“Take everything that’s left after him.” The trade panel appeared, the girl offering me to take twenty three granises. “Elixirs. Inventory extender. Amulet for protection and for Energy. We found one more teacher‒ he trains in additional attack ability. Here are the coordinates. I have nothing more. Please, Yari, do it quickly… I don’t want to stay in this rotten Game any more!”
The spikes entered the base of her skull without resistance: the mage had no protection on. The girl bent backwards, drew air convulsively, and immediately faded into the air. Marinar had made her choice; she had decided not even to leave the Academy, so I did not deny her last request. The Game turned out not to be her thing. Fourteen hours later, angry, tired and barely dragging his feet, a second level Paladin was moving along the crystal bridge with determination worthy of a better use. I had questions which the Chancellor simply must answer. Otherwise I would break to pieces everything breakable in his tower and I wouldn’t care about the ripe old age or strength of the host of the castle.
“Come in!” The huge double-leafed wooden door to which the bridge led, opened, and the Chancellor himself came out to meet me. The vampire’s red eyes measured me from top to bottom, causing me to tremble with a feeling that I was being examined piece by piece. Snorting with satisfaction, the Chancellor added: “We need to talk.”
I silently followed the head of the Academy, looking around furtively at the tower. The Chancellor’s castle was just a very tall building that seemed to scrape the clouds and took the all the land available on the island. The vampire gestured, inviting me into a futuristic elevator, and we, at breathtaking acceleration, rushed towards the skies. In passing I noticed that there was a spiral staircase snaking along the wall. That made me think a little better of the owner: given his mean character he could easily have made me climb up on my own.
“Have a seat.” The elevator brought us to a spacious room, and the vampire pointed at one of the red leather armchairs facing each other. The floor was covered with a thick green carpet that looked more like grass, and for a while I could not force myself to step onto this wonder of nature or example of someone’s brilliant work. “While you were busy killing, Dolgunata and Sakhray received the answers to their questions and left the Academy. They wanted to wait for you, but I was very persuasive. Are you coming in, or are you just going to stand here at the door?”
Reproaching myself for momentary weakness, I decisively moved towards the armchair.
“Who would think,” the Chancellor grinned once I settled down in front of him, “that the incarnation of Merlin would be a Dark one! In the past you were one of the most devout fighters against the Darks, you killed them whenever possible, so how did you manage to become one of them?”
“Did you tell the same to Levard?” I responded. “Don’t you think that it’s impossible to have two incarnations of Merlin at once?”
“There’s a lot you don’t know, young Judge. Levard is a cynocephalian; Merlin was a human. A human can return only as a human. I admit, there was a point when I thought that the Game had changed its own rules, but now everything fits the picture. You are human, you have Madonna’s notes, just like Merlin, you don’t care about your own life … The battle with Zangar was quite telling. In an honest and open battle you would not have any chance at all, but neither the necromancer nor myself could have even imagined what you did. That was clever and interesting. Quite in the spirit of Merlin. So yes – I am more than certain who you were in your previous life.”
“If I am Merlin, then where’s my book?” I grinned.
“With the keeper,” the Chancellor answered with a serious face. “You have to remember who it was, find him and take what belongs to you. Then you will be able to gain part of your former power and strength. But until you find the true Madonna, nothing will matter.”
“What will not matter?”
“The Game will stay defective. Lies, betrayal, hatred, desire to kill those close to you and advance through their deaths – those were the point of the last restart. Find yourself, find Madonna, teach and train her. When the third one shows up – and he will, as he is attracted to Madonna – break him and restart the Game. Make the world better. Then your life will have meaning.”
There was a pause. The Chancellor made a face as if he just said a speech full of pathos and it was supposed to immediately make me want to run off and throw myself on the enemy's grenades. Apparently, he was confusing me with someone else.
“Let me recap in plain terms everything that you’ve just told me,” – I hadn’t even noticed that I had become quite informal with the Chancellor, ignoring his impressive age and status. “Train, find this couple of lovers, break them and then die so that everyone’s lives would be great and full of joy. Did I miss anything?”
“In general that’s correct.”
“Great motivation for work! Most important, the goal is precise and clear.”
“You were an NPC,” the Chancellor said calmly, completely ignoring my sarcasm. — “Did you like the world in which you were living? Corruption, lies and treachery? You became a player – did you like the foundation of the Game? All the same, only taken to an extreme. Your verdicts are indicative: you can’t tolerate any of that. Now think, how long will you survive in a world which is based on treachery? Nothing to say? So I’ll repeat myself – your thought that you will croak so that life may be great and full of joy for all is correct. There’s no other way for you to survive. Now let me work on your hand. I don’t like it when someone is defective.”
A greenish glow encompassed my left wrist, and literally out of nowhere a whole and healthy hand appeared there, devoid even of the scars I had earned as a child. I clenched and unclenched the fist several times, as I was reviving the habit of using the limb I had lost; then I took the glove out from my personal inventory, set it in place, and the world was transformed once again. There was a barely audible click when the glove connected, and suddenly I realized that until that moment I had been in a rather stuffy and uncomfortable room. The outline of the human on the armor icon turned fully green, indicating it was now complete, and, to my immense surprise, it activated an air conditioner, ensuring an optimally comfortable environment.
“I can see you really like one of my gifts,” the Chancellor, noted, observing the changes. “An intelligent being that destroyed one of my birdies is quite rare; not every enrollment can boast one of those. So the upgraded armor is yours by right.”
“Gifts?” I frowned, regaining my critical thinking. “So, this is not the result of activating the Luck?”
“No, of course not. Zangar was not lying: it just doesn’t work in the Academy. When you activated the stone, it gave you a glimpse of what you would have received, had you activated it in the main world; also, your attention sensitivity improved somewhat, but not more than that. You veered from the main course, found the cave and completed that practically ideally, Actually, I was planning to give pets also to Zangar and Dolgunata, but for some reason they refused. Decided that they were not prepared to take on such a responsibility. So you were the only one who received a pet; the armor is just a nice bonus, no more. Not only you get to bring me joy; sometimes I could cut you some slack, too.”
“That means there are three stones still somewhere in…”
“Don’t even think of it!” The Chancellor cut me off. “From the tower you have one way only – to the greater world. No dungeons, attribute stones, or anything else. You’ve got enough already.”
“I need to help Teart,” I said emphatically. The leprechaun had survived, after all, though he had lost his conditional initiation, and now was actively moving away, further from the center of the Academy.
“He betrayed all of you by agreeing to help Zangar. Why do you need such a weakling?”
“You are not in a position to criticize him, and I don’t want to. Let him be punished or exonerated by those who speak for the law of our class. As for me, I need to do everything I can to e
nsure that as many Paladins as possible finish the Academy.”
“Teart has to train with one more teacher.” The Chancellor thought for a long time before decisively dotting all the i’s. “As a gesture of good will I will make sure that he finishes the training and leaves the Academy.”
“Why do the mages need Paladins? Why do you allow such bedlam to go on in the Academy altogether?”
“I don’t care why they are killing you,” the Chancellor snorted. “Dust eating up other dust. Why should I care about it? As for the bedlam – I am preparing them to face life. If not myself, who else? That’s my duty. Are you happy with the answer?”
“More than happy. Who else, other than Zangar and Marinar, knew that I had Madonna’s notes?”
“Looking out for your well-being?” The Chancellor nodded approvingly. “Good thinking. Don’t worry: no one else knows about you. As you already noticed, Zangar was not a talkative player. He kept this information to himself. Only Gromana knows that you’ve seen the notes, but actually she will be the one who can help you find the keeper. Now about you: in accordance with the rules, I am supposed to present a non-initiated player with a gift. However, there is a problem: you are initiated. Therefore, no gifts for you, as you understand.”
“It’s a conditional initiation. In effect, it’s just an extra life…”
“What difference does it make? The operative word is initiation‒everything else is immaterial. Besides, remember: the number of players and NPCs never changes. Nartalim was an officially initiated player‒ he was sent to the Academy specifically in order to overcome the three-level ceiling. By your verdict you took his initiation and, as you can guess, became quite an officially initiated player. There were no precedents of that before, but I am sure: had Zangar been able to find a way to counteract the way you were killing him, you would have stayed stuck at level one. A pity there was no chance to check.”
“You said all three of us were not initiated!”
“So I was wrong, can happen to anyone,” the Chancellor was obviously having fun. “I could not say definitively whether you would die or not. So I proceeded based on the information available. According to it, you should have died.”
“So then now why are you proceeding on a different basis?”
“Because those who work in the Temple of Knowledge are unanimously saying that you are initiated. I am inclined to believe them: in recent tens of thousands of years they have never been mistaken.”
“Tens of thousands of years?” I frowned and suddenly was hit with a stunning idea. “How many restarts of the Game have there been altogether?”
“Oh! What an interesting question! One could even say "unexpected". To which I have been leading for the past several minutes of our conversation. I was already thinking of becoming desperate! I will answer that. Even Levard does not know; during the time of its existence, of about seventy five thousand years and a bit, the Game has restarted four times. And every time it was done by the same essential beings. Two men and one woman. All human. Two of whom loved each other. Does it remind you of anything?”
“Then another question: who was it that created the Game altogether? And what for?” The news regarding restarts was shocking, but to some extent it was expected. But I was interested in something different.
“That’s two questions, but I will answer. The Game was created by the creators, and they did it because they could. They were just amusing themselves.”
“Are you one of them?”
“Me?!” The Chancellor even laughed, obviously not expecting that question. “No, Paladin, I am just a tool. Half machine, half living being, half Light, half Dark, crazy but knowing how to control himself. I am not a creator of the Game. I am its mechanism. Like the Emperor, but the Chancellor. Hm… That’s a funny play on words… I should write that down…”
“Are the creators still alive?”
“Hmm… That’s questionable. Two are definitely not, the state in which they are can hardly be called a life. Nirvana, nothingness, uncertainty – go ahead and pick a word; it will not describe even a fraction of what their current existence is like, anyway. As for the third… Yes, he is definitely still alive. When you restart the Game, you will meet him. It’s unlikely to happen before that, so the name will not tell you anything. It will lead you away from the main path.”
“He takes active part in the Game?” I asked in surprise.
“Oh, sure he does! Seventy five thousand years is not a reason for idleness, you know. I, for example, became aware of myself during the creation of the Game and still have not lost my interest in setting up training.”
“If you’ve been involved in training for so long… then why is it so easy to pass through the tests? You make everything more and more complicated all the time, right?”
“Because if I were to make the tests even an iota harder, you would have all just died here! I grant the non-initiated players a chance, even though it’s an ephemeral one, to complete the Academy. You may consider me a benefactor. The last restart didn’t work out right; before that a lot more players completed the Academy. There wasn’t such chaos. And of course there was no sacrifice class. Only a truly depraved mind could have come up with such a thing… So I jump through the hoops of all these constraints, trying to help as many players as possible complete it.”
“Who knows the name of the third one?”
“Madonna does: she is the only one. It’s possible that Gromana does as well, but I would not bet on it – the witch was too carefree at the time; she could have simply not paid attention. The others definitely didn’t care about him and his desires. Find the keeper, receive your book, and you will understand how to find Madonna. I think it’s time for you to go back. I will not tell you anything else anyway; you can learn everything else in the Citadel. By the way! Your experience. What, did you think I’d forget that?”
Information flashed in front of me, notifying that my second level was just history now. I was going to leave the Academy as a level 11 player.
“So, I can’t train in something special with you?” I asked just in case.
“No. I don’t do training, that’s what teachers are for. But really, I can’t just let you go with nothing! Here, take this and don’t you dare say that the Chancellor of the Academy is an evil creature who hates Darks. First of all you are Merlin, and only after that a Dark one…”
The Chancellor disappeared for a moment, then returned with a thick book bound in dark leather.
“That’s the book of the explorers. Read it in your spare time, figure out where you should go first and what to study. I hope it helps you develop. Now activate the exit key. Your time in the Academy is complete. I will accept no objections. No matter what, from here you will go out into the main world. This is my will.”
I didn’t feel like arguing. Hiding the gift in inventory, I silently clicked on the button, confirmed several times that I really wanted to leave the Academy and, finally, stared at the long load bar with its countdown: 29… 28… 27…
Thirty seconds, during which I had to stay still.
… 3… 2… 1…
I finally finished this blasted Academy!
“We hail our new brethren in arms!” Once the darkness around me lifted I heard the pompous booming voice of the Viceroy. “This month one thousand and seventy eight players completed the Academy! Thirty six non-initiated beings were able to prove that they are worthy and from now on have a full right to be proudly called “players”! Glory to the Game!”
The general roar of everyone's exaltation and approval exploded in the arena, in the center of which there were a thousand tired, swaying, slumping and embittered players. I was even surprised: the faces of many Academy graduates broadcast anything but joy. I met Logir’s eyes. The red-eyed femorc was swallowing tears; not for a second did I think that those were tears of joy. Grief, pain, disappointment – anything but joy.
“Mages, over here!” The moment I started towards the femor
c to find out what had happened, the loud order from the master of ceremonies interfered. “Under the blue banner!”
“Hunters, over here! Under the green banner!”
“Paladins, over here! Under the red banner!”
The crowd swirled. The players ran into each other, hurrying to the banners of their class, trying to forget, as quickly as possible, the nightmare they had just escaped. No, one wouldn’t say that all the players were depressed: some really beamed, knowing they made it back, but there were only about twenty percent of those. Mostly they were having the blues.
“Paladins: over here, come to me!” A long-eared elf vigorously waved his red banner, looking for someone in the crowd. Sharda, grinning, was standing next to him, counting the arriving Paladins on his fingers. Logir’s father was also there, barely able to stand still, eager to embrace his daughter and ask her questions. Other Paladins started to join that motley group – one, two, five, ten… Twenty three Paladins returned from the Academy, and as far as I figured from general conversation, only Teart, standing with his head bent down, was not initiated. I no longer counted myself among the non-initiated.
“Logir, where’s the group?” Sharda asked pointblank as soon as all of us had collected in one spot. “Tell me, please: where are the rest? At least two brothers, after whom you were instructed to watch, are not among those who completed the Academy. I would like to understand…”
“Where is Nartalim?!” The elf who had been holding the banner lost it, looming over the hunching femorc. “He was in your group! Why did he not come back from the Academy? He was initiated! Where is my son?!”
“He was stripped of his initiation and killed. It was done on my command,” I said coldly, defending the femorc. In any case, very soon the truth about Nartalim would become widely known, so at least let it be known from the source. I had no intention of hiding behind the backs of other players, who had already shown their weakness. Nor was I intending to interfere with Sharda’s instruction process. Logir was nobody to me. Even worse, she was one of those who had tried to make sure that I never left the Academy.
The Beginning (Dark Paladin Book #1) LitRPG Series Page 47