by Arthur Stone
Chapter 6
Ros was sitting in a cage. A real cage, just like the one occupied by his neighbor’s parrot in his previous life. It was a cylindrical construction of metal bars forming a symmetrical cone on top. Ros had no idea how they got him in, since there was nothing resembling a door.
At that moment, Ros’ universe contracted until there was nothing left but the cage, which was narrow and low. He could only sit and turn around, though the latter took some effort. His kidnappers hadn’t bothered with providing him so much as a modicum of comfort.
He thought it a blessing that he wasn’t claustrophobic.
Yet, perhaps, it wasn’t a matter of comfort. Once he started to come to, he sighted a head in a closed helmet through the rainbow blurs. The head then told him in a muffled voice that he should by no means try any magical abilities inside the cage, for they would be rendered useless anyway by the unique properties of the rare material the cage was made from.
It must have indeed been rare if they had only had enough for one measly cage.
Ros managed to notice another thing: his prison was installed on a cart just as small, with a pair of disproportionately large wheels attached to it. He didn’t manage to see much beyond that—his vision was blurred, and total control could not be overcome all that easily.
Ros hadn’t seen anything since then. Of course, there was the cage. His kidnappers covered it with a blanket of some sort that would let a bit of light trickle through, but nowhere near enough to make out anything.
The first thing he attempted was to contact Digits, but the chat interface wasn’t merely silent—it simply refused to open. This could not be explained by his being far from the city with no messengers in sight—no, this was something completely different.
The cage appeared to block more than just magic.
Ros adjusted his pain threshold in the settings, got a knife out of the bag, closed his eyes, and drove it right into his heart. The cage immediately became filled with the shimmering effects associated with well-familiar healing skills—apparently, death was not an option, either.
How could this be? The mages somehow could heal him while he couldn’t use any of his abilities at all.
Evidently, the cage deprived only the prisoner of the ability to use magic, unlike those outside.
Ros wouldn’t give up, but tried to kill himself time and again. He hoped the mages would eventually run out of mana, and that he would be set free.
After an hour spent trying to kill himself, he realized he must be dealing with a party of high-level mages. They weren’t even bothering with sparing mana, overhealing him without reservation. Even if they were losing mana, it wasn’t happening fast enough, and considering there were also elixirs that could be deployed, they could probably keep him up forever without batting an eye.
He gave up after that realization—death just wasn’t in the cards for him.
Instead, he filled himself with resolve, and waited to see what would happen next.
* * *
There was a rumble, steel clangor, some shouting, and inhuman roaring.
“Pat, damn you, get the ones in the back! Get them! We’ll hold back this bunch! Come on, or it’s curtains for everyone!”
Ros jumped up and hit his head on the cage ceiling. It hurt, and he had to bite down a curse. He shouldn’t have returned his pain threshold levels to normal setting.
He’d also somehow managed to fall asleep under these circumstances. Who knew he had such iron nerves?
But what was happening outside seemed new. Someone was attacking his guards. And judging by the roaring and the unintelligible yelling, the attackers weren’t human.
Who could they be, then?
Someone was nice enough to remove the cover from the cage in a single sweep, as though answering his mental question. The thing caught fire, going up in a blaze as a heat wave hit him right in the face.
That was the last straw that caused Ros to lose it and start bawling so loud he nearly made himself deaf. Instead of adjusting his pain threshold in the settings, he started throwing himself against the bars, not even noticing that his efforts were rocking it. He wouldn’t always keep the rhythm, but there came a moment when his steel prison reached a state of shaky equilibrium, and then toppled over. There came a loud cracking noise as something wooden was clearly broken.
Then it rolled into a random direction.
The remnants of the charred cover were blown off, but Ros was in no state to take in any local sights, rolling around frenziedly like a cat shoved into a washing machine by a bunch of cruel children.
Then the cage, which had gained some momentum, crashed into a tree.
And the tree turned out to be pretty sturdy.
“You are hit for 107 damage.”
Oh? It felt like he had lost half his HP.
The cage wasn’t designed to withstand such punishment, and Ros found it easy to crawl out between the broken bars. He looked around without getting up. There was a forest behind him, dark and scary, which was hardly surprising since the sun had already set, and only a faint glow in the west testified to the fact that it hadn’t happened all that long ago. In front of Ros was the very slope he’d rolled down so dashingly. It reached all the way up to the road, which could be vaguely made out by the silhouette of the stopped cart.
The cart was burning, giving off enough light even for a player with no night vision to see, let alone Ros who could see it all.
Around forty high-level players were desperately trying to rebuff an attack of mobs that looked most peculiar—like lizards who’d learned to walk on their hind legs. The monsters were around nine feet high, and mostly wielding huge machetes, though Ros also spotted others with shields, axes, halberds, and maces.
Ros had a high Perception, and all related stats were likewise high. Apart from that, he’d unlocked an auxiliary skill: Monster Expert. It was very rare—a reward for landing one of the harder achievements. It wasn’t merely unlocked, either—it was sitting at seven. By itself, it gave a considerable bonus to information about living objects. In conjunction with everything else, Ros could discover a lot about mobs as high as 200, provided they had no advanced concealment skills.
“Unknown creature. Aggression: unknown. Sociality: unknown. Level: unknown. Abilities: unknown. Stats: unknown.”
None of his further attempts to find out anything about the attackers revealed anything more. It felt just like his first month, when even rats were a mystery.
He could have come closer for a better chance of learning something. However, Ros had a hunch such initiative might prove fatal.
He turned toward the woods. Could he run away? Could he hide? But why hurry when there was so much to see here?
He decided he could escape at any moment, but he wanted to know who would win.
The mobs seemed to be poised for victory, as the players were falling one by one. There was but a handful of warriors in heavy armor who had formed a circle and were frenziedly fending off the attacking “lizards.” Ros climbed the tree that had destroyed his cage, from where he spotted two healers in the middle of the formation taking care of fighters. That must have been the reason for the squad’s resilience.
But how long would it last? There were lots of mobs, and mana was always in limited supply.
Yep, it looked like those guys were finished.
Ros had no sympathy whatsoever for the defenders. Let this be a lesson for them not to attack frail and defenseless flightings.
Suddenly, a plan formed in his mind to profit from the fight. Surely, he could pick up a few things? He’d never seen the likes of such strong mobs, and they looked like ideal candidates for his soul crystal collection.
Ros began looking out for mobs with critical health, and hitting them with Soul Trap. The distance was too big, and the skill had a low chance at success, but it was still far enough from zero. He thought he might luck out and end up with a crystal or two. The tables were slowly turning in favor of t
he players. One of the buffers would occasionally sidetrack and cast Resurrection on the fallen players. High-level characters normally took a while to respawn, and he was managing to treat quite a few.
As soon as the warriors would rise, they’d hasten to swallow a few elixirs and fall into tight formation. The mobs didn’t look back as they surrounded the warriors who had formed a circle, and ended up paying for it dearly by completely missing an attack from the rear. A few mages ran off to the side and started to cast all kinds of debuffs on the mobs—Ros realized it must have been the ones that had kept him blind and paralyzed. They were just simply too good at turning the “lizards” into listless vegetables that became super easy for their melee fighters to put down.
Ros watched the reptiles’ numbers dwindle rapidly, realizing that it would be imprudent to linger here much longer. Once these guys dispatched the mobs, they’d switch their focus to him. He might have been a weird noob, but he was a noob just the same, so he’d be smart to make his escape without any undue delay.
He’d lingered long enough as it was. Screw the crystals, he thought. Greed would be his downfall.
As soon as he started climbing down from the tree, he heard voices raised in a cry of despair. And when Ros looked behind him, he saw an interesting scene in the form of a horde of mobs approaching from the woods across the tract. Some were smaller than the ones from before, while others were bigger. There must have been a thousand or even two—the sheer numbers were mind-boggling. He’d never seen anything like it—not even on forum screenshots.
“Teleports! Let’s warp the hell out of here!” Some player’s voice was loud enough to carry over all the others.
“Teleports my foot! They’re not working!”
“Say what?!”
“The scrolls are breaking without producing any arches! Nothing seems to work here!”
“What the hell is this? Where are they coming from?!”
Ros heard all of that coming from behind as he ran toward the woods. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only one—some of the fainter-hearted weren’t far behind. The only thing that reassured him was that some of the unfinished first-wave mobs were hot on their trail.
He decided against heading directly for the thicket. Instead, he cut a sharp left, along the edge of the woodland. He ran for about half a mile, then hid in a large bush, crouching as tried to catch his breath while making as little noise as possible. There were sounds of branches cracking coming from every direction, and a choir of monsters could be heard ululating as they approached from the road. Ros had no idea where he could escape to—danger seemed to lie in every direction.
He had ended up at the wrong place at the wrong time, despite assurances that this was a sleepy province where nothing ever happened and level zero miners could work in peace…
Now it was overrun with mobs that even well-geared level 200 players could do nothing about.
He didn’t feel like dying. What if his bind point was known and watched?
Guys as smart as these would surely take every single bind point under control.
Duh… he should have made a bind point somewhere deep in the woods. But it wouldn’t last long, anyway—that was how wild areas worked. He’d already been there.
The sounds of branches trodden on by heavy feet were getting closer. The mobs seemed to have decided to get everyone, even if it meant combing the entire forest. Ros was about to start preparing for death, but then a triumphant smile lit up his face.
He wouldn’t have to respawn, after all. At least not yet.
* * *
Clean Slate used on oneself would take the character into the editing menu. The character itself would disappear into a mysterious limbo between the First and the Second World.
Ros did nothing for a long while, just enjoying the quiet—something that’d been rather scarce of late. But he couldn’t hang between worlds forever, so he had to get down to business.
Farewell, NurseLady. No one would see you anymore. Ros’ radical disguise trick didn’t work—they’d managed to identify him, after all.
He’d never become a flighting again—the Jeeps would pay particular attention to that race henceforth.
Ros opted for a humanoid appearance, making his irises unnaturally purple, which was typical for certain hybrids. Let them be curious about whom his ancestors had mixed their blood with.
Now he looked like an average human mage. The backstory was nothing special—hardly any better or worse than any of his previous ones.
He pondered the name for a while. Nothing seemed particularly attractive, and so he chose Tarros4 almost randomly. The system wouldn’t let him register without a number added to his name.
There must have been four more Tarroses, three of whom had numbers after their names, but that didn’t bother Ros in the least.
It didn’t take him long to decide on his stats, maxing his Attack, Accuracy, and Vigor. There’d be enough equipment bonuses not to be especially worried about it, and he could level those stats well with the right strategy.
He had to keep his Intellect at around 500, so that stat wouldn’t grow no matter what he did. The best he could hope for was a point a year, provided he would spend all his time killing mobs level 150 and up.
It was time to take the biggest risk and return into the game world. Even Ros couldn’t spend more than an hour in the editor—the system would kick him out.
Chapter 7
Nothing was left of the cart that had transported the captive in his cage but a messy charred pile smoldering on the road. Ros didn’t trust the quiet, so he climbed the tree as before and found a perfect observation spot in the thick canopy. There was no movement anywhere. The night was dark, and the only sound he could hear was made by the crickets, which bode no ill. None of the players’ bodies remained—they must have respawned (or, perhaps, some of them survived against all odds). But they couldn’t have won—there were around fifty mob carcasses lying around at best.
Ros took his time, spending around half an hour in the tree, and only approaching the former battlefield afterward, and with much caution. But it turned out he wasn’t the only one drawn to all the fresh corpses. He caught something suspicious move out of the corner of his eye the instant he bent down to check the very first one.
The mob looked unpleasant, resembling a rather ugly hybrid between a toad and a lizard, with an overlarge maw and bulging eyes. Roughly the size of a plump calf, it moved pretty swiftly, keeping itself down so it’d be harder to spot. If the fighters hadn’t trampled the tall grass, it could have easily hidden itself there.
“Unknown creature. Aggression: unknown. Sociality: unknown. Level: unknown. Abilities: unknown. Stats: unknown.”
Ros had no doubts about having been spotted. And now he was wondering what the mob would do next—attack or ignore him. But it made no sense to just wait and do nothing.
Taking out a soul crystal, he cast Raise, and saw a fiery centipede manifest itself in a blaze of flames—one of those killed by the merc squad of NPCs.
The unknown mob must have considered the arrival of a minion an act of aggression—or, perhaps, it had something against centipedes, for it went straight for the pet, paying no attention to Ros. The rrokh cast Chaos Aura at the monster and started healing his pet—it was level 172, but was losing HP at an alarming rate.
What was the beast’s level?
Ros started to complement healing spells with every buff in his arsenal, stemming somewhat the hemorrhaging of the pet’s HP. He also cast a Soul Trap on the mob, which seemed to make it irate all of a sudden, leaving the centipede alone and switching to Ros.
“The unknown creature hits you for 620 damage.”
Ros started running as fast as he could, emptying a vial of elixir as he went. Attempting healing spells under that kind of pressure would be suicidal. It was all he could do to cast Entangling Roots, ensnaring the mob’s feet—the beast jerked violently, but stayed immobile for a couple of seconds while the centipede
kept chewing on its feet. The monster’s attention shifted back to the pet. It tried to use some unknown ability, but the gigantic arthropod kept on attacking, and the cast never went through.
The mob tried going for Ros two more times, but he had learned enough from experience to keep far enough away to take timely measures. The battle lasted around seven or eight minutes—the level difference was just too great—but the beast fell in the end.
“You kill the Scavenger Reptus. XP received: 14,992. Points left until the next level: 3015. Attention! You have found a creature that has not yet been added to the world bestiary! You receive a reward: +1 to Arcane Knowledge. You can receive the reward for discovering a new creature at the Academy of Magic. Your Stamina grows by 1. Congratulations! You have destroyed a monster 200 or more levels above yours! Achievement earned: Crazy Loner, Part Fourteen. Achievement bonus: +2 to every primary base stat points, +4 undistributed secondary stat points, +1 undistributed auxiliary stat point, +50 HP, +4% to Water Magic Resistance. Bonus effect: permanent. Achievement unlocked: Giant Slayer, Part Seventeen. Kill 50 monsters whose level exceeds yours by 200 or more or more without any help to complete the achievement. Achievement bonus: random.”