Gamers and Gods: AES
Page 54
Tufflady kept at it for a couple of hours. When they reached the ultimate boss room the first time, she led them all the way back out without attacking the boss, which Darla could tell was puzzling Aes. He didn't say anything though.
Tufflady reset the mission and they went in again. As soon as they went in and the Kindred were back near the bend in the tunnel, the wrinkles in Aes's forehead smoothed out; evidently he had figured out that there was a way to keep redoing the mission as long as they did not complete it.
He kept healing the team, when it was safe for him, after each cavern was cleared of enemies. They ran the farm mission over and over.
After a couple of hours, Tufflady led them back out and called a halt. “I have to get my kids bathed and put them to bed,” she announced. “Let me know if you want to do this again sometime.”
Aes didn't answer her. He had leveled up to 17, an amazing amount for such a relatively short time; from the slightly awkward expression on his face Darla guessed he didn't want to appear greedy even though she knew he had a long way to go before he could fight and heal alongside Tufflady. Sherman and Darla had leveled a few times too, but not nearly as much as Aes had. Because of the exponentially increasing XP requirements for each level, the two of them were up to 21 and 22. Nuclear Flame and QuickStone, of course, being 50s, had not leveled despite their participation.
“We will,” Darla promised. “Thank you so much, Tufflady. It would have taken us forever to level him this far with our own missions.”
“No worries,” said Tufflady. “I do this all the time. Plenty of folks want to get into high level PvP and have trouble fitting all the leveling they need into their work schedules. Toodles.” There was a flash and she was gone, just like that.
“Yeah, she's leveled up a lot of heroes, including me and Stone,” Nuclear Flame volunteered. “You guys want to run some of our missions?”
“I'd love to,” she told him. “But we're on East Coast time and I have to work in the morning. We'll see you again soon, I'm sure. Thanks for your help.”
“No problem. Add us to your Friends list if you want.” He turned to QuickStone. “Up for some more action tonight? I hear there's a breakout in progress at the Pen.”
QuickStone smiled up at him. “For you, anything.”
He arched his eyebrows. “Careful. I might hold you to that.”
“You can hold me to anything you want, love,” QuickStone said, taking his hand.
FLASH.
“So, you really have to sleep?” queried Sherman. “Don't forget to train, babe.”
“I won't,” she promised. “Aren't you tired?”
“Nah, I woke up a few hours ago. Race you to the trainer!” Sherman ignited his rocket boots and ascended into the sky on twin blue-white tongues of flame.
Darla caught Aes's eye and shook her head. “He's forgotten you don't have your travel power yet. At least you'll be safe on foot, now that you're stronger by a dozen levels. Let's go train.”
Boomtown was hardly booming, she noted as they passed through the region on their way to the trainers. But it would have been boring if the entire Realm of Heroes had been hundred story skyscrapers and manicured parks.
“Why is it called 'Boomtown'?” Aes wanted to know.
“Usually, a boomtown is something that springs up around gold mines or something like that,” she said, “but not this time. It's kind of a memorial to the people who died in the nuclear exchange that started the W3.”
Immediately she regretted opening that can of worms. His curiosity was insatiable; soon after she tried to explain it, she gave up and just led him to the Pyongyang Crater. While he gazed, awestruck and aghast, at the radius of total destruction, the fused glassy remains of buildings and sand that a single ICBM had made, she tried to answer his questions.
“Someone did this deliberately?”
“Not exactly,” she said. “The weapon was never supposed to detonate this close to ground level. It was supposed to be an air burst to maximize the EMP and so on. At least that's the official story: an antimissile near miss failed the barometric fuse, and it had to rely on the backup triggers. But yet, it was deliberate.”
“Why? I've seen cities sacked and farms burned, but nothing like this. What kind of people think it is all right to do this?”
“Actually, machines made the decision,” she told him. “The major nations had thousands of these weapons but held off using them because it would have wrecked the planet.”
“Then what happened?”
She picked up a rock and flung it out over the edge; it bounced off the Trinitite-like lining of the Crater several times before it reached the bottom. “Smaller, angrier nations developed them too. They only had a few, but for a few minutes it looked like they were going to trigger automatic alliance launches that would have killed us all.
“That's when the military AIs stepped in. Apparently they ran the numbers and decided they could still stop it from escalating. They launched a few surgical strikes on the smaller countries that prevented any further rogue nations from launching.”
“I don't understand,” he said.
“Think of it this way. Suppose you have a patient with a tumor that will kill him. You can let that happen...or you can try to cut it out before it grows.”
“No wonder Farker doesn't want to believe that I'm real,” Aes remarked. “He lived through this,” he said, pointing at the greenish bowl that had been most of a human city.
Darla dusted off her hands. “Enough sightseeing,” she said. “Let's go pick you some powers.” The first thing we have to do, she reminded herself, is get him a travel power. She had forgotten how depressing this part of the Realm of Heroes could be, when seen up close. If only they could have flown past it.
Chapter 47: Farker: of demons and dead ends