The Ultimation (Play to Live: Book #7)

by D. Rus

  I considered a long combination of passive shields: an instant cast of six hundred hits with Shield of Yangur—I still hadn’t parted with my favorite childhood toy. Under its cover I could raise the Autonomous Bone Shield for one thousand one hundred points. Plus, Fuckyall could put up the Charm of the Fairest One—another nine hundred cash. However, the timing of this series of spells didn't work out: there were too many enemies and I couldn't even fit it in the break between salvos.

  I sighed, exasperatedly driving my teeth into another Maniac's throat, shrugged off a second with my elbow, redirected the flight path of a Cerberus on a jump attack with a short hook, and loudly warned my clanmates,

  "Plan B, boys! I'm activating the emergency reserve!"

  Fuckyall happily grinned. Snowie, not understanding, continued rhythmically swinging his club.

  I switched to the panel of divine abilities, mentally crossing my fingers for good luck and whispering, "Fallen One, don't fail us."

  I clicked on the Shield of Faith. The familiar effect of black sparks and the sudden surge of my mana to seventy percent told me that divine abilities worked in all worlds! Not to their full capacity—the blue mana bar should have regenerated in full—but at least it was working!

  The sounds of monsters beating on my armor became muffled. The battle chat exploded with messages, reporting complete disregard for damage. The thirty-second invulnerability began its countdown halfway down the timer—which was logical as the Fallen One wasn't omnipotent on Earth, after all—but thanks, anyway! Fifteen seconds was all I needed.

  Grinning, I pulled out a Soul Stone from my bandolier and summoned another pet. The raised spider was a bit weak—level 309—but it was more than enough for our current enemy. Moreover, Lloth's creation had saved a few abilities of its prototype: Venomous Bite and a massive Poisonous Spit. I cloned the single spider into a whole platoon and assigned each of my fighters a pair of the arachnids as bodyguards. The rest went to crush the shooters.

  "Bite!"

  Twenty eight-legged towers rushed towards the Lilim while the rest promptly began mopping up the surrounding space. The maximum paranoid mode of assist and protect demanded that the bodyguards clear the radar of all red markers. The game was on.

  Fuckyall sighed wearily and leaned on his sword, exhausted. His Stamina had long been drained. Our bodies’ muscle memory didn't allow us to endlessly brandish a thirty-six-pound hunk of steel without the need for rest. Otherwise, it would force a debuff on your brain and devour units of Agility and Strength. Such passive effects were absent in AlterWorld. Here, the cold tended to bind your limbs, hunger quickly used up hits and mana, and heat squeezed moisture from your body.

  I calmly activated a Bone Shield and was pleased to notice that the red markers had extinguished all around me. The cleansing was in full swing.

  The enemy leader wasn't stupid; he assessed the situation just as fast as I did. The Player furiously yelled something obscenely threatening, pulled out a stack of expensive-looking parchment with gold seal, and tore open the first one.

  The gray blotches Fog of War spread out over our heads. The next moment, it was studded with stars and then those very stars rained down upon our heads.

  "An Armageddon!" yelled Fuckyall, whipping his shield from behind his back and raising it above his head, trying to hide his considerable bulk beneath the shadow of the steel pentagon.

  Pointless. The meteor shower rained down on the earth, plowing it up dozens of feet deep, knocking out boulders that weighed many tons and easily kicking them hundreds of feet around. The fire immediately burned up all oxygen and the air collapsed, greedily filling the void and reaching those who had managed to survive the flames and shockwaves.

  I shook my head, knocking the ringing from my ears and looking around, stunned. Holy shit. It was as if an insane gunner had launched an entire cluster of missiles with thermobaric warheads from a Smerch multiple-rocket launcher.

  Snowie and I had lost half of our respective Lives, the Analyst three quarters, and the spiders a third. There was a scorched area a hundred and fifty feet in diameter and no signs of the demons that had attacked us. Did they kill their own just to scare us?

  One or two more of those rainstorms and we'd be done for.

  The Player laughed and, after a moment’s pause, reached for a second scroll. They couldn’t have been cheap. Had he too had to dip his hand into the Civil Reserve?

  "Go! Take the freak down or we're toast!" Fuckyall took off, setting an example.

  I shot out behind him, redirecting the spiders to the more important target. I added a bit of my own military wisdom, “Spread out!"

  The maneuver was a good idea, even though we hadn’t practiced it enough yet. The Analyst shook his head and went left. Snowie, on the other hand, slowed down and began to move his lips in thought as he always did in moments of the highest intellectual effort.

  We didn't manage to get out of the strike zone. Once again, incandescent meteors beat us into the ground. The shockwave kept our hands tied and our armor was whipped by a variety of fragments. Blinking, I anxiously looked at the radar.

  Statistics were a capricious bitch, smiling at some and making faces at others. Snowie had been in the center of the Armageddon. Now his snow-white grave decorated the manmade basalt ridge. Fuckyall and I crawled out of it on our elbows and sheer will. Our hits were in the red, our interfaces ringing in alarm, reporting our injuries and fractures and hastily counting the fuzzy characteristics.

  The Player, who was only a leap away, growled in irritation and took out a new scroll. The trumpets sounded.

  Fuckyall and I quietly glanced at each other. My face was apologetic and slightly guilty, and his was thoughtful and analytic. He pursed the lips of his bloodied mouth, spat out saliva black from the filth, and whispered,

  "Hold on."

  In the next instant, I was enveloped by the encompassing darkness of the Dark paladin's Holy Hands. My red life bar joyfully leapt forward, stopping at the hundred-percent cap. Dumbfounded, I looked at Fuckyall, who had sacrificed his life-saving abilities for me.

  He grinned menacingly and yelled, "Go! Tear him apart!"

  He himself could barely stand up on his broken legs. He pulled an unusual bow out of his inventory.

  BANG! A string slapped across his bracers. A sparkling magic arrow rushed towards the enemy General in a steep trajectory.

  Swallowing the lump in my throat, I shot forward. The flames of Judgment Day once again screamed through the skies, but I ignored them, contemplating the paladin's deed. Logically, he was right and the math was as simple as two times two. I was a stronger fighter and as long as I was alive, my summoned pets would fight. But in my heart... Who could say whether death was reversible on Earth?

  The Armageddon violently shook the ground. The hellish flames bit into flesh and permafrost. Fuckyall crumbled to dust, and only an unusually colored gravestone indicated the spot where the Russian cluster's most powerful paladin had died.

  I lost a third of my hits, but my loathed target was already close. The Player didn't want close combat. His fire-breathing black stallion reared up, turning in place. The Player dug in with his spurs and took off at a gallop, trying to hide himself in the welcoming, open gates of the citadel.

  Overtaking me by a dozen steps, six of my pets rushed ahead: a squadron of clattering paws, evil hissing and clicking of mandibles, and the snowy comet tail behind. The Lords of the Abyss intercepted the former creations of Lloth, trying to engage them in battle to give the Player a chance to get away.

  They paid me extra special attention. Seven huge demons simultaneously jumped out of micro-portals and constructed a fluid wall of bristling black blades in my path.

  There was no time for a showdown. Reaching for the Fallen One's strength in my soul, I sharply accelerated and at the same time pulled to the side at the minimum necessary arc to avoid obstacles. The Dark Energy was viscous and unyielding, burning up almost immediately—like over-dried
gunpowder—and the effect was unexpectedly weak and anemic.

  No, time still yielded and slowed, but its speed lagged not by an order of magnitude but by a fraction. Creating miracles on Earth was a complicated and very expensive business. The matured metrics of the ancient world were far from the plasticity of the newborn AlterWorld.

  I exasperatedly grabbed the very heavy Dragon Claw Cutter from behind my back and slashed it across the nearest Lord of the Abyss. One shot! The top half of the demon's carcass began to infinitely slowly slide down. The horror of what had just happened shone in the beast's eyes. I was already passing over the demon barrier and after a dozen seconds had overtaken the Player. I was at the gates.

  The Dragon Claw Cutter lived up to its name, ruthlessly shortening the enemy General's horse by two black ham hocks. The unfortunate animal fell onto its side, crushing the rider and crippling his leg, leaving it in the stirrup.

  I ran up to the fallen rider and rested the all-powerful sword on the lower section of the steel helmet's scales that protected his throat.

  "Die, you beast!" I yelled deafeningly, barely being able to stop myself from pouncing on the crossguard of the sword with all my weight and pinning the monster to the ground. "Raise your visor, now!"

  The Player's shoulders shook. A muffled, rumbling laughter escaped from under the helmet. Red sparks of coals shone through the peepholes.

  "You fool! Do you really not know that once the Path has been chosen, the armor of a Chaos warrior fuses to his body and feels like a second skin? However, it's no use to hurry and torture me. The sensitivity of this outer covering freely regulates itself. All the way to absolute zero, praise Urgash!"

  I dubiously glanced at the sinister-looking armor, densely covered in thorns and cutting edges. OK, we're still going to take a look. I cast a quick glance around. The spiders had already killed the Lords of the Abyss and were now smoking the Lilim. There were few of both of these, but the outcome of the battle had been decided. And I... I was the only one left.

  Rage once again stirred in my mind. My eyes must have been glowing just like the Player's. With effort, I controlled myself and continued the interrogation.

  "Who the hell are you? What are you doing on Earth?"

  The Player chuckled uncertainly and learned forward, ignoring the blade at his throat. The all-powerful sword easily slid through the fine scales of the armor and pierced the prisoner's skin. Drops of dark red blood seeped through the cracks of the armor. Leaning back, the enemy gave a weary sigh and then spoke,

  "I'm not afraid of death. Ahead of me lies eternity, and behind, dependable support. This is a good castle, but it is only a bonus from a benefactor, nothing more. I propose an exchange of information. Question for question. Don't lie. I can tell when you are."

  Squinting, I peered into the slot of the muffled helmet, trying to catch a glimpse of the enemy's eyes. There was only darkness and the crimson sparks of a wolf's pupils.

  I slowly nodded. "OK. But I suggest you don’t lie, either."

  I psychically reached out to the hound that circled nearby. "Belka! Come!"

  A moment later, the bloody jaws of the hellhound hung over the enemy. My lie detector had arrived.

  I repeated my question. "Who the hell are you? What kind of castle is this?"

  Even in this position, Chaos managed to shrug his shoulders. "I was a man... Now, I'm a player in the Virtual Heroes of Might and Magic—hardcore mode based on nine Heroes, PvP-server. Perma, naturally. I'm in the Top 100 of my segment. Our world is multilayered, you see, according to the number of servers. What else... hmm... I just thought it would be fun to cross over. You can never have too much battle experience.”

  I greedily drank in the information. "And what about the castle?"

  He grinned. "It's my turn to ask a question. Who the hell are you? Have the Gods of Light forsaken you?"

  Shaking my head, I reluctantly gave him carefully-filtered information, interspersed with useless facts. "I'm a perma player from Alternative World, Russian cluster. A Death Knight. Specialization: pet summoning. I’m conducting reconnaissance in the interests of our Alliance. Now you. What kind of castle is this and what's the purpose of the pyramid at its base?"

  Chaos thought it over. "It's your average citadel of Inferno, part of the Small Transportation Ring. It's rebuilt at sixty percent. It serves as a transfer station for the transport of troops from my world and protects the ziggurat. Which is exactly what you saw there: a truncated pyramid made from 666,666 souls... n artifact masterpiece."

  "The ziggurat—is it a portal to the world of "Virtual Heroes?"

  Chaos shook his head. "Not fair. It's my turn to ask! What's the name of your Alliance? How did you come to Earth? What's your name?"

  I chuckled ironically. "Don't mess around. Choose one."

  The Player thought, deciding on his priorities. "How did you come to Earth? Tell me everything! Portal? From where?"

  I gave a faint smile. "From He himself. The gift from Asmodeus—have you heard of him?"

  Straining for an answer, the Player weakly sat back on the crushed ice and whispered, "Of course I do. So the Supreme One started to pit his allies against each other? He seems to be in a hurry. The battle for Earth had only just begun...”

  I latched onto a familiar word. "What's the situation on Earth? What's happening in Russia? Are they still holding on?"

  The Player laughed quietly and shook his head. "I've learned all I needed to. My master is waiting for my report. See you soon, Death Knight! Your skull will take its rightful place in my collection."

  The Player abruptly leapt forward, impaling himself on my blade. He frantically threw his hands forward and grabbed the crossguard of my sword, increasing the impact force and severing his spine with a crunch.

  The Player was about to say something else but only a gurgling stream of blood flowed out of the slit of his armor. He convulsed and died. The last red marker on my radar disappeared.

  “You son of a bitch,” I managed to curse.

  My vision was blocked by an inopportune system message window,

  Glorious victory! For his calmness in battle, Laith has received 4,459,006 Experience.

  Losses on the battlefield:

  Offenders:

  Maniacs, 3,429;

  Cerberuses, 2,000;

  Lilim, 2,711;

  Matriarchs, 1,309;

  Lords of the Abyss, 13;

  Players, 1

  Defenders:

  Mounts, 1;

  Pets, 42;

  Players, 4

  Captured enemy artifacts:

  Pendant of Death

  Tarot Cards

  Traveler's Gloves

  Part of the Armor of the Damned set: Shield of the Yawning Dead and Blackshard of the Dead Knight

  Basic statistics:

  Duration of battle: 31 minutes

  Level of difficulty: Nightmare

  Probability of winning: negligible

  Impressions of bystanders: shock and awe

  Hits given: 11,022

  Hits received: 62,941

  Hits countered: 3,991

  Hits blocked: 12,831

  Spells cast: 163

  Congratulations! You've received a new level! Current level: 333!

  Racial bonus: +1 to Intellect!

  Class bonus: +1 to Strength, +1 to Build!

  Five characteristic points are available! You have five undistributed characteristic points!

  Attention! New achievement: Lucky Number 333!

  Magic numbers always go hand-in-hand with good luck! At your current level, loot will be generous like never before! You will crit often and crafted items will offer unique characteristics. Your loot’s class has increased by one point! The number of dropped gold has doubled in the Universe!

  The reward is so high and the lucky number is so attractive that you don't want to part with it! Effect: 300% reduction of experience at this level.

  Congratulations! You've received a n
ew level! Current level: 334!

  Racial bonus: +1 to Intellect!

  Class bonus: +1 to Strength, +1 to Build!

  Five characteristic points are available! You have ten undistributed characteristic points!

  "What the fuck!" I grunted with indignation.

  No, of course I was happy for the levels. It looked like the system was skewed in favor of the mechanics of The Virtual Heroes, allowing me to single-handedly receive all of the XP over the course of the whole battle. But to race past an entire mountain of wonderful bonuses was just cruel!

  Gasping in frustration, I threw my sword behind my back and stepped away from the steaming puddle of the Player’s almost-black blood.

  Every step in this life is important and this one immediately resulted in a deafening fanfare:

  Victory! You have captured a castle: Alaska.

  Losses on the battlefield:

  Offenders, 0.

  Defenders, 0.

  The castle has been transferred under your control, including the contents of the warehouses and the treasury. You are free to destroy the Citadel, but you cannot change the factional affiliation of the castle.

  I looked down at my feet. The barely-visible line of the open gate ran precisely underneath my right foot and had now turned from red to blue. On the tower spires, flags of "Children of Night" were slowly raised.

  A pleasant, albeit expected, bonus. But as much as I would like to tear into the vaults of this castle earned in an honest battle, I had something more important to do. I had to resurrect my men.

  I quickly called Belka, summoned the exhausted Hummungus, and posted the surviving five pets to guard the gates.

  I sought out a grave’s gray marker on my radar, took the bearings, and quickly made my way to the tombstone that was lost among the heaps of bodies. I literally had to dig it out: that was where my spiders had got to work, cutting out one of the cohorts of Matriarchs.