Chapter 18
You’re trying to hack into player RN554-7’s phone.
…
Access gained to all phone functionality.
A HAPPY SMILE even spread across my face when 32 million coins hit my account. And that would have been enough for most players, only I wasn’t most players. After digging through the phone, I figured out how Seven communicated with the general. It was a private chat. If I hadn’t known the two were in touch, it would have been hard to find it. The messages themselves were short and sweet.
Seven: Mark Derwin is hiding in a dungeon. Haven’t been able to find him. Requesting permission to destroy the dungeon.
General: Confirmed.
Seven: Please open a standard line of credit for 150 million coins. Reason: purchase 1500 thermal mines.
General: Confirmed.
Game admin: Your account was credited with the funds. A line of credit for 150 million coins at 5% yearly interest was opened for one release. If the coins are not returned by the end of the release, the standard penalty will be assessed to you and your guarantor. Please confirm.
General: Confirmed.
There was a lot to unpack there. The game has an admin? What do they do? What kind of functionality do they have? How do you kill them? I also wasn’t sure why Seven hadn’t used all the mines. Thirty million meant that 300 had gone unpurchased, after all. Anyway, that was neither here nor there — I had bigger fish to fry. After figuring out how to send messages, I went ahead and pulled the trigger on one.
Seven: Mark Derwin was able to jump from one dungeon to another. Requesting permission to destroy the second dungeon.
General: Confirmed.
Seven: Please open an additional standard line of credit for 150 million coins. Reason: purchase 1500 thermal mines.
General: Confirmed.
Once again, the general confirmed the message from the admin. The robot’s phone dinged to let me know the coins had reached it, and my palms even grew slick with excitement when I realized I’d pulled it off. Figuring out how to pay off the sum wasn’t my problem. Seven and the general could handle that.
You’re the first natural release player to have more than 100 million coins in your account.
Rank received: Moneybags.
Level +1 (288).
***
You set up a non-natural release player and earned them a penalty (for 3 releases).
Rank received: Con Man.
Level +1 (289).
Sadly, that was the end of Seven’s service. No sooner had the messages been received, than the robot began smoking. It jerked almost out of my control and finally settled, a useless hunk of metal. The enraged general had fried its spawn’s electronics. And that was a problem — the robot’s phone was destroyed, too, and my greed had gotten the better of me. I hadn’t taken the time to check its virtual storage, its maps, or anything else. That was an inexcusable mistake. Just to take one example, if I’d dug around in the phone some more, I probably would have found out where Fang was. Instead, all I could do was stand next to the gutted robot and sigh at what might have been. Idiot! When am I going to have some sense knocked into me? There was just one day left until Olsen clapped a penalty on me and told the general that my sister was alive and in the city, and I couldn’t boost the dungeon level or get the pearl without my ritual dagger. Of course, I also didn’t have the noa I needed to summon some victims… It was looking like the aliens were definitely going to be finding out that Squirrel was with Wart. Damn it… The taste of victory turned bitter in my mouth. Okay, stop thinking so much! Just enjoy where you are.
But it was like the hexagon boss could sense my negative attitude and decided to toss oil on the fire. Without the ability to hurt me itself, it sent in all the dogs it could find.
The hexagon general designated you a personal enemy. From now on, all the monsters in this hexagon will do septuple damage to you. You will receive seven times as many coins for each monster killed.
Level +10 (299).
10 free attribute points received.
You can collect any level six item in the store for free.
***
You’re the first player in this hexagon to become the personal enemy of the general.
Level +5 (304).
5 free attribute points received.
You can collect any level six item in the store for free.
***
All players, natural included, who help destroy you will receive 100 million coins and be guaranteed a role in the next release.
***
3 destroyers were sent to hunt you.
Oh, wow! Even the other Earthlings were being turned on me. I couldn’t help but assume that General Maximov would jump at the change to earn that kind of change for something so easy — he’d already sacrificed me on the altar of humanity once. And that ruled out any contact with the army. No contact with any other humans. I’d had enough.
To keep myself distracted from the pressures of life, I slipped into Ulbaron and got to work going through the loot the general had left behind. There wasn’t much, unfortunately. The flying platform worth twenty million along with one item lying in the LTS were about the size of it.
Guldin’s ritual dagger. Description: Simple knife made from the bones of Lord Guldin, the dungeon boss. Can be used to sacrifice creatures, exchanging them for coins. Cost: 0 coins. Creator: Villian Po.
In all the time I’d spent in the game, that was the first time I’d gotten my hands on anything crafted. And for whatever reason, I wasn’t in the least bit surprised to see who had made it. Villian really was a tough opponent. The cost surprised me, though I assumed it was zero because of the restrictions the game placed on the weapon. You couldn’t sell things you crafted, otherwise it would have been too easy to get rich. As I was starting to understand, coins were such a valuable resource that you could take out lines of credit and earn yourself penalties lasting multiple releases.
I unwillingly tossed the dagger in my virtual storage. If I can’t find Fang, maybe it’ll come in handy. The timer showing how much longer I could be in the location had dropped below twelve hours, so I needed to hurry up and gather the loot lying around. The 184 million I had in my account was great, though it wasn’t going to last long. Just a couple minutes, in fact.
The store showed me the named item section, and I quickly bought up everything I’d lost: the barrel-mounted grenade-launcher for Valkyrie and the zoom for Ulbaron. Thirty million later, Mark Derwin was a happy camper, and I had everything in place after a couple moments. Everything in me wanted to pick up some new goodies, though that wasn’t the best use of my coins. The general was angry. That meant its players would be hyped up to go find camouflaged old me, and I was still just personified noa. I needed to boost my protection. From prying eyes and hackers alike.
You’re trying to boost an attribute past level 110.
Closure is a secondary attribute for the demolitions infiltrator class. To boost it between levels 110–120, you need 200 free attribute points.
I’d been expecting something like that. The game was off its rocker, forcing absurd numbers on the players. Getting a secondary attribute or skill from level 110 to level 120 meant spending 2,000 free points. From level 120 to level 130, that number was doubled. It was doubled again for levels 130 to 140, and so on for every ten levels. Sooner or later, there wouldn’t be enough coins in the game to pick up a single attribute. Bastards! Five minutes before, I’d fancied myself a rich man. Yeah, right. My total of 154 million was just a syringe for 77,000 attribute points, nothing compared to what I needed.
To give myself some kind of peace of mind, I had to spend 42,000 on what were really just supporting attributes.
Closure +30 (140).
Introversion +30 (140).
Inner harmony +30 (140).
Hacking protection was next — 15,000 more attribute points. And what did that leave? Nothing! I was down to just 20,000, so I decided to spend them o
n my main attributes, getting most up to level 120. The rest stayed at level 100. As I was working on that, the sort and color-coding functionality proved a huge help. I set up my status table such that my attributes were all split into three blocks, all colored differently. Really, the difference between boosting primary and secondary attributes was colossal. That gave me a leg up, though when I was done, all I had left in my account was 320,000 coins. For fits and giggles. Who was just over here cackling like Scrooge? Welcome to reality!
While my body was adjusting to the changes, I went ahead and jumped into a couple trials. I had too many levels that hadn’t been locked in, and the last thing I wanted was for someone to snatch them from me. I needed to make sure.
Ten minutes later, I was done. I’d locked in 25 levels for impenetrable skin and another 32 for steel bones, losing just 43 levels in total. That wasn’t bad, especially since it was my first time going through the bones trial. It was the easiest of the three. All you had to do was hold on while your bones were broken. The whole thing was silly, if still remarkably painful.
I had to admit, I liked where I was at. With all my updates, I was somewhere on par even with Five, if still well behind Villian.
Status table
Name
Mark Derwin, demolitions infiltrator
Coins
320000
Level
261 (254)
Titles and ranks
Title: Liquidator
Ranks: Con Man, Moneybags, Tsarter Bane, Bandit Bane, Lone Wolf, Stone Wall
Body reinforcement
Impenetrable skin
12
Steel bones
4
Adaptive vision
4
Reinforced internal organs
4
Attributes
Strength
100
Coordination
120
Stamina
100
Hacking
120
Agility
100
Perception
120
Scanner
100
Introversion
140
Demo expert
100
Closure
140
Concealment
100
Resilience
120
Camouflage
100
Willpower
120
Fortress
100
Necrotica
70
Pyrotechnics
100
Regeneration
100
Noiseless
100
Aeronautics
70
Cartographer
90
Good eye
90
Resistance
120
Skills
Defusing
100
Monster knowledge
90
Trackless
100
Device control
120
Detection
80
Anatomy master
120
Spatial perception
90
Device repair
90
Inner harmony
140
Pistol shooting
90
Melee weapons
100
Consciousness block
90
Hacking protection
140
Electromagnetic impulse protection
90
With that done, the next time my named items were promoted, there wasn’t going to be a problem. It was going to be rough after they hit level 30, of course, but I couldn’t imagine I’d be able to clear that many locations of monsters given the fuzzy feelings the general had about me.
I decided to hang onto the LTS. Sure, it would have given me fourteen million even with the commission if I’d sold it, but I was okay for the time being. Tossing it into virtual space, I decided to head over to where the players had died on their way out of the location. Maybe they have something fun for me. With the position I was in, I couldn’t afford to pass up so much as a simple BRO-V suit — leveling-up from there was going to cost millions, not just thousands, and I assumed the game wasn’t through giving me surprises. I wouldn’t mind slapping Five with a line of credit. That chunk of metal was no favorite of mine.
There were quite a few red dots denoting dead players not far from the location border. They were the ones who hadn’t made it out, though they weren’t what grabbed my attention. A separate group jumped out at me like a four-hundred-pound man at the gym. Of course, you know why he’s there, you’re just not sure why he’d trying to bench three hundred instead of going all-in on cardio. It was the same there. Thirty players represented a fifth of all casualties, and they were off in the very center of the location. Did they ignore all the warnings the system sent them? Intrigued, I took off, reaching the strange field a couple minutes later.
But I stayed at a respectable height, hovering in the air without getting any lower. The field was littered with explosives, both from the game and otherwise. And while I noticed the former immediately thanks to my scanner and vision, it was only my elevated perception that told me where the latter were. Barely visible threads stretched across the field to turn it into a veritable three-dimensional spiderweb. Picking up some more altitude, I once again had to comment to myself on how lucky I was. I’d managed to fly right past a few slender strands, and the whole area would have turned into a ball of fire if I’d brushed against any of them. And me along with it.
But the mines weren’t the most interesting thing in the field. I was much more drawn to the pyramid of bound bodies, with one right at the center holding a sign that read, Gift for Mark Derwin. There was an arrow pointing down to something at its waist. Zooming in, I noticed a small casket. And it wasn’t even your usual game casket, the kind they stole from pirates; it was beautiful, decorated with gems that glittered in the sun. Before the game had invaded our world, Squirrel would have sold her soul several times over to get her hands on something like that.
All the approaches to the field were so well mined that I had to fly a good hundred meters away before I found a spot to land. I had to admit that it was good work — all my demolition skills told me as much. And that just made it more interesting. It isn’t every day you come across a riddle that leaves you completely in the dark regarding who put it together, not to mention why.
Gaining control of the game mines turned out to be easy enough — there were a few control circuits, and that was it. But as soon as one of the mines disappeared, the entire construction lost its equilibrium. A timer began counting down from five seconds. By the time it got to two, I figured out that I needed to put the mine back where it was. The system regained its equilibrium, and the countdown stopped.
But that wasn’t all.
It wasn’t just good work. Whoever had put everything together was a master of their craft, displaying in-depth knowledge of all the ins and outs of mining and defusing. My skills, to take one example, certainly weren’t good enough to break everything down. And it wasn’t just the ones I could boost. I simply didn’t know enough. The human-engineered mines were a complete mystery to me, and I could also tell that just flying over to the casket wasn’t going to work. It was covered beautifully from the top. Somebody wanted me to walk over, making sure I evade every trap they set.
But two could play at that game. Drone flew over, and I started digging around in the store. Back when I’d used Mark-1 to kill a few players but wasn’t able to take their phones, I’d realized what I was missing. The game had gifted me two bonuses. What was the sense in waiting to cash in on them? I was soon the proud new owner of an adaptive arm and a small storage. The former could interact remotely with items using Drone, with the claws modifying to fit the job at hand. And the latter
let me store a small item the size of about twenty phones. It was perfect for the casket.
Drone took just a few moments to update, and I sent it over toward the pyramid. If the mystery miner was naïve enough to think that I’d go dashing in myself even without the requisite knowledge, they were very wrong. Just one false step would have spelled doom. And I wasn’t about to risk everything for a casket and a sign. Actually, I should get farther away.
That last thought was such a good one that I flew a hundred meters into the air above the work of art. Ulbaron’s updates kicked in, zooming in as far as it would go. Basically, it was like Drone had picked up an extra camera high in the air above it. The flying cushion’s own camera didn’t let me use my perception, which meant the slender threads were invisible to me. But up where I was, I could see them perfectly, and that let Raptor chart the best approach.
Pearl of the South (World of the Changed Book #2): LitRPG Series Page 24