"Let's go somewhere safe," I grabbed her hand and dragged her inside the armory, then closed the door shut behind us.
She perched on top of an upright barrel and gave me a frowned look.
I forced the massive bolt bar shut and took a seat next to her. "Has anyone told you about neuroimplants?" I asked, struggling not to betray my emotional state.
"First time I hear about them."
"It's just a small gadget which processes all gaming events, then feeds them into the host's brain, allowing the player to experience virtual reality first hand."
"Bullshit. Impossible. The equipment I ordered is the latest thing. I consulted the experts. I wanted the best I could have. No one even mentioned something like that to me."
"Okay. Now I want you to do a quick online search. Have a look at the accident reports for March 18 this year."
She zoned out momentarily, then turned pale. "But that's you, isn't it? Alex? It says here you died in a road accident!"
"Not exactly. I survived. But I had to make a deal with the Infosystems. I didn't want to be reduced to a vegetable."
Breathless and visibly shaken, she hung on my every word.
"They suggested I take the risk and become a neuroimplant test subject. That allowed me to move to the Crystal Sphere."
"And your body?" she mouthed.
"It's still there, in the life support chamber. Attended by their medical staff."
Word by reluctant word, I was forced to tell her everything. About Christa's sudden decision to sell her Crystal Sphere account. About me locating her in the real world. And the rest of it...
"Jesus, Alex. I can't believe it."
"Whatever. Every word of it is true. I fear for your life, don't you understand? I have nothing to lose! I know the risks! But that duel with Christa could have killed you just with the shock of the pain! You need to log out! Please! You need to break contact with the implant! Call your father and tell him what you know now. I'm sure he'll find a way to protect you. This isn't a joke! You can die, as simple as that!"
"Why would they implant me with this thing?"
"No idea! They might have already finished fine-tuning it and are now busy pushing the test boundaries on the sly. Any feedback from unsuspecting users is priceless for the device developers."
Her pupils dilated, once again glinting with madness.
Her reaction was strange. She closed her eyes, stood up and began tapping the air with her fingers as if entering a code.
The battle chat window showed me what she was seeing: the surge of a nasty-looking gelatinous goo and Enea's familiar body lying in it. The dull emergency light of the VR capsule was harsh on the eye. The other Enea kept pressing her hand to the chip stuck to her right temple to make sure it didn't drop and get lost in the gel.
She shook off her padded helmet which hung swaying on its thin cable. The picture I received through its projection visor blurred momentarily, surged with interference, then restored. I heard the hiss of the capsule's pneumatic lid as it rose sideways, opening.
She climbed out. Still, contrary to my expectations, she kept feeding me data!
Dozens of antigravity modules hovered around her, moving freely around the room. As far as I could remember, one such "Santa's helper" was more complex and pricey than a sports flybot.
They hurried to clean the girl up from the remaining bits of gel. Enea wrapped herself in a fluffy bathrobe and sank into a soft easy chair. And then-
Her avatar next to me opened her eyes.
What a shocking experiment. The battle chat window closed.
The dull light cast by the Staff of a Hydra danced on the tiny scales of Enea's unique armor, illuminating her face. The tiny Alpha climbed out of her hair and froze momentarily on her shoulder. With a sharp swing of his leg, he buried his venomous stinger in a tiny spider and swallowed him whole.
She didn't seem to have noticed. Looking me in the eye, she asked, "Can you feel everything? Everything everything?"
"I can."
Our eyes lit up with a rush of insane desire.
"Me too... It's not like it used to be. It's deeper... more intense," her lips timidly touched my cheek. "Alex, I'm not going anywhere," her whisper scorched my mind. "Don't even think about it..."
I buried my fingers in her hair. Our lips were touching softly. I was losing my mind.
"I'm not going," she whispered stubbornly between kisses.
"They'll find you, don't you understand?"
"I don't care. Whatever. I want to be with you..."
We couldn't draw ourselves away from each other. Tears ran down her cheeks. Her eyes glistened. Our nerves began to burn up.
* * *
CONGRATULATIONS! The darkness has retreated, unable to resist the new force which has just entered the Crystal Sphere!
You've successfully cleansed the second level of the donjon!
You've received a new level!
You've received Achievement: The Light of Passion
+1 to all stats whenever the person you love is with you.
We both startled.
"The developers must be spying on us," I said.
"Or it might be just the game engine reacting to the changes. It's adaptive, remember?" she clung to me, looking over the dusty, messy room. "This is crazy. It feels like a dream... but I don't want to wake up. What a shame I didn't know. I could have talked to Christa."
"She hates us."
"That's what you say. I'm pretty sure she's just a normal girl. She was probably so tired of all the pain... she must have been so lonely. She just happened to join the wrong crowd... and now she's freefalling."
"How do you know?"
"I'm a real-world girl too. You think I had it all delivered on a silver platter? I never knew my mother. My dad was too busy moving and shaking to take care of me. He shipped me off to a boarding school. The girls there were so spoiled you can't imagine. Such a bunch of sourpusses. Sorry, I don't even want to talk about it. Did you see the clock? We only have five hours left! I want my castle clean and filled with light! Come on now," she sprang up and pulled me by the hand. "We need to look for more prompts!"
"All right, all right. You can stay till morning. Don't argue. I know how these neuroimplants work. Once we complete the quest, you're going to log out and have a nice long sleep. That's an order."
"All right," she agreed. "As you say."
Very well. I had something else to do in the morning. It was about time Mr. Borisov and I had a talk. Seeing as he'd given me the summoning scroll, anyway...
* * *
OUTSIDE, the night was just starting to get a little lighter. I still couldn't see the Moon nor the stars.
The tiered ruins of ancient bastions rose around us. The pitch blackness that used to envelop the castle now spiraled, swirling, high overhead.
I focused on the nearest of the platforms lining the donjon walls, about fifty feet above. It was formed by the cliff's natural ledge framed by stumps of collapsed masonry. This part of the donjon must have endured some devastating fire during the siege. We might still be able to locate the trebuchet positions on some of the little islands on the moors: they were the only weapons capable of hurling massive boulders to distances of five hundred feet and more.
Dark outlines appeared on the platform from a breach in the wall. Gradually their tags came into focus,
Fallen Warrior. Level 22
Fallen Sorcerer. Level 30
Fallen Guard. Level 25
The latter seemed the most dangerous of the three.
"What do we do?" Enea whispered.
"It looks like the legionnaires have spread all over the donjon. Do you think you could port us up to that platform?"
"Sure. The staff has enhanced my abilities really a lot."
"In that case, I want you to hit the guard with Lightning and port us straight away. Once that done, you should just stick to healing. Understand?"
She nodded.
"Are you ready
?"
Lightning seared the air, critting the guard and shrinking his life bar in half.
I heard the recognizable popping sound of a teleport. Enea ported us both to the platform and buried the sharp end of her staff in the sorcerer's throat.
Its stone flashed, pulsating vigorously. The sorcerer's black blood hissed, darkening the staff, as the Heart of a Hydra erupted with crimson charges of energy. The sorcerer's tattered robes caught fire, dealing him additional damage.
I slashed through the warrior's armor, simultaneously casting Subzero with my left hand. The spell escaped my fingers with a flash, freezing the attacking guard solid before he could complete his assault.
My sword drew a well-practiced combo in the air. Wheezing, the warrior collapsed to one side. The guard's head tumbled away, leaving a bloody trail on the rock.
"Alpha, don't! You can't eat that!" Enea exclaimed. Her cheeks glowed from the fight, her eyes bright, her hair in disarray.
The Black Mantis — who'd grown quite a lot already — turned his triangular head in surprise but didn't dare disobey, shaking his spiky leg free of the tiny bit of dead flesh he'd managed to catch in flight.
The entrance to the tower was not far away. Still, having made sure that no more surprise attackers lurked around, I looked up at the next defense platform overhead. It was about thirty feet away, the wall around it virtually undamaged. No idea what awaited us there. Still, fighting our way through the donjon's inner halls swarming with the fallen defenders was out of the question. We wouldn't last long against them.
Enea's mana levels had already restored. She nodded to me, signaling she was ready to port us again.
"Wait," I clenched the sword's hilt, channeling my mental energy to the symbols lining the sword's blood groove. The runes along the top half of the blade began to glow.
My own mana took much longer to restore. I waited till the bar filled about 50%. "Off we go!"
Another popping sound. Darkness momentarily enveloped us, followed by a shaky torch light. A dull growl came from behind a helmet's lowered visor. A steel blade whooshed through the air.
I ducked. A poleaxe sank into the rocky wall just above my head, striking off a cascade of sparks.
A burly orc clad in cargonite armor towered in front of me. His level was considerably higher than mine. Not good. The poleaxe looked like a toy in his enormous fists. His practiced movements betrayed an experienced warrior.
Darkness trailed after him over the rock debris, marking him as another victim of the ancient curse.
"Port yourself over there!" I pointed my sword at a fragment of destroyed stone bridge which must have connected two of the bastions. Supported by crumbling pillars, its middle vault still rose over the chasm way out of the enemy's reach.
In a short risky teleport Enea jumped onto it. She could now cast distance spells from the relative safety of the bridge.
I was alone against five of the Fallen. My chances of survival were negligible.
I chose a blood Elf whose level was the same as mine. Before attacking him, I sent a brief message to the battle chat,
Enea — the orc!
Got it!
A bolt of lightning seared through the darkness, illuminating all around. In a cascade of sparks from his molten armor, the orc went sprawling to the ground. A large hole gaped in his breastplate, his clothes still smoldering. His angry roar shattered the silence.
Enea had invested all of her mental energy into this spell, the most powerful in her arsenal. It would take her several seconds to restore.
The agile Elf kept dodging my attacks with ease. His upper lip — apparently ripped during the battle for the castle and unable to heal since — rose in a disdainful sneer. Two more were stealing up on me from the side. My mana was taking too long to restore. I opened a quick access slot, equipping the shield.
The trailing darkness concealed the objects' true shapes. I could hear screams and the clanging of steel coming from the donjon as Rion Castle replayed the ancient tragedy as it had done every night ever since. If I failed to lift the curse, this castle would never become our home.
A smashed window frame went flying through the air, followed by a shower of broken stained glass. A gravely wounded knight tumbled out of the window and clattered to the ground in a heap. Immediately he jumped back to his feet and shouted, staggering and leaning onto his sword,
"Traitors!"
The Elf — who was on the brink of finishing me off — cut his attack short and lunged to one side, turning to the newcomer. "Helmud! Finally! Time to settle the score!"
Without hesitation, I hurried to the wounded knight's help as he began to retreat from the Elf's energetic attack. "Hold on!"
The exhausted knight struggled under pressure.
The orc was also coming for me now. The wound in his chest oozed darkness. I'd been wrong thinking that these locations weren't adaptive. The higher we climbed, the stronger the quest NPCs became.
Enea managed to cast Endurance on me, and not a moment too soon. A whack from the orc's poleaxe shattered my shield; I staggered but remained standing.
My life bar shrank about 10%. I didn't feel the pain yet. My blood was boiling with adrenaline. The neuroimplant kept adjusting the combat configuration non-stop. Throwing caution to the wind, I lunged at the orc, catching him in mid-swing as he opened up, raising his poleaxe for the final coup the grace.
My sword sliced through the metal, cutting deep into the putrid flesh.
The orc staggered and dropped to one knee. With a furious unintelligible growl, he attempted to scramble to his feet, losing strength. His hands refused to obey him; his tag sported a Mortal Wound debuff.
One down. I didn't have to worry about that one anymore. He was about to die a natural death.
I swung round. The knight was cornered with his back to the wall. His longsword had been broken. A shower of blows struck cascades of sparks from his armor.
A bolt of lightning pierced the attacking legionnaire. His body arced. I ducked under his halberd's trajectory in a desperate combo.
Black blood hissed on the rocks. A golden shimmer enveloped me. System messages flashed through my mental view, reporting a new level. The Elf swept the knight off his feet and buried his stiletto in a gap between his armor plates, extorting a wheezing scream from his victim.
A teleport popped open behind the Elf's back. He jumped to his feet and swung round.
The mortally wounded knight had helped us a lot. By putting up such a skillful and desperate fight he'd virtually nullified our enemies' hits.
Enea took a calculated risk and ported right into the thick of the melee. Her Aura of a Predator worked like a dream, slowing the attackers down and preventing them from promptly reacting to my attacks.
Soon the Elf collapsed to his side. Finally, an Ice Spear pinned the last of the cursed warriors to the wall.
I hurried toward the knight and proffered my hand to help him up. "Hold on! We'll heal you right now!"
He clenched my hand in his vice-like grip. His richly decorated armor was in tatters. All the engravings and filigree inserts covering it had grown dull; all the complex embossed patterns were buckled and deformed.
Enea cast a Minor Heal over him. The spell produced a spectacular show of flashes and surges of light, but that was about all.
"Won't work," the knight's muffled voice came from behind the visor. "The curse affects everyone."
"But you're not one of the Fallen, are you?"
"I'm Helmud — the knight who didn't submit to the demons' magic. Only my strength isn't worth much, I'm afraid. They," he pointed his broken sword at the bloodied bodies, "at least they don't remember what they did. But we remember everything. Every night we're trying to change the castle's fate. But we lose every time."
"Do you know how to remove the curse?"
"You can't," he slumped onto the collapsed remains of a battlement. "The curse is cast over the very souls of the Fallen."
"Ther
e must be something we can do!" I protested.
Helmud's life was rapidly dwindling, his muffled voice weaker with every passing moment. "Darkness has consumed their souls... The stone... its light.... can melt the darkness... the blood of a demon..."
In one last effort he unclenched his fist, offering me an oblong object made of some dull metal. A spasm ran through his body. He collapsed to one side and went quiet.
"What stone is he talking about?" Enea asked softly.
"No idea. You'd think there'd be a quest update, no?"
"What's that thing he gave you?"
I showed it to her: a cargonite locket on a chain.
Enea sighed. "How weird. I can't see its stats, only question marks. Same thing as with my staff," she gave the knight a long sad look. "I have a feeling we're missing something. We don’t read deep enough into their prompts."
"Very well. Let's have a think. He made it clear enough that the Fallen hadn't possessed the power of spirit necessary to resist the demons' will. But prior to that, the legionnaires had confronted the Darks hundreds of times. What could have happened on that particular night?"
"I think we need to go back to the Resurrection Hall," Enea said. "That's where we received the quest, wasn't it? Do you remember those carvings on the walls? Could they be the answer?"
"Whatever," I agreed. "It's pretty clear we can't fight our way through here, anyway. We've only been confronted with the weakest of the Fallen — and we barely escaped with our lives."
* * *
THE MOMENT we entered the Resurrection Hall, the wall lamps went on again, their uneven light struggling with the darkness.
The walls here were indeed lined with images carved into the stone. Last time I hadn't had the chance to even notice them: everything had happened too quickly.
Enea took me by the hand. Our fingers interlinked. I may be thirty and counting in real life but now I felt like a young boy.
We walked along the walls, peering closely at the ancient carvings. Many of them had been eroded by time, some to the point where you couldn't even guess what they were supposed to depict.
The Curse of Rion Castle (The Neuro Book #2) LitRPG Series Page 3