Absolute Zero

by Max Lagno

  On the other hand, Camper easily took care of the chunk of nanomass intended for him. It seemed he’d upgraded his Kinesthetic Telekinesis a lot. The superman’s right fist was surrounded by a barely noticeable cloud of shimmering light. He met the flying mass with a punch. The component nanomass disintegrated into dust, and Grisha felt that he couldn’t reassemble it. It was gone.

  The interface confirmed it.

  Damage taken: -50,000.

  Health: 54,800/120,000.

  CN available in storage: 155,000.

  The situation began to look threatening for Grisha. Another confirmation that LeCube’s invincibility was no longer a given. His enemies had accumulated knowledge about its weaknesses. Grisha himself had thought many times that if he’d been in the enemy’s place and knew what he did about LeCube, he could kill himself many times over.

  Grisha was a brave soldier, but not a fool. He fought to the end when he was winning, but knew when to retreat when the fight was lost. Retreat wasn’t running away. Retreat could also be a tactical maneuver.

  That said, it was too soon to retreat. Grisha had orders from his brother: to draw some of the enemy’s flying units away from the base, which is what he was doing. The entire fleet of MiGs, Eurofighters, flying supers, humans in suborbital shuttles and other heroes were chasing after him. Everyone wanted to be the first to take out as juicy a target as Grisha. Most importantly, they all knew they were being drawn away, but each thought himself smarter than the rest. The coalition was far from the synergy and military precision of the Black Wave.

  Grisha gave the command, and Second Skin activated its second property. Each particle of component nanomass began to vibrate and pulled the material of the jets into itself. Right now, the mechanodestructors’ interfaces would be flashing with alarms, reporting the destruction of their frames. Their ejection would be offline, their repair skills would fail to keep up with the material loss...

  Done — one of the MiGs disintegrated along with its mechanodestructor. The remaining CN headed back to Grisha.

  Grisha (Mechanodestructor, Guild: Black Wave) killed Zyxel (Mechanodestructor, Guild: Golden Horde) using: LeCube (Mechanodestructor Frame).

  Recovered: 18,000 CN.

  CN available in storage: 173,000.

  Earned: +200 XP.

  The second MiG fell apart next, but Camper got in the way and only a few thousand CN made it back to Grisha. Kinesthetic Telekinesis destroyed the rest.

  Grisha immediately started regenerating his Health. And to win time, he opened a hail.

  “What do you think? Awesome, huh?”

  “Not really. You broke a couple of planes. I can do that too. You find it awesome how I broke you?”

  “You haven’t broken me yet. And I got plenty of surprises.”

  “I have more.”

  A shining cocoon surrounded the superman’s body and slowly expanded, capturing more and more space. In seconds, the wave hit LeCube and swept away its defenses.

  Kinetic Explosion.

  Damage taken: -4,940.

  Forcefield destroyed.

  Restoration under way...

  Warning, must increase CN expenditure!

  Grisha felt LeCube begin to fall apart under the telekinetic forces. His Health regeneration stopped at the previous mark... then fell. It was slow, but he had no way to stop the decrease.

  Chapter 39. Red Cloak

  THINGS GOT WORSE and worse. Along with his kinesthetic telekinesis, Camper had upgraded his ordinary version as well. Now he was attacking LeCube at range. Grisha strengthened his defenses, converting CN into energy.

  “Think, Grigory, think!” he said to himself. “How did he get that skill so quick? He must have redistributed stats and skill points.”

  Grisha kept an alarmed eye on his dropping Health and the increasing progress bar of his defense recovery. He converted more and more component nanomass to increase his defense even further. But the amount reached the threshold: he could no longer convert more component nanomass into energy. He didn’t have enough Knowledge or a high enough level of some skill that Grisha didn’t even remember, because he didn’t take interest in boring skills.

  Maybe now was the time to retreat? But... there was no way he could switch to another configuration without a forcefield to cover him. The constant telekinetic attacks would simply destroy LeCube. The transformation time from one config to another was LeCube’s weakness. And it was a good thing that nobody knew it!

  Alright, Grisha continued to think. Camper strengthened some stats, but seriously lowered others. The superman’s telekinesis depends on his Strength stat. To damage the defended LeCube at such a great distance, he must have put a lot of points into his Strength. He probably sacrificed his Luck first of all. Then he would have lowered his Agility to the minimum, otherwise he would have already gone into slowed time.

  Health: 54,000/120,000.

  Forcefield regeneration: 4,300/10,000.

  Grisha began to fly farther away to weaken the effects of the telekinesis. Moving immediately raised his energy expenditure, but his restoration speed increased. The superman closed the distance again, keeping the same range of around five hundred yards. Now Grisha kept an eye on three stats:

  Health: 52,000/120,000.

  Forcefield regeneration: 4,500/10,000.

  CN Expenditure: 9,800 per minute.

  Fortunado’s avatar popped up in the neurointerface. “How’s it going, bro? Our plan worked. We repelled the attack on the ground. Just like I predicted, the coalition began an attack on Shoreline at the same time as the attack on the Langolier base. Their strategists are dumb if they think I’m that easy to fool. They thought we’d divert all our forces to defend the Langolier base and leave Shoreline undefended, but on the contrary, we reinforced it... Hey, what’s up?”

  “I’m in trouble. Hurry and tell me how to defeat a strong player that dropped his Luck and Agility to boost his Strength.”

  “Use weapons or skills with highly random behavior, of course. For example, missiles with a random flight trajectory. Shells with a large amount of shrapnel. Plasma bombs. They all have secondary destructive effects that are highly random. His Luck won’t help him, and his Agility won’t save him.”

  “I don’t have any weapons, I’m just a cube. I can’t change my configuration until my shield recovers. I can use my ethereal creature, but Kinesthetic Telekinesis will easily destroy it. Or I could use Second Skin, but I control it directly, and all the damage goes straight to my Health, which is already low.”

  “We-e-ell, I’m no expert in LeCube, bro. You can’t retreat?”

  “My CN expenditure increases when I move. I don’t have much as it is When my component nanomass runs out, my forcefield will too. I’m a sitting duck.”

  “Damn. What can I say? My condolences... Although, wait. What does Second Skin do?”

  Grisha showed his brother a clip of the battle with the MiGs.

  Fortunado watched the battle unfold. “Yep, I see the nanomass fragments fly in a straight line. That’s what allowed the superman to repel one of the fragments. That’s why he’s keeping his distance from you, so he has time to defend against a strike.”

  “So what do I do?”

  “Again, I’ve never piloted LeCube, but... try to be chaotic.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, when you activate Second Skin, don’t make your trajectory predictable. Move in such a way that your chosen direction surprises you. I’m the strategist here, you’re supposed to be our intuitive and unpredictable warrior. I work based on plans, you work in the circumstances arising around them. So do your thing.”

  “Alright. Over and out.”

  There was one consolation: the rest of the enemy armada that had followed Grisha into space had turned around and headed home. The coalition’s ground forces had suffered a defeat due to the absence of their air support.

  Grisha pulled up a fourth line on the screen, the most painful to see. It ma
rked the time remaining until death.

  Health: 44,000/120,000.

  Forcefield regeneration: 5,600/10,000.

  CN expenditure: 11,200 per minute.

  Estimated time to CN exhaustion: 6-7 minutes.

  Damn... With these rates, he had no time to recover his defenses, turn into the Grenika and escape the battlefield. Or rather, perform a tactical retreat. Time to follow his brother’s advice.

  Grisha couldn’t imagine how to control the nanomass chaotically, especially with two chunks at once. If they were standard controllable shells, he’d ask his personal assistant to calculate a trajectory consisting of random points. But the personal assistant was useless here. It waved him away with a nebulous phrase:

  “Unable to set object parameters.”

  After a little thought, Grisha decided that it would be better to send two small chunks of CN to Camper instead of one large one. And yes, he needed to somehow prepare for the fact that if Camper could fight off both, it was game over.

  * * *

  Two blocks of component nanomass detached from LeCube’s sides again. The superman was ready for it. He knew that one strike of Kinesthetic Telekinesis could destroy these satellites and deal damage to his opponent. He was even surprised that Grisha was trying the same trick again. Or was it...

  “Got it!” Camper cried joyfully into the ether. “You can’t turn into anything without a forcefield, right, asshole? You’re vulnerable when changing shape.”

  But then Camper fell silent, realizing he had to be on guard. The blobs of component nanomass had turned sharply for some reason. Describing unpredictable loops, they tore around like a ricocheting plasma charge for a while, then flew apart in opposite directions, neither of which led to Camper.

  “Gone nuts, huh?” he muttered on an open channel.

  But Grisha didn’t answer.

  Camper’s reduced Perception only let him track the nanomass blocks for a short time. Soon they disappeared in the blackness of space. Camper couldn’t figure out Grisha’s plan. He was on high alert. What was it? Some kind of ejection? Did the remnants of LeCube carry off the mechanodestructor core, leaving the enemy facing an empty shell? It couldn’t be. Surely Grisha wouldn’t abandon the frame that everyone was after, that the greatest masters of crafting had tried to reproduce.

  There were rumors that someone had managed to create a mass that took the form of a cube, allowing the mechanodestructor core to control it. Someone had even managed to make the mass transform not only into other forms, but into complex objects like a giant axe or a bow and arrow. But it was all a far cry from LeCube’s abilities.

  The craftsmen claimed that someone spent almost an entire lifetime on getting the required components and forcing the mass to take on complex forms like robots and jets.

  To calm himself, Camper increased the pressure from his Kinesthetic Telekinesis. Whatever Grisha had come up with, he had to kill him before his plan worked.

  As a race, superpeople had no interfaces like those of mechanodestructors or humans in UniSuits. The enemy's Health looked like a small column of light: green when it was high, flashing red when it was low. The column of light above LeCube had only just turned from orange to red. A little more and it’d start blinking! Then he’d be able to use the Decisive Blow skill: it instantly killed any enemy whose Health was below ten percent.

  “Come on, come on! Start flashing, you bastard!” Camper clenched his fists, feeling LeCube’s material in his palms. “A little more!”

  Supers had no personal assistants. ‘Sidekicks’ fulfilled the role instead. They were a special class of pets available only to them. A sidekick often looked like an animal but was actually a kind of super NPC. The super worked in tandem with the sidekick, and could level it up just like himself, while the pets of ordinary humans earned and distributed their experience themselves.

  The Batman class, which Camper used in his last rotation, had Robin or Batgirl as a sidekick. But Camper was a solo player by nature. He didn’t like to have a human-like NPC hanging around with him all the time. So his superman sidekick was Krypto Mouse, who could take on the same abilities as his master for a few minutes at a time. Normalized for the fact that he was a mouse, of course. The stronger the master, the longer Krypto Mouse’s skill cooldown. It had reached two days now. This meant the mouse hadn’t participated in the first fight with LeCube, and today Camper had used Krypto Mouse’s abilities to kill a squad of Black Wave mages that had stood in the way of the coalition’s infantry.

  Now Camper regretted using Krypto Mouse. Grisha couldn’t have survived double telekinesis. But LeCube wasn’t flashing yet. The red column above it turned deeper and deeper. When it seemed that the column would stay red forever, it flashed. Thirty seconds later, it flashed again.

  “Yes!” Camper cried victoriously. “It’s time! You’re de...”

  An alarming red mist enveloped Camper’s peripheral vision, signaling danger. One of the chunks that Grisha sent off to who knows where was coming back, and fast. Its trajectory was strange, fitful. Camper was forced to switch his ranged telekinesis back to kinesthetic to meet the flying blob with a strike, like before.

  He threw his fist forward, but the unpredictable trajectory caused him to choose the wrong moment to strike. The blob leapt to the left, then the right, then flew straight at him from somewhere below. A kinesthetic telekinetic strike, in contrast to a constant attack, took two seconds to cool down. Camper managed to jump to the side.

  The blob still reached its target. No, not Camper — his cloak.

  The black mass quickly enveloped the equipment item, spreading itself over its entire surface. Camper undid the cloak and threw it off himself, flying farther away. Just like with the MiGs, the nanomass shook, intending to tear the cloak into dust. That was bad. The cloak provided defense. Now Camper had half the protection he had before. The cloak increased his stats and skills. And more than that, it looked awesome!

  His strike came off cooldown. Camper flew to the cloak, stricken by the nanomass, and hit it.

  “That’s my cloak, asshole!”

  The black mass split into shards like glass, freeing the cloak. It was still intact! The red column above Grisha flashed frequently. There it was! The enemy’s health had dropped below ten percent! But Camper had no time to activate Decisive Blow. His peripheral vision filled with a red mist again. Camper turned.

  “Fu...”

  Something black blinked, covering the light of distant stars. Camper felt a mass enshroud his body, first immobilizing him, and then depriving him of sight, hearing and the senses that supermen possessed. All that remained was his X-Ray Vision. But what good was that? All it could do was let him see the triumphant Grisha at the last moment as he put up a forcefield and turned into a jet.

  No matter how the superman struggled, he couldn’t throw off the nanomass shackles. Telekinesis! It helped a little, weakening the pressure, but the damage dealt to him by the blob enveloping him was stronger. Soon Camper’s entire vision was red.

  The cosmos disappeared. Camper’s last regret was his cloak. It remained in orbit. And a superman was nothing but a chump without his cloak.

  Camper flew along a tunnel and found himself on the ground, somewhere in Rim Three. The respawn station flashed a welcoming green light at him. A happy voice blared from a speaker.

  “Thanks to the Projectoria system, you have been brought back to life! Keep dying, we’re always pleased to see you and your money!”

  Camper gazed into the blue sky as if waiting for his cloak to descend from orbit and fall to his feet.

  Chapter 40. Trouble with the Law

  WHEN WE ARRIVED at Town Zero, a long and red strip of dawn was already visible on the horizon. It shone orange at its center, foreshadowing the sun’s coming and outlining scarlet clouds in the thick blue sky, lit from underneath like fantastic cliffs hanging above.

  It was all extraordinarily large, its beauty and majesty stunning. I was particularly stunned, as
I’d seen only the real sky for so many years. There you saw only smoke, radioactive dust clouds, acid rain and other horrors falling down on people’s heads.

  I was the only one among us to notice the beauty of that morning in Adam Online.

  The driver drove and drank whisky, his wife and child slept. Vildana grabbed a few empty scrolls, placed her tome on her beautiful bare knees, opened it and started muttering. Multicolored threads of light stretched out from the tome and began to stream into the scroll, but broke off halfway through the process: the light threads lost their color and dispersed, melting in the air. Vildana swore and began the process over again.

  I didn’t understand people that lived surrounded by technology but strove toward magic in the virtual world. All modern religions had discredited themselves so much that ignorant people, no longer having faith in God, turned toward magic instead. Even a version of magic created by a highly advanced virtual world.

  Vildana slammed the tome shut in annoyance. “Damn it, I don’t have enough Knowledge to cobble together a decent scroll with a spell for drawing in projectile weapons.”

  “A wise person once said that the choice between technology and magic in Adam Online is purely an aesthetic one. The fact that you like magic implies that you’re a person that believes in fairytales and miracles.”

  Vildana yawned. Since sleep wasn’t a critical necessity in Adam Online, her yawn was a demonstration of how she felt about my statement.

  “And who was that wise person? Not you, clearly.”

  “The creator of the first version of Adam Online said it. Adam Mickiewicz.”

  Vildana perked up.

  “I thought Adam Online referred to the biblical character Adam.”

  “No. That’s a common misconception. Adam Mickiewicz was as full of himself as most developers, so he named the virtual world after himself.