by D. Rus
4. Their new confidential software, Insanity aims to spread terror in the worlds chosen for research or immigration purposes. Over 150,000 mentally ill patients from all over China have been handpicked and are ready to be dropped into the aforementioned worlds. Several hacker groups will be waiting on standby, ready to take over the worlds' login servers within a few hours if required.
5. They have created a seven-level secret program entitled The Great Cleansing aiming to conduct the step-by-step digitalization of the following population segments: criminal elements, political unreliables, long term convicts, the terminally ill, the handicapped and, finally, all sections of the population unfit to work. The final figure of the individuals chosen for the program exceeds 80 million.
All of the above is the subject of deep concern. The success of the aforementioned programs would enable China to dominate not only the virtual worlds (if we can still call them so) but also the world as we know it.
* * *
The teleport made our ears pop as it ejected our A-team under the Frontier's striking sun. Fortunately, the teleport point was up the hill where the breeze fanned us against the heat and the visibility allowed us to survey the area before hitting the road.
"WTF?" I heard Bomba's voice full of indignation. We swung round, staring at an old road skirting the hill several hundred feet away from us. A column of prisoners dusty beyond all recognition dragged their feet toward the depths of the Frontier.
Behind me I heard the sounds of a spell being cast: Eagle Vision x10, immediately allowing the group to zoom in on the approaching procession.
"Gnolls," Zena concluded.
"Yeah," added Whizz. "Tiny. Not one over level 30."
I peered at the crowd loaded with their meager possessions: messenger gnolls, overseers, warriors, shamans... It reminded me of some WW2 footage: the hot summer of 1941, fugitives fleeing their homes, trying to shake off the creeping front line. Warily I looked up, searching the clear sky for any cross-decorated wings eclipsing the sun, descending deathlike onto the helpless stream of refugees.
"Fancy a bit of genocide?" the Troll patted her club with a shovel-shaped hand.
I startled at the scary accuracy of her suggestion. "No, don't. Let them go. Don't know what kind of exodus that is. Could be some community event. In any case, they're not an army. They're refugees. We're not animal enough to assault them."
Bomba's face blackened. I thought at first she was furious, ready to squash her employer like a bug. But the next moment she slung her club over her back and even wiped her hands on her thick leather pants for some reason. Only then I understood it was the troll's black blood flushing her face. The girl had blushed.
The gnolls noticed us. The column stirred, falling into formation. The more battle-worthy gnolls were lining up, shielding casters, gatherers, messengers and other more rare gnoll specimens with their bodies.
"How naïve can they be," Freckles dropped sarcastically.
A gnoll officer emerged from the crowd, waving a shred of something white in one hand and clutching a handful of arrows in the other. Stooping, he ran uphill toward us. Surprisingly, he was well suited for running uphill, dropping on all fours and leaping, pushing with his front legs. I shuddered. Almost like a werewolf.
Soon he stood before us, panting, his tongue hanging out. Waving his white rag, he barked something, then dropped it at our feet. Demonstratively he broke the arrows on his knee, then threw them to the ground in the same way.
Zena turned to look at me. "Need an interpreter, boss?"
I shook my head. "Not really. Everything's quite clear. They're asking us for peace. They don't want to fight."
As if understanding my words, the gnoll glared at me, barking a long sentence that ended in whimpering followed by a threatening growl.
Zena shook her head. "For a fugitive he's a bit too forward, don't you think?"
I shrugged. "Who can understand their logic? He could be trying to assure us that fighting the weak is not kosher. Then once they level up a bit, we might be looking at a good scrap."
"Oh really?" she raised her eyebrows. "You think that's supposed to make us feel better?"
"Oh well, this is pure conjecture. Right, sheath your weapons, show him your empty hands, then turn your backs on him. It's not exactly our direction, anyway."
We nodded to the watchful gnoll and performed the requested motions. Then we summoned our mounts and trotted down the slope. Just another two hours, and I'd finally see those mystical Dead Lands.
Yeah, right. Dream on.
The first half-hour went rather quietly. Small game scattered in front of us, trying either to flee, bury itself in the sand or otherwise pretend it had never been there. The bigger non-aggressive ones followed us with their puppy eyes while the real predators huddled up between rocks, swallowing their hungry drool—we were way out of their league. As their levels grew with every mile, soon it became our turn to give a wide berth to a pack of coyotes, squeezing our way between a pride of lions and an inviting but birdless oasis circled by giant level-100 vultures perched in nearby trees. As I eyed the welcoming shadow, Zena shook her head. With her experience she knew better, of course.
Soon we made our first unscheduled stop by the iridescent mouth of a cave that glowed in a rocky outcrop. A pop-up kindly informed us we had just discovered a one-off dungeon: A Mature Manticore's Lair. The word mature meant that the dungeon hadn't been discovered for over a month allowing its mobs to gain in power and treasures. The girls grew restless, casting those buttery pleading glances at me. So much for your feminism, sweethearts. The moment you need to manipulate your man, you use your eye artillery with the best of them.
"Sorry, ladies, we've got work to do. Just bookmark the place or let's wait a few minutes until Freckles sets up a beacon. Once we're finished, you can come back here and pull their tails off all you want. I'm not going to lay claim to that."
Zena was the first to come to. "Now! Stop huddling together like a bunch of greenhorns! We don't need no compact group targets! Whizz, I thought you were our point? Off you go and circle round the group, then! Freckles, set up the beacon, then join Bomba at point."
She turned to me, faking some semblance of regret on her sly goblin face. "Sorry, dude. Greed got the better of us. Mature one-off dungeons are a rare find. Usually they get mindlessly purged already a few hours after their discovery. When a strong guild manages to lay their hands on one, they would sometimes let it mature for a couple of weeks to allow the mobs to fatten up, giving time for XP and loot bonuses to grow. It's non-linear growth, mind you. Those rangers who were lucky enough to discover it and keep it under wraps often hire mercs to help them purge it. And between mercs, we have the habit of sharing our war stories—and discussing our clients' loot. I tell you, cleaners later have to mop up the drool by the bucket."
Oh, well. Looks like I'd have to do the same for my inner greedy pig who was already foaming at the mouth. Well, that made two of us. Still, he'd have to grin and bear it—I'd given my word I wouldn't lay claim to any loot. Wouldn't be very nice to change my mind to sponge off the girls.
All the time Zena had been closely watching my face. Now she smiled, nodding to her own thoughts. I just hoped that the conversion rate of missed dosh to virtual authority was high enough that day.
After another half-hour of traveling higgledy-piggledy all over the map, my inner greedy pig got a tasty appetizer as a vast prairie opened up to our right. Although no different from any other stretch of virtual grassland, it was overgrown not with feather grass or whatever, but by billions of Gigantic Fly-Traps, no lass, swaying their sticky flagellae in the breeze. I nearly hiccupped when I made a quick estimation of the unclaimed gold just growing there while the greedy pig was already busy driving his virtual harvester, collecting ton upon ton of the precious tobacco ingredient from the boundless fields. Talk about the Admins' playing along with the tobacco business.
Having said that, harvesting the field was still a
job and a half considering it was teeming with all sorts of aggressive wildlife. But in a way, it meant protection from the thousands of low-level amateur boy scouts who would have descended on the field for a quick farm had it been located in a safer zone. Then again, how sure was I that I needed it here, fifteen miles from the Dead Lands and the emerging First Temple? And what was I supposed to do with all this treasure: should I delegate it to the Alliance or the Vets, or, alternatively, put on my farmer hat and harvest it all myself?
I glanced at the girls who were apparently clueless about the contents of my sensational but still unavailable product. In actual fact, hardly twenty or thirty people knew the recipe yet: the guild leaders, their security people and inspectors, that had to be it. In any case, I had to give it a good think when I had the time.
Suddenly, Whizz—until then busy turning circles around us—shrank and bolted toward us, squeezing the alarm button which automatically sent the target's status to the group chat.
Warning! Code Red! Target detected: Junior Vampire, level 123.
The girls perked up and serried their ranks, turning into a cube bristling with steel and magic. The tousled rogue ran up and joined them.
"Report!" Zena croaked, squeezing her shield and her mace.
"Vampires! Three of them tried to intercept me when that cliff shielded me from your view. I detected their shadows just as they went for me. I was lucky I was all maxed out, stealth and all. I managed to select one as target and slammed the alarm before rejoining you."
"Not good. If we've trespassed on a vampires' nest, they'll hunt us down. The bloodsuckers receive a substantial experience both for players killed and for each day survived. Their chief motivation is to kill and to keep on living without dying as they progress in their Nest's hierarchy. As NPCs go, they're pretty weird."
"Vampires? Aren't they supposed to sleep in the daytime?" I showed off my erudition.
"Supposed to, yeah," Zena agreed. "Only they're the wrong sort of bats, and they're about to bite us real hard."
She turned around, poking my shoulder with her tiny fist, her enormous mount tall enough for her to reach me without any problem. "I wonder if you'd have such a thing as a gun about you? I could use it, for sure. Anyway! 'Nuff clowning around. It's all just nerves with me. AlterWorld's vampires have no weak spots. At daytime, they're strong. At nighttime, they're freakin' powerful. All depends how old the nest is we've disturbed, and how many Elders and Higher Vampires it has. Their Prince himself might pay us a visit, you never know. Actually, judging by Manticore's Lair it's been laying idle for quite a while."
"So what do we do, then?"
Zena sniffed, then slapped her helmet down to her eyebrows. "We fight our way through. At worst, we'll die, but when did it stop immortals? At best, we'll smoke the bastards or even find their nest. The loot here is just as good even though we'll need a raid to do it."
So off we went. Our speed, meager as it was already, dropped to a snail's pace. Those who couldn't cast spells when mounted had to walk. I was followed by my personal reinforcement group represented by Hummungus and a level 78 gator I'd raised. We didn't go too far, though. They attacked us by the book, ambushing us at a particular section of the road which was far too troublesome to avoid. A couple dozen vague shadows came at us from every direction. Even a branch of prickly acacia over Bomba's head sported a tooth-baring monster. Two powerful figures appeared on top of a cliff about a hundred feet away from the road: the Patriarch and the Elder Vampire. In less than a heartbeat, the unstealthed shadows were all over our meager force.
"Control them! Back off, gradually!" Zena commanded.
Casters had about ten seconds while passive shields absorbed damage, allowing us to root and paralyze almost half of the attackers. We backed up, leaving in our wake a thin thread of vampires raging in impotent fury. Actually, we did give them the company of two motionless bodies: one smashed by the Troll's unwieldy club, the other perforated by Whizz's swords until it resembled my Mom's colander. Both Hummungus and the gator had turned into two swirling, growling and howling balls of flesh losing stats at a threatening pace as neither of them was up to their quarry. Having said that, they still did what they were supposed to do, drawing a certain amount of paws and claws to themselves. I was anxiously watching Teddy's stats as I alternated between casting Deadman's Hand and the Aura of Fear. The mobs kept resisting! The young vampire was all of fifty levels above me which made him virtually impregnable. And he was dangerous, too, very rogue-like with his two scythes and lightning combos, occasionally interspersed with his attempts to lunge forward at me and sink his fangs into my vulnerable flesh. The constant pressure from some auras they were using weighed my arms down, affecting my speed and attack strength; my miserable agility bonuses blinked red and expired. Even though the shields still held, my mana and hits kept dwindling—and as I looked at my opponent's scowl, I had a pretty good idea of where my stocks were disappearing to.
I kept glancing at Hummungus' life bar and hit the unsummon button just in time. He folded into his artifact and was now regenerating at triple speed. Very soon I'd be able to summon him again—no buffs this time and maybe for the better as there may be no one left to cast them for him.
Ouch! It felt as if I'd been lashed with a bunch of stinging nettles. A jetstream of prickles ran through my body as the vampire broke through the shields and tucked into my life bar.
I had plenty of hits, about four thousand, but even that would have lasted me a minute at the most—less, considering my breastplate's nature. I activated Jangur's Shield, allowing me an extra five seconds of uninterrupted casting time. Come on now, control him! Yess! The root spell had got him. The deadman's hands broke through the ground, clenching the vampire's feet. He jerked, hissing, his tiny scarlet eyes glaring at me. I ran a few paces back and cast Life Absorption, then began summoning my new pet: the zombie gator which reappeared almost simultaneously with Hummungus' comeback. Without interrupting the spell, I surveyed the battle field. Not good. I couldn't see Bomba at all under the five or six vampires that swarmed over her. Whizz was struggling to fight off two more, her health in the orange zone. Zena was gulping an elixir, ignoring another vampire's teeth which were already sinking into her as she hurriedly selected her team members as targets and sent them the precious few hits she had left—working against time, unable to heal everyone at once.
Two more enemies were hanging off our wizard and it looked as if she'd be the first one to croak. She looked as if she knew it, too. Scowling, she cast a quick spell, sending a wall of ice to swallow and freeze all enemies within a dozen paces. She shouted something long and unintelligible, causing a similar wall of fire to scorch everything around her. Immediately, my vampire's health dropped 25% and two more enemies fell from Whizz and Bomba. Before I knew it, she cast another wall of fire. I sighed with relief. Another couple of those would have solved the vampire problem. But apparently, murderous blanket attacks like those generated an indecent amount of aggro. The released vampires—including some of those that had clung to Bomba—all jumped onto Freckles burying her under a heap of their bodies. The group interface icon went gray, indicating we'd just lost one of our own. But it didn't help the enemy much. Freckles had already done her job. The remaining dozen were rather worse for wear, allowing Bomba's club to strike fear and desolation into the die-hard enemy.
A heart-wrenching howl came from atop the cliff where a couple of mobs stood frozen, forgotten in the heat of the battle. To the sounds of retreat, the remaining vampires scattered in all directions like roaches in a dark room when you turn the light on.
We stood there, panting and looking all around us, but there were no enemies left. Their lookouts had promptly stealthed so now nothing reminded of what had just happened there, apart from a good dozen bodies and our spent frames.
"Bandages, elixirs, buff foods! You'll have to heal yourselves for the moment, I'm all empty. I'll meditate and raise Freckles first, then I can heal and rebuff the res
t of you. Laith, go check the bodies. Customers get all the loot."
Did she need to tell me? Every single one of the vampires made me a few gold richer. One of them dropped a small ruby—just some jewelry, no added stats. What did attract my attention, though, were three tiny vials dubbed as Vials of Blood and numbered as 91, 83 and 89. All the drop was automatically reported to the group chat.
Seeing the Vial messages, Zena perked up. "Blood, sweet blood! Let me check the charts. They could be rare numbers... No, no such luck. Twenty to thirty gold each."
"What's that, a lottery or something?" I asked.
"Don't you know? No, of course you don't. It's a top level game for the elite. Basically, sometimes vampires drop these vials, each with a different blood group. Should be a hundred in total, in theory. The smaller the number, the cooler its owner was."
"Why in theory?"
"Because no one has come across the first five numbers yet. Even when we farmed Nosferatu Castle—and we were a hundred-strong raid and by the way, that's where we got those two blades for our Whizz—the Lord himself only dropped number 7. That's the way the cookie crumbles."
That got me interested. I used to collect all that stamp-and-coin stuff myself when I was a kid. "So what's gonna happen when someone gets the whole hundred?"
Zena cracked up laughing. "No one knows, that's the whole thing! The fullest collection I know of contains ninety-one vials. The fucking thing is addictive—and it's hot at the moment, probably one out of three collects them. Here, I'll forward you the chart. You never know, you might need it."
My Inbox dinged. I opened the file. Wow. It wasn't just a price list, but a complete guidebook answering everything about what, where, how often and how much. Indeed, the first five numbers sported nothing but question marks. I liked it. I wouldn't mind collecting the full hundred myself. There could be a nice mega goodie at the end of it.