Raptor began buzzing to grab my attention, only I didn’t have time right then. Grabbing Lurkan’s phone, I pulled my extra universal protection necklace out of my chest pocket, slipped it over my neck, and crawled over to Valkyrie. The mounting had been torn free — I was going to have to repair it. Not far away, I found my dead opponent’s named pistol. It had apparently been knocked loose by one of the explosions, explaining why I was still alive.
Marlon hadn’t moved, though I wasn’t about to risk it. The Tsarter fighters’ weapons punched through level five protection like it was cardboard, so I was going to have to rely on my concealment. But to be fair, the need for stealth disappeared when I saw the other player. Ulbaron had been ripped almost completely off — just scraps were left. The naked, pimply body was lying on some rocks and regenerating with startling speed. The torso was already complete; the game was wrapping up work on the legs. Ten shots from Valkyrie showed yet again how powerless the gun was against upgraded bodies. The wounds just closed up faster than I could open them. Making my way over, I buried Fang in Marlon’s chest, thinking better of the urge to pull the creature’s helmet off and get a good look at its face. Who knows? Maybe, it spits acid or something. And that was the last thing I needed.
Following a charge of necrotic energy, Marlon’s body went through the same process Lurkan’s had just completed. It froze, shivered, and began decomposing in front of me. That time, I didn’t pull the ritual dagger out, instead waiting for the end result. It was only when the flesh seeped into the ground, leaving behind a bare skeleton, that I found Fang dangling from my wrist. Exhausted, I laid down next to the remains. The wounds Lurkan had given me were taking their toll. I was going to need an hour to feel like myself again, and I very much hoped nobody would bother me in that time.
With the last remnants of strength I had in me, I pulled up Raptor and read through the messages:
Lurkan Po was sacrificed and received a penalty covering the next 4 releases.
You can collect 4 items at your maximum available level (current equipment level: 5).
Level +5 (115).
***
You killed a player from the owner’s personal guard.
You can collect 1 named item in the store.
Level +20 (135).
10 free attribute points received.
I got the same messages for Marlon. Another four max level items, 25 levels (totaling 160), ten attributes points (laughable), and one named item were ready to be picked up. That’s a nice little pick-me-up!
And it wasn’t all.
While my wounds were closing, I started digging around in the two Tsarter fighters’ phones.
Hacking store… Successful! Access to level 5 items unlocked.
Hacking wallet… Successful! Available: 3560000 coins.
Hacking personal data… Unsuccessful!
Hacking contact list… Unsuccessful!
Hacking map… Unsuccessful!
Hacking storage contents… Unsuccessful!
Hacking phone functionality… Successful!
Virtual storage-VI. Description: Phone expansion. Lets you store up to 60 game items in virtual space. Item materialization takes 10 seconds. Cost: none, is a rank reward.
Virtual exchange-VI. Description: Phone expansion. Lets you exchange game items for coins at 70% of their value. Cost: None, is a rank reward.
Those were certainly some requirements. I left Lurkan’s phone for later — it boggled the mind, but even level 70 hacking and level 70 device control were powerless against Marlon’s device. There must be so much in there! Missing out on the map and storage contents was a huge mistake. If I’d known in advance, I would have done some leveling-up before trying to hack in. Regardless, the 3.5 million coins were more than welcome, as I needed to repair Valkyrie and buy myself more armor. The damn green-skinned beast had torn mine to pieces.
Dragging over all that remained of Marlon, I looked over its equipment. The names of the named items weren’t available, though I could see what level they were. The message on the screen captured my attention for quite a while. It was one of those cases when you only realized after the fact what kind of a mess you’d actually found yourself in. My desire to take on the rest of Tsarter disappeared immediately.
Named armor, name and description hidden, level 22.
Judging by what I could see, Marlon had been wearing Ulbaron. The suit’s level 22 meant the requirements were doubled, their minimum values between 90 and 100. And that’s just the minimum values! I was happy enough about my level 70 attributes, some kind of idiot with a whole squad of personal guards running around with skills and attributes at level 100. What was that Olsen said about balance? How the game gives everyone a chance to survive? Yeah, right. If it hadn’t been for the fifteen mines, I wouldn’t have been able to scratch the pair, not to mention stand up to them in a pitched battle.
Next, I got screwed once again by the game. It refused to buy back named items belonging to other players. It didn’t even let me fix them. All I could do was disperse them into a dark dust, leaving nothing to remember my opponents by.
By the time my body had completely restored, I’d been able to crawl over to Lurkan. It was the same there — items at level 22 that I couldn’t sell. The pair didn’t have anything else, and so I was left to sigh bitterly and collect what the orcs had left behind. Unfortunately, even there I was met with disappointment. The game would only buy back 32 level four items. All the rest needed repairs, and that would have cost as much as buying them outright. I ended up collecting 5.6 million from the equipment and 870,000 from the orcs’ phones.
Right away, I materialized my vehicle and sold it on the spot. The updated commission netted me 10.5 million coins, and that pulled a relieved sigh out of me. Now we can do some damage! Opening the store, I bought everything I needed to repair Ulbaron and Valkyrie, feeling the cool blast of the built-in air conditioning system a couple moments later. Ah, I missed this.
I then got to work on my bonuses, having taken care of my protection. There wasn’t much of a question there — I needed to upgrade Flyer to level six. The monsters were going to be getting stronger in the next few days, and I had to be ready for that. A whole seven bonuses went toward it. Soon, I had a drone, a scanner, an invisibility field, universal protection, a high-resolution camera, an automatic pistol, and cartographer. That was the minimum I needed to really have eyes in the sky.
Flyer universal drone. Description: Sixth-generation flying device. Range: 300 km. Flight speed: 250 km/h. Maximum altitude: 10 km. Requirements: Device control (90), device repair (90), agility (90), camouflage (90), introversion (90), concealment (90), consciousness block (90), trackless (90), pistol shooting (90), monster knowledge (90), anatomy master (90), perception (90), cartography (90), good eye (90), spatial perception (90), electromagnetic impulse protection (90). Cost: 29000000.
As soon as the devices were in place and I saw the list of requirements, a smile tightened across my face. Damn it! Of course, I was going to have to get all those attributes up to those levels anyway, but right then using my force of nature meant picking up 3,690 free points at a cost of almost 7.4 million coins. How much is it going to cost to get to level 100?? And what about after that? Hundreds of millions and tens of billions? I didn’t even want to think about that.
There was nothing else to do but call up my current Flyer and kiss it goodbye. I ended up getting just 5.2 million, though that was enough to cover my needs. The coins didn’t matter; my life was more valuable. I ended up adding hacking to the list, boosting it to 90. I needed to break into Lurkan’s phone.
While the game was updating me, I walked around the remains of the camp. Sadly, once again I came up practically empty. Raptor only highlighted a couple surviving items. The only problem there was that their value was so low that it wasn’t even worth bending over to pick them up. The thermal explosion had incinerated the tents, demolished the equipment. Really, it would have been
a miserable disaster where loot was concerned if it hadn’t been for one thing.
The two named items. Just like with the regular bonuses, I decided to leave one in reserve, as the game tended to change so quickly that you never knew what you’d be needing next. Having a trump card up your sleeve was huge. But I did know what I wanted to spend the other bonus on.
A few taps in the store, and I found what I was looking for. I read through the description as it materialized.
Zelda. Description: An adaptive universal camouflage cloak for Mark Derwin. Current Zelda level: 13. Creates a dynamic invisibility field with a radius of 1.3 meters, absorbing all radiation coming from inside it. Duration: 13 minutes. Restores 13 seconds every 5 minutes. Can stand up to level 65 perception and detection. Cannot be blocked in the game world. Requirements: Camouflage (70), introversion (70), concealment (70), consciousness block (70), noiseless (70), willpower (70), trackless (70), closure (70), inner harmony (70), device control (70). Cost: 50000000 coins.
Damn it! After all that, I had to go back and buy more attribute points, though at least it was just 220 of them. The needle went into my leg, I clipped the still-useless cloak onto my shoulders, and off I soared into the air. There wasn’t anything else for me in that field. Over the next three hours, as my body adapted to the new changes, there was something I needed to do…
You destroyed 2 of the larva’s 3 farms in this location.
The monsters did their best. Each of the farms had fifteen hundred tubs with women in them, and the fact that they weren’t in transporters presumably meant the location had been thought to be safe. I didn’t bother killing all the monsters, just flying over and dropping grenades down on the tubs. Sabotage is the name of the game! The crowds of superior monsters and champions could only howl in frustration and run after me until I was lost from sight.
I only headed toward the third farm after my adaptation was complete. The cloak that had dangled lifelessly integrated with Raptor, the screen picking up a new invisibility field function. When it was active, Zelda had no problems with movement, didn’t even react when the wind kicked up. It occupied a barely visible strip on my back, from which it was prepared to unfurl around me at any moment.
The larva clearly knew what was coming for it and did everything it could to set up a defense. It felt like every monster in the location had come running to occupy the city, filling the spaces between buildings, crawling through the sewers, and flying around in the air. Launching Flyer, I grunted when I saw what I was up against. There were 24,000 superior monsters, 7,000 champions, 250 players, one larva, and a farm with 10,000 tubs. I’d never come across an army like that. Of course, I could have taken on any of them one on one, but there was nothing I could do against the whole lot together.
The solution came to me quickly. I may not have been able to take care of everyone fast enough to make it worthwhile, but I did need to get rid of the location boss and its farm. If I survived, I could come back in a week or two to finish what I’d started. In the meantime, level six mines were out of my price range at five million apiece, so I went with level four. Even level five would have taken an update to my attributes. And I didn’t have time for that. I’d spent too much time in the location as it was, with the day almost over. There were only about four days left for me to find the pearl and head back to see Olsen.
They were clearly expecting me. Judging by the fact that the players were walking around with some kind of device, they were scanning the area carefully in an attempt to find the ghost I’d become. But that was practically impossible once I was able to use Zelda. I hurtled through the sky, doing my best to dodge the aerial patrols. The invisibility field worked flawlessly.
Landing next to the farm, I spent thirty seconds activating the camouflage field, only then turning off Zelda. It was a great little tool, just at high levels — I’d burned through nearly the entire duration just flying in. And it was going to take more than an hour to recharge. Convenient, cool, but short-lived. I’ll have to keep it for special occasions.
The larva was dashing back and forth between the tubs, checking their contents. A crowd of smaller monsters I immediately dubbed minions were helping it out. They had neither teeth nor claws, though they made up for that with feelers and suckers they used to crawl around the banks of tubs and haul down newborn dolls. The process was relentless. Instead of a transporter, which would have made more sense, they were using enormous dump trucks to haul food off to the general. Earthling dump trucks. Alien players with symbols pinned to their chest were driving them. The diamond with the bolt of lightning burning through it was apparently the insignia for the general’s servants.
Once I was sure I’d landed unnoticed, I crouched down in the shadow of the farm. The camouflage field disappeared, quickly replaced by my skills as a saboteur. The most interesting part was that I could sense when I needed to freeze. It was like I knew when stray glances were lingering in my direction. It took five mines to make sure I took out the farm. Of course, two of them needed to be set at the top of the construction, and that gave me issues — I couldn’t time the minions. Unable to climb up, I had to use Zelda and fly over.
That just left the larva.
For a long time, I couldn’t figure out what to do with it. It moved around the area too quickly, there were too many monsters hustling and bustling around it, and its protection looked too strong. Unlike the other larvae I’d come up against, that one had armor covering its body, which was odd in and of itself. Creatures at that level generally had subordinates take care of protecting them. But no, that one had a bunch of extra armor plates just in case the army wasn’t good enough. That made things harder.
The maximum damage value Valkyrie showed me at level 13 was just 0.1%, and I only found one spot that high when I accidentally swept past a point right under its head. Everywhere else, it was in the hundredths of a percent. There was no way I was taking the thing on with my pistol.
It was the larva itself that showed me what to do. As it grabbed the harvest from the upper banks, it rolled the dolls up into a bundle and tossed them into the dump truck. Exactly — a bundle! Half a million coins later, I had another five thermal mines. My repair kit had a cord I used to make a bomb the description told me came with half the destructive power of one level six mine. But that was enough.
Waiting for the moment when the larva started upward again, I dashed forward. Zelda had just two minutes of invisibility left, though I didn’t need any more than that. As the monster tilted its head back, it bared its weak point, and that’s exactly when I sent my makeshift bomb flying. Ulbaron’s acceleration maxed out as I swallowed my fear. A couple times, I even smacked into flying monsters, sending them summersaulting through the air. But that didn’t matter. Flyer’s feed showed me the picture down below — an enormous ball of fire rose, spread out, and engulfed what had once been the larva and its farm. Body parts and rocks flew past me and even crashed into my legs, knocking a few points off my protection. And no sooner had the explosion died away, than my helmet screen started telling me what a good job I’d done. Reading the text, I stopped suddenly and landed on the next roof over. There were monsters there, but judging by the messages, they didn’t pose a threat to me anymore. And it was true — the once-nimble beasts were slow, sluggish, and indifferent. A few minutes later, they collapsed onto the roof, howling and twisting in pain. Bones shattered. The howling quickly turned into a shriek heard round the city.
But it was a human shriek.
Over the previous couple weeks, so much had happened that I didn’t think it was possible to surprise me anymore. How wrong I was. In fact, just that thought was enough to tell me how much I didn’t know about the game. Each stunning new message kindled a spark of hope for salvation, hope that humanity might be able to win the war.
Pearl of the South (World of the Changed Book #2): LitRPG Series Page 10