by Tao Wong
You are Poisoned!
Poison partly resisted
-4% Movement Speed and Agility
I call down Beacon of the Angels even as I hold the arms of the metal man, sprawling as much as possible while keeping him on top of me. Even if he’s still injecting poison into my body, his body will be my protection. Above, my Skill conjures in midair, bypassing the thin walls of the platform. I spread the attack as far as I can, the blinding glare of the attack hidden by the flash protector in my helmet. The platforms between stations are just rest stops, areas for enterprising entrepreneurs to sell last minute refreshments and travel supplies, areas where travellers can rest when security takes too long at their job. The entire place isn’t much bigger than a football field, so Beacon of the Angels blankets the majority of the area, including me.
It hurts, the attack bypassing my armor and defenses in a way none of the others have ever done. Unfortunately, my Penetration Skill has no friend-or-foe designation; it’s just damage. Bad as it might be, I know it’s worse for others. So I call down the second Beacon as fast as the first. Just as fast, before the expected Skill bitchslap happens.
There’s a reason why we’ve all been careful not to use area effect Skills like this, to not damage the ways leading in. Rising Crescendo has its own way of enforcing its strictures, and the resulting attack tears at my mind, punching through my mental defenses and imposing its will upon me. I feel a wetness on my lips as I hide beneath the burning corpse of my victim, my muscles locked in rictuses of pain.
Mental Influence Partially Resisted
Beacon of the Angels Skill Locked
Firestorm Locked
Polar Zone Locked
Improved Infernal Strike Locked
Army of One Locked
Duration: 18 Minutes 31 Seconds
Duration: 4 Minutes 1 Second
Mental Damage Taken
-1084 HP
“Hera!” A scream filled with loss and longing, one torn from the very depths of the soul resounds through the platform. It transitions into a wordless howl, going from loss to rage. The kind of anger that will follow one across the seven seas, the thirteen planets, and the hundreds of galaxies, all to sink their teeth into you.
“One. Second. I’ll Be. With. You.” I force myself to my feet, tossing the corpse aside as I face the fleet members.
There are holes in the floor, gaps where low quality materials or prior damage created low durability spots. Through those holes, I see writing—dense words that take the place of the flooring. From the transportation tube leading to their captured station, more fleet personnel rush in, Galactics refilling their ranks. And there’s a lot to be refilled, for the majority of the support Classers here have fallen, unable to take not just one, but two applications of my Skill.
As for me, I have less than half of my own life left. My armor’s smoking, damaged and patchy while it attempts to repair itself. I can’t use half my Skills because of the backlash, and another portion of them are blocked. The majority of the Advanced Classers, people specifically picked out to target me, are still standing, many with full health.
“Things are not looking good for the hero, boys and girls,” I mutter, palming a half dozen Chaos grenades while conjuring my sword. Yet for all my words, I can’t help but grin. I trigger Harden, letting the Skill wrap around me, giving me strength. Another thought has Soul Shield layered on top, right above my armor’s Force Shield.
I can’t figure out why they’re coming for us. What their goals are. Who the damn Librarian is or why he stuck the library in my head. Or hell, how to derail the train of my death. But this? Blood, death, and tears on the edge of failure?
This I can do.
***
Escaping my encirclement was actually easier than it seemed. Ducking into the gathering point was to help me target and find the son of a bitch who had triggered the more powerful Dimensional Lock. A quick scan, with the aid of Ali, found me the still-surviving Grushnak Naval Lieutenant. After that, it’d been a simple thing to end him and his connection to the Dimensional Smoothers that surrounded us, freeing me to Blink Step away.
Not before I dealt a little more damage with a series of quick Blade Strikes, of course. Repeated layering of Soul Shields and attacks allowed me to keep the damage up, trading Mana for health, while focusing my attacks on those already injured ensured I could finish them all off. Add in a healthy dose of Chaos Grenades, poison clouds, and Mana-eating nanites and I left the fleet personnel reeling and in pain.
Blink Stepping using Ali’s line-of-sight put me back among my own people. Even the navy’s attempts to stop that by erecting a wall of smoke and metal failed. Of course, I still had to punch through the rest of the Dimensional Locks, so that added to my damage, but it threw me right into battle with the front line Galactics as they clashed with my people. They never expected an enraged Master Class to pop up behind them, wielding his ever-so-dangerous sword.
After that, all we had to do was pull back under Oi’s orders, heal up, and try not to get separated while we retreated. Even if we managed to pull more of their forces to us, the other teams had lost their waypoint stations. Once our resistance started crumbling, the beginning of the end was nigh. We lost the access rings and were forced to fight in the station itself, with only a short break as the fleet piled in more and more reinforcements.
We fight, making them bleed and die. We pick up bodies when we can, picking off the weak and the overextended. Defensive walls, traps, and turrets hurt the invading Galactics. Shifting walls and routes in the station allow us to hit them from the side and behind. We pop in and out, hitting them when they don’t expect us, then fade away, hiding behind the cloaking spells of each station. But big as a third ring station might be, it’s nowhere near big enough.
“Move, Pinkie!” I chivy the tired-looking pink-armored guard along, yanking him onto his feet and shoving him forward. “They’re right on our tail.”
“I thought we lost them,” Monocle, the alfling with dreadlock hair and a single targeting monocle says, hauling a plasma glaive along on one shoulder.
“Go complain to them,” I say. Who knows how they know, but I can see the converging red dots on my minimap.
“Oh shit. Watch the corner, boy-o.”
I relay the warning to everyone before sending my thought to Ali, the Spirit scouting ahead of us. “Trouble?”
“Take a look for yourself.”
I share his vision, surprised when I realize that I know what we’re looking at. Where. This is the way to the library. After all the running around and shifting corridors, I’d gotten a little turned around. Crouched in front of the library doors is an array of fleet personnel, a full platoon and more of marines, mages, and drones. They’re staring at the closed doorway, tense.
“Patching you in,” Ali warns me, then, suddenly, I’m hearing a whole new conversation in Galactic.
“Do NOT enter the premises. I repeat, do not enter the premises. Subject is a Class I threat.”
“Orders were passed on, but the Sect ignored them.”
“Pull back!”
Before I can gesture for my team to back off and find a new route, especially before the team before us bumps into us, things go to hell. The security doors burst apart, a half dozen figures flying out, propelled by, all of things, data slates. The blast doors, all three of them, are no more useful than a paper screen at stopping the bodies. Well, except for the unlucky figure whose bodily integrity doesn’t hold up under the pressure and comes apart. Once the thrown figures clear the doorway, the slates accelerate. Another of the Sect members body can’t stand the sudden acceleration and comes apart, blood exploding as it’s bisected.
“Improper Shelving. Library Ban,” Ali says, eyes wide as he reads his interface. “Goblin’s Ass. How is he using those Skills at that Level?”
I don’t know. But floating out of the rubble is the Librarian. As he exits fully, the doors reform, broken pieces floating back into p
lace as he surveys the results of his attack. The Sect members and the remaining navy personnel are all professionals, having shaken off the surprise, and are spreading out to surround the Librarian. In one ear, I hear the navy commander screaming for updates, for them to pull back, even to finish off the battle. He’s panicking, his orders contradictory. I kill the tap, focusing instead on the upcoming battle.
“You are all not invited.” The Librarian turns his head and fixes on a marine. “Except you. A fellow Questor is always welcome.”
“You a Questor, Gehney?” one of her teammates asks, surprised.
“I am. What’d you think I was reading? The menu?”
“Quiet in the ranks!” her Sergeant barks, the pyramid-shaped figurine in his hand held up to the Librarian. “Librarian Feh’ral, you are under arrest.”
The Librarian turns his head, twisting his neck while keeping the rest of its body entirely still. He focuses those grey eyes on the Sergeant and I can hear the Sergeant gulp. That’s when I realize that I’m sensing a portion of the Librarian’s aura, even from the distance and through my Resistances. To say it’s disturbing is kind of like saying that waking up to a five-year-old standing by your bedside in the dark of the night, chanting the words “in the darkness they will come” is perfectly normal.
“No.” The Librarian’s answer is simple and to the point.
“Then we’ll be forced to use force,” the Sergeant says, voice trembling with breathless fear. But the Sergeant’s talking has bought time for those thrown out of the library to steady their hearts and heal, time to spread out and focus on the Librarian.
“I would not recommend that,” Feh’ral says as his hands steeple in front of his chest. That casual, non-combative motion sends a shiver of fear through my spine. And I’m not even looking to fight him.
“Stupid. You let us set up the Seven Light Eleven Heaven Formation!” One of the Sect members cackles, thrusting his hand toward the ceiling. Mana emerges from his hand and the palms of the others around.
They form a seven-sided pentacle with the Librarian in the center. Within the pentacle, eleven stars glimmer. Together, the Sect members cast a formation—basically, just a group spell—at the Librarian. Walls of Mana form, trapping Feh’ral. Within, the air itself warps and shimmers as the temperature rises again and again. On top of that, the other unharmed members of the Sect and navy open fire, their attacks passing through the walls of Mana to strike the Librarian.
Attack after attack lands. His clothes are ripped and torn, bullets and beams burning and howling. The thin, grey body is buffeted by the strikes, yet he does not part his hands or otherwise move, not even when the beam of an entire cannon blast strikes his face. Blows land for a good minute, a barrage that makes his figure disappear. Eventually, they run out of Mana or ammunition.
“Hag’s tits.”
“Goblin snot!”
“That’s not possible.”
Cries of exclamation from the attackers as they realize that all that damage, all the attacks have done nothing more than ruffle the Librarian’s hair. As the shock ripples outward, the Librarian unsteeples his hands and opens them, the casual motion shattering the formation that held him still.
“How?” I send to Ali in pure shock.
“He took damage. It’s a Skill—Unflappable Help—that’s hiding the damage.”
“A bluff?”
“Of sorts. There are ranges of damage that the Skill can hide. Most Skills start at around thirty percent of one’s health. I’m surprised he sunk this many points in it… unless…”
“Unless?”
Before Ali can answer me, the Librarian seems to have gotten tired of waiting. His hand twists, fingers twitching as the shards and pieces of the data slates rise. The patched doors open and more data slates appear, flying out to surround the Librarian. But that’s not the end. As the fleet personnel shake off their fear and get ready to attack, the Librarian’s other hand clenches. The Mana around the group freezes, stilling even when others try to rouse it.
“Silence of the Sanctum of Learning. Skill killer.”
What happens next is a massacre. Without Skills, without ability, the navy personnel and Sect members are forced to fight with one hand tied behind their backs. And the Librarian takes no mercy on them, using his data slates to attack them physically and his Skills to tear open their minds, making even the paltry physical defenses they raise fall apart at the appropriate moment. They fall, one after the other. Some of the fighters collapse without a single data slate touching them, as their psyches shatter.
“Boy-o. Some of those Skills I can list. Mental Impartation. Mind over Matter. Knowledge of the Masses. But there are others in there that I can’t even get the System to cough up.”
“Master Class Skill hidden via the System? Or Heroic?”
One of the aspects of Ali’s growth is that he’s still limited by my Level, and since the System technically registers him still as an Advanced Class, reaching past Master Class for his Skill delving is impossible, even if it’s not blocked.
“Only a Seer knows.”
As the last stubborn bastard ends up on the floor, his body carved up by the data slats and green blood dribbling from his wounds, I can’t help but shake my head. They should have run. Instead, they stood and fought. And died. Brave idiots.
“You can come out now,” Feh’ral calls, making me jerk. The others with me flinch, some almost looking as though they’d rather retreat.
I shake my head quickly as I make my way to greet the smiling Librarian.
“We’re all friends here, yes?” I say, offering him an uncertain smile.
“Friends? Perhaps. I do require an escort.” The Librarian gestures back at his library. “The attack interrupted my packing.”
“Packing?” I frown, recalling the relatively empty library. When nearly everything is kept in electronic records, most of it situated in the System itself, there’s not a lot of packing to do. “I…” I shake my head, recollecting the fight that just happened. You know what. If he wants to pack up the lint, I’m not going to question him on it.
“We’ll be happy to escort you, sir,” pink armor speaks up, bobbing a bow to the Librarian.
“Let’s move. Our pursuers might have gotten delayed, but we should get going.” I glance at my HUD, a little regretful that they did get delayed. After what I just saw, I have a feeling taking care of them would be a cakewalk.
Then again, the Librarian might be a Bolo. All burst damage, high Mana pool, but low Mana regen. As we head out, I can’t help but glare at the question marks hovering over Feh’ral’s head and wonder what secrets they hide. Wonder who, exactly, this Librarian is.
***
We’ve made it most of the way to the backlines, past the vanguard of the fleet attackers when I feel safe enough for us to talk. In my minimap, I can see the front line of the rebels and the lack of trouble, so I ask the question that’s been burning at the tip of my tongue.
“Where are the rest of the Questors?” I say to Feh’ral, gesturing to the inner core. “I’ve only ever seen you and me.”
“Questing,” Feh’ral answers.
“No way. You’re the largest non-Council library. There has got to be others visiting,” I say stubbornly. “So where are they?”
“Questing.” Feh’ral fixes me with his gaze by twisting his neck only, just like an owl, while the rest of his body floats forward. “Many take the opportunity to purchase information or receive a data download. But once done, few stay. They find their own opportunities in the wider Galaxy.”
I frown. “Opportunities?”
“Testing,” Feh’ral says. “Many of the assumptions in the papers are tested in the Forbidden Zones. Tested at places where the System and non-System reality meet. In that way, they gain greater understanding of the works and are able to produce additional studies.”
“Additional…?”
A slight twitch of Feh’ral’s fingers as he stares at me, then infor
mation that had been packed away in my mind blooms. I grunt as data becomes information, as dozens of studies, hundreds of papers and videos pass by me in the blink of an eye. Knowledge, given understanding.
System Quest Updated
+814 XP, +72 XP, +175 XP…
A step and then another, and the information fades, the studies going dormant. But the knowledge of spells that worked in the Zones, of races that changed and altered as the System took hold of individuals and warped them, of Classes that appeared then shattered under the pressure of too much Mana. Skills that no longer worked, or suddenly worked too well as the System gave way. Information of expedition after expedition into the heart of the Forbidden Zone. The studies might have faded, but the knowledge stays. Knowledge given, questions answered, all leaving me with ever more confusion.
I take a drink of water, clearing my suddenly dry throat. “How are you bypassing my resistances?”
“With difficulty.”
I snort, but the answer does at least make me feel a little better. Even if he doesn’t seem to be straining to get past my defenses. Before I can continue to question the Librarian, we find our front lines. I glance at my team, all of who’ve managed to regenerate back to full health.
At their nods, I sigh. “This is where we part, Librarian.”
“Yes.” Feh’ral continues to float forward, the front line parting to let him through. He continues to twist his neck, following me with his gaze until he is past the line, his head turned around completely. “Do not die, Questor. There are few enough true Questors left.”
“True?” I call out, frustration evident in my voice.
But he’s not listening. The Librarian floats into the safety of our lines, headed for the transport tubes.
“What do you mean true?” I ask.