Absolute Zero

by Max Lagno

  “Why only two hours?”

  “After that, the controllers will pry me out of this tech bot. They’re doing it right now, actually.”

  “Who are the controllers?”

  “They’re designed to deal with hackers like me. If tech support bots are ordinary NPCs designed to fulfill one task — to eliminate bugs — then the controllers are here to neutralize cheating players.”

  The walls of the tent shook. A notification lit up on the panel. A missile strike had eaten through half the defenses. I couldn’t help but smile: I was unused to a tent withstanding a missile strike just because it had been upgraded with a force field. A tent! Not a bunker, a tent. I wasn’t at all used to the way things were here.

  “That’s it, Anton, they’ve found us. I’ll hold them off, you get elsewhere.”

  Makarov waved the image of Leonarm onto me, confirmed the character transfer and fled the tent. As he ran, a heavy Nevsky infantry exoskeleton formed on his body, almost the same as the type used in real military theaters. The real military preferred realistic equipment even in a virtual world.

  Then I felt myself changing. My vision flickered out and appeared again, now equipped with neurointerface data.

  * * *

  I opened up the character tab.

  My head span from the abundance of data. To go from level zero to three hundred was stressful even for a digital conscious.

  Name: Leonarm.

  Player: %Username% (Error! Check taharration system settings).

  Race: Human.

  Level: 322.

  Classes: Gunner, Technolord, Stalker.

  Why all these classes? Don’t they conflict with each other? It seems the people that leveled up Leonarm disagreed on what was most important for him. Or more likely, they didn’t know who they were leveling him up for and for what, so each went by their own opinions.

  I didn’t even open the Skills tab. I could imagine what that list was like! I moved to the equipment description. Humans were capable of expanding their battle abilities via one method: UniSuit upgrades.

  The Universal Suit (UniSuit) looked just like a level one or two suit after buying it in the store. After installing the right upgrade in one of the slots, the UniSuit turned into both armor and neurosuit for controlling combat machines, and an exoskeleton like Makarov’s.

  You could either buy the upgrades or make them yourself...

  The number of slots depended on the UniSuit’s level and could be increased again by the upgrades themselves. A Multislot upgrade could fit in one slot without issue. After which you could put not one upgrade in it, but three or five. The upgrades themselves could be components too. They were made from the corresponding expansions. For example, radiation protection plus infrared, plus vision, plus perception upgrade. In other words, the range of combinations was huge. The UniSuit of a single adamite was rarely similar to the UniSuit of another.

  I scrolled through the list mindlessly. Most of the upgrades told me nothing. There was a time when I knew them all. Damn, what could “Defense Against Bizoid Seed” mean? Or “Leap into the Unknown”? Or “Angelic Shepherd”? Out of interest, I expanded the description of the last:

  Angelic Shepherd.

  Allows you to capture angels and bend them to your will as long as their level is lower than yours.

  Duration: 5 minutes.

  Cost: 1,500 energy per minute.

  So much was new to me. What kind of race were the angels? Fallen ones too. Back in reality, I avoided news about Adam Online. And that was hard. Most people that are forced to spend time in their body to get back into a pod talk about nothing but Adam Online.

  I was afraid that Makarov had entrusted this mission to the wrong guy. I was starting to doubt myself.

  “Player Name Hidden is calling you. Action?” the voice of the personal assistant in my head rang out unexpectedly.

  “Accept call.”

  Chapter 3. First Damage

  ANTON, Makarov’s voice said. It’s worse than I thought. Someone knows our plans. Used to your new body yet?”

  The sounds of shots and explosions accompanied the question.

  “Um... Ah.... Not quite...”

  “There’s no time for a tutorial. You’ll figure it out in battle.”

  I opened the inventory and selected a machine gun based on its size and fearsome appearance. I noticed that the UniSuit was equipped with a Stalker Dimensional Compression Backpack. The number of items in it was off the scale. Apart from heaps of weapons, ammunition, medkits, expansions and upgrades, a box depicting an armored car came to my attention. A toy, or...

  Not trusting my guess, I expanded the description. There it was:

  Tiger.

  Armored Vehicle.

  Level: 69.

  Speed: 55.

  Acceleration: 14.

  Maneuverability: 22.

  Economy: 49.

  Reliability: 102.

  Durability: 102,000/102,000

  Fuel Supply: 49,000/49,000

  Fuel type: energy units.

  Armament:

  Left Side: Twin Nagata Machine Guns.

  Right Side: Twin Nagata Machine Guns.

  Turret: Arena Plasmagun.

  Upgrades:

  Toyota Transmission: +5 Maneuverability.

  Gorilla Front Glass: +1 Perception.

  ...

  And another dozen lines. But it was the backpack itself occupying one of the UniSuit’s upgrade slots that interested me. From reading the description, I realized that it compresses items to an identical size and weight: within it, an armored car and a chocolate bar took up the same weight and linear size.

  The past hit me like a punch in the gut: Olga invented a backpack like that many years ago. She even sent the idea to a contest for improving the Adam Online world...

  I unfolded the map. It turned out that we were far from Town Zero, the starting point of all new players in Adam Online. Then I examined the weapon I’d chosen. The model was unfamiliar. The so-called “Automatic Salinger Rifle”. It used magazines with a capacity of ten eus. One eu (energy unit) was equal to one gold. I was basically shooting currency.

  I didn’t have time to read the long list of this gun’s characteristics. After making sure I hadn’t forgotten anything, I ran out of the tent.

  * * *

  Makarov stood tall, blocking the entrance to the tent, and shot from the same Salinger rifle. So I made the right choice. To his right and left, fifty meters away, there were machine gun turrets. Spinning around, they emitted long volleys of covering fire, cooled down for a couple of seconds and opened fire on the enemy again.

  Two huge spiderlike robots meandered through the tall grass. I aimed at the first and read:

  Grisha, Mechanodestructor.

  Guild: Black Wave.

  Classes: Pilot, Defender.

  Level: 332.

  Health: 42,439/59,000

  Armor: 7,865/9,000.

  When a volley from the turret hit Grisha’s mechanodestructor, its protective field glowed blue, and blue damage numbers tumbled out into the air:

  -230.

  -106.

  -643.

  Grisha launched missiles at us in response. They tore away from the shoulder-mounted missile launcher and drew a complex trajectory in the air, dodging the anti-air defenses we didn’t have. They flew into the sky and turned back, dropping onto us from an unexpected angle. The explosion dissipated across the dome of the force field, reducing its power.

  I aimed my sight at the second mechanodestructor:

  Fortunado, Mechanodestructor.

  Guild: Black Wave.

  Classes: Engineer, Defender.

  Level: 340.

  Health: 40,000/40,000.

  Armor: 2,336/16,000.

  I addressed my personal assistant:

  “Why are players of this level in Rim Zero? You can’t come back here after reaching level five.”

  The assistant answered instantly: “Initialization e
rr...” and cut out.

  Fair enough. Strange to ask the game assistant about a non-game situation. I readdressed my question to Makarov:

  “How did they get here?”

  “Someone hacked the block, like we did,” Makarov replied. “That’s why you’re here, and these high-ranked players.”

  “What’s the Black Wave guild?”

  “A brigade of high-rank mercenaries. Their interests include contract killing and fighting wars for other guilds. Their HQ is in Rim Four, at the Black Wave military base. Grisha[3] and Fortunado are the guild leaders, twin brothers.”

  Makarov sent two identical photos of men aged around twenty. Judging by their perfect appearance, the photos weren’t real.

  “Handsome guys,” he continued. “They’ve headed up the leaderboard for the coolest adamites for two years now. Only you caught up to them sometimes. Or rather, the people that were leveling up your Leonarm.”

  I summoned my personal assistant. “Show leaderboard.”

  “The leaderboard consists of three billion six hundred twenty million three hundred thousand entries. Estimated time to display list: eleven minutes. Continue?”

  “Just show me the top ten.”

  Adam Online Ranking Leaderboard (Asian Cluster)

  1. Fortunado — 340 (Mechanodestructor, Guild: Black Wave).

  2. Grisha — 332 (Mechanodestructor, Guild: Black Wave).

  3. Jamilla — 329 (Fallen Angel).

  4. Most Ancient Evil — 327 (Bizoid, Guild: Black Wave).

  5. Leonarm — 322 (Human).

  6. David Kronenberg — 319 (Bizoid).

  7. Nika — 301 (Android, Guild: Black Wave).

  8. Crusher — 292 (Angel, Guild: Black Wave).

  9. HyperNoob — 284 (Mechanodestructor, Guild: Langoliers).

  10. Evil Transformer — 277 (Mechanodestructor, Guild: Golden Horde).

  An interesting spread. The mechanodestructors dominated in the top ten. One human and one android. Two bizoids. One angel and one fallen angel. I didn’t know the difference between them.

  I had other things to deal with. Time to fight.

  The turrets had torn up the entire field before them. The grass no longer hid the fact that apart from the two gigantic mechanodestructors, a dozen or more smaller enemies now approached us. A couple of tall, thin androids towered over us.

  They were all player-controlled. There were no NPCs or procedurally generated soldiers. All of them were between level 200 and 300, and all from the Black Wave guild. I could see several red squares in the sky. That was my neurointerface marking air targets: one Eurofighter, two MiGs and one empty target, which my combat system stubbornly lit up, but didn’t describe.

  My personal assistant came to my aid:

  “That is an angel. They are invisible to the naked eye, but your level allows you to at least be aware of their presence.”

  Strange that they brought androids onto the battlefield. That race stood out for the fact that it couldn’t attack or use weapons against any players or characters.

  But I quickly remembered what androids did on the battlefield. One android approached the spiderlike mechanodestructor and placed its long fine fingers on its force field. The Defense scale instantly rose.

  “Makarov!” I yelled. “Switch the turret fire to the androids! They’re healing the spiders.”

  “Take care of it yourself, son,” Makarov replied. “I know nothing about these games.”

  A message appeared in front of me:

  Obtained:

  Automatic High-Caliber Ellen Turret (x2).

  Damage: 200-600.

  Cost: 1,000 eu per 10,000 shots.

  Upgrades: barrel cooling (10 sec.), King force field generator (+2,000 Defense, 25 meters), intelligent target search.

  Attention: second turret Durability at 450/5,000.

  I opened my equipment and selected a Nanoid repair kit. I sent the nanobots to the turret — the device’s Durability scale crept upwards. Great, my skills as a seasoned adamite had almost returned. I was acting automatically, without having to waste time thinking.

  The repair finished and a message popped up:

  Urgent Repair skill increased: +10 XP.

  Having given me time to get my bearings, Makarov rushed forward. Two missiles launched from his back and flew toward our enemies. But a beam of light came down from the sky, cutting the warheads in half. At the same time, quiet music descended from the sky and dispelled my doubts: this was an angel at work.

  I opened the turret control interface and reconfigured the targeting to aim for androids. The first volley took down the android restoring the shield on Grisha’s mechanodestructor. The android exploded in a flurry of damage notifications, which instantly filled up my progress bar.

  Leonarm (Human) killed Digerati (Android, Guild: Black Wave) using: Automatic High-Caliber Ellen Turret.

  A second android lost both legs and fell into the grass. Damage numbers fell off him for a short while longer, but quickly stopped.

  Congratulations, Leonarm, you leveled up!

  Your level: 323.

  Attention: you have unused stat points (1) and skill points (1). Spend them wisely!

  “Keep it up!” Makarov encouraged. His Armor meter floated around two thousand. Health: around five thousand. Just as I was about to grab a medkit, he stopped me:

  “Don’t waste it on me. The controllers are already here. Stay focused. They don’t meddle in player affairs unless they’re cheaters like me, hacking a bot or another account. That’s it, Leonarm, you’re on your own now. My advice: don’t try to take them all out. Break through and run to the respawn tower in Town Zero. You have more than enough money on your account to go straight to Rim Five. From there, move to the most distant and unexplored zones. The Mentors are somewhere where there are no players yet...”

  Before I could speak, the Major General shut off the radio and ran at the enemies. The rain of fire cut through his defense. His health bar began to drop. Aside from the mechanodestructors, the angels were shooting at him too: fiery arrows fell from the sky with a piercing whistle, drowning out the angels’ song.

  The figure in the exoskeleton was covered in a cloud of fire, columns of dust. But all the same, Makarov reached the enemy. He detonated a powerful explosive. The explosion threw tons of earth into the air. The turrets’ force field shuddered and rippled as if in fear.

  Small explosions tore through the sky. The Eurofighter and the MiGs lost control and went down. They all exploded before hitting the ground, struck down by Makarov’s superweapon. It seemed to be a unique bomb assembled by an experienced and high-ranking weaponsmith.

  The shockwave hit me. It knocked out the turrets and blew away the tent.

  Damage taken: -945, shockwave from Wiper Swiper photon mine.

  Automatic High-Caliber Ellen Turret (x2) destroyed, cannot be repaired.

  A list of players killed by Makarov stretched out before my eyes. I didn’t know how they’d all gotten into Rim Zero, but I guessed that the fines for dying in such a low-level zone would be huge.

  Two mechanodestructors remained among the enemy’s ground forces. Not only were their force fields destroyed, but their Armor had been halved. Their health bars also showed less than eighty percent. They were defenseless against the full-fledged power of Leonarm.

  Chapter 4. Damned Angels

  “LEONARM CALLING Black Wave,” I said over an open frequency. “How’s it going? Hanging in there?”

  “Get lost,” Grisha’s avatar replied.

  Fortunado’s avatar just sent a picture of an ass.

  “What do you want from me? How did you hack the protection in Rim Zero?”

  Fortunado answered this time. “Nothing personal, Leonarm. We got an order, we’re carrying it out.”

  “As for how we got into Zero, that’s none of your business,” Grisha added. “Give up now. You can’t escape.”

  Their words were booming, frightening, spoken through a speech mod
ulator. I aimed down my sight: a few surviving soldiers stirred in the churned-up earth. A legless android crawled to them on his hands and began to heal them. I aimed for the android’s head and fired. The white-blue stroke of the energy charge took out half the skull. The burnt edges of the head’s remains glowed. A blue flame burned to the android’s shoulders. Damage numbers fell off it as it burned, adding to my XP bar.

  Leonarm (Human) killed Nika (Android) using: Salinger Automatic Rifle.

  Why was that so easy? These are top players. Why are they so slow, and why do they die so quickly? Maybe it’s because of the hacking?

  The mechanodestructors continued toward me. Suspecting that they were attacking out of sheer stubbornness, I calmly picked off the remaining soldiers, gathering experience points. I tried to tease more information out of the brothers about their customer:

  “You’re about to die and respawn fifty percent weaker. Want to make a deal?”

  “It could be a hundred percent,” Fortunado said.

  “We’re bored of being at the top all the time. We’ll level up again.”

  Were they bluffing? I checked the contents of my Wallet. Wow! 5,345,700 g.

  “Then I’m officially offering the Black Wave guild a job. I need bodyguards.”

  “Don’t be an idiot, buddy,” Grisha said. “Firstly, there’s a conflict of interest.”

  “Secondly, we were paid so much that you wouldn’t be able to save it up in a hundred years,” Fortunado added.

  I aimed my sight at Grisha and shot out one of his left legs. The spiderlike mechanodestructor reeled. Another bunch of experience points flew into my progress bar.