***
You cleared a location of monsters.
Valkyrie and Zelda levels increased by 1 (17).
Take that! Get the hell out of my location!
Chapter 15
Location access request received.
NO WAY! The request disappeared, only to be replaced by the next one. And after changing the settings to have the game only pop it up every time it reached the maximum number of 300, I continued turning everyone down. Over the first few minutes, the lists filled up every second or so. Obviously, the alien players were going to do everything they could to keep me distracted and knock me off track, let the game functionality figure out who should be permitted and who shouldn’t be. Screw you! I had time and desire enough to turn them all down myself. At least, everyone had a different last name — the game apparently had a penalty that kept players from spamming location owners.
None of the three four-armed creatures had survived. And that was to be expected, given the hell we’d unleashed in the safe zone. But I was in no hurry to run around the demolished farms taking pictures of everything. The other players still had plenty of time to regain control of the location, and I was sure they were even taking pictures of the larva and transporters to ensure that I couldn’t pick up any extra coins. And that meant the only thing left for me to do was hide. But I did have something to do. Before I got to work on anything else, I deactivated the security system the four-armed aliens had been so confident in. Drone fulfilled the same function for me, so it was superfluous. Into the inventory with you. I liked having something there, at least.
The tree was much more interesting. I circled it like a cat eying a bowl of sour cream, though device control came up empty. Not even running my palms over the bark got me anything game-related. In fact, it took several circuits and hand positions before I noticed anything. Not sensed; noticed.
The +1 bonus to my adaptive vision the game had given me turned out to be awfully interesting. First and foremost, I could see where explosives were supposed to be set even when I wasn’t holding them. I was also able to identify game items — they shimmered oddly against the static background of the natural world. And it was that shimmering that I noticed among the roots. Placing a palm against it and tuning in to my senses, I cursed. Nothing! At least, I sensed nothing. Trying to dig it up or tear it out didn’t do anything, either. It was like the roots were made of some ultrastrong alloy, and not your usual wood. There has to be a lock, but I don’t see anything…
Growling in frustration, I pulled up the trials. I had eighty-one levels available to boost my adaptive vision at least one point. As long as I can last a couple seconds…
You locked in 23 levels. 27 levels were discarded in favor of the game.
Current: 228 (197).
Adaptive vision +3 (4).
Lying on the floor, I did my best to forget the nightmare I’d just lived through. I did it! I’d made it through almost half the time before the pain got the better of my resolution, and I collapsed unconscious to the floor. No sooner was I able to move again, than I tapped the button to leave the trials. I’ve have just about enough of that!
Unfortunately, one glance at the tree told me I’d have to go through the adaptive vision trial at least one more time. Game objects weren’t just shimmering; they shone like a polished fender in the sun. It just wasn’t possible to miss them. Even the spots where I was supposed to set explosives had changed, as looking at them triggered a process in my head that ended with a projection of the mine — where I was supposed to put it, which direction it was supposed to face in order to maximize the result. But even that wasn’t the most important thing. I could finally see the hiding spot.
The shimmering field was generated by a few well-hidden plates set in the roots. They were what made the roots so strong, to the point that they withstood even a shot from Valkyrie. But they weren’t so lucky against my hacking skills. Device control went to work as soon as I stuck a finger into the recess and touched the first plate.
You’re trying to hack into a player’s personal storage.
Sum total of your skill levels: 410 (device control: 100, hacking: 110, perception: 100, anatomy master: 100).
Sum total of the personal storage’s skill levels: 400 (hacking protection: 100, resistance: 100, resilience: 100, willpower: 100).
Probability of successful hack: 2.4% (1 — 400/410).
Attempt 1… Unsuccessful.
…
Attempt 132… Successful.
Each attempt took one second and one frustrated sigh. The second was for giving the next command and waiting with bated breath to see what happened, and the result was five minutes spent on a single sheet. As far as I could tell, there were another twenty-one of them. So, after turning down the next list of players trying to get into the location, I stuck my finger into the next opening. This is going to be a fun couple of hours.
But I was wrong. Of the twenty-two plates, only the first and ninth gave me any trouble, the rest taking between 30 and 40 attempts to get through. The ninth, however, was such a challenge that I played with the idea of boosting my hacking attribute. Happily, it worked on the 533rd attempt. Brutal. The final plate gave way with a blink of annoyance, revealing a path down into a small cave and…
The shimmering film that marked the entrance to a dungeon. Drone immediately added it to the map, restoring some order to the world — there were two dungeons in every location, with the location I was in standing out up to that point. Ah-ha, that makes sense… There was a small pile of items lying next to the entrance, all of them carried over by the four-armed creatures, but instead of diving in after the loot, I paused. Actually, no, I dashed off with arms and legs flailing wildly. Leaving the field entirely, I ducked into the shadow of some boulders a hundred meters away.
Hurry… Okay, I made it… Why didn’t I think to wait?
A couple moments after I froze in my hiding spot, Five slammed into the ground by the tree, disappearing almost entirely into the ground and soaring immediately back up into the air. It was like the robot had shot itself out of an enormous cannon aimed at anywhere I might appear. Or where something unusual might happen.
Antennas appeared on the robot’s trunk, most to point at the dungeon. The rest began doing circles to scan the area. It was a good thing I’d gotten so far away — the monster definitely didn’t have the level 200 device control it would have taken to reach me. But just in case, I crawled farther away, doing my best to blend in with the rocks. I wasn’t ready for a confrontation with that kind of opponent.
Shadows flashed, and Drone highlighted a few new targets. The robot’s friends had arrived: Seven, Villian, and, from what it looked like, some riffraff. Although, calling players in the location’s top one hundred riffraff might have been overdoing it. Underestimating your opponents, as my death had taught me, was a fatal mistake in the game. But I did notice something strange. The mercenary leader had been way up at level 541, though it had dropped to level 491. Could that be a penalty for not taking me out? Apparently, not all its levels had been locked in.
I was forced to pull myself away from my musings and turn on Zelda’s invisibility. The players were flying around too actively, leaving no stone unturned in the area. I’d gotten away just in the nick of time.
“That’s pointless,” Villian said. He’d stayed behind with the general’s spawn. “Either he’s inside, or he’s gone. My guess is that he bought himself Ulbaron and a flight drive and headed out of here. Does anyone have eyes on the first dungeon?”
There was a pause, and then Seven suddenly took off. That answers Villian’s question, I guess. There weren’t any champions left in the location to stand guard over the aliens’ prize, though there were presumably now two of them.
“He didn’t have any named items, coins, or noa.” Five was insistent, a robot to the core. Its processor couldn’t accept the fact that I might have picked up coins somewhere. After all, it would have been informed of any kill
s, and it hadn’t been. Therefore, I couldn’t have had coins.
“But the kid just left all this here,” Villian replied with a snort, a hand gesturing toward the pile of loot. I clenched my teeth in helpless rage. Don’t touch my loot, you bastards!
“He just didn’t have time...” Five kept pushing, but the mercenary leader just laughed.
“Seriously, I love how stubborn you are. Are all robots the same, or did I just get lucky? Mark Derwin didn’t bother to grab this junk because he got three named items for killing my fighters. Being a member of the owner’s personal guard isn’t just a big responsibility; it’s a huge risk. We risk our own belongings, our own named items. So, believe you me, Mark has Ulbaron and the flight expansion. And we need to do something about that.”
“What’s your suggestion?”
“Since you can’t find Wart, and I won’t even ask why not, let’s try something different. You brought a million and a half monsters into the location, and they were all transformed back into their old appearance. Make an announcement — if Mark doesn’t turn himself in, or if we can’t come to an agreement, you’ll kill everyone. We have ten hours. That should be enough, and we’ll do some leveling-up to boot.”
“A hunt?” the other players chimed in, though Five didn’t share their enthusiasm.
“Mark is target number one in our hexagon. We aren’t permitted to negotiate with him, and even if we use him, we’re required to destroy him afterwards. We can’t be sure how to boost the dungeon level. And we only have ten hours. I like the part about leveling-up, but there won’t be any negotiating.”
“But we can scare him, no?” Villian asked. “That will tell us a lot about him. What if that’s too many deaths for him to have on his conscience?”
“That’s fine,” Five replied. Suddenly, his voice echoed across the location, the very air speaking, just about.
“Mark Derwin, this is player ULB89-5 speaking! You have thirty minutes to turn yourself in, otherwise all million and a half humans who transformed back will be destroyed. Your time starts now.”
A timer appeared in front of me, and my breath caught in my throat. Are you off your rockers?! A minute went by, and then another, and I couldn’t find the words to describe the monsters. Are they really going to commit genocide?
“He’s not coming,” Villian said, flying a meter and a half up into the air. “Time to go hunt. The north is mine!”
“Leveling-up is important,” agreed Five, his own platform taking him up above the tree. “All life forms may be destroyed, females included. The west is mine. Anyone I see there will be destroyed.”
It felt like my heart was about to pound its way out of my chest, but I couldn’t find a solution. There wasn’t any kind of location control — I didn’t have a way to push the aliens out ahead of time. Villian and Five flew off, the sound of explosions immediately following. Drone showed me the pandemonium that erupted. The high-level players weren’t playing games, and they certainly weren’t about to kill the humans one by one. With undisguised enjoyment on their faces, the rest of the group ran off, not forgetting to grab the loot left by the four-armed creatures. A black shroud fell over my mind as I watched the horror. And though I continually tried to dash off and protect the location, a small if conscious and rational side of me blocked BRO-VI to keep me from going anywhere. I bellowed, howled, and tried to break free, but it was all in vain. My body was locked inside a prison of its own making. Five hours later, the shroud lifted, and I could finally hear the voice of reason convincing me that the people in the location were doomed anyway. How was I going to find them all food? And if I’d turned myself in, the location would have been returned to the hexagon, and the monsters would have come rushing over to feed. One way or another, the conclusion was the same: it was my fault the monsters had turned back into people, but there was absolutely nothing I could do to keep them from being wiped out.
The only problem was that I drew no comfort from that thought. I was miserable.
“I can stop them, Mark Derwin.”
Regardless of how unexpected the voice was, I didn’t even jump. Only my breathing and the pulse in my temples quickened. Drone returned to hover over my hiding place, only there wasn’t anyone else there. Neither the scanner nor the video feed came up with anything.
“At what price?” I asked quietly. I had a hard time believing it was a glitch. Am I hearing voices now?
“It won’t cost you anything so long as we come to an agreement.”
“An agreement about what? And who are you?”
“You need to let me continue working in this location. I’m a digger — you’ve heard of me. I already stopped the players, though you only have ten minutes to make your decision.”
“What decision?” I muttered angrily. “Let you destroy Earth? That’s not a decision; it would be the height of stupidity. I made that choice a long time ago.”
“You don’t get it. We’re talking about a million and a half people killed because of you. Can you bear that burden? Old people, children. How about I show you how they’re dying?”
Against my will, a video of people being burned alive showed up on my helmet’s screen, the speakers filled with soul-wrenching cries. I ground my teeth and ripped the helmet off to keep from seeing the nightmare.
“We can stop this. Just give me access.”
“Screw you,” I said. It was hard to say, but I was firm. “Get the hell out of my location — you aren’t getting any blood, whoever you are.”
“You need the pearl. I can tell you how to get one, how to save your friend. You’ll be able to complete Olsen’s mission.”
I almost told it where it could shove its pearls, but instead I focused on figuring out where the voice was coming from. If I could hear it without my helmet, it was either inside my head or nearby. Dubious that it could be powerful enough to control that many minds, I stood up and looked around. There was indeed a strangely glowing creature nearby. Almost like a projection or ghost, it was semi-transparent and reminiscent of a small cube. Ripples ran across the surface, the same as if I’d tossed a pebble into a puddle. Valkyrie popped into my hand, and a chunk of energy passed through the digger without doing it any harm. Yep, a projection.
“I’ll take that as your answer.” The ripples ran faster, creating the sound. “But I’m still going to find what we need, if not here, then in another location. If not in this hexagon, then in another. You can’t stop us.”
“We’ll see about that,” I snapped back as I took another shot. That one wasn’t at the cube; I was aiming at a small rock. My perception and adaptive vision had identified it as a game item projecting the image of the cube, but I turned and dashed off, flicking on Zelda as I ran, before waiting to see what happened.
Made it! I was off at Olympic speeds, and in the ten seconds the game gave me, I was able to make it out of the epicenter of the enormous explosion. Five wasn’t skimping on rockets, raining them down around the entire area. Only it focused on the area between where I’d been sitting and the dungeon. The assumption was presumably that I’d jump into the shimmering film, though my instinct was actually to get as far away from the spot as possible. It was true — I wasn’t able to stop the genocide no matter how horrible I felt for the people in the location. And I knew I might live to see the day when I regretted the decision I was making. But it wasn’t that day.
I had other plans.
Diving into one of the many crevices the boulders in the area offered, I quickly bought Ulbaron and the flight expansion. Villian had been right — life without them was tricky. A few minutes were spent integrating them, and I was hurriedly pulling off my BRO-VI suit to replace it with old faithful. Over the previous couple weeks, I’d gotten to the point where I couldn’t imagine the game without Ulbaron. The third bonus was spent on Raptor. Drone was great, but the handheld device was a pain that let people see me when I didn’t want them to.
My wallet a million coins heavier thanks to the sale of
the suit and helmet, I took off into the air. Zelda told me it had just ten minutes of invisibility left, so I needed to hurry. There was nothing I could do right then to stop Five and Villian. The north and west were doomed. On the other hand, I could lose myself in the general commotion and make sure the people in the location didn’t die in vain.
Drone hurtled forward, feeding video back to me. The first targets came up almost immediately. A group of five players was clearing a small village, the people there hiding in houses and sheds in an attempt to escape the merciless killers. And the latter were methodically sweeping each building, finding their victims with their scanners and wiping them out entirely. They looked like RPG gamers who’d picked up a quest to clear the area. Actually, that’s not far off.
But one thing they certainly weren’t expecting was vengeance to come hurtling out of the sky. Their scanners didn’t pick me up, Valkyrie kicked into action, and they had nothing that could stand up to my firepower. Five mental commands later, five bodies flopped to the ground without ever knowing what had hit them. All I took the time to do before flying off was grab their phones and drop them in my storage. Of course, I didn’t actually change anything — a volley of rockets demolished the village and killed everyone the aliens had left alive. Five was showing off the full range of its arsenal.
Pearl of the South (World of the Changed Book #2): LitRPG Series Page 20