“The boy has grown up. The boy has become a man,” Dolgunata drawled in such a languid voice that I felt as if everything inside me was melting, and my libido hit the stratosphere. She was trying to control me again! What a bitch!
“Stop that!” I growled with the remains of my sense, trying to push Nata out of my head. It seemed like I was starting to succeed when the druid used her trump card: suddenly moving very close to me...
“Stop what?”
“I am ….” I had no other choice but to kill Dolgunata. The druid was dangerous. But for some reason my thoughts were moving so slowly that I only managed to push out two words before Nata practically finished me off:
“Stop this?”
The druid’s green dress opened, revealing the girl’s perfect form. My world toppled, and all my troubles floated away. How could a being so perfect be evil? Had I really wanted to hit her just a moment ago? That was unforgivable of me! I was saddened to note that she had underwear on that concealed the beauty’s breasts. Size B, my favorite. Not huge tits like a cow’s and not little lumps like those of flat-chested skinny girls. This breast would fit in my hand just right, allowing me to enjoy its tenderness and sweet softness and …
“You’re weak and helpless, Paladin,” Dolgunata whispered, bending down to my face. I jerked forward, trying to kiss the goddess who had descended to me from the sky, but she easily moved back, not allowing to touch her velvet lips. “You’d never compare to my teacher! Learn, risk the Labyrinth on your own; once you understand that you are just a no-name nobody, I might agree to help. But I warn you outright: if you want me to help you’d have to crawl to me on your knees! I opened to you, offered you a helping hand, but you pushed me away. Too bad for you. Until we meet again, Paladin. I don’t know what the teacher saw in you...”
You were killed and sent to a respawn point
You lost one level
Your current level: 4
“Paladin!” The players scream, to which I was becoming accustomed, informed me that I was at the respawn point again. “Catch him!”
“I am the Templar’s blow”!
I was using up Energy elixirs at the express rate. The players were trying to get to me from all sides, but unlike the last time, I wasn’t attempting to run away. On the contrary, I openly rejoiced at being in the center of a huge crowd of players wanting to kill me. At the previous site it was enough for me to kill a warrior and the players had parted, letting me pass; but here, at the respawn point, no one was in the mood to retreat. In my current state I actually needed that, since I needed to vent my emotions on someone. Dolgunata had yet again shown me my place, demonstrating that even six months of leveling up my defenses was no guarantee of safety. She’d made me lose my concentration, and then the protective shell had dissipated as if it had never been there. So the local players were out of luck: I was angry.
“Regroup!” I heard Dangard’s order and for a few moments I was left alone. Another empty vial was set on the shelf and I turned towards the mages. Socking in the face the rogue who rushed towards me, I moved on, fatal like an avalanche, towards the leader of the “Say no to Paladins” movement. Instead of catching me by my arms and legs, pressing me to the ground and finishing me off, so I wouldn’t be able to get up, the players were trying to be the first to hit me, getting in each other’s way and enabling me to collect my bloody harvest. Just five minutes of this melee not only restored my level 5, but actually brought me up to level 7. I looked at the mages who clustered together, and immediately a funny plan occurred to me, as brilliant as it was original. There was nothing left for me other than to start implementing it immediately.
“Hi! Shall we talk?” I said, stopping within just a few steps of the mages. One half of me wanted to tear and crush everything within reach, but the other half, including my consciousness, stifled that urge, and worked on extracting maximum advantage from the current situation. Information! I needed information, and Dangard was the only player who possessed it. The Book of Knowledge, working like a live video relay, showed me that a crowd of fifteen players gathered around my back, but was in no rush to attack. The players still couldn’t figure out how it was possible that an ordinary Paladin, not even armed with a sword, had been able to send to respawn over fifty bodies while not sustaining any visible damage. If they’d only known that this battle had cost me half of my store of elixirs, they probably wouldn’t have stopped …
“Let’s talk,” to my surprise, Dangard turned out to be quite a sensible player, who adequately saw his chances for victory. At this point he saw none, so he was trying to stall for time: the runners must have already gone off to the neighboring clearings; soon reinforcements would arrive. “Did you find a hidden teacher somewhere and learned defense?”
“It wasn’t only that,” I saw no reason to hide the obvious along with the fact that I was still holding an elixir in my hand. The teacher was right: at the initial level the defense really did make a player invincible. I needed to use this fact to the max.
“I see. But sooner or later you’ll run out of elixirs‒ you understand that, right?”
“Right.”
“And you understand that we have no choice: either we destroy you, or Devir will destroy all of us.”
“I know that as well.”
“In that case I don’t understand what we could talk about.”
I need information about the Academy. What, where, how and why. You have it. The point of my offer is simple: you share information with me, I stop hunting you and let you through to the Labyrinth at a level higher than one. Otherwise I’ll just trap you all here and will keep you here until the majority are dead. You are the only initiated mage in our sector, right? I’ll make it so that you’ll have to keep going by your lonesome. I don’t care what Devir will do to you later‒ I care what I’ll do to you now!”
“I am the Templar’s blow”!
It would’ve been pointless waiting for a response. The mages weren’t ready for this dialogue now. Dangard’s pose, expressions and body language indicated that he wasn’t taking my threats seriously; so I did what the druid had taught me: attacked first. The mages were sent to respawn without even as much as throwing a lightning at me; or it was possible that by then they didn’t have enough Energy to do it. Seven blows, seven slowly disappearing corpses.
“Everyone’s free to go!” I turned towards the remaining players. They never dared attack me, deciding to wait for the outcome of the showdown between Dangard and myself. I checked the map and pointed towards the center of the Academy: "The Labyrinth is there! The longer you are cooling your heels here the less time you have. Or does someone have a secret wish to get back at me? I’ll count to ten and then kill everyone who remains in the clearing. One. Two…”
There were no stupid ones, and for a while I was completely alone. Amazing, but Dolgunata had been able to wake in me something that I hadn’t even known was there. Anger. Thirst for killing. The impulse to crush and stomp. During the hour several groups of mages ran into the respawn clearing and I sent them to take a rest and respawn without much ado. . I had only forty two vials of elixir left, but I wasn’t going to give up and abandon my plan. I needed information!
Taking a position close to the point where players appeared, I extended the spikes to their maximum length and started training on precise hits to the head. Players appeared one after another; yet during the first three hours I decided not to bother sorting them, simply sending everyone to respawn. My actions were the same as the genocide started by the mages; the Chancellor would certainly not like that, but at this point I didn’t care anymore. Light is not my thing.
“I agree, damn you!” Dangard yelled, appearing in the Academy after the third respawn in a row. During the three hours of non-stop fighting I had managed to reach level 10, and was starting to seriously contemplate totally wiping out all the one hundred and twenty seven players who were caught in the respawn mill. I let no one escape – neither the mages, nor
other class players who were caught in this crush accidentally. Everyone got it bad.
“You’ll get the information! Stop this!”
“You forgot to add that until the end of the Labyrinth the mages and your local minions will forget about the Paladins."
“Fine. Game is the witness — we won’t touch the Paladins until the wastelands!” Amazing, but Dangard had broken down too fast. Either his level had dropped too low and he realized that dropping it further meant major problems, or he completely hadn’t expected such cruelty from a non-initiated player. By all accounts I should’ve run off to a dark corner and sat there trying not to attract attention, but I didn’t like playing according to the pre-established standards any more. I stepped aside, allowing the next mage to appear, and looking at Dangard all the while. He was supposed to signal that there was no need to attack me, that we’d reached an agreement.
There was no attack.
“What do you want to know?” It took Dangard about ten minutes to recover and collect his thoughts. During that time most of the players respawned and decided that the respawn point wasn’t the best place to hang around. Only the mages stayed at the clearing; they couldn’t figure out what had happened and why their leader was suddenly talking with their main intended victim.
“Everything you know about the Academy. Teachers, hidden teachers, traders, tricksters, crapsters, completing the Labyrinth… I need exhaustive information.”
"I’ll figure out a way to get through your defenses,” Dangard growled with hatred, looking me straight in the eye. For a moment I felt a weak urge to take off my armor and embrace my brother, who by some fluke had turned out to be a mage, but I only grinned, and the temptation passed at once. Compared to Dolgunata, Dangard was nowhere close to being able to control other players well. Had the druid’s influence on us been at the same level, perhaps I would still be among the Paladins. By the way, by now they must have made it rather far from the territory discovered by me. They must be approaching the mysterious Labyrinth.
“The Academy is divided into four large sectors,” Dangard started, as he realized that the attempt to take me under control had failed. “Each of the sectors …”
Listening to Dangard, I clenched my fists in impotent rage, understanding that I had simply missed out on a certain part of training in the Academy. Why were there hidden teachers in the Academy? They didn’t teach you anything special, just enabled you to select the sequence of training, and in essence didn’t affect your return to the main world? Dangard explained what my mistake was: if one were to refuse the training and offered wisdom, the teacher wouldn’t count. Instead the recruit would receive additional information on the current Labyrinth setup and the key to one of the tests that had to be passed there. The Labyrinth was the only part that always changed from one batch of students to another, and so it was impossible to prepare for it outside the Academy, only inside it. In addition, it was set up in such a tricky way that refusing to train would make the process of passing through the Labyrinth much easier: if you were to find all the hidden teachers in the sector and refuse to train with them, you could collect three keys from the four tests. And the final nail in the coffin of my hopes was the caveat that only one recruit in each team was able to use the keys; he could take up to ten players with him. So, if two players on the same team were to turn down the training, only one of them would be able to deactivate the test; all the other group members’ keys would be destroyed. Now it became clear what Dolgunata had meant by saying that she knew how to complete part of the Labyrinth. She had become a key master! I was unable to hold back a curse: in a bout of kindness and desire to save my “brothers” in class I had presented to Dolgunata the location of the second hidden teacher! Now half of the Labyrinth would be practically easy as pie for her! Where was Dangard a couple of hours ago?!
The mage didn’t have much information regarding the wastelands, only a generic notion: the wasteland inhabitants were divided into Light and Dark ones, diligently killing the opposite factions. The point of completion was that one had to choose one's side while in the Labyrinth, and use assistance from allies in the wastelands. Dangard did not refuse to explain what was Light and Darkness; he just didn’t have a lot of information about it himself. Everything turned out both simple and complicated at the same time. First of all, all players in the Academy were supposed to form an allegiance with their “hue”; there was no place for neutral ones. If a player were unable to take a side, the Game would wipe him out. Once the recruit returned to the main world, the top scale disappeared and the selected side would be the player’s side to the end. What was the effect of this, Dangard didn’t know. He knew one thing only: it was important to be “Light”, for Devir wouldn’t teach the “Dark” ones, even though he wouldn’t kill them either. I looked at my scale and frowned: the arrow rested almost halfway down the dark die. If I were to continue with my atrocities, it would reach the end, and then I’d receive the first level of Darkness. Like everything else in the Game, players’ allegiance leveled up as well. What benefits that would give me, or from what it would protect me, nobody knew.
Book of Knowledge reached a new level. You need to increase the level of the artifact properties: “Context search” (1), “Weapon”(1),
After I was alone again I decided against testing fate, and returned to the forest. While working on the available properties I’d become vulnerable. Agreement is one thing, but someone among the players might decide that it wasn’t made with him personally, and send me for a spin. So I climbed up, made sure the Paladins were still as far off as before, and opened the list of the available artifact properties. Improving the Book of Knowledge or attack capabilities seemed excessive to me at the moment. The battle with the players had demonstrated what I was lacking. I had issues with availability of free Energy; before investing in something I needed to make sure that issue was resolved.
Chapter Seven. Partner
I APPROACHED the last of the generally available teachers in the reinforced concrete forest with a clear understanding of what I wanted from this life and from the Game specifically. I’d spent about three hours working to figure out the artifact properties and selecting the ones most suitable for the current situation and future game; at the same time I contemplated the strategy of my further actions. I even tried to gain access to the Temple of Knowledge a few times, but to no avail: the Game must have considered that my need for new knowledge wasn’t vital. So I had to study the list on my own, and in the end selected the three properties the description and use of which seemed the most understandable: “Acceleration”, “Protection” and “Thoroughness”.
“Acceleration” reduced the cooldown time for all abilities and increased the rate of Energy restore. It was a somewhat marginal quality for now, given that Energy doesn’t replenish within the Academy, but given the inevitable return to the main world that quality looked quite advantageous. The only thing that concerned me was a rather narrow applicability of this property: it would be useful only to fighters and defenders, but not, really, for a world explorer.
“Protection” enhanced “Armor resistance” and reduced the amount of Energy needed to block a blow; that would be extremely useful both within the Academy and beyond. In time the other players’ probability of dealing a critical hit would increase, and I needed to be ready for that. The drawbacks of this quality were that it did not affect Energy at all and required a continuously activated energy shield.
“Thoroughness” reduced the amount of Energy drawn by the use of all abilities by a certain value; it was also useful to players who had chosen a creative path by mysteriously lowering the rate of “low quality results”. Given that I’d been unable to discover any properties that directly increased the level of Energy, this one would have to do.
As before, the description of each property was only available to level 15, so, having thought out all the pros and cons, I decided on “Protection”. Here in the for
est I was a tough and hard to kill player. But by the wastelands the mages would have studied defense and it wouldn’t be beer and skittles any more for me. I needed to protect myself.
“Welcome, recruit, I will tell you about the basics of the Game. Harken to my wisdom!”
Learning progress: You have reached teacher 6 of 10
“How interesting, a practically darkened recruit!” The teacher said with surprise as soon as the world around us turned into a training range. “That’s rare for the initial stage of training!”
“Would you stop pointing that out to me already?!” I lost my temper. “Would someone finally explain to me what’s the difference between Light and Darkness?!”
“You need to revise your behavior; a Judge shouldn’t be so emotional,” the old man said coldly. “What’s good for a berserk isn’t acceptable for others. Especially for you.”
“I lost my temper, I admit,” I agreed. “But I am so often reproached about Darkness without any explanation that I couldn’t contain myself any longer.”
“You broke down, that’s a fact,” the teacher confirmed. “But it didn’t happen just now. The emotional breakdown started immediately after respawn; you still can’t come to your senses. Explain: why did you need that massacre? You could have easily avoided it and preserved a huge stock of elixirs.”
“I needed the levels.”
“Do you even believe that yourself? You killed seven players to the final death and brought another twenty recruits to level one. Was that worth your levels?”
The Beginning (Dark Paladin Book #1) LitRPG Series Page 24