“Are there player Raks,” I suddenly found myself asking.
“Of course there are,” Humabel said. “The humans seem to think that we are savage beings that are ever ready to kill and eat them— which isn’t false. But we have our own society. And there are real world humans who play as Raks in this world. But there are fewer of them than the human players. Too bad, because there are so many benefits of being a Rak. But the players who choose to go with a Rakshasha character live and play mostly to the Far East, and not in these parts.”
“Do the player Raks also eat humans?” I asked. I was just too curious. I also didn’t think that I was asking anything inappropriate which could get me killed.
“They can, but they mostly don’t. At least I have never seen a player Rak eat human meat. One came to these parts a few weeks back. We offered him human meat, but he rejected. Of course he didn’t refuse it outright, just said that he had a bad stomach. In the Far East humans are very few. Human meat costs a lot and player Raks aren’t interested in consuming it.”
“Do you think Raks and humans should be friends?” I dared to ask. I wanted to tell myself to stop. Curiosity could get me killed. I didn’t want to go down all the levels after working so hard to get to my current level.
“Not a long time from now Raks would conquer all humans and keep them in cages. And then we can eat them whenever we want to. That is what every Rak dreams.”
I gulped. Raks were Raks.
Humabel took me to a place that had giant slabs of stones partially buried in the ground in a circle with a diameter of a few metres. He told me to wait outside the circle and he went inside it. Humabel knelt down on the ground and began saying words in a tongue that I didn’t understand (which was probably the original tongue of the Raks). Beams of light suddenly began to appear from each of the stones, meeting at the centre where Humabel was. Humabel stood up and came out of the circle of stones.
“Now just go to the middle of the circle and repeat the name of the place you want to go thrice,” Humabel told me.
At that very moment I remembered that Mastermind had never really told me the name of the place where he was. I looked up at Humabel, quite confused and angry with myself.
“Why aren’t you moving?” Humabel said, and he seemed to be getting impatient, “It’s not easy to keep the portal up for long.”
“Could you just wait a moment?” I said uneasily, “my friend said he would tell me the name of the place, but—”
“What are you saying?” Humabel thundered. “You think this is a joke!”
“Please just give me a minute,” I said hurriedly. Yes, this was all a creation of my own fault. “If you want I can pay you more.”
At the same time I sent Mastermind a message asking him to quickly tell me the location where he was.
Humabel raised his great arm and brought it upon me. He grabbed my neck and raised me above the ground, my feet dangling in mid-air. He was just too strong for me to do anything to stop him, and as I struggled to breathe, my health began to fall and I saw stars appear in my vision. I was dying. In front of me was Humabel’s ugly face and he sure looked angry with the worst glare that I had ever seen on anyone. I didn’t blame him at all for this. I had been a total fool. I felt my consciousness slip as my lungs were rejected of precious air.
Just then a message popped up in my vision from Mastermind.
“The Library of Karthulung. Sorry, forgot to tell you that.”
“Li… library of … Karthulung,” I whispered to Humabel with the last breath I still had left in me. Humabel let go and I dropped to the ground. I landed hard on my buttocks. My health dropped further. As I pulled myself back to my feet, I saw that I had only fifty health left.
“That would be 5000 gold,” Humabel said. “And three thousand more for making me wait.”
“Three thousand more!” I said, massaging my neck, which ached.
“You want me to grab your neck again, eh?” Humabel said and the threat in his voice was obvious. If I didn’t give him the money, he would kill me.
“Okay, fine, take it,” I croaked.
“You are the first idiot who has come here to use the portal without even knowing where he wants to go. You just wanted to waste my precious time.”
Humabel’s face however lit up the moment I paid him 8000 gold. Giving away so much money made me feel like a millionaire who had turned into a peasant in the passing of a moment.
“Now that I think about it,” Humabel said, as he gestured me to go to the middle of the circle where the beams of light met, “it’s not so bad that you forgot the name of the place where you want to go. I guess I would have to hire someone who can cast spells that can make players forget the names of the places they want to go.”
I grimaced hard. I went and stood in the middle of the circle of stones
“Remember, the return portal will be open for only twenty four hours,” Humabel said, “after that you would have find a different way to return.”
I repeated “The Library of Karthulung” three times. Immediately, the very ground began to pull me. A scream escaped my lips.
“Enjoy the travel!” Humabel said and he began to walk away.
The ground kept pulling me and very soon I was neck deep inside the soil. Was I being buried or would I actually be teleported to another place? I didn’t know. But it was scary as hell. Very soon, the ground had pulled my entire body inside it.
However instead of finding myself buried deep inside the ground with no way to breathe, I found myself in a different place. Here there were few trees around me, and in front of me there was a great building, which looked like an ancient castle that had been long abandoned. Even the great door of oak wood was in a ruined state, having been eaten by termites.
I stood up. That had been one strange way to travel. My heart was still galloping in my throat, and it took a moment for me to properly calm down.
“Are you here yet?” a message came from Mastermind.
“The library of Karthulung looks like an old abandoned castle, does it?” I asked.
“Come to the top floor, and look about the different rooms. You should find me in the largest room.”
“Okay.”
Just then I noticed that there was a small orb of light just next to my feet. I reckoned this was how the portal was kept open. In twenty four hours the orb would probably disappear and then I didn’t know how the hell I was going to get back to Kapilpura.
I checked the map, just to get an idea of where I was.
There was no sign of the Blood River anywhere on my map, and I was sure that I was a really great distance away from Kapilpura, perhaps even hundreds or thousands of kilometres away. At the edges of the map, there were quite a few red dots telling me of the location of the villages of the Raks. And in the top right of the map there was a particularly big red spot. I reckoned this was of some large village of the Raks. They certainly didn’t have the brains to create anything larger like a town or a city, did they? But I could be wrong.
I pulled out the sword from my bag. It was best with my sword in my hand. I felt much safer. I also drank a health vial. I was never going to approach Raks to use a portal without knowing the name of the place where I needed to go.
I approached the door of the castle, sword in hand. There might or might not be great dangers lurking within. It was best to take precautions.
“Why did you call me here? Are you in danger?” I asked, just to be sure.
“Just come where I am,” Mastermind messaged back.
I pushed the door of the castle, and it swung open with a great creak.
The inside was quite dark, but with the light of the moon streaming in I could make out the faint outline of a staircase leading upwards. At some places I could see bones strewn on the floor. There were also rusty shields and helmets lying around. I shivered. This place had probably been the site of some bloody battle in the distant past.
I took the stairs upwards. The stair
s were also broken at several places, and once my foot got stuck in a hole in the stairs and I had a hard time pulling out my foot. In the second floor I could make out several rooms along a corridor. Here too there were bones and helmets and swords and shields on the floor. I began to check each room. They were pretty large, almost like halls. Theyhad book cases with shelves upon shelves of books. Tomes of thousands of pages. There were spider webs all about the shelves and many of the books were in a poor condition, having been attacked by termites, mice and whatnot. Out of curiosity, I pulled out a dusty book from a shelf. The moment I did so, nearly half of the book’s pages fell to the floor.
I found Mastermind finally in what was easily the largest of the rooms, at least four times the size of the others. He was peering over a large tome with the help of a candle’s yellow light. The chair and table he was using seemed to be from the age before time.
“I am here,” I announced to him.
He looked up, almost looking disturbed and offended at my sudden entry. But he smiled, or at least forced a smile onto his lips from what it seemed.
“Ah, come, come,” he said, beckoning me, “I am glad you have come. I hope you didn’t have any problem with the Raks?”
I recalled the time when I had nearly been strangled to death.
“I nearly died. You should have told me the name of this place earlier.”
“Ah, I am extremely sorry for that,” Mastermind said. He didn’t look quite sorry, because he seemed only partially immersed in the conversation with me. He kept glancing down at the pages he kept flipping even as he talked to me.
“So, what was this artefact you were talking about?” I asked. Mastermind held up his hand as he seemed to have found some important information in the pages. But then he shook his head and he closed the book with much exasperation. He seemed to have decided to give me his full attention now.
“There is this mythical artefact,” Mastermind said, “that I read about in this book,” he pointed at a book of no less than two thousand pages just beside the book he had just closed, “which apparently can be used to kill… no I am not sue if that would be the word. The better word would be ‘deceive’. There seems to be an artefact which can be used to deceive Death13.”
“But we don’t really want to ‘deceive’ Death13, do we?” I said, as I slowly walked towards him, while also observing the room. In many places on the walls fungi had grown. I was doubtful that the library would remain a library for long.
“We don’t. Our main goal is to remove him forever,” Mastermind replied with a nod. “But I feel that if we look further into this, we might find a way to remove Death13 forever. For the time being, I want you to browsethe books. If possible find me a book that tells where the said artefact is. I could only find a brief reference to it so far.”
“So this was what you called me for? To find some info about an artefact?”
“Well, did you think there was some monster that we’d need to slay, and then boom, we get some cool new ability that allows us to remove Death13 from the face of this world forever?”
Mastermind didn’t say this sarcastically, and there was a good-natured smile playing on his lips. I nodded. I guessed there were other things to do in a game world besides killing mobs.
“Fine,” I said, exhaling and looking at the many books. This wasn’t going to be easy. “There sure seems to be a hell of a lot more books here than I have ever seen in my life.”
“It’s a library after all. Please allow me a shut eye,” Mastermind said, and then he leaned back onto his aged chair, putting his hands behind his head for support, and closed his eyes. I was afraid the ancient chair would collapse.
I began to browse through the books. Mostly the titles on the spines seemed to have faded, with only a letter or half-a-letter remaining. I picked up a book from a shelf at random. It turned out to be a book about ancient Rak rituals. There were illustrations even. The artist seemed to have liked Raks and had created them as lovely beings of remarkable beauty. Was it even possible for a Rak to be beautiful? I wished the shelves had been marked, telling what genre a book belonged to. Alas, they weren’t. And even if they had been, then the markings had faded a long time ago. But I had been intrigued by the ritual book. There was a second chair near the table and I began reading with the help of candle light. The book was teeming with silverfish.
I began to flip through the pages, reading a passage here and a passage there. There was one ritual that involved summoning spirits of ancestors. This I didn’t really understand. How could there be spirits of ancestors when every time you killed a Rak the mob would respawn in a matter of minutes? I hesitated, but then put this question forward to Mastermind. He replied without opening his eyes.
“That’s how the game developers designed the game,” he said, “They decided there should be spirits, but every time you killed Raks most of them would respawn and so would most of the other NPCs. The game developers created the world, and now the developers and the AI together run it, with most of the stuff being on the shoulders of the AI. The game developers can add something new to the game, but to a large extent the AI has powers to decide what to do with what has been added.”
“But isn’t that a scary situation?” I asked. “I mean what if the AI decides to do something bad?”
“Nah,” Mastermind said, his eyes still closed, “the AI works with some restrictions from what I know. It’s not a scary situation. The situation is scary now only because...” Mastermind suddenly opened his eyes that were filled with guilt, “… because I created and uploaded the junk code for Death13.”
“Wouldn’t the AI then try to eliminate the junk code?” I asked, filled with curiosity.
“There is a high possibility. Which is why I want my hands on the artefact that can deceive Death. Who knows, maybe the AI has made the artefact capable of totally destroying Death13? Anyway, this is complicated stuff and even I only understand parts of it. So just find me a book that tells the location of the artefact for now.”
Mastermind closed his eyes again.
I flipped through the pages of the book. I didn’t know how long it would take for me to find anything. A few minutes? Hours? Days? What if I never found anything? Just then I reached a chapter of the book titled “Marriage Rituals”. Yes, a chapter that talked about marriage rituals of the Raks. There was one illustration depicting both the bride and the groom lying down on what seemed to be a bed of hot embers. Under the illustration was written:
Fig. 154, Through Pain
Apparently the ritual was meant to check whether the bride or the groom would leave each other during the torture session. If anybody left, they were killed, deemed unfit for any other bride or groom at all. I suddenly became very happy that I hadn’t chosen to become a Rakshasha.
And so it happened that I spent the entire night looking through books. There were volumes on widely different subjects. From the rituals books to history books to folk tales to cook books (and yes there was one section in a cook book that described in detail the different ways to cook a human). I struggled to stay awake, as my eyelids became heavier with each passing moment. Soon, before I knew it, I had fallen into the blissful world of sleep.
Chapter 4
I awoke when sunshine fell on my face. For a moment I felt like I was back in my apartment in the real world. But then I saw the ancient library I was in. Even Mastermind was hunched over the table in a deep sleep,snoring lightlywhile saliva drooled out of his mouth onto the table.
I rubbed my face and stretched myself, taking in the surroundings properly. It had been so dark yesterday night so I had missed most of the features of the library. But today I saw the library in all its details of devastation and ruin. I could seelines of ants at numerous places on the ceiling and the walls. There were plants growing near the broken window panes. It was a miracle in fact that the books were in a readable condition at all. But then, it was a game world and perhaps the developers had decided that an ancient library
in a desolate are of the land of the Raks would be pretty cool. Too bad the library didn’t have any fantasy novels. I would have gladly spent the rest of my life in the library otherwise.
And then I saw ‘the book’. It wasright there at the bottom shelf of a book case. The title?
Immortality.
What attracted me more than the title, which bore close ties with Death, was that the book seemed to be in a newer condition than almost all the other books in the library. I quicklywent over and pulled out the book. It was a slimmer book, and had only about four hundred or five hundred pages.
I openedit. I almost dropped the book the next second as a message popped up in my vision.
New quest available!
Defeat Death13
Rewards: A new beginning, plus hidden rewards
I let out a shriek. This book wasn't what Mastermind sought, it was what we needed. So the AI hadcreated a quest based on Death13 after all. Though I was euphoric, I didn’t accept the quest immediately. I decided to go through the book first.
It essentially explained that to achieve immortality you needed to find an artefact that was located in a place called The Ruins of Drabund. Or at least that was what I understood by quickly skimming through the book. I reckoned Mastermind would understand the text much better.
“Hey, Mastermind,” Isaid aloud in my excitement. But the latter was too deep in his sleep. I went over to him and shook his shoulder.
“What?” he said, as he slowly opened his eyes.
“I have found the book,” I told him. “And something more.”
“What book?” he said. And then his eyes went wide as he remembered. “You did, really?”
“The AI has created a quest based on Death13,” I said.
Mastermind looked at me quizzically. He rubbed his face and yawned, still quite sleepy.
Perma-Death Online: A LitRPG adventure: Book 2 Page 5