ScaleGuard: Transported to Another World Full of Busty Babes and Also I Can Summon Crocodiles Read online

  ScaleGuard

  Transported to Another World Full of Busty Babes and Also I Can Summon Crocodiles

  by Seann Barbour

  Many Thanks to my supporters on Patreon, including:

  Sean O’Neil

  Cover by Eden Brown

  Contents

  ScaleGuard

  I The Deal

  II Arrival in a New Wold

  III A Town of Beginnings

  IV The First Night

  V Road to Helisor

  VI The Sun City

  VII Thief

  VIII Dark Streets

  IX The Thieves’ Guild

  X Rats

  XI The Secret of the Cellar

  XII Mistress of the Dark Arts

  XIII Undertown

  XIV The Depths of the Earth

  XV The Temple of Plague

  XVI Within the Ziggurat

  XVII Against the Cult

  XVIII The Plague Lord

  XIX Calvary Come Lately

  Epilogue

  Stat Cards

  I

  The Deal

  It was… warm.

  Cozy.

  I didn’t want to open my eyes. The soft warmth against my skin evoked the comfiest of all possible beds, and I wanted nothing more than to drift off to sleep. Or maybe drift back into sleep? I felt like I had just slept for a really long time, and a part of me resented the fact that I was now awake.

  After waiting a few minutes to see if I was going to drift back into pleasant slumber, I determined that I was, unfortunately, probably going to be awake for a while.

  Well shit.

  Begrudgingly, I opened my eyes. And then I determined that my vision must be fucked up, so I closed them again. And then I opened them a second time.

  Nope, vision was still fucked up.

  Instead of waking up in my bed or in a puddle of drunken mess in a gutter somewhere like I might have assumed, I seemed to have woken up in some sort of formless void, where distant lights flew past lazily and everything seemed weirdly dreamlike.

  “Where… am I?” I asked aloud, as if there was someone somewhere who was going to hear me and reply.

  ...which, it turned out, was exactly the case.

  “Oh shit, I got one!”

  I craned my head, and suddenly I got the distinct impression that I had been turned around. That was disorienting enough, but what was even more disorienting was the fact that I was staring into the eyes of an… alligator? Crocodile? I tried to remember the difference. Something about the teeth I think.

  “A mortal!” the crocodile exclaimed, and it was at this point that I realized the crocodile head was attached to a very human body. And holy shit, this crocodile headed guy was jacked. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, which I guess made sense because most shirts probably wouldn’t fit over his noggin, and his exposed chest was so huge and muscular that it was honestly a bit more intimidating than the big monstrous face.

  He was also wearing jeans, which fit him really well, I had to admit. He looked like he belonged on the cover of a Chuck Tingle book.

  “Um, hi?” I hazarded.

  “Mortal! Welcome to Limbo!” the crocodile headed man declared. “Now that you have died, your soul seeks a new realm to pass into and--”

  “Sorry,” I interrupted him, “now that I’ve what?”

  “Died.”

  I suddenly recalled having been in a car, driving home from classes, and then the brakes failing. I also recalled driving directly off a bridge.

  “Oh,” I said. His story checked out. “OK, go on.”

  The crocodile guy cleared his throat, which was interesting since I didn’t know crocodiles could do that. “As I was saying, your soul now seeks to pass into a new realm, and to do so it must pass through Limbo. And I am here to offer you a choice on which realm you pass into.”

  I nodded. That all made sense so far.

  “By now, no doubt, you have guessed my identity,” the crocodile guy said.

  He stopped talking after that, so I guessed he was waiting for me to answer. “...Offler?” I asked.

  “What? No. I’m Sobek.”

  I stared at him. “Who?”

  Somehow, the crocodile head managed to look hurt. “The… Egyptian god?” he prompted.

  I shrugged. “Sorry.”

  “Honestly,” Sobek muttered, “is it too much to ask that civilizations at least remember you millenia after your cult collapses? But I digress. I am a god, and therefore I have the power to bestow a blessing upon you if you decide to take up a sacred quest in my name.”

  “Is the quest lying in a coffin?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Getting cremated?”

  “Not that either.”

  “Decaying?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well in that case,” I said, my hand on my chin, “I’m not sure I’m capable of succeeding in it.”

  “Not at the moment, admittedly,” Sobek conceded, “but you will. I will send you to another world, one much unlike your own, and grant you a portion of my power so that you may aid in my goals there.”

  “And your goals there are…?”

  Sobek leaned in, which was a bit scary, what with the crocodile head and everything. “There is an evil god ruling over this other world,” he said conspiratorially. “Champions of other gods must arise to throw off the yoke of oppression.”

  Wow. That seemed really heroic.

  “Do you want to make room for people to worship you?” I asked.

  “People already worship me there.”

  “Do you want to make room for more people to worship you?”

  “I may want to make room for more people to worship me.”

  I nodded. “What are your tenets of your religion?”

  “That I should be worshipped.”

  “And what do you require of your followers?”

  “That they worship me.”

  “And what do you give to your followers?”

  “Someone to worship.”

  I blinked. Oh my God he sounded sincere. “What does worshipping you entail, exactly?”

  Sobek shrugged. “I don’t fucking care; I just want worshippers. You can do whatever you want as long as you offer up some praise to me once or twice a week.”

  “So,” I said slowly, “you want to send me to a fantasy world, have me fight an evil god, and establish your church, but you’re not going to give me any direction?”

  “I’ll be giving you superpowers!” Sobek said. “You don’t need direction if you have superpowers.”

  “Well, I admit, I can’t really argue with that logic.”

  “So you’ll do it?” Sobek asked.

  I shrugged. “Eh, what the hell? I’ve already died, so what’s the worst that can happen?”

  “You can die again,” Sobek said solemnly.

  We stared at each other for several eternally long seconds.

  “So when am I going to this other world?” I asked.

  “Right now,” Sobek told me.

  “Right now? What do you mean right nooooAAAAAAUUUUGH!!!!”

  I was suddenly falling through the void of lights, and then I was covered in light, and then I couldn’t see a thing, and then I could see lots of things. I could see blue sky and trees and green grass rushing up to meet my stupid fucking face.

  And then I couldn’t see anything anymore.

  *

  Maybe I should back up.

  My name is Gide
on, which is a shitty name, which is why most people who know me just call me “Gids.” That name’s a bit better, I think.

  Prior to my death and subsequent meeting with an Egyptian god, I was a 21-year-old student at a shitty community college with no idea what the fuck he wanted to do with his life. I lived with my parents because my part-time minimum wage job didn’t pay enough for me not to, and every day they would ask me when I was going to get my life together and do something with it.

  Well, joke’s on you, mom and dad. I neglected expensive car repairs and consequently threw my life off a goddamn bridge.

  Sorry about that.

  On the plus side, the question of what the fuck I was going to do with my life had been answered for me: I was going to die.

  And then, as it turned out, I was going to meet an Egyptian god. Which I guess meant that, out of all the religions and philosophies that have sprung up throughout human history, it was the Ancient Egyptians who got it right all along. Huh.

  You know, now that I think about it, I realize that I kind of just brushed aside a whole host of theological implications with my meeting with Sobek. In my defense, however, at the time I was more concerned with more immediate matters. Matters such as “who is this crocodile man?” or “where am I?” or “oh shit I’m falling really fast oh shit that’s the ground oh shit oh shit.”

  So you can forgive me if I didn’t take a second to ponder the secrets of the universe.

  But that’s neither here nor there. Because this isn’t a story of ontological introspection or theological studies. This is the story of me, the man named Gids, who came to another world, went on exciting quests, started a revolution, summoned a lot of crocodiles, and even got laid a bit.

  So, you know, I was pretty busy.

  Let’s begin, shall we?

  II

  Arrival in a New World

  As luck would have it, I did not, in fact, die horribly upon faceplanting on the ground of an alien fantasy world. Instead, I just kind of laid there, wondering if I was going to pick myself up to find myself back in that weird interdimensional limbo place with Sobek apologizing for accidentally killing me again.

  Instead, when I did finally pick myself up off the ground, I discovered that I was in some kind of forest. Specifically, I was in a lovely meadow in a forest, and everything around me was brown and green.

  You know: forest colors.

  Except for the sky. I looked up and confirmed that sky was indeed blue. Except for some parts of it that were white. Those were the clouds.

  I admit, I was a bit disappointed to realize that this magical fantasyland that Sobek had promised me was, so far, just a normal forest. This was the kind of forest I’d seen in countless video games and movies and anime and comics and books and, oh yeah, real goddamn life. Forgive me if I was hoping an actual fantasy world would be a bit more imaginative.

  I stood up and brushed myself off, noting that I was still wearing jeans and t-shirt with a Monty Python quote on it. I checked my pockets. Yep, still had a wallet filled with what I assumed was useless currency, and still had my phone too.

  Curious, I checked the phone. The battery was at 1%, and it lasted just long enough for me to register the words “no service” at the top of the screen before it shut off.

  “Thanks, Sobek,” I muttered. “I’m really off to an auspicious start here.”

  If Sobek could hear me, the god did not deign to reply. I wondered how exactly he expected me to accomplish the task of spreading his religion across this world.

  Maybe he figured I'd think of something, and if I didn't, then he could probably just grab some other dead idiot and send him to do the job instead.

  I stretched and examined myself. Sobek had said he'd give me superpowers, but I didn't feel any different. Experimentally, I jumped, and thus confirmed that I didn't have any super jumping powers and probably couldn't fly either. Then I went back down to the ground and did a few push-ups.

  Nope. I certainly didn't feel any stronger than I had been prior to death.

  “Could I at least have gotten a manual?” I asked the sky, figuring that since I fell from there, then Sobek was probably up there somewhere looking down on me.

  The only reply was the gentle rustling of leaves and branches in the wind. Half-assing son of a bitch probably wasn't even paying attention to me anymore.

  After waiting a few seconds to see if anything would happen, I decided to pick a random direction and start walking. I was almost to the edge of the meadow and under the canopy when I heard a shout from behind me.

  I spun around to see a Legolas-looking motherfucker sprinting across the meadow. “Get down!” the Elf shouted, and then he knocked and arrow and aimed right at me.

  Well, I must say that in that moment, following his advice and getting down seemed like a wonderful idea.

  I dropped to the ground, and the arrow whizzed over my head, thinking against something unseen. Immediately, some green alien-looking monstrosity collapsed from out of the trees and fell in a heap next to me.

  “Vars!”

  That word was shouted by a new arrival, a woman clad in metal armor who came rushing out of the trees a ways away from me. “There's a big one coming!”

  No sooner had she shouted her warning than a gigantic green fucker burst out of the trees and started swiping at everyone in sight with its giant “fuck you” claws.

  The woman in the armor managed to bring up her shield to block a blow, but her archer friend wasn't so lucky.

  He got off exactly one more shot from his bow, the arrow sinking itself into the monster's black eye, before a claw speared him right in the torso.

  “Woah holy shit!” I shouted.

  “Vars! No!” The woman screamed, and then she raised her sword. Immediately, the blade began to shine with blinding light.

  “HOLY SMITE!” she shouted, and brought the weapon down on the monster. The light burst out in a radiant explosion, and the monster was split in two.

  I would have stayed there and watched, but I was suddenly distracted by something grabbing my leg.

  It seemed that the green fellow the archer shot earlier was not actually dead, and a slimy green hand had grabbed me. The creature looked at me with an ugly, lumpy face and chittered something.

  Whatever it was chittering, it didn't seem friendly. So I did what anyone would do this situation: I screamed like a girl and scrambled backward, throwing my hand in front of me in a futile gesture is protection.

  That's when I heard a *pop* and then something big, scaly, and angry plummeted from the sky and landed right next to the green dude.

  I stared at the crocodile, and it stared back at me. I got the distinct impression that both of us were equally bewildered by this turn of events.

  And then the green thing chittered at the croc, and the reptile responded by biting the thing's goddamn head off.

  I scrambled to my feet and backed away as the crocodile started tearing into the green dude. I was thwarted in my attempt to back up, however, by the feel of something sturdy and metal against my back.

  “Wow,” the woman said, “did you just summon that thing?”

  “I'm not sure. I'm kind of… new… here…” I had turned around to look at her while I was speaking, and I ended up trailing off.

  She was about my height, clad in practical steel armor. Her golden hair was pulled back and tied in a bun, and her eyes were wide and silver. Her ears, I couldn't help but notice, were pointed.

  This woman was an elf.

  I was talking to an actual goddamn elf.

  The elf lady frowned. “What do you mean, 'new here?’” she asked.

  “Well…” I thought about it, then decided “fuck it.” I didn't know anything about this world, so if I tried to lie about being a native, she would have thought I was a dumbass.

  Granted, she might think I was crazy, but I was less insecure about my perceived sanity than I was about my perceived intelligence. We've all got our foibles.
br />   “I kind of just ended up here, in this world,” I said. “I'm from another world. I was sort of sent here all of a sudden, and then you and the archer we're fighting those green things.”

  “Mosslings,” the elf said. “And I suppose I need to give last rites for poor Vars.”

  “I'm sorry.”

  She shrugged. “I just met him an hour or two ago. We teamed up for this quest. So you're a planar traveler, huh?”

  I wasn't sure if we were talking about Dungeons and Dragons style planes or Magic: the Gathering style planes, but I figured either was close enough. “Basically, yeah.”

  “What Class are you?”

  “Class?”

  “What's on your Stat Card?”

  I stared blankly at her. “Stat Card?”

  “Yeah,” the elf said. “You just flick your hand like this and…” She demonstrated by quickly flicking her wrist, and a card materialized on her fingers.

  “I don't think I can…” I mimicked her movement, and was surprised when a card appeared in my hand too.

  There was writing all over it. I read it carefully.

  Level 0

  Class: N/A

  Experience: 0 / 200

  Strength: C (⬨⬨⬨⬨⬨)

  Agility: C (⬨⬨⬨⬨⬨)

  Endurance: D (⬨⬨⬨)

  Intelligence: B (⬨⬨⬨⬨⬨⬨⬨⬨)

  Wisdom: B (⬨⬨⬨⬨⬨⬨⬨⬨)

  Charisma: C (⬨⬨⬨⬨⬨)

  Luck: C (⬨⬨⬨⬨⬨)

  Special Ability: Blessing of Sobek

  Eligible Classes: Fighter, Rogue, Caster, Druid, Beastmaster

  I squinted at the card and tried to make sense of what the hell I was reading. It looked almost like it was describing a character in an RPG. Was this some kind of world that followed the mechanics of a role-playing game? That would be… interesting. I'd always seen RPG rules as being more like abstractions, meant to broadly simulate what was happening in-universe in a simplified manner, rather than concrete numerical values that actually existed for the characters in the game.

  Apparently, I would have to rethink my view point on that matter.