Rin winced. “The ones I’d make would be a lot better than that.”
Wing Commander Vasoly shook his head. “I’m afraid you’ll not find a single soldier here who would be willing to test this device. They would rightfully feel that you were ordering them to their deaths for sport.”
“What a load of ghora shit,” Taethawn drawled. “I will do it.”
Everyone turned to look at him, including the Yanik Rangers.
“Your fears are stuffy Vlachii nonsense. If his Grace swears by the method, it isss certain to be feasible.” Taethawn fingered his whiskers, hooding his eyes at the other commanders. “Voivode Dragozin and Lady Ba’hadir led us to victory at the Prezyemi Line. It stands to reason they know something about thisss strategy we do not. You can count on The Orphansss, your Grace—on one provision.”
“Go ahead,” I nodded to him.
“That you Starborn test this device and demonstrate its use,” he said, lashing his tail. “If you land safely, I will commit my elite infantry to thisss training, the best of the best. We are Prrupt’meew, warriors of the Hm’rraw. We fear no height.”
“Done,” Suri said. “Rin, build us a chute and I’ll demo a jump.”
I glanced at her, surprised.
“Sure! I can make a parachute, no problem. If I have the mats and can figure out the recipe, I can probably craft one by this afternoon,” Rin replied, blinking as she looked between us. “Which of you has more skydiving experience?”
“Him, so grill him about the design. But I’ll make the actual jump.” Suri pointed at me. “I fuckin’ hate heights and weigh a ton with all my armor and gear on. If I can pull it off, any of our troops can.”
“Okay!” Rin nodded, smiling up at her. “Hector? Can you come to my workshop and sketch out some military designs for me? The only kind of parachute I know is the round one, but I know the Army has better shapes for combat purposes.”
“Can do,” I replied. “We can test it tonight, preferably when it’s dark.”
“I will test it,” Suri repeated, stubbornly. “You will park your arse on your dragon and watch.”
“What gives?” I PM’d her.
“Karalti told me what happened to you last time you died,” she fired back. “If anything goes wrong, I’ll respawn at the castle with my memories and sanity intact. You won’t. You were out for three days, last time. The next time, you might not wake up.”
“… Fair enough.” I grimaced and closed the chat.
“So let us say this tactic is workable,” the Wing Commander said. “The idea is to send a small team to disable the anti-airship ordnance, then land the army in the castle?”
“Yes,” I said. “Taethawn’s volunteered for the vanguard already, so that’s taken care of. He will open up the sky for the Royal 2nd Company and its ships. With your Dragoons and the Royal Elementalists, we’ll be able to hit them hard and fast, and avoid a siege. We just have to make sure he can’t knock our ships or Karalti out of the sky.”
“Indeed.” Captain Vilmos said. “I will be honest with you, my lord: I am skeptical. It seems like a very long reach to jump off an airship, land inside of a castle, and storm it in such a way as to avoid detection.”
Unseen and unheard, Mehkhet the Illuminator hung in the shadows at the very back of the room, his shadowy sleeves billowing in the gloom. I smiled, and absently rubbed the Mark of Matir. “Trust me. Once you see what I’m talking about, everything will fall into place. The Black God has our back on this one.”
Chapter 21
I went with Rin to the smithy where she’d set up her quarters. It was still fairly chaotic. Rin’s workspaces were neat—organized by shape, size and color—but she’d heaped her belongings into a pile on the middle of her bed.
“Hi, ladies!” She sang out as she opened the door. I hung back as her artificed sentinels, Lovelace and Hopper, scuttled over to greet us. They were mobile turrets the size of large dogs. Hopper was heavily armored and engineered for defense, capable of deploying magical protections and barriers to shield Rin from damage. Lovelace was her attack drone, armed with what looked to me like a really, really old-fashioned Gatling gun, the kind that had to be turned with a hand-crank. They waved their front legs at me in what I hoped was a friendly gesture as Rin hung up her coat.
“Okay, parachutes. There’s two kinds I know how to use, the T-11 troop dispenser and the HI-5 free fall rig, and I’m pretty sure I remember how they’re put together.” I gingerly patted Hopper on her ‘head’ as the machine stomped over. “And while we’re at it, two things. Can you possibly repair the Raven Helm and the Spear for me? And do you mind if I ask you some stuff before you get stuck into the design? About Michael, and OUROS.”
“Oh! Sure! If you can leave the helmet with me, I can repair it this afternoon, but you need an Aether Forge for the Spear and we don’t have one here. There’s one in Litvy, but we won’t have time for that today. As for questions… umm… I don’t really know much more other than what I already told you, but I mean, it can’t hurt to ask?” Rin smiled prettily at me, plopping down onto a heavy-duty stool built to withstand beings who weighed as much as Mercurions.
“We spoke to Jacob.” I pulled the scarred Raven Helm off and set it on an empty worktable. “He told us that Michael experienced hallucinations when he was glitching during his upload. Did you know about that?”
“What? No.” Rin shook her head, picking up the helmet and turning it over to appraise the damage. “We watched him enter the game and go through character creation, but when the glitch happened, we only saw him die a couple of times before HR cut the feed. They gave us some peppy little Silicon Valley propaganda talk about it afterwards. We heard the truth via gossip, of course, but when management reactivated the game stream, Michael seemed to be fine. He was laughing and talking... no mention of hallucinations or other problems. He reassured us they fixed the issue, and he was okay.”
“Yeah. Well, the SysAdmin team heard a different story,” I said. “It was real bad, apparently. While they were scrambling to fix Michael’s spawn problem, the Drachan began whispering shit into his mind. Violent stuff, maybe even Total War imagery. And you know, now I think about it...”
“Hmm?”
I reached up to squeeze a handful of my hair. “I’ve had NPCs tell me the same thing. Not that they’ve hallucinated the Drachan, specifically, but that they’ve had nightmares of fleeing from war, or seeing people shot with modern weaponry. There was one village in Ilia, Lyrensgrove, where all the townies had dreams like that.”
“Really?” Rin’s brow furrowed. “That’s… not supposed to happen.”
“Matir said the Drachan have gone beyond their operational parameters. But Jacob, who managed the ATHENA database team, said that was impossible. That there’s no way for them to.” I began to pace, fidgeting. “So I’m trying to figure out what exactly we’re dealing with when it comes to Ororgael and the Drachan.”
“Well... if Michael was having violent hallucinations that he thought were some of Archemi’s mobs speaking to him, that explains why he wants to destroy them.” Rin began laying out her drafting tools, neatly arranging pencils, her protractor, and rulers. “As for Jacob, he was one of those young rockstar programmers, you know? He wasn’t much older than me. As far as I know, he was fantastic at what he did, but he wasn’t an expert on AI. Information Architects are kind of… what’s the word? Shortsighted? They look at databases all day, modify and organize information in different dimensions. They aren’t really looking at that data in a holistic way, not like how Michael and Steve did.”
“What about you?” I asked. “You seemed to know a lot about AI in Korona.”
“Oh, me? No… I’m a hobbyist, at best.” She gave a prim shake of her head. “The theory of AI fascinates me, so I read a lot of books and articles about it. I realized early in my degree that CompSci wasn’t for me. I moved into VR Modeling and Architecture. Growing up in an arcology gave me a head start on designing artificial
environments, so… I just ran with it.”
I rubbed my face. “Guess we’re shit out of luck, then.”
“Matir can’t tell you more?” Rin took out a sheet of parchment and weighed the corners down with small metal discs. “Suri... she mentioned that, umm, Matir might be Steve.”
I sighed. “It’s complicated. Matir isn’t Steve. Steve uploaded some fourth wall-breaking information to him somehow. He told me my brother might not have ever intended to become a character. He might have just delivered some kind of data payload and died, or become something else.”
“What else could he become?” Rin gave me a curious look.
I rolled my eyes. “Knowing Steve, he wanted to become a god so that he could lord over everyone here and lecture them on their bad posture.”
Rin laughed, a musical, tinkling sound that filled the chamber. “I mean... he DID do that. A lot.”
“Just like dad.” I made a face, absently petting Hopper. The machine was dog-like enough that I felt compelled to tell her she was a good girl and feed her robo-treats. “Anyway. I’m probably just overthinking shit. Ororgael hallucinated some old war trauma he had and went nuts from dying a couple hundred times. He wants to free the world bosses before anyone else is ready, destroy the global order, and declare himself God Emperor of Mankind. End of story.”
“Maybe. I’ll have to think about it.” Rin shrugged, and turned to the paper. “Anyway, let’s just focus on this for now. I need you to describe as many features of these parachutes as you can for me...”
***
Rin and I worked on the parachute designs for a couple of hours. I could describe a lot of what I’d trained in: the static lines we’d used for our T-11 jumps, the harnesses and toggles that were part of the free-fall HI-5 system. I had clear memories of being drilled over and over in how to pack and unpack both kinds of parachute. I left everything I could dredge up from my memory with her—she already had a stack of silk in her inventory—and went to go sort out my level up.
Level 26 hadn’t opened up any new abilities. After Level 25, new ability acquisition slowed down. My skill tree had fifty slots, so I figured I’d have access to that many abilities by the time I reached Level 50 or 60. That meant I had two points to spend on combat abilities I already had, or a Mark of Matir ability that had levels, like Spider Climb.
In my opinion, my Advanced Path was still kind of meh. I was powerful in combination with Karalti—she was a frigging dragon, after all—but the fight with the Rotmother had exposed a major weakness in the Lancer and Dark Lancer/Dark Dragoon Paths: they relied on the same key spear-fighting ability used in many Japanese-made RPGs, Jump. With Jump V, I could leap 50ft in any direction and deal a huge amount of damage on anyone I landed on, but because of Archemi’s realistic physics, enemies with enough strength or reach could potentially knock me out of the air. If I was thrown out of the attack, it canceled the Jump and its bonus damage, along with any combos I might be chaining off that one maneuver.
The obvious solution was mobility, more training—and better gear. Oh lort, was I ready for better gear. Anything that made me faster, less visible, offered me mobility or teleporting—or even better, some kind of time-slow ability—was top on my list. After the tragic demise of the Raven Suit, all I really had right now was a Medium set of [House Bolza Guard Armor]. It was better than my Jack of Plates mishmash, but still not great. The Nizari Set, which I’d been using since I was barely Level 10, was also an option—but unless Rin could work some miracle with it, it just couldn’t handle the kind of damage and armor penetration my enemies threw at me now.
I plugged both points into Shadow Dance, leveling it up to Shadow Dance V: the maximum level for combat abilities until I hit Level 30. It was my primary mobility ability, and once I read the description, I knew I’d made the right decision.
Shadow Dance V
Basic Evasive Dash reduces damage by 95% at the cost of HP (5 HP per dash). Can now be used three times in a row before recharging, including while in mid-air. You can now dash in any direction without needing prior momentum: straight up or down from standing, etc.
Satisfied, I closed the window. I had 5366 EXP to go before I reached Level 27, but there wasn’t going to be time for grinding monsters just yet—because this bitch was gonna train.
Cue the montage.
Chapter 22
Training always began with a brisk 3-mile run in full gear, accompanied by wholesome songs about patriotism, duty, and sacrifice.
“Airborne Ranger was a hell of a man! Walked through the bar with his cock in his hand! Shit on the table and pissed on the floor! Wiped his ass with a forty-four!” I happily bawled out the lyrics as I jogged through The Orphans’ camp, clanking on every step. “A hundred women queued against the wall! Bet a hundred bucks he couldn’t fuck ‘em all! Fucked ninety-eight till his cock turned blue! Threw up, swelled up, fucked the other two!”
By the end of the song, half a dozen of Taethawn’s soldiers had joined me—and by the third mile, they’d learned the full version of The Monkey/Airborne Ranger, My Girl is a Vegetable, A.I.R.B.O.R.N.E #2, aka the ‘Drink Yourself to Death’ song, and two of the Kick-Ass Granny ones. Unsurprisingly, I leveled up in Stamina, but not Wisdom or Intelligence for teaching a bunch of battle-hardened giant cats about Everclear and amphetamines.
After that came combat training. I was just about to hit the threshold for Advanced Spearfighting, which meant I was going to need a trainer of some kind. Unfortunately for me, I was the best spear specialist in Karhad, and possibly all of Myszno. What I could train was acrobatics. I had three disciplines of acrobatics I planned to master by the time I was Level 40: Gymnastics, Parkour, and Aerobatics, the art of flipping out like a circus performer while in the air. And I did know someone who could train me to Master levels, when the time came—Vash.
“Hup!” I Jumped up to the scaffolding, found my feet, and launched out into the air. I chained Shadow Dance up, up and forward, reappearing on the top level of scaffolding. Teetering high above the courtyard, I ran to the edge, flipped across the gap, and cartwheeled over to stand on my hands. Then I walked on them to the edge of the rampart, holding position there against the wind for a handful of seconds before slowing tipping myself over the edge. Leap of Faith III kicked in, slowing my perception of the descent. I twisted in the air like a cat, heart pounding as the ground drew closer and closer. At the last second, I Shadow Danced forward and up. The dash almost carried me into the edge of a broken wall. I barely twirled out of the way, sucking in my gut, then burst out laughing.
[You have gained a level in gymnastics! You have gained a level in Aerobatics! You have gained +1 Str, +1 Dex]
“Nice.” I drew a deep breath, pausing to rest and let my stamina bar refill. I was grinning, pulse racing, muscles warm and ready to fire. It was the same bliss I’d felt during motorcycle stuntwork: the double pleasure of skill and raw physical control meshed into a seamless flow.
An odd sound broke through the morning air: the sound of clashing metal and rough leather. I turned, saw nothing, and looked up to find Vash perched on the edge of the rampart I’d just dropped down from. The clanging was the sound he made while clapping with one metal arm, and one arm covered in the full-length striking gauntlet of the Baru.
“You’re getting better, dog!” Vash fluidly dropped to the ground. He was still dressed as he had been while training Karalti: loose pants tucked into heavy-duty steel-capped boots, a sash, a well-worn crossover jacket. “No wonder you casually told the commanders this morning that you want their men to jump sixteen thousand feet off an airship, eh?”
I laughed. “Seriously, it works. We’ll show you how it’s done.”
“Oh, I believe you. Istvan said something about soldiers holding sheets over their heads, drifting to the earth like gentle autumn leaves.” He cackled. “Come. Walk with me. I would talk.”
Curious, I jumped up and down a couple of times, loosening my arms, then fell into step with him.
Walks with Vash were rarely casual—and even as I thought that, he vanished into a fine film of smoke and reappeared twenty feet up on the edge of the wall. I leaped up after him, breaking into a jog as he ran along the narrow edge, cartwheeled without hands over a break in the stone, and kept running toward the gatehouse. Two months ago, I would have only barely kept up with him. Now, I was able to match his speed as he scaled the rough stone walls like a lizard, pulling himself up to the top of the gatehouse tower and scattering a flock of crows. They squawked indignantly as they flew away.
“Sorry, little brothers,” he said, clicking his tongue. He hopped up onto the very edge of the parapet and squatted on his heels, looking out over the Meewfolk encampment.
“What’s up?” I asked, once I’d found my place beside him.
“Earlier, I mentioned that I might ask you a favor,” he replied in Tuun. “It isn’t something you can do for me straight away, but it is unfair to leave your questions hanging.”
That took me aback a little. Vash wasn’t usually one for explaining himself. “I’m guessing it’s a quest. What level do you think we’d need to be to help you?”
He made a face, thinking. “Hrrnn... Level Thirty-four? Thirty-Five?”
I whistled. “Yeah. That’s a ways off.”
“Mmph.” His thin face settled into deep, troubled lines. “Not as far as either of us would like to think.”
“Talk to me, man.” I rested my arms on my knees. “Is something wrong with Istvan, or...?”
“No.” Vash closed his eyes, gathering his words. “It is personal. All this talk of the Drachan, and would-be tyrants...” He sneered, reaching back to pull his fall of beaded braids over his shoulder. “I smell a tsunami heading for Vlachia, Hector. A black tide, full of monsters and human hatred. And I found myself thinking back, back to the unresolved guilt that still haunts me. The death of my family.”
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