’s back.

“Careful, [Analyze] says they’re half demons, Cambion. And they’re high level.” Noah warned.

Mark nodded and walked up to them, but when he got within a meter of the Cambions, he hit an invisible wall. He shot them a questioning look and asked. “What is the meaning of this?”

“Forgive us, for we do not have the best experiences with humans. But I can assure you that we mean you no harm unless, of course, you harm us first.” A heavy pressure accompanied the Cambion’s last words as Mark was almost forced to kneel.

“Is this how you merchants greet all of your customers then?” Mark said through gritted teeth. He glanced back at Noah and the others who were about to come to his aid and waved at them, signaling that he was fine. Then, a much stronger yet gentler pressure surrounded him and fighting off the oppressive pressure, allowing him to stand up. He looked at the other red skinned man, who he noticed looked quite similar to the other one, smack the head of what Mark assumed was his brother.

“He’s right. What are you doing? We agreed to try my way on this planet.” He then looked at Mark and had an apologetic smile on his face. “I am truly sorry about that. My brother has a tendency to resort to threats and violence. My name is Aglith by the way, and this dumb brother of mine is Gakun.”

“You don’t say…” Mark glared at Gakun for a moment, then turned to Aglith and spoke. “My name is Mark and if you don’t mind, I would like to ask some questions.” Mark cleared his throat and continued. “First, what are you people doing here and are you really demons?”

Aglith adjusted the necklace he was wearing and replied. “As I said earlier, we are merchants. We travel the worlds in search of trade and hopefully, riches. As for your second question, we are half-demons as I’m sure your friends over there already know from scanning us.”

Mark waved the others over and asked. “And what, pray tell, do you have in that magic wagon of yours?”

Aglith smiled as he knocked on the door with a rhythm. Then, out came the other half-demons carrying all sorts of items. Two items in particular caught his interest, though. A breastplate that was ornately decorated with trees and animals of some sort that he felt was calling out to him, and a miniature toy which he could only assume was a flying car. “Why’s there a toy here?” He thought as he stared intently at the toy.

Noah rushed up from behind him and whispered loudly into his ear. “Buy the toy no matter what! For super chocolate!” It was loud enough that everybody heard what he said.

Mark recoiled from the unexpectedly loud whisper so close to his ear. “I thought you were going to whisper in my ear!”

Aglith’s smile reached his ears as he heard that. “Oho? You’re interested in this little toy, it seems. Tell you what, as an apology for earlier and as a show of good faith, I’ll sell this toy to you for cheap at only ten medium-grade mana stones.”

Noah and Mark hesitated, as that was pretty much all of what they had on hand. “Why is a toy so expensive anyway? After all, it is just a toy.” Noah asked.

Aglith smiled knowingly. “I’m sure you know the answer to that already, for it is the main reason that I brought it here. I just didn’t expect that I would encounter a native studying the art of runesmithing so soon after arriving.”

Noah shut up immediately and felt stupid for giving in to his excitement earlier. “Crap.” He thought.

Mark then patted Noah’s shoulder and told him it was okay. He looked longingly at the breastplate and thought. “I’ll get you another time, don’t worry.” He shook his head and looked away. He then looked Aglith straight in the eyes and said. “We’ll take it.”