Got it. Let me know when to start.
Attempting to hack Sha-Rgi-Tan.
Your Hacking level: 30.
Sha-Rgi-Tan’s protection level: 30.
Probability of successful hack: 0%
“Go! The hack didn’t work!” Tailyn yelled worriedly as he sorted through his cards. Chain lightning popped up, and he blew his activation word on it.
“Boo!”
Six twitching bodies dropped to the ground, shock and awe filling both the rest of their group and Tailyn himself. After seeing what the card could do for the first time, he was impressed with its power. It couldn’t break through the lixes’ defenses, but that was fine—they were going to be rolling around helplessly on the ground for thirty seconds.
A second’s hesitation by the lixes, unprepared for the surprise attacking coming from within their presumably safe dome, cost them their lives. The next chain lightning hit them, sending another two into convulsions. The final four charges were spent resetting the clock on the ones already on the ground and knocking off the remains of their shield. A third shot made sure all ten were down. And while Valia fired off three rounds, she wasn’t able to make much of a difference. The girl’s level three absent her advanced attributes and skills just wasn’t enough to take on lixes ten times higher.
Tailyn ran over to the creatures on the ground to find that just eight of the ten were still alive. A couple chain lightnings and electric strikes later, their first battle was won.
You destroyed more than 10 creatures at least 10 levels above you.
Crystal +1 (9).
Instead of a crystal, Valia picked up a perception upgrade that just served to remind her how low she had fallen. Tailyn, in turn, did his best not to think about how many more opponents they had to deal with as he bent over the bodies. He wasn’t about to repeat his latest mistake—loot needed to be grabbed as soon as it was available.
Active Marauder and Hacking attributes detected.
Analyzing bodies...
Location maps updated (3).
Loot received:
18 coins.
23 gold.
Complete level II outfit (9).
Complete level III outfit (1).
Shaman’s Staff-I.
Steel Claws-II (9)
***
Access received to logs.
Access received to personal information.
Synchronizing logs.
Tailyn could only sigh bitterly when he saw that the juiciest loot remained out of reach. The shaman hadn’t had time to use his cards, and so his personal inventory was unavailable. And while half of the coins and gold went straight to Valia, it was barely enough to laugh at. That left the logs. Happily, they didn’t let Tailyn down—he soon found out exactly how many lixes were left alive under the dome. Four of them were shamans; the fifth was a black lix administrator. All five were in the tent, as the last of the human mages had died a couple days before, leaving the lixes awaiting the next shipment. Judging by the fragments of conversation the dead shaman had caught, Halas’ servants had said the group under the dome would be waiting another few weeks. Nobody had any available mages.
The boy crouched down, gesturing for Valia to stay hidden. Actually, it turned out to be a good thing the group had set up their fire so far from the camp center—the shamans hadn’t heard a thing. The combat status disappeared, and Tailyn automatically recharged all his cards. It was a habit that had been drilled into him with blood.
After making sure everything was ready in case another battle ensued, Tailyn set off. He ran over to the tent, threw back the flap covering the entrance, and was just about to attack when he stopped short. Nothing could have prepared for what he saw inside. Lying on pillows littering the ground, the five lixes were all stripped down to their underwear. Glassy eyes stared off at nothing, unresponsive to the boy’s intrusion. A thick green smoke was wafting up out of three bowls on the ground. In fact, it filled the whole tent to the point that the boy’s outfit filter immediately warned him of danger—the air was full of the drug. Looking around and at a loss, Tailyn realized he wasn’t going to get anything off the bodies of the lixes. The loot was all in their personal inventory, and there was no way he was going to get access. The reset was taking its toll yet again.
Still, Tailyn wasn’t the type to throw in the towel, so he used marauder on the lixes. While he didn’t get any map updates or anything like that, there was something even better.
Loot received:
3668 coins.
Chest key.
Cage key.
Tailyn did his best not to think about where the administrator might have been hiding all that, though he did wipe the keys off on the nearest curtain just in case. Stepping into the tent, Valia frowned when she saw the smoking bowls.
“Black lotus is strictly forbidden in the empire, but that has never stopped anyone. My brothers once boasted about how they smoked so much they became one with the god, or maybe until they started squealing like piglets. I don’t remember. Father came down so hard on them... Are you going to kill this lot?”
“Yes, though... You know, I want to try something. Remember how I was able to pull a block of ice out of virtual reality in the academy underground? And we got the statues in Mean Truk, too. What if we try attacking without using our cards? We can just use the elements, especially since you’re so good with electricity. It doesn’t hurt you.”
“Tailyn, that’s amazing!” Valia even threw her arms around the boy. “Sure, let’s do it!”
But the girl’s excitement didn’t last for long. After stepping into virtual reality and looking around, she found that the only hint of another space was the Exit button. Tailyn immediately realized what was going on. He would have had to be a complete buffoon to not notice that his favorite girl was so upset.
“It took me a ton of time to learn how to stay in two states at the same time. Actually, I don’t think I had a choice—it was die or figure it out. Don’t worry, it’ll come with time. Just structure the snow so I can try throwing some icicles at the lixes.”
Suddenly, it hit Tailyn how far he’d come. A couple years before, he would have fainted dead away at the mere thought of killing another living creature. Where was the boy who loved picking herbs and didn’t have to think about the problems of the future? When had he become a ruthless killer?
After scooping up some of the cold, the boy imagined a sharp icicle and mentally sent it flying at the nearest shaman. The piece of frozen water appeared right next to the boy’s hand and hurtled off, piercing right through the lix. The old Tailyn was gone. He’d disappeared by the time the boy no longer had enough fingers to count the times his life had been threatened.
Icicles, chunks of ice, bitter cold...Tailyn was able to make anything having to do with ice magic. But there was a downside—when he gave lightning a try, he just about met his end. Valia handed him the ball of sparks, and Tailyn was shocked so powerfully that he was knocked out of virtual reality with nasty burns on his hands. The girl used her trophy staff to finish off the black lix, battering the drugged creature to death.
As soon as the last lix was dead, Raptor cheerily announced that there were items available for confiscation: the tent, the protective field generator, all kinds of bedding, and even a locked chest. The latter was Tailyn’s first stop. Not looking to deal with it right then, the boy wanted to dump the enormous piece of furniture into his inventory, only it wouldn’t budge.
“That won’t work so long as it has something in it,” Valia said. “My father has a ton of them at the palace—he keeps his valuables in them, and they’re perfect for that. Can you pick the lock?”
One of the keys slid right into the keyhole, and there were a few clicks as the traps inside disarmed. If anyone had tried to force their way in, they would have found themselves facing an unpleasant surprise.
“Oh god,” Valia hissed in surprise the moment she peeked inside. The chest was packed with flasks. Most were mana
elixirs, each offering +100%. Not one percent; one hundred. But even those were nothing next to the crystals and tears of Alron also in the chest. The lixes had tortured to death several mages, juicing them for all they were worth.
“Thirty mana flasks, seven tears of Alron, and twelve crystals,” Tailyn said once he’d finished combing through the chest. “I’ll take three mana flask, two tears, and all the crystals. You take the rest—you can give them to me after I’m resurrected.”
“You’re not dead, yet.” Valia didn’t like Tailyn talking about his death as though it were a done deal. “Maybe, the destroyer won’t be able to make it here because of the war. Or it won’t find you in the Gray Lands. Or the lixes will intercept it. Anything could happen! So stop writing yourself off.”
Tailyn was taken aback by the girl’s fervor. Really, why was he thinking that way?
“Okay, we’ll figure it out later. Can you take care of the prisoners while I blow up the pool? Here’s the key. Don’t let the green lixes out, yet—we need to think about what to do with them. It’s just a shame the sun doesn’t make it through the dome, otherwise we’d be able to charge the crystals.”
It took Tailyn a whole hour to head underground and mine the pool, which was in a large underground space that looked like it had once been a storehouse. Doing everything exactly the way Forian had, the boy set up three of his eight Alron potions, tied strings to their lids, and jerked. Oddly enough, there wasn’t a message telling him that one of the pools with dragon tears had been destroyed even though nothing remained of it. The red acid all seeped into the ground. Shrugging and deciding that the oath apparently didn’t have a numerical value, the boy headed to the surface. There was a surprise waiting for him there.
“Tailyn! Oh, it’s so good to see you!”
Powerful arms grabbed the boy and hoisted him into the air. Perception quickly came to his aid—it turned out that Motar, the captain of the guard at Culmart, the city Tailyn was from, had been taken captive by the lixes. The mustachioed man had spent quite a bit of time training the boy to use a sword, run, and jump, so it was good to see him, too.
“What are you doing here?” the boy asked as soon as he was back on the ground.
“It’s those damn lixes! They’re not afraid of anything these days. During the night, they attacked the city and grabbed me, seven more guards, and a mage. The mage is somewhere underground, though they dumped me and my boys in those cages. Three were already eaten. My turn was coming up, so you saved me, Tailyn! I owe you my life, damn it.”
“As do we.” Three more fighters stepped forward. Motar twirled his mustache in satisfaction—he hadn’t doubted his boys.
“You know, I accept your service. And not only the guards—I accept everyone I saved today from their bitter fate!” Tailyn suddenly yelled, and his voice echoed around the camp. Everyone fell silent and stared in shock at the boy.
“I’m the head of the ancient city of Mean Truk, which is a day’s march from here. Pack up the camp, saddle the yaks, and head in that direction. Valia will show you the way. If you serve me faithfully for an entire year, helping me rebuild the city, I will consider your debt paid. You’ll be able to return home.”
Motar was about to crack a joke about the boy’s mental health when he was stopped short by a message that popped up:
The head of Mean Truk is offering to accept a year of service in payment for your blood debt.
Accept?
“No!” someone yelled from the edge of the camp. “I’ll never be a slave!”
The god accepted his answer, and the poor guy dropped dead on the ground. The System was demonstrating what would happen to anyone who declined Tailyn’s offer.
The population of Mean Truk increased by 68 humans.
“Roll up the camp and saddle the yaks. We’ll get started now since there aren’t any night beasts—they were all destroyed,” Tailyn said as he did his best to avoid the judgement in Motar’s eyes. The guard clearly hadn’t been planning on a year spent as a slave.
That just left the green lixes. Tailyn went around their cages a few times looking for the faintest spark of intelligence in their eyes, shouting over and over that he needed to speak with someone. Finally, an older lix shook himself, stepped forward, and leaned on the bars.
“How did you come to speak our language, little human?”
“I was taught by Ka-Do-Gir, a green lix and my friend.”
“The Outcast! He knows the Outcast!” A murmur made its way through the cages, and the lixes began rustling around when they heard the familiar name.
“Ka-Do-Gir is the best of the lixes born under this sky!” Tailyn pointed upward, the lixes following his gesture. “Halas betrayed him the moment he was the least bit inconvenienced. But I wouldn’t give up on a friend, and we’re together again. While Ka-Do-Gir is my servant, that’s just a formality—he’s a free lix permitted to do anything that doesn’t harm me.”
“What are you saying all this for, human?” the old lix asked.
“Ka-Do-Gir is lonely. He needs his kinsmen. I will free you and become your chief; you will be my tribe and settle in Mean Truk. Both my lixes and my humans will live there in harmony, neither killing the other. But don’t worry—I have many enemies, so there will be plenty for you to kill. The green lix tribe will be reborn under my leadership.”
“That sounds good, and I’m even inclined to believe you, little human. It’s just that... What’s that?”
The old man stared up at the sky in surprise. Tailyn followed his gaze and noticed a black dot quickly approaching the camp. As everything inside him went ice-cold, his body froze. He knew exactly what it was.
“Valia, get the humans out of here! Out of the camp!” Tailyn yelled as he fought to overcome the fear that was locking up his muscles. The boy sprinted toward the hole in the ground. He had to lead the monster away from everyone.
The air smelled like a thunderstorm was brewing, and there was a deafening explosion. Collapsing in on itself, the protective dome turned out to be entirely incapable of holding out the intruder. The monster slammed into the ground, let out a ferocious roar, and rattled the bones of everyone nearby in the process. As soon as he realized he wasn’t going to make it far enough, Tailyn whirled around and threw out his hands to activate his shields. A plasma charge slammed into them and threw him backwards. The boy felt his back plowing a furrow in the ground as he refreshed his defenses and finally caught a glimpse of his attacker’s attributes.
Destroyer (machine). No class. No age. Non-level.
Status change. Current status: combat.
Chapter 3
GET EVERYONE OUT of here and stay out of this! Find a way to get the recipe for resurrected noa from the god. Okay, I’m leaving the group, Tailyn practically screamed as he did his best to hit the right buttons. If Valia was in the same group as him, the destroyer might go after her, too. And he couldn’t let that happen to his betrothed.
The plasma charges the destroyer was cutting loose weren’t anything like fireballs. Even salamander potions didn’t work, while Tailyn’s shields weren’t completely up to the task, either—a few drops made it past them, singed right through the boy’s armor, and ate into his body. The projectiles were smaller, more delicate, and even enchanted. As was the destroyer itself. Actually, it was Tailyn’s first time coming across something that deadly but awesomely beautiful, the machine halfway between a dragon and a scorpion. While the wings were equipped with the devices shooting out the plasma charges, it also had a fanged and fire-breathing mouth, a scorpion’s tail, and six massive legs tipped with claws capable of cutting through stone. There were spikes everywhere, too. Lots of them.
Valia’s shields did their best to protect their master, but they had to be refreshed every second or so. There was too much damage coming in. Realizing he wasn’t going to be able to hold out long in the open space he found himself in, the boy sprinted off toward the hole leading down to the lower level. Obviously, he wasn’t going to
survive there, either, though at least Valia wasn’t going to have to watch him die.
The destroyer is hacking you and your equipment.
Destroyer’s Hacking level: 65.
Your equipment’s protection level: 70.
Probability of successful equipment hack: 0%.
The destroyer received access to your personal information and logs.
It blocked me! came Valia’s panicked scream. Tailyn very much hoped the destroyer had gone after everyone rather than picking additional targets to take out after the battle. Chunks of plasma once again stripped him of his force shields. But that was when Tailyn countered—if he was going to die, he was going to die fighting.
Isr Kale's Journal (The Alchemist Book #4): LitRPG Series Page 4