Agility: 4.
Defense: 1.
Health: 20/20.
Damage: 12.6.
Fatigue: 24%.
Throwing Stones: 1.
Dodge: 4.
Unarmed Combat: 3.
Spears: 4.
The Spears and Spark of Tlaloc bonuses gave me extra damage, but I was struggling for health. I’d be easy to one-shot.
My level didn’t seem to do anything but show the others how strong I was. The game mechanics of the Ordeal were nothing like those in Dis. Maybe it was another of Snowstorm’s projects, a separate game in a Battle Royale style that they decided not to release, but instead to integrate with their more important brainchild. In any case, the gameplay seemed alien. “Gameplay”… I remembered my bit-off ear and the fury on the hobbit’s blood-soaked face. For most of the convicts, this was life, not a game.
The cosmic gong rang. The earth vibrated and the ringing reverberated so hard through my head that I went deaf.
Ceasefire ended!
An orc on the next tentacle of rock looked at me, bared his teeth and ran his finger across his neck. I showed him my middle finger and the orc roared, waved his axe and rushed for the center. I tried running, but a couple of dozen paces later I slowed to a walk — my Fatigue was going up too fast. Half as fast as at the Ordeal’s start, but still fast. Better save my strength for battle, what with my low Vitality.
A ragged beam of light lanced down from the sky right before me. The spot where it landed exploded in a shower of stone dust, and after it settled, I saw a white cube three times the size of a black one.
Great Gift
There it was; one of the promised divine gifts. I made sure there were no enemies nearby, then sat down and touched it. A flash of light burned my hand, enveloped my arm and sank through my sleeve into my flesh. A wave of binding cold passed all through my body.
Great Gift of Nergal: ±1 to all stats.
Only he who walks the path of Light shall be rewarded!
Plus/minus? How did that work? The answer came before I could even open my character profile. Tiredness crashed down on me. It got hard to breathe, my legs buckled. My Defense stat was down at zero, my damage down by a point, but worst of all, I lost one Vitality. Without that, my health dropped to ten points. Now anyone could kill me in one hit.
Thanks for nothing, Radiant One! Although it was partly my fault. I shouldn’t have touched the cube once I saw who it came from! Idiot! Loser! Dumbass! I recalled a few more names from Navalik. Despairing, I staggered toward the arena, realizing that there was no way I could make it out. My enemies were leveling up, and each death made someone stronger. Someone other than me.
Reaching the end of my finger of rock, I saw the orc from before. Dead and shattering into pieces. Above him towered Mano’Hano, the two-headed ogre with the stone club who I’d seen in the crowd in the arena. A small fairy with broken wings was huddling by his legs.
This is the end, I thought, hanging back. When she saw me, the fairy lit up and waved, beckoning me over.
“Hey, Scyth!” she called, her voice too hoarse for such an ethereal creature. “Over here!”
Yeah, sure. It was obvious what they wanted me for; to crush me and feed the fairy a healing black cube.
“Whaddaya waitin’ for?” one of the ogre’s heads rumbled, shaved except for a topknot.
“Hurry up, damn it! Get over here!” the second head said in a surprisingly high-pitched and well-read voice, his hair a red mane.
I shook my head and stepped back.
“Oh, Nether!” the fairy swore and scampered over to me. She stretched out a hand. “Come on, there’s three cubes over here, we’re saving them for you.”
“For me? Who are you?”
“The name’s Lil’ Star, now hurry up!” the fairy answered in annoyance. “We’re from the Green League, buddy! Mama Kusalarix heard from Bargrivyek, the all-seeing and all-round prince of all things informational, that you, pal, were about to go through the Ordeal. Me and Mano and Hano here happened to be awaitin’ judgment in the Kinema slammer. Word came in from outside that the chosen one of the Sleepers needs help and support. We volunteered, to cleanse our good names of… um… it doesn’t matter. The point is, the League pulled some strings and the judge sentenced us to Trial by Ordeal instead of death.”
Lil’ Star’s tale was accompanied by Hano’s deep-bass commentary and Mano’s high-pitched whine. The ogre towered over the three black cubes like an immovable boulder. A few convicts looked on from some way away, but they didn’t have the courage to attack the ogre. Judging by the fact that they weren’t fighting each other either, the group was together.
“Come on, suck ‘em up,” Lil’ Star nodded at the cubes of divine gifts.
Both the ogre and the fairy were already up at level 16, so I “sucked ‘em up” without hesitation. And the first cube gave me a pleasant surprise, a reminder of one of my patron saints.
+3 to level. Current level: 10.
Great Gift of Fortune: +7 Vitality.
Either the goddess of luck had organized this or I was just lucky, but I’d gotten exactly what I so badly needed! The next rewards were just as encouraging:
+2 to level. Current level: 12.
Great Gift of Shezmu: +4 strength, +5 damage (Shezmu’s Punishment).
+1 to level. Current level: 13.
Medium Gift of Veles: +3 defense.
“Follow me,” Mano whined. “Stay behind me,” Hano rumbled.
“Don’t go looking for trouble,” Lil’ Star warned me. “Let the ogre take out the trash, your job is to loot the cubes.”
Of course, I went looking for trouble right away. The group of thugs standing between us and the center of the arena was, as it turned out, standing guard over the great gifts. In that center, a special cube like the one Nergal The Radiant had dropped so generously for me appeared every five minutes.
The bandits tore apart a centaur that tried to get through, nearly came to blows over the loot, then saw our group and spread out. There were eight in total, and half of them began moving off to the sides, trying to flank us.
I glanced at the number of remaining survivors: 97. Less than 10%.
I was surprised by the variety in the group: a lopher, a minotaur, a titan, an elf, a kobold, a dryad, a naga and a human. How did they unite? A pointless question, and a second later it flew out of my mind completely.
Mano’Hano, who had so far shuffled along with deceptive slowness, now suddenly moved with incredible speed and hit the lopher so hard with his club that the elephant-person flew twenty paces. The monstrous strike killed the lopher, but we didn’t get the loot: a brawl began over the black cube. The minotaur won. Roaring triumphantly, he charged and tried to impale the ogre on his horns, but was too slow: Hano and Mano had time to block. There was no victor in the crash of skull against stone club. Even the horns survived, but the impact shook the minotaur hard enough for the ogre to finish the combination, bringing the club down hard enough to split the bull’s skull. I didn’t see whether he was dead — I was fighting too, covering our flank.
A level 10 elf leaped at me and a level 6 kobold went for Lil’ Star. The fairy dodged and disappeared while I jabbed my spear at the elf. The bastard was nimble and agile — he took half my health with rapid thrusts of his knife, but I won the exchange; four spear strikes was enough to take him down.
Spears +2. Total: 6.
Before picking up the loot, I span my head anxiously, looking for Lil’ Star. I thought she’d died, but I was wrong; the little fairy was fluttering through the air! Her wings were fixed, her health recovered — she must have picked up the black cube from the dead minotaur. The kobold growled, barked, jumped up and down to try and catch the fairy in its claws, and grimaced as she pelted him with stone after stone. The little fairy had great aim.
I finished off the rage-blinded kobold, grabbed the black cube from the elf and rushed to the ogre’s aid.
+1 to level. Current level: 14.
/> Lesser Gift of Huracan: +1 to speed.
Four attackers surrounded my unexpected ally, and the entire brawling group had moved around twenty paces closer to the arena’s center. The ogre was fighting a titan and naga while a dryad and a human shot at him unpunished from a distance. The dryad, apparently the same one who broke my nose in the cell, threw stones from a slingshot. The human used a bow.
“I’ll take the bitch!” Lil’ Star shrieked, pointing at the dryad.
I ran toward the human. Distracted with his target, he checked himself only when I stabbed him in the stomach. Screaming in pain, he managed to fire off two arrows, hitting me in the eye and shoulder. I answered with two strikes, finishing the bastard off. The loot restored my health and the arrows slid out of me and fell to the ground.
+2 to level. Current level: 16.
Medium Gift of Ishtar: Sharp Sword.
Sharp Sword
Damage: 15.
My Spears skill was at level 9, but even without the bonus damage, the sword was the better choice. All the same, I kept the spear in my left hand and took up the sword in my right. The blade wouldn’t have been worth a silver piece in Dis, but here it was a top weapon!
Newly emboldened — thanks, Ishtar! — I looked around; the fairy was taking good care of the dryad, but the ogre needed help. Mano had lost both eyes and was screaming about it:
“Don’t make me laugh! You’re all dead!”
The high-pitched head was all talk — the ogre’s health was down at six percent. Measuring up the health bars of the titan and naga, I chose the snakewoman, taking a run at her and driving my sword and spear into her scaly, spongy body.
Learned One-handed Swords!
+10% damage with one-handed swords per skill level.
“Mano, grab it!” I shouted.
The titan and the ogre reached for the black cube at the same time. I cut off the titan’s hand and the black smoke streamed into Mano’Hano. The ogre was healed.
After that, we had no trouble finishing off the titan and dryad. We shared the loot with the fairy.
+1 to level. Current level: 17.
Lesser Gift of Marduk: +1 strength.
Total surviving convicts: 18 of 981.
Looking around, we saw the arena empty. A bright green cube glowed invitingly in the center. Lil’ Star flapped over there, turned her head and waved for us to follow.
Great Gift
“All yours, Scyth,” she said.
“Hmm… I already took one like this, from Nergal. It lowered all my stats!”
“Well, this one is green, y’see? It sure ain’t from the Radiant One. Marduk ain’t your biggest fan either, but his would be black. Take it, mo-fa!”
“Where’d the others go?” I asked, approaching the cube.
“Hiding,” Mano squeaked. “We’ll find the cowards!”
The green smoke whorled into my arm.
Great Gift of Toci: +10 Vitality.
A conqueror’s reward!
I could forget about Fatigue now; even running to the end of one of the tentacles of rock and back didn’t fill the bar to half.
From then, the Ordeal stretched out for several more hours. Many survivors, as it turned out, had hidden right away, so the hardest part was finding them.
We spent a long time wandering around, but had no trouble with the convicts once we found them. Pangs of conscience plagued me; some of our targets were more like victims than enemies, not even trying to resist. Lil’ Star saw it on my face and shot me a hard look:
“Wipe up them tears, mo-fa! If you didn’t kill ‘em, they’d kill you. With pleasure! You need to get out of here, and fast, remember?”
I hadn’t shared my plans with them out of fear that the New Gods would overhear, but the fairy and ogre already knew that the Green League needed me. For the goblin mafia, I was both their most valuable partner and an insurance policy. The League knew that without me, Kinema would fall as soon as people turned on it for helping the Awoken and colluding with the Sleepers.
“What were you imprisoned for?” I asked once we’d cleared half the tentacles of rock.
“For nothin’!” Lil’ Star croaked, making honest eyes.
“Shameless jackals!” Mano whined. “They tied us up where we stood, the bastards!”
“And you were sentenced to the Ordeal for that ‘nothing’?”
“Tha’s right!” Hano rumbled deeply. “Otherwise they just string us up and we done.”
The main battle took place once there were fewer than ten survivors left with us. On a narrow neck of rock, we met the plains orc Holger, the strongest of all the convicts. Holger was a player, and he had successfully farmed enough kills to hit level 36.
But there were three of us and he couldn’t fight us all at once. I don’t know what went through his mind when he focused first on Lil’ Star, who was hovering over the edge of the cliff and arrogantly pelting the orc with stones. Apart from sword and shield, the orc had a bow, and he hit the fairy. Fruitlessly flapping her broken wings and showering the orc in curses, Lil’ Star fell down into the abyss and evaporated in the predatory mist.
Mano and Hano roared in rage and leaped at Holger with bloodshot eyes. The orc threw away his bow, blocked the club with his shield, kicked the heavy ogre away and slashed with his sword, spraying the ground with blood.
Without hesitation, I attacked the plains orc from behind. By then my damage was already over fifty thanks to my divine damage bonuses and high One-handed Swords skill.
Regardless of Holger’s high level and defense, there was nothing he could do. I gave the loot from him to the ogre — he was dying from a multitude of deep wounds. Mano’s head had been completely cut off and was in the process of growing back, still tiny, whining at an even higher pitch than usual. It was a funny sight, but not enough to cheer me up. Navalik, Lil’ Star…
We finished off the remaining convicts in silence, trying to get it over and done with. Hano said nothing more until it was time to say good-bye.
Total surviving convicts: 2 of 981.
“Well, that’s it…” Mano sighed. “See you, Scyth. If you find yourself in Kinema, stop at the Hell’s Cauldron and tell Karlina what happened. Tell her I’ll be waiting on the other side.”
“And if you see Zhigo the goblin,” Hano boomed, “punch him in the face! Tell him it’s from me. He’ll know why.”
We hugged. A lump caught in my throat and tears welled up in my eyes. All I could see was the ogre’s blurry outline stepping over the edge.
The divine gong rang, reverberating through my skull. The rock beneath me began to crumble, dropping into the endless abyss. A red flash blinded me for a moment:
THE ORDEAL IS ENDED! HERALD SCYTH, YOU HAVE BEEN ACQUITTED!
The world slammed shut. I was thrown through an envelope in space right back to where the Arbiters picked me up, in the temple, at Behemoth’s feet.
“Just in time, Initial! Quickly, back to your world. You must make it to the Demonic Games!”
I hadn’t yet recovered from the Ordeal. Rage and the pain of loss boiled inside me. I waved away an untimely achievement notification. I stood up, reeled back, but kept my feet and looked the Sleeping God in the eye.
“You know, Great and Terrible One, you could really use some manners. At least be happy I survived!”
“The names of Navalik, Lil’ Star and Mano’Hano will forever be remembered,” the Sleeping God said gently, squeezing my shoulder. “Now go, and make sure their sacrifice was not in vain.”
End of Book Six
Preorder the next book of the series!
The Demonic Games (Disgardium Book 7)
Afterword from the Author
I WRITE THESE LINES in the middle of November in the hardest year of my life — 2020 — just a few hours before the series’ excellent translator Alix Merlin Williamson begins his work.
I suspect that far from every reader will read this, but I still want to explain myself.
The s
ixth book in the series was going to be called The Demonic Games. I started writing it in June, but the more I wrote, the more I realized that I just couldn’t fit all the events of the Demonic Games (which begin immediately after the Ordeal) and what came before them into a single book.
Initially I planned to dedicate no more than five or six chapters to the events of the Demonic Games, but SUDDENLY my Russian readers, who have been following the adventures of Scyth and his friends online, began to write to me that the Demonic Games were the best thing that has happened in this series. I felt that myself too, so I decided to delve deep into that story arc, which eventually grew into its own full book.
Path of Spirit (Disgardium Book #6): LitRPG Series Page 34