by D. Rus
I checked the Staff’s battery. Before the raid, it had been charged to the brim. Out of twenty thousand units, however, this greedy reality had already pumped out a hundred and fifty. This was bad. Very bad. How long would the scrolls and vials last until the last of the magic was used up and we lost all of our magic abilities? Complex items had batteries which at least could be recharged! But the most basic things could present us with some unpleasant surprises.
I dug deeper into the Staff’s settings. We didn't need the strobe setting. I wasn’t a traffic cop. The Wall and Fire Stream were also clearly superfluous. I reset the power adjuster to the minimum setting, the intensity of light to the maximum, and the frequency of light to a soft, sunny yellow.
Activation!
Not bad at all!
The light was so strong that it hurt my eyes. Under the pressure of a myriad of photons, the gray concrete of the elevator shaft began to steam, drying up right in front of my eyes. I raised my head, illuminating the shaft with my portable version of the Lighthouse of Alexandria.
Not good. Not good at all.
"Dan, look at this."
The expert grabbed onto the opening and bravely hung out into the shaft. He looked up, and then asked me to shine the light down.
"Apparently, the security system worked,” he chuckled. “The hermetic partitions isolated all the floors from each other. We should check the fire escape, but I have no doubt it's going to be the same thing."
"The demons got through somehow, right?"
Fuckyall's voice came from the stairwell, "They did it their usual way, straight through."
And so they had. The steel partitions that were fire, explosives, and assault-proof were riddled with demonic inscriptions. They’d been ripped open crosswise. Runes for Hagalaz, Raido, and Sowilo—respectively Destruction, Path, and Integrity—could be read on the mangled petals of the doors. We could see the sharp outlines of negation characters along with streaks of blood from sacrificed creatures. Creatures from Inferno could, and loved, to work with living flesh, expertly syphoning off its enormous reserves of energy.
As usual, the hound’s claws were the first to hit the steps. After a ten-second pause, we followed. There was a flight of stairs, another hermetic door torn open, and the twisted hinges of the entrance to the seventeenth floor. After a minute of inspection, it seemed that this was a technical level crowded with powerful diesel engines, air purification systems, pumps, compressors, condensers, and machine rooms. We, being the Swiss Family Robinson in a technology-free world, found all of those extremely valuable and tempting.
I marked them down on the map. We moved onto the next floor. It seemed to be the recreation area. It had a dining room and a lounge, plants everywhere, and dead flat-screen TVs on the walls.
Fuckyall couldn't resist the habit of his destitute school days, so he raked in a rich collection of music and video crystals for his inventory. He topped them up with an expensive Sonus Faber Homage Amati Anniversario speaker system adorned with a silver nameplate Handmade in Italy. It wasn't for nothing that the speakers were named after the legendary violin master Andrea Amati from Cremona. Some wood, a secret glue formula, and a tad of varnish. No one is so versed in expensive watches and cars as the poor.
The Americans had definitely put their budget money to good use! Or had they had a music-loving caretaker? And how on earth was Fuckyall going to play his music without electricity?
I repeated the last question out loud. He just threw up his hands in response, impersonating his own greedy pig. "Oink-oink!"
That bastard was still smiling! I shook a reproachful head. If he began slowing the group down by being overloaded, I would personally make him smash his precious speakers.
Fuckyall understood it better than I did. He quickly began emptying his inventory of everything he could part with, choking on sandwiches and dumping dozens of bottles of kvass in a corner.
The hound forwarded me their picture accompanied by a puzzled inquiry: had we lost them? Weren’t they government property?
I began to collect the bottles. I still had seventy pounds of available capacity left. Then I gave the go-ahead to move onto the next floor.
Fourteen... thirteen... twelve... eleven... ten...
The tenth floor was the intermediate center for the base's defense. The elevator shaft ended there, requiring a transfer to another elevator. A narrow control corridor was supposed to cut off and destroy any enemy that had broken through. There were both passive and active security systems, automatic turrets, electrical arc cores, and sprays filled with paralyzing and toxic formulas.
The base security must have had time to wake up and meet the demons head on. The massacre of the science and technology personnel must have put the demons in a cheerful mood. All the more surprising must have been the strong blow to the face—complete with blood and smashed teeth—dealt to the advancing troop of these Infernal creatures.
No, we hadn’t seen the bodies of any demons, let alone tombstones. However, the hound's higher instincts repeatedly reported to us about wormholes in the Astral plane, a sure sign of a magical creature’s recent death.
We hadn’t found any intact human bodies, either. The demons had fully appreciated the heroism of their resistance. A truly gloomy fate awaited the prisoners. Their bodies had been quickly gutted on the field altar while their courageous souls had found their final resting place in the personal reservoirs of the Silver Legion's soldiers. This was one case where courage and valor were punished by a terrible afterlife. However, the fate of the weak had been, to some degree, even worse. Their souls had been promptly passed through a magical press, losing any chance of rebirth and being exchanged for energy at bargain rates. Waste is waste. It wasn’t worth five cents on sale.
On the other hand, there were a bunch of weapons lying around. As far as automatics, there were mostly compact XM9 assault rifles with shortened barrels for close quarters combat on the premises. They had all the extras that were characteristic of majors, the elite, and PMCs—all the possible trim, tactical handles, under-barrel lights, laser and pricey night vision sights.
As far as pistols, there was a wide range of models and calibers. Each person purchased their own last-chance personal weapons according to their own taste and budget.
I almost howled out loud, clutching half a dozen automatics to my chest and not having the strength to let them go from my hands. My inner greedy pig's beady little eyes were bugging out of its head: master, what do we need all this useless steel for?
But Dan understood me. He walked around the floor plunging through the mangled doors and broken walls, dragging out the fallen panels from the suspended ceiling. Like a magician, he pulled still more and more guns from the rubble. The pyramid of firearms kept growing as tears of avarice rolled down the men's cheeks. Zena, the wise old woman, sat down in her usual lotus pose and, with her chin propped up on her fist, followed our bustling about with her all-understanding gaze.
We went through the scraps of gear found on the bodies, removing the precious electronic tinsel: tactical radios and headsets, electronic warfare systems, and intelligent first-aid kits. We reached into the victims’ pockets, gingerly removing the plump bodies of M68 fragmentation grenades, the smashed black cylinders of the M84 flash bangs and magazines for carbine rifles, both emptied and full.
What a treasure. A real man's treasure.
Seeing Fuckyall clip a heavy Glock to his operational hip holster, I sighed and gave a conflicting order. "OK, boys, we've had our fun. Now that's enough. This is nothing but fluff and self-indulgence. Right here, the Legionnaires smoked fifty Special Forces soldiers, who didn't even have time to make a peep. Firearms don’t work against demons. Steel and magic—that’s the answer!”
However, Dan didn't support my sentiment. "I don't agree. First of all, these guys died with dignity and some of them have been sent to their respawn points. Second of all, we’re not the same as human beings anymore. Their men could be killed
with one hit, they crumbled to ashes from a single fireball with no chance of dodging it or ignoring damage. But you, for example, have enough hits to last a whole assault regiment. I'm not even talking about your agility, speed, and resistance to mental attacks and elements. Put a gun in your hands with enough silver and charmed ammo, add some enchanted runes to its butt, and you might just have yourself a very interesting combination!"
I thought about it. There was something to his words. It didn't take much to persuade me. I myself was looking for an excuse to avoid parting with the firearms.
I sliced through the air with my hand. "Lads! No more than two barrels per person—one long and one short. Ammo—a dozen magazines of every caliber and all the grenades. Make sure you don’t go into overload! We can’t go into battle hung with physical debuffs."
After a quarter of an hour of mental agony, our medieval appearance was jazzed up with modern militaristic hardware. My brains melted as I looked at Fuckyall—a paladin with grenades at the ready and a Glock on his hip! Brings a tear to the eye.
We piled the rest of the firearms into an upended safe, having generously poured rifle grease over the moisture-sensitive steel. With this kind of conservation, it should outlive us.
We continued our advance. Breathing became more difficult from the still-smoldering islands of fire that had burned out the oxygen of the last floors. Our faces grew somber. It looked like any exits to the surface were blocked.
We came to rest at the obstruction on the minus fifth floor. Here, the collapsed concrete stairways had sandwiched the elevator shaft, flattening it completely.
Dan used his thieving abilities to investigate: Search for Voids and Caches, Finding Shelter, and Piercing Vision. This wasn’t enough of course—he was still far from becoming a real master-prospector—but his conclusion was reliable enough. Above us was thirty to thirty five feet of reinforced concrete.
Fuckyall scratched his head.
"Commander, what are we going to do? Call the dwarves?"
I thought. What methods were available to us? Could we blow it up? Dig it out? Drill through it? Melt it? Hmm... Melt it?
Shaking the Staff of True Flame in my hand, I once again opened its menu. I switched it to Stream of Fire, slid power to the far right and the length of the flame to the minimum of five steps. The icon promised a brilliant white flame with a temperature of about four thousand Kelvin. I mean, Kelvin? What the fuck was that in Fahrenheit? And would it melt concrete?
It turned out that yes, it would. It also made it explode, generously dosing the hapless welder with bits of shrapnel. Cutting through the passageway involved lots of pain and constant healing, panting from the wild mixture of carbon monoxide and standing ankle-deep in the melted components of the cement mixture: sand, crushed granite, and white-hot puddles of molten reinforced steel.
The Staff's charge lasted half a minute. During this time, I had managed to claw through a little more than six feet of the obstruction. Then I reloaded the crystal, rested, and continued the slaughter. Miner's Day was going to be my holiday from now on.
After three hours, the torch had burned through the top layer of the collapse, opening a path to the sun and the unexpectedly cold, fresh air. The last three feet had been difficult. No idea what kind of fire had raged on the surface, but the ceiling had fused into a thick glaze.
One by one, we climbed out. We stood, absolutely stunned, in the middle of a hundred foot crater, ignoring the alarming beeps of our respective interfaces and squinting from the unbearable brilliance of the snow. Tommy the leopard was already frolicking in the snowdrifts.
I blew at my rapidly stiffening fingers. “Did you say Arizona?"
Chapter Seven
The enormous white troll sat on the snow bank, studying with a childlike amazement the jewelry structure of a snowflake in his hand. After a second, its weightless beauty turned into a turbid drop. Snowie indignantly furrowed his brow, then turned his big head to us and with a sweep of his hand pointed theatrically at the snowed-in vista around him.
"This is your Earth, eh? What a boring, monotonous place...”
"You still haven't seen the taiga!” Fuckyall blurted out angrily. “How about Baikal? The Volga? The Black Sea and Bora Bora? The historical buildings of St. Pete and ancient Kiev where the most beautiful girls on the planet live?! Wait before you speak, Snowie!"
The albino raised his mighty hands in the air. "OK, OK! Stop yelling! Show me this Bora Bora on the Black Sea. Maybe it will truly catch my eye."
The discussion was interrupted by Zena's anxious voice, "Guys, we have a problem. A cumulative debuff with a bunch of nasty side effects. No one has any headaches yet?"
Momentarily forgetting the greatness of the moment, I stopped shooting a panoramic video clip and switched over to the chirping interface.
Uh oh... The corner of the screen was flooded with red-edged radioactive danger and biohazard signs.
The black quad-circle of a biological threat reported an "Unknown DoT" and quickly gathered damage momentum. Twenty per cycle... resist... thirty... thirty five...
It was tolerable, for now. I turned my gaze to the second icon.
It was the easily recognizable yellow circle with three black petals inside. When I focused at it, it began to shake and crackle with the ominous soundtrack from Stalker, informing me of Cursed Areas that carried a punishment of 1200 Roentgen per hour. Whoa! We had to make ourselves scarce double quick!
Dan reacted fast, “One hundred thousand rem! Half an hour in the hot zone, and you’re toast! No amount of grandma healers can bring you back.”
Zena laughed ironically. This ex-grandma religiously believed in the power of magic. But this time she didn't argue. "I recommend we immediately leave the epicenter of the blast. I can't guarantee that magic will heal us."
We ran, slipping on the ground fused into glass towards the nearest edge of the crater. Dan began undressing as he went, throwing equipment into his inventory.
"Hide all your armor! If your armor's irradiated, it’ll stay radioactive for years! And cover your mouth, even if it's with a scarf or sock!"
We promptly obeyed. Our run slowed sharply as my clanmates opened their interfaces. Using their virtual cursors, they began whipping off various items and shoving them directly into the depths of their digital backpacks. This was the fastest way to undress, expressly practiced in case of any instances of PK attacks.
"Are radioactivity levels so bad here?” Fuckyall asked curiously.
Dan’s grin promised nothing good. "A tank can save a crew half a mile away from the explosion of a tactical charge, but then it will kill them within twenty-four hours with its own induced radioactivity. So yeah, it’s quite high."
Looking at our naked army with socks in their mouths, I couldn't help but smile. “If anyone saw us now, they would piss themselves with laughter,” I cast a glance at our lumbering, nine-foot-tall troll in his loincloth. “Or maybe with fright.”
* * *
Russia. The Creeping Vine Orbital Complex of the Satellite Intelligence Center.
The second lieutenant of the analytical department carefully looked at the latest pictures sent by the Lotus-E9. Why had the AI singled them out from the thousands of others and marked, "For the operator's manual processing"? With every such case, there had to be an expert report with a mandatory entrance into the archives. In these cases, they always found something extreme.
So what did we have here? An hour ago, the Lotus-E9 passed over the USA, focusing the mirrors of its fifteen-foot telescope on the most promising areas. Naturally, the point of the tactical nuclear charge's explosion was a zone of heightened interest.
A picture in the infrared range showed an anomalous increase in temperature inside the crater. Was it a fire in some underground rooms? What kind of basements don't collapse after a nuclear blast? According to the latest data, that was where the operational depots of the USARAK 25th Infantry Division were located. Nothing outstanding or top secret. Alt
hough... The place was clearly suspicious and marked with an orange dot, meaning Special Attention.
The next picture was of the surface of the crater: thermal emissions and the output of the combustion of a high-temperature fire. It's true that the spectrometer gave a rather strange picture. Something very murky and unconventional was burning down there.
The lieutenant tensed up as he studied the third picture showing some strange, unearthly figures around the steaming, underground passage. Was it another breach? However, this wasn't much of a sensation these days, but rather just an excuse to maneuver troops. Even more so if more monsters had appeared on foreign territory.
Feeding the picture into one of the streams of the AI Know-it-all for identification, the officer skimmed through the rest of the screenshots. His eyebrows shot up in surprise. In the high-resolution photograph, five naked figures running across the white snow inside the crater of the nuclear explosion were clearly seen. WTF?
And where were they running? The lieutenant traced the vector of their current course and frowned. The anomalous Fog of War began after fifteen miles, concealing a considerable portion of the surface.
The chirp of Know-it-all distracted the officer from his thoughts. Having received the file, he opened the document and was stunned.
The report said,
According to the aggregate image, there is a 98.12% probability that the figures shown on the picture are players and NPCs from the Virtual RPG AlterWorld.
With 82.13% probability, figure "N1" was identified as the player Laith from the Children of Night (Max Nazarov, year of birth: 200Х, citizen of the Russian Federation, passport number 78 12 417833, declared comatose since October 8, 203Х).
With 93.41% probability, figure "N2" was identified as the NPC Snowie from the Children of Night (identification code: 9724389831288-РТ, catalogued October 22, 203Х by the search engine "Crawler-7739E.")