The Omnithaneum

by Matthew Powell

  Chapter 16

  Since some players have started figuring it out, I guess there’s no harm in saying this now. Weapons in Macrocosm don’t exactly work based on the game’s physics engine or anything like that, but rather a general idea of what the weapon should do. It doesn’t actually matter if the runes on a magical sword imbue it with power, only that the player inscribing them believes it does, provided they have the talent and skill to make it work. At the same time, an uneducated player’s bastardized version of a scientific weapon will still work perfectly, so long as the game’s AI can recognize the intent and effort put into making it. We don’t expect our players to become professional scribes or rocket scientists just to make weapons, only that they put forth the effort necessary. – on Weapons, from The Chronicles of The Founder

  The next fight was almost laughable. Another boar, slightly larger and higher level than the last one but much less of a threat. Each of his five Rail-Disks shot twice, draining 35,000 Pestilence, but killing the boar instantly. The amount required to kill the boar was so low that Joshua recovered before he even reached the next chamber.

  The slaughter continued as Joshua made his way through the tunnel system. It took him roughly three minutes to navigate the narrow passages and cracks that connected each room, and less than ten seconds to kill whatever monster lurked inside.

  Boars weren’t the only thing that populated the cave dungeon. A few chambers held giant salamanders, a small number of giant snails, and one with a giant snake hiding in the rocks near the ceiling. The salamanders were obliterated with a single volley, the Rail-Disks tore right through the snail’s shells, and the snake fell from the room with a stump where its head would have been. Each kill gave Joshua a little more EXP and a lot more Pestilence.

  After an hour, Joshua was starting to get bored. Each fight was the exact same: he took a moment to scan the room, he located the monsters, there was a short charging sound, and the monsters were torn apart. He had made the disks spin while charging to make them look a little cooler, but that had only alleviated the boredom for a few minutes.

  It was tempting to head back towards the surface, but the rewards were simply too good. The single hour that he had spent spelunking had risen his Pestilence cap to 250,000, and his level to 9. It was just a hunch, but Joshua believed that his current Pestilence cap was a million instead of the previously speculated 500,000, and he wanted to reach that as soon as possible.

  Unfortunately, the dungeon didn’t quite agree with him. The last room didn’t hold a boss or even a special encounter, but just another batch of snails. Joshua dispatched them and searched for a way forward but found none. He coated the room in Pestilence to search for a secret exit, but there was nothing. He had reached a dead end.

  This had to be the end of the dungeon, Joshua thought. There hadn’t been any splitting pathways or alternate routes on the way here. Every room had a single entrance and a single exit, with no room for error. Seeing no other options, Joshua began the long trek back towards the entrance. He would have to find another dungeon to farm.

  It took just under an hour to reach the lit room near the entrance, which was an hour that Joshua considered wasted. It would have been so much easier if there was an elevator or teleporter, but nope, he had to walk the whole way. Joshua stepped into the lit room, adjusting his eyes to the light. It was just as he remembered it: dead grass, wilting vines, and a zombie meditating in the middle.

  Wait a second.

  The Living Dead

  Tier: 5

  Level: 62

  HP: 3M/3M

  A zombie that has somehow learned to synthesize Ki energy from radiation. Ki, being life-energy, should be completely blocked off to zombies, but not this one. The Ki makes the zombie significantly faster, smarter and stronger than normal, which is further multiplied by its Dungeon Boss status.

  Danger! Dungeon Boss Detected!

  Joshua felt a mix of fear and excitement when he saw the dungeon boss. It wasn’t brawny or impressive. On the contrary, it didn’t seem much different than a normal zombie, but it gave off an aura of power that was undeniable. It was easily the strongest monster he had encountered since starting, but not by much. The zombie was only slightly superior to the Demon soldier he had killed outside, and he was much stronger now compared to then. Without a second thought, his five Rail-Disks opened fire.

  Four of the projectiles sped towards the zombie’s chest, while the fifth went towards its head. Given their speed, and the fact it was an ambush, Joshua expected to easily take off a good chunk of the bosses’ health instantly. Of the five projectiles, four missed, and the fifth merely clipped its stomach, dealing negligible damage.

  When the disks had fired, the zombie had immediately shifted slightly. The change was almost imperceptible to Joshua, but it was enough to almost completely negate his attack. The zombie stood up slowly, opening its eyes and watching him. Joshua realized it was scoping him out, determining if he was a threat or not, completely ignoring the previous attack.

  Joshua, filled with fury at the casual dismissal, starting firing volleys. Two more barrages rang out, with only a single more glancing hit, before the zombie decided he was worth fighting.

  The zombie may not have been much stronger than the Demon soldier health-wise, but it was much faster. Joshua was barely able to track its movements as it flew across the room, darting to the side and coming at him from an angle. Two shields formed in its path while the Rail-Disks continued firing. Virulent Aura and A Sickly Spider’s Web were deactivated in order to put the energy to better use firing more shots.

  Two more shots, both direct hits, struck the Living Dead before it crashed into the first shield. “Into” might have been the wrong word since its extended fist tore through the first like wet paper. The second faired better now that the dungeon boss had lost some momentum, but it fell all the same. Joshua’s actual shield managed to hold, albeit barely, and with a disturbingly large indentation. If the shield had broken, the punch would have continued on right towards his head.

  Tentacles lashed out of Joshua’s shield as he activated Envelope, trying to catch the zombie and hold it steady. To his surprise, the zombie stayed still, allowed the grasping limbs to take hold of its arm. Joshua dug in his heels and waited, prepared for the zombie to thrash around while his Rail-Disks positioned themselves for a better shot.

  Rather than try to break free, the zombie smiled. Joshua felt a jolt of panic rush through him as he attempted to deactivate Envelope, but it was too late. The dungeon boss took a step back and pulled, lifting Joshua over his head in one smooth motion and slamming him back down. The impact cracked the ground, but Joshua’s barrier held strong after the first slam. It weakened after the second and shattered after the third.

  The zombie was throwing Joshua around like a toy, and Joshua wasn’t happy. The Rail-Disks had spread out, surrounding the Living Dead, and opened fire. The monster couldn’t dodge while swinging him around, so the first and second full volleys struck. Each projectile scored a direct hit, tearing small chunks from the zombie’s body. Ten shots were fired and hit their mark before the dungeon boss had a chance to react.

  It first attempted to use Joshua as a shield, swinging him in the direction of oncoming shots. Joshua, rather than panic and eat the Rail-Disk shots face-first, dispersed the bullets immediately after they were fired. They were still made of Pestilence, after all, and that meant he could control them. The dungeon boss took six more shots before realizing this wasn’t working and threw Joshua at the nearest wall.

  The Living Dead

  Tier: 5

  Level: 62

  HP: 1.2M/3M

  Each direct shot dealt over 100,000 damage, boosted higher than the original gun by his modifications, plus a little more from infection. Joshua wasn’t fairing much better after having been treated like a ragdoll.

  Zandrius the Blight Lord

  Tier: 5

  Level: 9

  HP: 74,000/170,000


  Just being thrown into the wall had dealt a solid 30,000 damage. Joshua dipped into the Pestilence stored in his armor, pulling 400,000 to heal himself back to full. It was more than half of what he had in reserve, but having such little HP put him at risk of being one-shot.

  His personal reserve of Pestilence was also starting to get low from constantly fueling the Rail-Disk shots, so he went ahead and pulled another 200,000 to fill it back up. There was only another 150,000 left in reserve at that point, and he was only going to pull more as the fight dragged on. If this didn’t end soon, he might just be forced to choose the random respawn option again.

  It was then that the Living Dead made a mistake. It didn’t charge at Joshua or try a ranged attack, no, it leaped at him. It jumped right into the air, crossing the distance faster than it ever could on foot, but that didn’t matter. Joshua saw his opportunity, and he took it.

  Two massive slabs of Pestilence formed on the ground, clapping together and trapping the dungeon boss between them. If it had been running on the ground, it would have been able to dodge or destroy these slabs before they could close, but now it was trapped.

  It shattered the slabs a moment later, flexing its arms and sending the pieces flying, but it was too late. Its forward momentum was gone, stolen from it, and that signed the bosses’ death warrant. Joshua was tempted to open fire with the Rail-Disks as the monster fell to the ground, catching it mid-air, but quickly realized that would be pointless. Just because it couldn’t fly like him didn’t mean it couldn’t twist and contort, dodging the shots. Instead, Joshua formed a dozen swords beneath it and watched the boss skewer itself.

  The Living Dead was a crafty monster, grabbing two of the swords with his hands and one with its feet to stop its fall, but the swords were hardly stationary. The ones it didn’t grab quickly stabbed into it from every direction, pinning the monster midair. To Joshua’s amazement, even that wasn’t enough to kill the dungeon boss. It continued thrashing against the swords, bleeding itself of the last little HP it had left. A single Rail-Disk shot to the head ended the monster’s torment.

  The Dungeon Boss has died!

  10M EXP awarded to all group members!

  Blessing of Growth detected

  Zandrius gains 50M EXP

  The EXP pushed Joshua all the way up to level 13. That alone was a reward worthy of such a difficult fight, but it didn’t stop there. There was a new notification when he attempted to absorb the monster’s Pestilence.

  Ki Energy detected

  Most forms of energy dissipate from a being’s corpse immediately following death, but Ki is different. Ki Energy is stubborn and will cling to a body for several hours. This energy can be converted into Pestilence and will significantly increase the amount of Pestilence gained. This is the only way that Pestilence can be gained from other players.

  Joshua couldn’t help but laugh when he saw the increase. He had gained an entire 50,000 from the dungeon boss. One wrong move would have killed him, and nearly did, but it had been well worth it. All that was left was the giant silver chest in the middle of the room that had appeared when the boss had died.

  Joshua had flashbacks to the chest that had dropped after the raid group had killed the Harbinger back in the irradiated tower. It had only been a few days since then, and he was already soloing dungeons. Too bad Khymer wasn’t here to backstab again.

  The chest proved unremarkable. A mediocre Ki-Practitioner’s armor set that he threw up on the Auction House for 5000 credits and a single Intermediate Skill Book. Joshua put the skill book into the Plague Dimension, rather than use it immediately. It might prove useful if he ended up in a tight situation and needed a new ability.

  After waiting a few more minutes for his Pestilence to recover, Joshua left the dungeon. The outpost was still deserted, so he headed back out into the wastelands, towards a battle being fought nearby. It was time to really put these Rail-Disks to the test against the factions.

  Chapter 17

  We did kind of fudge the numbers a bit with the faction wars. Normally, a faction doesn’t have a limitless number of NPCs running around. The factions can be huge, numbering in the billions, but they aren’t numberless. This changes during a faction war, where faction bases will spawn an infinite number of tier-appropriate scouts and recruits. This gives the players something to do other than getting stepped on by a soldier two tiers above them. If a faction war is underway, there should be constant conflict across the territory, or even the entire planet if Sci-Fi civilizations are involved. – on Faction Wars, from The Chronicles of The Founder.

  The battle happened to be taking place in a city this time, instead of the wastes or trenches. Joshua quickly reached the end of the irradiated zone by following the sounds of battle and found himself in the downtown of a major city. The Saints and Demons were fighting across the ten and twenty-story tall buildings, turning upper floors into basecamps and erecting bridges between the rooftops.

  The streets had become a kill zone. Mounted laser gun emplacements sat in the entrances to most of the buildings, constantly firing at eachother and anything in-between. The city had become a massive warzone, home to thousands of fighters from both factions.

  It was absolutely perfect.

  Joshua couldn’t have asked for a better environment to test out his powers, but there was something else he wanted to check first. He had never actually figured out whether kills by collateral damage would give him EXP or not. The city allowed him to escape from any fight in an instant, which meant he could take risks in his experiments.

  He located an abandoned building near where a skirmish had broken out. Weapon emplacements set on every floor of two ten-story buildings were unloading on eachother, which meant no one noticed the giant rotating disk, nearly five meters in diameter, that was floating outside the window of a nearby building.

  Creating and maintaining the giant Rail-Disk took nearly 150,000 Pestilence, and another 75,000 to fire, but Joshua was ok with that. Not just ok, he was ecstatic that he finally had enough power to just throw it around like this. The two forces took notice of him when they heard a loud whirring sound and the disk started spinning rapidly, but by then it was too late.

  There was a crack, a loud bang, and the building full of Saints started crashing down. The shot had torn a hole straight through the buildings main support column. That alone wouldn’t have been enough, as these buildings were fairly sturdy, but it had been in a dangerous firefight for several minutes already. Nearly 50 Saints died in seconds.

  The roll of EXP notifications confirmed that, yes, Joshua did get EXP from collateral kills. He could see and hear the cheering of the Demons in the other building, thinking that he was new reinforcements. That tune changed quickly when the giant Rail-Disk started spinning again. A few of the recruits tried shooting back, and a laser emplacement managed to blast off Joshua’s leg (which effortlessly regrew), but the other building fell seconds later.

  Altogether, Joshua had managed to kill just under 100 Saints and Demons within five minutes of reaching the city. There were no soldiers or priests involved, just scouts and recruits, as a collapse like that wouldn’t have been enough to kill a tier 6.

  The kills, combined with the leftover EXP from the dungeon boss, pushed Joshua up to level 15. A swarm of flying eyes, the most he could control with his new tier and levels, scattered throughout the ruins and began harvesting the Pestilence. Each of the soldiers was only worth one or two thousand, but that added up quickly during massacres. Unfortunately, some of them had been crushed to paste, so far beyond recovery that he couldn’t even gather Pestilence from them. He still managed to raise his cap to 400,000, a testament to his exponential growth.

  This, Joshua realized, was how people like Foundation kept the number one spot. He must have been in fights like this almost constantly, taking part in massive wars and slaughtering thousands, possibly while using a Blessing of Growth himself. Now, though, Joshua had found a real war to take part in. No
t some little battle between a few hundred soldiers in the trenches, but a war between thousands. He was going to make it a slaughter.

  Two groups of tier 6 soldiers had seen the collapsing buildings and started making their way towards them, forcing Joshua to retreat and find a new vantage. This new vantage turned out to be a rooftop just two streets down, barely a short sprint but far enough away that they lost him in the chaos. Joshua turned just long enough to confirm that the two groups, one of the Saints and one of the Demons, had started fighting eachother before searching for a new target.

  There was another big fight nearby, this time between buildings too small to collapse. Joshua almost dismissed it before he noticed a separate group of snipers keeping the building full of Demons suppressed. Taking them out would not only stop the battle from being one-sided but might also give him a chance to intervene.

  The snipers didn’t even see Joshua coming until it was too late. He silently ascended over the opposite edge of the roof from where they were all sniping, spotting just under ten shooters in total. Unfortunately, nothing ever goes according to plan.

  Just as the first Rail-Disk shot rang out, aiming to take off one of the sniper’s heads, the man turned around and shot his own rifle at Joshua. It only took a second for Joshua to recognize the shooter’s gun, and the shooter himself: Jonah the Spontaneous Rifleman. The same man that had almost taken off his head back in the trenches.