The Destroying Plague

by Dan Sugralinov

  After this, we quickly walked to the inn that Bjorg had recommended, this time without getting distracted. Once he heard that his brother had sent us, Bjorn, an exuberant and noticeably soused viking in a horned helmet, took us to the innkeeper. Without asking us any questions, he gave us a key to a room which turned out to be tiny, but quite comfortable, with clean windows and neat furniture, along with a great view of the lively street.

  I looked out of the window and saw the dwarf Gonzo, the same one I’d turned into in the guest room of the Darant city hall. Since our last meeting, the player had leveled up and was now hurrying to the red-light district, whose closeness was what made the street so lively.

  The district of forbidden pleasures was wisely hidden from gentle eyes with a semi-transparent, space-distorting barrier. My heart sped up at the thought of what went on there. I shook myself of the idea to go and ‘just take a look.’ It didn’t seem right. Maybe it even felt like it would be a betrayal against Tissa.

  Nobody would be able to pick up Trixie today, everyone’s characters were regenerating, so he had almost another full day to enjoy himself in the capital. I could guess how he planned to do that based on the foggy glances he threw toward the neighboring district with its alluring red glow, but I wasn’t about to judge him.

  In the end, I took on the guise of a hunter called Headshot, which seemed most suitable to my aims. He was a level fifty-seven human of middle height, around age thirty, with a close-cropped haircut and mismatched equipment that even included a low-level epic. Iggy transformed into the black panther Biter. I had yet to find out know how the flying needler would use his abilities in battle, or what that would look like for onlookers and the combat logs.

  I didn’t waste any more time. I gave Trixie clear instructions to not get carried away and waste clan property, to avoid gambling institutions, and under no circumstances to get up to the kind of perversions he was obviously excitedly dancing about. My instructions given; I left the dwarf’s spartan room. If everything went to plan, I could pick up Trixie tomorrow after school.

  I left the Jolly Bear and paused, trying to figure out which way to go. A player carriage stopped nearby; a common horse and a common cart that gave plus twenty percent movement speed. He offered his services and the price was right. It took twenty minutes of rough road for him to get me to the auction house, and he took fifteen gold for the trouble.

  The viking was right; this city was a rip-off. It seemed like copper and silver weren’t even in circulation there, all the prices were in gold! I really needed my own mount, and soon. The question was — could I buy one?

  Thousands of players jostled under the high roof of the Commonwealth’s main auction house. The place was four soccer fields big, and hundreds of NPC auctioneers all along the walls called out the names of exclusive lots. Considering the size of the market, this method seemed less than perfect, but it wasn’t just for show — players present in person and shouting bids had the advantage. If nobody had been there, the exclusive lots would be publicly accessible to those who preferred to use the in-game interface for the auction house.

  People like me. After my faction change, I wasn’t sure I could use the Commonwealth auction house. Successfully buying the Eternal Ice Cream gave me some hope that my Imitation worked not only on a visual level. And I was right.

  In Tristad, I had to take a catalog from the auctioneer to access the lots. Here I just clicked the relevant button that appeared as soon as I walked into the building. For the game system, I was human, not undead.

  The first thing I did was buy a bunch of strong arrows with various tips: venomous, freezing, burning, piercing, explosive… I added some Splintering Shots, which were self-guiding and hit three targets at once. Having filled my quiver to the brim and spent several thousand gold, I started choosing a mount.

  Firstly, I filtered out everything with a quality above rare. I needed something simple and unassuming. I’d have taken a horse, but that wasn’t the best choice for the desert. Lakharian Dromedaries, one-humped camels, were better for riding across sand. Unfortunately, they were epic and very expensive.

  I had to settle for a blue ostrich mech. The gnomish mechanical transport reflected the strange love of the little people for ostriches, but in contrast to the living birds, it had no penalties on rough terrain. Nine thousand gold… Expensive, but everything I’d spent that day I considered an investment. If I thought about it otherwise, I’d have just sold everything and quit the game.

  Spotted Mechostrich

  Rare

  Mount.

  +200% movement speed.

  Once considered the height of gnomish technology, the mechostrich has become a popular means of transport among all the races of the Commonwealth. It requires no food, water or maintenance.

  The gnomes say that the mechostrich is made without a drop of magic, but then how does it restore itself and what is its power source?

  Not a battle pet. Does not take part in conflicts. Hides head in the sand at first sign of danger.

  Requires level: 40.

  Requires riding skill.

  I’d bought the mount, but I couldn’t use it yet, so I hid the mechostrich’s Summoning Whistle in my bag and headed to the stationary portals, which thankfully weren’t far away.

  The Portal Hall building was like a spaceport — the same kind of labyrinth of life, with passengers rushing everywhere. It looked a lot smaller on the outside than inside. Magic. Magic everywhere. It seeped into everything in Dis. Mana, the basis of any magic, was the breath of the gods, whose source of strength was faith. That was the trade, mana for faith; intelligent creatures gave the gods faith and the gods gave them mana. As the population and followers of gods grew in number, so too grew the amount of mana in all existence, and along with it, magic and spells became stronger and more destructive from year to year. I recalled Armageddon, that Hinterleaf had used. It appeared in the game not so long ago.

  There were permanent portals, arches fifteen feet tall and thirty feet wide, leading to the largest cities of the Commonwealth — the capitals of the gnomes, dwarfs, elves and other races. To get to other destinations, you had to order a personal or group portal, which was far more expensive. The transport guild competed with the clans for every high-level spatial mage, giving them huge paychecks and offering them the best working conditions. As a result, those portals cost ludicrous sums.

  It was cheaper to fly by airship or griffin. The first belonged to the same transport guild, while the Royal Griffin Airlines network belonged to Bastian the First himself. But in both cases the journey would have taken too much time; a day or more.

  After queuing a while, I found myself face to face with a frowning goblin in a peaked cap.

  “Destination?” he asked in a squeaky voice.

  “The Lake District.”

  “Three thousand one hundred gold,” the goblin said without skipping a beat.

  A payment window popped up. Suppressing my desire to tell the goblin what I thought of his attitude and then go catch an airship, I paid the required amount. It would take me several days to fly so far. The goblin gave me a metal token with some small text flashing on it:

  Destination: Lake District.

  One-way ticket.

  Take advantage of transport guild portals! Instant, safe, reliable!

  “Happy travels, Headshot!” the goblin grinned, baring sharp teeth. “Next…”

  Chapter 16. Lake District

  ONCE IN THE LAKE DISTRICT, I wasted no time; I headed straight for the instance called Abandoned Ruins of Dothleran. The recommended level was sixty. There were three bosses and packs of roaming human mobs inside. I should be able to handle it.

  It took me an hour and change to get to the dungeon, but I made it before nightfall. The entrance was through some huge lopsided gates with a portal field stretched across them.

  There was a group of players gathered at the respawn point. Judging by the fact that one of them was without pants
and the other was in a shirt, they’d just wiped. An elf girl screamed at them, her voice breaking, until someone asked her to stop.

  “We don’t have enough damage!” said a thickset dwarf warrior in pants. The tank, judging by his full-length shield. “The healer’s doing fine, I’m holding aggro, but we ain’t killing ‘em before enrage kicks in!”

  “What are you implying, Garran?” the elf girl turned on him.

  “Three percent! Three percent!” the cleric wailed.

  “You don’t understand! I lost my coat! My epic coat! If only you knew how hard it was to get…” another player whined, an elvish archer.

  He was almost crying, and the others looked crestfallen too. For a second, I even thought of offering to help them finish the dungeon. In the end I changed my mind and slipped past them to the gates.

  In big Dis, unlike the sandbox, whenever a group of players entered a dungeon, a copy of it was created especially for them. But the rules were the same: if the group wiped, they lost their progress and had to start over. And the worst of it was that you had no way to get back any items you lost. They just got added to the dungeon’s loot pool.

  I couldn’t go in right away. A warning appeared before me:

  Attention!

  You are trying to go into the Abandoned Ruins of Dothleran, intended for completion by a group of players with a minimum level of 60!

  Your level (39) is beneath the recommended level. Are you sure you want to enter?

  Ah, if only you knew how much money I spent to get here! I thought.

  “Hey, dumbass!” the crying and depressed elf archer shouted at me. “Where do you think you’re going with your fifty-seven levels? And solo too?”

  Looking around, I saw that the whole failed group had formed a semicircle, blocking my retreat. Had they decided to make up for their lost gear by ganking a lone noob? And I’d wanted to help them…

  “Stop!” the archer shouted, but I’d already walked into the instance.

  Now even if they followed me, they’d end up in another copy of the dungeon.

  The instance was gloomy. Destroyed buildings loomed against a crimson sunset. The skeletons of burnt trees reached into the sky. The air smelled of wildfire. Stone blocks towered all around and I saw the foundations of buildings — there used to be some town here, but now fire cultists had set up shop in its remnants.

  The first group of eight mobs stood nearby, but I paid them no attention for the time being. The cultists were arranged in a circle, arms linked, and heads bowed.

  “Well, Iggy, want to have some fun?” I asked my pet, clenching my fists. “Stay behind me, don’t get up close, attack from afar. If they attack you, run. Got it?”

  My pet in his panther disguise growled his agreement. I took my bow in hand and began to approach the group of cultists.

  “Intruder!” one of the mobs shouted at the top of his lungs.

  The pack split into two groups of four: one stayed at range and shot me from afar while the other entered into close combat.

  The first battle stretched out. At first I placed myself before the strikes of the enraged cultists, waiting with some anxiety for Destroying Plague Immortality to activate. The ability activated without issue when I should have died.

  Then, sluggishly throwing out Combos and Crushing Hammerfists strengthened by my epic knuckledusters, I analyzed the logs. They appeared before me in full, displaying what was really happening and what others watching would see.

  Iggy fired a Needleshot and missed. Yes, the damage was zero, but the visible part of the logs reported that it was a Clawstrike dealt by Biter. This was pretty transparent, of course, since it was impossible to deal melee damage from thirty feet away, but it was better than the logs saying that a panther was throwing around swamp needler larva. Just next time I used Imitation, I’d have to pick a pet with a similar fighting style to my own.

  With my attacks it was easier, even in spite of the fact that I didn’t have hunter class skills. A hunter would, of course, have used far more abilities in his rotation, but that didn’t matter much.

  While I was reading, I got cut with knives, stabbed with swords and shot all over with fireballs that tried to burn me alive. Nothing new. Although my Resilience was capped out at this rank and hadn’t gone up, the Plague Energy I’d spent on raising and supporting the guardians was recovering. Long story short, I was spending my time profitably whichever way I looked at it.

  My ordinary strikes often missed my target due to the level difference, but my skill levels and the Unarmed Combat skill itself grew as if on steroids. I was in no hurry. I’d need to spend a bunch of time to complete the instance just because even a full bar of Plague Energy was only enough to kill one or two mobs. No way around it with elites. It was far more important to level up Immortality itself to increase my plague reservoir’s maximum.

  After I managed to take out one particularly frisky cultist who stabbed me in the eye in a frenzy, I decided to see how he would behave in battle on my side. I activated Plague Reanimation on his corpse but didn’t preserve his mind.

  Mindless Zombie Cultist, level 61

  Undead Human

  Scyth’s minion

  An extra control panel appeared at the bottom of my view. That was interesting. I hadn’t gotten that when I raised the guardians. Seemed like mindlessness required micromanagement.

  The zombie pet stood nearby, drooling and growling, not getting into the battle. His eyes were empty and glazed over, although his dead hand still hadn’t released the knife. Hoping that I wouldn’t have to control the zombie’s every step and using one arm to repel the furious cultists’ attempts to take my head off, I started studying.

  Although the crackle of burning flesh was distracting, to say the least. It broke my concentration, and the smells weren’t helping either. Unable to stand the stink, I quickly went to my settings and lowered my threshold for touch, smell and taste to the minimum. The three senses switched off and I immediately found it easier to concentrate.

  I looked at the minion icon. A row of commands extended from it: Stand, Follow, Protect, Patrol, Attack. Right, so it actually didn’t need micromanaging exactly. The pet would decide when and which skills to use. Great.

  Now that I knew what was what, I ordered it to protect me and the zombie woke up and rushed into the battle. The cultists, who hadn’t yet attacked him, seemed surprised, then switched their target and started tearing their former colleague to pieces. That allowed me to get up and move a little further away. I noticed that my left leg had practically been cut off, but the magic of the dead held it in place, and it didn’t cause particular discomfort — it was just visual effects.

  The last thing I had to figure out was how my plague abilities leveled up. Counting the guardians, I’d already raised five dead people, but the Plague Reanimation skill had increased by just twenty five percent. The Destroying Plague Immortality progress bar still showed level one, with only a few points of progress. What played a role? Time while the ability was active? Number of activations?

  I got an answer within a few minutes. When I killed another cultist with an arrow infected with plague energy, it boosted Immortality slightly, then the bar grew another percent on its own. I’d need to figure it out more precisely later, but it seemed like roughly a quarter of an hour for one percentage of growth at level one.

  I’d gathered enough information. It was time to get to work. My zombie was in pieces by then, and the others switched back to me. The first thing I did was release a Ghastly Howl. My mouth opened in a snarl, visualizing the ability. It had no effect, but old habits die hard. Then I lost a plague arrow into the gown of a swordsman as he ran at me and attacked another with red tattoos on his face.

  My smile grew wider with every second — pure, reliable grinding, oh how I missed you! I actively used all my moves from Unarmed Combat and Archery, leveling up both them and the plague skills. Everything was leveling up fast considering how far above me the mobs were, and
I was getting a constant stream of experience.

  It took me about an hour to deal with the first pack, but then the process sped up. I approached the next group of pyromaniac fire cultists with a group of six Brainless Zombie Cultists.

  I gathered the mobs around me to gain Plague Energy but didn’t release the zombies into battle until it was time. The game conveniently showed the aggro level of each group member, including the pets, so it wasn’t hard to keep track of things. After the first kill in the pack, I could send the zombies in — the kill tripled my threat in the eyes of the mobs.

  The third pack brought me up to level forty. I spent my points on my physical stats. Iggy also made gains. Plague Reanimation leveled up to two, but there were no visible changes in the skill. It did cost a little less energy, at least. Destroying Plague Immortality also leveled up, doubling the plague reservoir and increasing the conversion of damage taken into energy up to two percent. That would be a key factor in the clan’s future leveling. The beasts in the Lakharian Desert had tens of millions of health, so leveling up Immortality was essential.