“We made lots of blunders at first, creating the most bizarre characters,” he continued. “But in the end, we’ve reached our goal, creating a world that’s truly alive. The NPCs with their own personality, goal, and ability to learn and grow started to live. The process turned into an assembly line, and right now, generating a new world with hundreds of thousands of new NPCs, factions, wars, gods, and a millennia-long history can be completed by our procedural generator as a matter of days. I repeat, the physical model is calculated at the molecular level. If we set immersion at one hundred percent, you’ll feel no difference from our world.”
“We’ve heard all about it. Congratulations on your incredible results,” the host commented.
“So going back to simulations... While watching the behavior of our NPCs, we’ve concluded that it’s no different from people in our reality, with allowance for their surroundings and era, of course. They are as alive as you and I.”
“But aren’t NPCs controlled by their AI? It’s just a program!”
“And what controls you? Are you sure it’s not an advanced version of AI? I’m not, personally. Our conscience is determined by a set of reflexes and instincts, the rules instilled in us in our childhood, behavioral vectors — no different than an AI controlling our NPCs.”
“Your words are a paradox. But all of your worlds are a digital illusion. They are kept on the hard drives of your computers. They don’t truly exist, while our world entirely consists of matter!”
“Of matter...” Andrei said with a smile and knocked on the table with an open palm. “What have I just done?”
“What do you mean? You’ve knocked on the table.”
“What do my hand and the table consist of? Flesh and bones and wood, and they consist of molecules, then atoms. Atoms are surrounded by empty space. Sorry for lecturing you on Physics 101. So what do we come to? We consist of matter, and it consists of empty space. I’ve just knocked with empty space on empty space. Isn’t it a paradox? It should be impossible. We’re just as illusory as the persons you were talking about. We’re only digital empty space.”
Silence fell on the room. Balabanov drank a glass of water and looked over the quiet audience.
“Whatever the truth is, this knowledge won’t change anything in our world,” he said. “So what’s my conclusion? While creating Sphere, we created a new world. While creating NPCs, we created living beings. It’s no game. It’s a parallel dimension created by our own hands.”
* * *
The firewood quietly crackled as it burned down and candle lights flickered in the darkness, reflected in Weldy’s eyes. The girl had dolled up for my visit; she even had her hair done. I had never seen her so pretty. Going by a gorgeous low-cut dress, elegant emerald earrings, and subtle make-up, she clearly took effort to prepare for the date. She graciously accepted the large bouquet of local flowers, but flatly dismissed the bottle of wine I had bought in the closest shop.
“No, tonight, we’re going to drink my wine. It’s special, I made it myself!” she declared.
The wine was red and sharp, tasting of ripe southern grapes. I noticed a hint of an unknown herb that I couldn’t quite narrow down.
“Do they serve meat with red wine in your world, too, HotCat?” Weldy asked as she put glasses on the table.
“Honestly, I’m not an expert on this. I think so. White wine goes with cheese, red wine goes with meat.”
Weldy cheerfully clapped her hands, gesturing me to refill the glasses. Frederic kept lurking under my feet, circling around the legs of the chair, purring, arching his back, and flashing the yellow lamps of his eyes.
“Hey, do you...look the same over there? I’ve heard tales that the players can choose any appearance when they enter our world. Is it true?”
Her question perplexed me. At character creation, I had based my looks on my real appearance, although with some improvements, enhancing my build, height, and changing the color of my eyes and hairdo. In real life, I had put on about ten pounds — staying in Sphere left no time for sport. Each time, I promised myself that I would change my online schedule as soon as I finished with urgent business, that I would start dedicating time to the real world, to my wife and my family. But more and more stuff kept coming up. The nature of making money in that game required constant online presence.
“Well, almost,” I finally replied. “Almost the same.”
“Almost? I hope you aren’t an old man or a young boy over there?”
“No, my looks here are copied from my real looks...I mean...”
Weldy burst into laughter. The wine was strong and packed quite a punch.
“Yes, you’ve already said that our world’s not real, and only you players are,” she said through laughter. “So what do you think about a girl who’s not real?”
She defiantly moved her bare shoulders, threw her head back, and giggled. I saw her pearly-white teeth flash in the darkness, reflecting light.
“You’re too beautiful to be real,” I mumbled, trying to avoid staring at the low cut of her dress. “In truth, I’ve been smitten with you since the first day of our meeting.”
“You’re saying all the right answers!” Weldy said as she smiled and started eating. “Tell me, do you have someone in your life over there?”
“I’ve already told you that I don’t,” I replied, smiling back. She didn’t have to know the truth. I didn’t want to blend the two worlds together. Not to mention that were I to say “yes,” I would most likely lose reputation and the magic around us would dissipate. Maybe the whole enterprise with Weldy would go down the drain. She was a good girl, after all, not the sort to get involved with a married man, even if he was married in another world, the real one, and she was just an NPC. I had to see everything through, get Weldy’s secret quest, and make her my pawn, both for the fun of it and because I really liked the girl.
“Yes, I remember. It’s just...” She faltered, afraid to tell me something.
I seized the moment to quietly treat Frederic with a piece of chicken. Pleased as punch, the cat grabbed his prey and leapt into the corner, giving us away with a muffled “meow.”
“HotCat, please don’t feed him! He’s already too fat! He doesn’t even want to catch mice!” Weldy objected.
I once again filled the glasses with thick, almost black liquid and looked at the fire through the wine. It glowed French red, tickling my palate with an unknown aroma.
“Hmm, a black cat living with a young girl in a magic shop,” I said, changing the topic. “Seems suspicious. Could you be a witch?”
“Me? Of course not. Frederic’s actually quite old. I inherited him from my grandma. Now she really was a witch. All Ardat was afraid of her.”
“That’s an interesting story. You’ve never told it before. Great wine, by the way.”
“Of course it is,” Weldy said with a cute smile. “I poured something in it, a potion brewed using an old recipe, my grandma’s, actually.”
“What kind of potion? Hope it’s not poison.”
“Oh, not at all. I’m drinking from the same pitcher as you. No, it’s something else. Let’s see how it works on you...” She smiled as she coyly bent her head.
The wine was intoxicating, as was the whole scene, with the flickering melting candles and the cozy glow of the fireplace. Weldy’s eyes shined across the table, her shoulders white in the dark. In a second, the girl was in my arms, fluttering like a butterfly caught in a web. The glasses on the table thrummed, falling down and splashing the remains of the wine, and the candles flashed. Effortlessly, I pushed back the hands resting against my chest — her resistance was more for show.
The fervor with which Weldy answered my kisses surprised and even scared me a little. Apparently, her cute face hid a passionate nature. Her breath smelled of wine, and I got a whiff of lavender from her hair as her hot hands twined around my neck.
“Your potion’s working,” I whispered. Weldy laughed, blew out the candles, and easily slid off my l
ap. She took my hand and beckoned me to the staircase that led to the attic and her room.
“I’m embarrassed with Frederic watching...” she whispered, pressing her finger against my lips. “Will you lead me upstairs?”
* * *
“What’s that?” Weldy’s pink nail outlined a scar on my collarbone. Her head propped on her elbow, she studied my chest.
“Third day in your world. A werewolf’s bite. He was an elf.”
“An elven werewolf? How curious! Was it far from Eyre? Will you tell me sometime?”
“Absolutely. There were two of them. They were siblings.”
“Exiles from Im Enoi, I guess,” Weldy sighed. “And what’s this?”
Her gentle fingers stopped at a round scar mark right on the solar plexus. I frowned. The memory of Svoy the snakeman sacrificing me to his God of Darkness with a ritual dagger was far from a pleasant one.
“Death,” I said brusquely.
“Death? I’m sorry. Was it painful? Have you died many times?”
“At least twenty,” I said. “What about you?”
Weldy shivered and cuddled against me, resting her head on my chest. Her blond hair tickled my chin.
“Never,” she confessed. “I’m really scared of that. It probably involves a lot of pain.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty nasty,” I agreed. Come to think of it, even with my standard 70% pain filter, dying was no walk in the park, but what about NPCs? They probably had 100% sensation by default, so they felt pain just as we would in real life. The developers had made that world awfully realistic, maybe even too realistic — while I was there, I didn’t see any difference from reality. It was a bit scary, as the thing that had just happened between me and Weldy felt as real as ever. I tried to notice some discrepancy, but there was none.
The girl lying next to me was alive, warm, not artificial in the least. I couldn’t continue associating her with a program. Was I lying to myself, or had Balabanov been right, and they accidentally created a new dimension in their own image and likeness? It was starting to get more and more confusing.
“Now, you don’t have to be afraid of anything,” I snickered. “Because I’m here.”
“You’ll protect me?” the girl asked fondly. Then she touched my lips with hers and whispered, “I’m so happy that it all worked out. From our very first meeting, I wanted to be with you. When I saw you with the flowers at the doorstep of the shop, my heart told me, he’s the one. That’s the truth. Do you believe me?”
“I do. I felt it.”
Weldy wistfully traced the lines of my huge Leadership tattoo, following all the curves. The mark covered my entire hand, from the wrist and up to the shoulder, ending just below the neck. It was a gorgeous pattern, but in real life, I would never dare to get something like that. Tattoos are only useful when ID-ing bodies, my father always said. After playing Sphere, I could argue with him. They added a certain aesthetic appeal, a measure of eroticism, personality. Almost everyone had them in that world — even Weldy, as it turned out.
“It’s pretty, just like a knight’s pauldron,” she concluded after a thorough examination.
“And really, why are you studying me? I want to learn where such a good girl got a tattoo, too!” With a slight push, I made our bodies switch places, and Weldy’s thigh came right into my view. There was a small tattoo, no larger than a fingernail. It reminded me of a rune or a cuneiform character. I had seen a similar image before, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
“You’ve already manage to study it? What a rascal. It’s a symbol of our lineage. It was painted when I was a baby,” Weldy confessed. “All Nialits have it.”
Got it! I opened my character’s profile and checked it. There it was. The girl’s tattoo was the spitting image of the icon of one of my perks, the Ancient Gene. I carefully touched the picture with my fingertips, making Weldy jerk, as if she was being tickled, and for a second, felt an unseen spark of energy connect us, as if I touched a battery terminal. The Gene’s icon on my paper doll flashed and went dark.
“Did you feel it? What’s that?”
“Yes,” Weldy answered after a pause. She was staring right into my eyes, and I knew that the moment had come. Could it be that I would get the final secret quest that each NPC had?
“You also have the blood of the Ancients,” she said. “I knew that from our very first meeting. It’s a rare thing. Too bad you’re a player.”
“Please explain.”
“The people of Eyre are descended from the Ancients. Some families pass their blood across generations. The Nialits are one of them. We trace our roots back to Ni-All himself, a great mage who lived before the Black Fast.”
As she told her story, I kept pestering the search engine, comparing the results.
Ni-All, Niall (Kann-Elo) is one of the best-known Ancients, a legendary wizard. He is considered to be a great alchemist and spellcaster, creator of many elixirs and magic items. He is especially venerated in the Eyre Nation (Dorsa) and mentioned in many texts preceding the Black Fast (see The War of Gods and Ancients). Some caches of the Ancients contain epic- and legendary-quality scrolls and recipes marked as copied from his spellbook.
“There’s a tale in my family that Ni-All left his descendants a gift that would imbue its owner with great magic power. My uncle, for instance, spent a lot of time looking for it and took a big interest in the places of the Ancients and the artifacts found there. And in my childhood, I — “
Weldy stopped mid-sentence and looked at me, embarrassed.
“HotCat, promise not to laugh!”
“I promise,” I said solemnly, making a serious expression.
“Well, I dreamed I would travel, find Ni-All’s gift, and become a great sorceress, the most powerful in the world, and everyone would admire and fear me, just like Uncle. That’s it...”
You are offered a quest: Weldy’s Dream.
Attention! This quest is classified as rare personal!
Ever since her childhood, Weldy Nialit has been dreaming of finding the legendary gift left by the Ancient mage Ni-All to his descendants. Help her make that wish come true, but take heed: sometimes, old myths turn out to be true...
Reward: reputation, (varies).
Attention: After the quest is completed, the quest giver’s reputation, karma, and attributes might undergo an unpredictable change.
Accept? Yes/No
A worrying scarlet line suddenly crossed the interface. Back in the real world, someone was trying to pull my body out of the VR capsule. Evidently, my expression sharply changed, as Weldy cried out, clearly frightened,
“HotCat? What’s going on with you?!”
I barely managed to click the Rest button before the emergency exit timer counted down the last seconds before disconnection.
Chapter 18
DARKNESS signified the instant transition between the worlds.
I opened my eyes. The lid of the capsule was half-open, and Alena’s face loomed behind the reinforced plastic. Her expression didn’t bode well for me.
I turned off the emergency exit transmitter blinking bright red, threw back the lid, and climbed out, making an effort to move my numb legs.
Alena was silently facing me, her arms wrapped around her body, her thin black eyebrows frowning. She was wearing a short red kimono-styled robe and shivering with cold.
“What’s happened?” I asked. “Why did you turn off the capsule?”
“Oleg, I’m fed up with it,” she replied, studying me with an impenetrable expression. “For crying out loud, it’s six AM and you’re still inside that thing!”
She pointed at the silver-black cocoon that was the VR capsule with her manicured nail and an accusatory glance.
I sighed. It seemed that a scandal was about to break out. Actually, it had been brewing for a while; I noticed that by Alena’s sidelong scowls and acidic remarks. She had never liked computers, video games, and my strange occupation. My timid wife usually waited a long time befo
re exploding — such was her nature. But if she did, only running could help.
“You’re always there! In the morning, in the evening, all the time! You only come out to eat and shower! And now, you’re there at night, too! God, what have I done to deserve this? Oleg, forgive me, but that’s not right! I want to fall asleep with my husband next to me, not in an empty bed!”
“I’ve already explained that it’s my job — “
“Stop lying, Oleg! Work? At night? Why’d you need such a job anyway! I guess my parents were right...”
She faltered as she saw my face. So back on The Star, my in-laws had done a number on her head. I could finally see where all of it was coming from. Without a word, I stood up, went to the kitchen, poured two glasses of water and drank them. After ten hours inside the capsule, I was horribly thirsty. Dawn was breaking outside. Apparently, I lost track of time with Weldy. It wasn’t right. I really had gotten carried away. But at least I managed to get her superquest right before being logged off.
The Gene of the Ancients (Rogue Merchant Book #2): LitRPG Series Page 24