“I’m listening.”
“How can we shield ourselves from the cold?”
“Pavel, have you ever played strategy games before?” Korzh asked out of the blue.
Pavel looked at him in surprise.
“I played some... Why?”
“Well, I have a plan. You know the game Frostpunk?”
I wondered where he was going with this. I had a vague memory of the game’s name but the rest of the crew didn’t seem to have even that much.
“Yes...” Pavel drawled as surprise gave way to interest.
“The plot of the game is simple,” Korzh began explaining to the confused players, focused in particular on Amoeba who was leaning over the table so as not to miss a single word. “In the nineteenth century, after a wave of extreme cold destroyed all of humanity, a small group of Englishmen went to the Arctic where they managed to survive by activating a giant generator, one of many that were built before the disaster...”
“Do you propose we build a giant generator?” Elf looked at Korzh with doubt.
“Why not? We can devote the next couple of days to working on small coal generators and place them throughout the tunnels to conserve heat. We can fill the dead ends with food and fuel, block off extra tunnels... Bunkered up like that, we can survive anything. I’d like to see the Giant try to dig us out from under a few meters of rock and earth! As for the cold, we’ll be nice and cozy down there for a long time.”
“And the coal?” The chemist persisted. “Where are we going to get that much coal?”
“My friend, you spend way too much time in your lab. The other day, Chernous and his scouts went upstream and found a mine on the riverbank near the cliff.”
“So...”
“So we have a coal mine right there! I don’t know if it being there is a coincidence or what, but if everything goes well, we’ll be able to dig in several places at once thanks to the game mechanics! We need to explore these technologies or we’re gonna end up digging for at least a week. The problem is, if we do this, we’ll have to stop working on everything else except energy. We’ll have to keep the base safe with sticks and stones as we won’t be able to cheat using technology.”
“Cheat?” Cap asked.
“Circumvent long and tedious construction processes using the System,” he explained.
“Any other options?” Pavel asked, turning to the others.
“Maybe we should just go south,” Amoeba mumbled. “This is all too complicated and risky...”
“We can’t move the base, and without technology, we’re doomed... The Giant will catch up with us even if we escape from the cold...” Pavel spread his arms and sighed. “I’d rather stay in the tunnels.”
“Then I suggest we put Korzh in charge of remodeling the base,” Cap said wearily. “I still have to figure out how to best defend ourselves from the migrating mobs.”
Pavel got up.
“So, do we all agree? Loki, you work on your thing. Korzh, cooperate with Cap and start equipping the base. Amoeba and Elf, proceed with your experiments.”
***
“Work on your thing” was easier said than done. I didn’t even know where to start looking for the key. No amount of freedom of movement could help me with that. “Go ‘I don’t know where’ and look for ‘I don’t know what’,” wasn’t really helpful. I didn’t know how many fragments of the key even existed! God forbid that there were twenty or more. It’d take me years to find them at this pace.
Great, just great...
Where did the Burgundies even get their fragment? Alastor had been fiddling with it since our first meeting, which was almost a month ago. I wish I had asked Susan or Leshy about it... Such things ought to be in unusual locations and hidden behind some puzzle or challenge. You probably needed some special skill or tool to locate them.
Perhaps I could use Third Sight? I could enter the dream state and... and see a fight with a group of some mobs or the cold wave’s trajectory or... or something I didn’t need at all. It was too random. How could I explain to the System what kind of vision I needed? And even if I could, would it listen? It was worth giving it a shot, but I’d still need skills or items that could help me search for artifacts.
I looked over my skills and figured that I had nothing like that in my arsenal. Heir caught my eye again. I had spent so many points on it. But it wasn’t for naught. Once it reached level thirty, I’d be able to copy the skills of any player, even if they were dead.
Who should I contact first? The Piper or Kay-Si. On one hand, it’d be nice to talk with an old friend, ask how he was doing, and if there was a life after this one for demons. But what could he really offer me? He had already given me his strongest skill. Kay-Si could have something useful. After all, he had reached the third level of magic. In terms of power, he was on the same level as the Piper. I couldn’t pick both as the skill had a two-week cooldown during which our faction might cease to exist.
I walked in the direction of my cabin and thought hard, remembering my talks with the Piper and Kay-Si. What exactly was I talking about with the latter? In the beginning, he scared me, pretending to be a ghost, and then he joked some more...
Ah, but I forgot to introduce myself! I’m Kay-Si Ed, a shaman... That’s what he said.
A shaman! That could work!
I had no idea if my assumptions were correct but I had no other options. I didn’t go home. Instead, after waking up Rat and Worm and its six clones who were quietly lounging in the sun in a puddle of melted slow, I went to the Magi’s Abode.
***
As I walked through the wind-swept field, I finally got a better look at our cattle. The mobs resembled cows, but slightly smaller, and were guarded by two Werewolves and a shepherd. The cows trampled the melting snow and grazed.
“Hey, Loki!” Greek greeted me. Today was his turn to watch the herd. He was reclining on a haystack and chewing on a straw.
“Ah, you’re today’s winner.”
“Bah! Falcon slipped me the short stick! I’m wasting my time here because of him! Hey, can you do me a favor and talk to Korzh? The wolves are doing fine on their own, and I’m gonna die of boredom soon enough.”
“I’ll see about it...”
***
The Magi’s Abode
I hadn’t been here in a long while. The small location, hidden inside the swamps and woods, seemed like it had been empty since my “death.” The ground was damp with snow but there were hoofprints and clawed pawprints. Hopefully, they belonged to mobs and not players.
The Elder was in its place. The hole in its trunk leading to the underground portal was empty this time. Judging by the footprints around the tree, nature spirits were making their way to our world through the portal and were doing stuff here. Were they hunting? Not that it mattered, I wasn’t here because of them.
After removing the corpse of a bird stuck between the logs from the totem standing in the middle of the clearing, I headed toward the hill. I passed through a wooden hall filled with numerous pots of ground grass and disappeared into the darkness of the cave. The pets stayed outside, guarding the entrance.
Having learned from my previous bitter experience, I immediately took a torch off a wall and lit it with lightning. As expected, the first cave was empty. The same symbols on the walls and floor, the same side halls littered with shards and bones... What I was interested in was further and deeper in the cave, at the end of the next tunnel. It was unlikely that any new mobs had settled here: the sight of so many cobwebs decorating the walls would’ve scared off any creature, but being cautious couldn’t hurt. So I slowed down and peered more closely into the darkness.
I didn’t have much to be afraid of: if someone had settled here, they probably weren’t a threat to me. I was actually afraid that something had eaten Kay-Si’s corpse. If that had happened, I wouldn’t be able to summon him and my entire plan would fail. And if whatever ate him came from the Wilds, then I was in deep shit.
Fortu
nately, my worst fears didn’t come true. In the middle of a small cave, the walls of which were almost completely covered with various signs and symbols (among which I found Piper’s symbol: a square in an equilateral triangle with a plus sign in the middle, and even a ten-pointed star, which I had seen on the altar in the Hall), was a stone platform in a white circle. Next to it was Kay-Si’s corpse. Which was intact.
“Activate Heir.”
A moment later, bright streams of bluish light burst from the corpse’s eyes and mouth, and the body jerked with a loud crunch, setting the broken spine back in its place. And then it began to rise into the air...
“I have... the weirdest feeling of déjà vu...”
Successful use of skill [Heir].
Reward: +1 Heir
Spirit of player [CCC]
Faction: Lilac
Level: 60
“Who dares disturb my slumber?!” An otherworldly voice thundered, sending a chill down my spine.
“It’s not very scary if you do the same thing twice, Key-Si,” I said with a grin.
Chapter 3
CHEATING IS BAD, RIGHT?
“Oh... It’s you,” Kay-Si said and cracked his neck. He seemed disappointed. “I thought it was someone new and I’d have some fun... Remember when you first came here? Haha! You almost ran away! And look at you now! Level ninety-five! And still alive...” He whistled. “You have my respect.”
“Why’s that so surprising?” I didn’t like his attitude. He looked at me, raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. Goddamn him and his riddles. He didn’t seem in the mood to talk so I immediately got to the point. “The Piper is dead.”
“What?” He flew up to me and looked me dead in the eye. “Really?”
“Yes. Graybeard killed him.”
“The old bastard... And you!? You just let him do it?” Piper’s death seemed like a big blow to him.
“I almost died,” I retorted. “And then I killed Graybeard.”
Kay-Si let out some inarticulate noise, covered his face with his hands, and sank down on the stone platform. He rocked from side to side until he finally pulled himself together.
“So why did you call me?! To tell me that the Piper is dead?”
I had to be careful what I said now since he was on edge due to his friend’s death.
“No... I wanted to tell you that my faction’s still alive. Though, it looks like we won’t be for long. A Steel Giant has awakened. Problem is, we don’t know how far away it is from us.”
“Steel Giant...?” Kay-Si immediately perked up. “I think I’ve heard of him. But only bits and pieces from the demon who dragged me away from the Elder... It’s a pity that he didn’t die. The fucker...”
“But that’s not all. A cold wave is moving in from the north, causing the mobs to migrate—”
“—and you can’t leave the base because you’ll definitely die. I know. We’ve been through this. Except we had a heatwave. Still, it sucks.”
“Our only hope is the Ancestral Hall. But we only have a fragment of the key.”
I reached for the small pouch that was hanging on my belt and handed the metal cube to the surprised Kay-Si who tilted his head in confusion. He was even more puzzled by the end of my story.
“Strange... I’ve never heard of this Hall... Much less about a hatch. Something really important must be hidden there... So, what do you need from me?”
“You’re a shaman, aren’t you?”
He squinted, spinning slowly in the air.
“And you can search for items with your skills.”
“I can,” he said, realizing what I was aiming at.
“Can you give me a skill for that? I’ve leveled Heir and can now take skills from deceased players, mages especially.”
“Ha! And what’s in it for me?” he inquired and cracked his neck again. Then he grimaced and tried to pop a vertebra back into place.
I looked at him, dumbfounded. I didn’t expect that he’d refuse to help me. He didn’t even need the skill! Why would a dead man need to look for items? Still, I wasn’t willing to give up just like that.
“Fine. What do you want for it?”
“Loki, I’m dead! You think you have something worth my while?!” He laughed. I couldn’t help but chuckle.
“What? Is it that boring on the other side? Want me to revive you?”
“Ha! I thought you’ve been here long enough to realize that dead means dead. There ain’t no second chances. Believe me, I tried everything I could. It’s pointless!”
“Maybe it isn’t...”
“Well, if you can revive me, the skill’s yours. No questions asked.” He put his right hand on his chest. “I swear.”
“Then I’ll see you in a couple of hours. I gotta do this before the skill expires. There’s a chance there’ll be no one to summon you, once the cooldown ends in two weeks.”
***
An hour and a half later, I was in the Valley of Light.
Well, it wasn’t so light after Graybeard’s death. The location seemed to have lost its magical properties and wasn’t different from any other plain in the Game, of which there were quite few in the area. The Piper had gained ownership of it before he died, but that wasn’t enough to make it turn “dark.”
As expected, Susan’s and Graybeard’s bodies were eaten by mobs. However, they didn’t touch Piper’s out of fear of getting poisoned. Some had tried to take a nibble but, judging by the corpses nearby, it didn’t end well for them. The carcass of a lynx, already half-gnawed, lay next to the Piper with a piece of meat sticking out of its mouth.
Kicking the carcass away, I carefully lifted the Piper and carried him closer to the stone formation. Using a stick, I drew a circle and the demon’s sign on the ground. In the meantime, Rat returned with Kay-Si’s corpse held tightly in his mouth. The pet was drooling, constantly trying to lick off the dry pieces of meat. His jaws were ready to snap shut and suck the bone marrow out, but he listened to me and placed Kay-Si next to his unfortunate friend.
As for my plan, I was going to take advantage of one very interesting bug.
What made Kay-Si return to the “afterlife” once my summoning was over? That’s right — the System. It read the mage’s name, and, after running the numbers, realized that his time was up. But what if a player disappeared from the Game? Mage Kay-Si would no longer be a mage, but... For example, Loki’s pet.
As for how I’d do it, that was the interesting part. The demon’s body was a perfect soul vessel. If the System’s hints were true, you could put any player’s soul into a demonic vessel. Like the Gray Pilgrim — an artificially created vessel for dozens of souls. It was potentially the same with demons. Who knew, maybe the same worked with the creatures of “light,” like the elders, but Graybeard’s corpse was... well, its leftovers were hardly suitable for something like this. Besides, Kay-Si was a dark mage, so using a druid would’ve been weird.
While in the Valley, I tamed a ferret and made it my pet. Then I went to the Lab and installed the Parasite mod into it. It was the fifth animal I had tamed that day: the first four had no Mental Strength, so they were fed to the Worm’s clones. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. I got lucky with the ferret. I don’t know how, but it had one point of Mental Strength. Hopefully, it’d be enough.
At my command, the ferret bit Piper’s neck. I had to act quickly because the ferret would die of poisoning if I took too long. Luckily, I managed to make the pet connect to the Piper’s body in time (or rather, I did all the work as the pet’s Mental Strength was too low).
Parasite Ferret
Owner: Loki (Gray Faction)
Level 12
Excellent.
“Activate Mental Mask.”
This skill applied a specific nickname over the player even if it wasn’t true. Now everyone, except me and the Grays, would see “Parasite Ferret” above the Piper’s body.
That was an important step of my plan. But what came next was where the true cheating
began.
“Summon Kay-Si.”
The mage’s mangled body, lying at the feet of the Ferret, suddenly twitched. Streams of bluish light shot out of its mouth and eyes. Along with them, the magic circle that I had made lit up in black. A substance that looked like oil burst from the ground. I barely managed to get out of the circle; all that was left in it were the Ferret, Piper, and Kay-Si.
The black substance continued to flow from the ground, covering the entire surface of the outlined circle in a couple of seconds. The oil washed over Kay-Si’s quivering body, covering it and blocking the bluish rays.
After half a minute, the oil subsided, releasing the mage’s body. It was wet and covered with the remnants of the sticky black substance. It looked like a corpse thrown into a tar pit.
In the black mass that was now enveloping the Ferret and the Piper, I noticed something silvery.
Could that be... his soul?
Attention! Pet [Parasite Ferret, level 12] has died.
Soon, the oil slid off the demon’s body as well, and started to sink into the ground. The glow from the circle began to fade, revealing two bodies — one lying prone and the other standing up.
Kay-Si Ed
Demon
Level 60
Kay-Si raised his hands to his face and stared blankly at his clawed fingers. I quickly activated Third Eye and saw how he appeared to the System and everyone else.
Parasite Ferret
Owner: Loki (Gray Faction)
Level 12
Did it really work? And who is the coolest mage in the neighborhood now?
To be honest, I wasn’t sure until the very end. I wondered if Kay-Si would die or stay in the Game. Whatever the case may be, I had to ask him for the skill as soon as possible.
“L-L-L-Loki...” Kay-Si muttered, plucking the Ferret from his neck and tossing its lifeless body into Rat’s mouth. “I... I don’t know what to say... This is Piper’s body, isn’t it?”
Reborn: Evolution: A LitRPG Series (Warlock Chronicles Book 3) Page 3