by G. Akella
"Now!" I shouted to Reece, who stood behind a rock. I cast Earth Shackles at my feet, heard an icy crackle behind me, and used Jump to return to the main group.
I barely kept my balance. Taking a left and leaning my hand against a corner, I tried to assess the situation. There was no need for my concern, thankfully. Raena threw up both her hands, her clenched fists a few inches apart, and froze. She was biting her lower lip, and a wild recklessness burned in her wide-open blue eyes. One hundred feet ahead, all of the paralyzed undead found themselves engulfed in a replica of Dante's ninth circle of hell. Blocks of ice smashed into the earth, hammering the party's ears with a symphony of shattering skulls and spines. Just like that, the courtyard was covered with a mix of sparkling ice splinters and bone dust.
"Oh, come on!" Reece exclaimed with reproach, realizing his help was entirely unneeded.
It was over as quickly as it had started. Our ears were still filled with the howl of undead hounds, the crunching of bones, and the din of falling blocks of ice, but we were in the clear. The bonehounds were in pieces all over the courtyard.
"Don't touch a thing. To the entrance!" I commanded. I waited for everyone and took up the rear, moving toward the dragons waiting for us at the entrance to the southern wing.
"Don't touch? Aw," said Raena with the sound of genuine sadness. "I was so looking forward to diving into hound guts, you know."
This one had clearly been hanging around Reece too much.
"Harness is ending, Chains will be next. Careful, everyone!" Vaessa waved at the hound, and the ribbon constricted around her body changed into four black pegs with a black chain. The sort used to leash circus animals, though certainly of a more magical variety.
The hound stood there immobilized, showing her dark yellow fangs and glaring at the bipeds passing by. Not making a single sound. It was stupid of me, probably, but even in the real world I had found about as much pity in myself for animals as for humans. Maybe more. This creature was from the Gray Frontier, and held a piece of the soul of the disavowed who had saved hundreds of thousands of people. I stopped in front of her, looking into those crimson eyes, and quietly said:
"Go, Myrna! Rynec would not want you to die. Go in peace, and farewell."
With a shrug and a sigh, I resumed following the others. It was all so strange. The necromancer's soul was there somewhere, in Limbh—and yet part of it was here? The dog could theoretically wait for her master to return. How long did he have left? Five hundred years? Maybe less?
"Prince!" Raena's warning cry brought me back to reality.
I whirled and froze. The hound stood a short distance away. No more shackles.
"Stay where you are," I commanded the guys, but they were in no hurry to attack. The beast was showing no aggression. She just stood there, her head inclined, and watched me. When she saw me turn, Myrna raised her head, howled loudly, and lay down on the ground, snout resting on her paws. She stayed still, not making a single move as we entered the building and brought the entrance down behind us. Incredible! A dungeon boss had refused to attack us! It was unthinkable, inexplicable... but it happened. So many things in this newborn world could not be explained. And maybe that was how it should be.
We reached the library in about three minutes. It wasn't far from the entrance, maybe about two hundred feet. Neither were the four packs of fifteen level 220 skeletal warriors and liches, but they were no trouble. In the games I played as a kid, mobs twenty or thirty levels below yours were guaranteed to be one-shot. Here, things were different on account of no level cap, but, usually, if a mob was one hundred levels below yours, one hit was all it took. Raena had demonstrated this at the gate, and she repeated it here. The girl simply took the lead, throwing Ice Discs as she went, apparently enjoying a break from healing. We simply followed, looting the bodies. I would rather have avoided touching the bones at all, but these one-off dungeons could have special surprises in them, so the effort was justified. In the end, those surprises amounted to four rare—only completely worthless—cloth pieces, two recipe scrolls for equally useless spells, and the standard assortment of alchemical reagents. Sure, there was probably someone who needed a fishing rod enchantment for +10 Fishing skill, but that person certainly wasn't me.
Only the dragons did nothing on the way to the library. They followed the group calmly, examining the cracked corridor walls with curiosity. Curiosity? How do I know that? No one knew how dragons thought. Humans couldn't even understand dogs' minds sometimes. Though dogs could be surprisingly articulate at times, that much was true. The dragons, on the other hand, were a complete mystery. They were also growing, and soon enough we wouldn't be able to take them with us into such places, absent some ingenious solution. As Nasreddin Hodja said, either the donkey would die, or the Emir would. Then again, it was probably possible to teach a donkey theology in this world. Give me twenty years, and Gloom will learn to swear.
The library itself was empty. Completely. A timeworn stone librarian's desk stood to the right of the entrance amidst a pile of dirt mingled with dust. Even the rats likely had nothing to do here. Fifteen hundred years! No tree in this place produced paper that would last that long. Perhaps the rats had eaten all the books and all the shelves, and then ran off somewhere else on important rat business.
"Well, then." Reece shook his head as he took a skeptical look around. "I was just so impressed with the outside that I wanted to study some necromancy... My rotten luck."
"Here you go, scholar." I handed him the clothing scraps from the undead and proceeded through a door in the far left corner into a small hall. "Let's check the place out, quickly. I'll get the box and we'll move out. Enough of these universities and cemeteries."
"We'll study alchemy, smart guy. In depth. As soon as we're out of here. Got it?" Vaessa's warning boded nothing good for the mage.
"OK, auntie, let's do that. I was actually going to ask you myself."
I didn't hear the rest. The more alchemists we had, the better, right?
The situation in the small hall was just like that in the larger one. Except for a strange odor like burning tire rubber. I walked over to the same place Rynec had, squatted down, wiped the mold from the wall, and removed my gauntlet. Now, to pull out the correct bricks. Damn. Have any of you ever tried to pull bricks out of a wall? Even loose ones? I hadn't. And presently I felt and looked like an idiot.
"Let me, prince," offered Raena silently. What, had she been a rogue or something before meeting Altus?
"Sure." I pointed the girl to the right section of the wall and stood aside.
She bent down, placed her open right palm against the wall, and calmly pulled the bricks out.
"You said you were a mage," said Raena, stacking the bricks on the floor and nodding at the revealed hiding place. "Standard adhesive spell. Pretty much the first one we learn."
"I'm about as good a mage as..." I stopped. She wouldn't understand my analogies, no more than she knew what "shit" meant. And I didn't feel like explaining. Reece was more than enough as far as curious party members went.
"I'll learn," I said with a smile, pulling out the box and opening it carefully.
You've completed the quest: Defending the Great City I.
You've accessed the quest: Defending the Great City II.
Quest type: hidden, chain.
Find the Gate of Inevitability in the catacombs of Vaedarr. Open this gate with the found seal and destroy the army of the Great Lord of Darkness, Teiran.
Reward: experience, increased reputation with Myrt the God of Wisdom and Battle Honor; increased reputation with Celphata the Goddess of Death and Rebirth; increased reputation with Liana the Goddess of Art; increased reputation with the human race; increased reputation with all the races in the Realm of Arkon, up to unfriendly (reputation with any race already higher than unfriendly would increase by the required number of points); unknown.
Attention! To complete this quest you will need at least 500 allies level 200 or above.
Attention! You can recruit up to 100 non-player characters to complete this quest.
Attention! You have limited time to complete this quest! If you fail to destroy the army of Teiran, the Great Lord of Darkness in the allotted time, you will fail the quest.
2113:35:47… 2113:35:46… 2113:35:45
Go to Vaedarr, Roman. Right now. And that's not a request.
I gave a weary sigh and looked at the cracking ceiling. Damn it all. I guess I was going there anyway. But why the hell did I need to destroy the whole army on my own? Vaedarr had guards. Legions! And why only one hundred NPCs? Where could I find four hundred allies? Thirty million players, and how many of them had reached level 200? How many of those level 200 players were willing to risk battle with a god's companion without knowing his tactics, led by some upstart demon? I was a prince in Craedia, but there, I was no one!
Some kind of Chinese-looking character glowed faintly in the center of a dark brown, star-shaped plate. It was the rune ansur. Another five runes decorated the star's points. The seal was mine. It could not be lost, not even if I wanted to lose it. And it could not be stolen, not even by Hart himself.
"Prince, you all right?" the sorceress asked, worried as she watched me contemplating the artifact in the box.
"You know," I closed the box and stashed it in my bag, then looked at her. "In the world I came from, they told me that whenever I was fed up and didn't know what to do, I should wave my right hand and say the magic word..."
"What magic word?"
A single F-bomb sufficed. I went for the exit, leaving Raena to consider the mystical nuances of that distant world.
I could make no sense of what was happening in the main hall. Reece was bent over, looking at something on the wall concealed by the librarian's stone desk. Vaessa stood just behind him, and Kan was sitting on the desk itself, looking bored. He smiled and nodded when he saw me.
"We found it."
"It" was a metal safe in the wall. Or something like that. A small rectangular door with a keyhole. It had probably been covered by a shelf or something, since any picture hanging this low would look dumb. Or maybe no one bothered to hide it, since it might just have contained the librarian's records. The key would be a random drop from local mobs or perhaps hanging out in some hiding spot nearby.
"Should we break the wall?" Reece asked as he stepped back.
"Mages, always out to break things," said Kan with a sigh as he hopped off the desk, pushed Reece aside, and bent over the metal box jutting out of the wall.
"Here." He pulled some kind of black prong with a round, silver top out of his bag and carefully slipped it inside the keyhole. I couldn't see what happened next—the knight-commander's massive back was in the way. But a couple of moments later, a deafening crack prompted Kan to straighten and tear the broken door off. He dropped a bit of powder inside, waited a few seconds, and then pulled out a battered notebook and handed it to me.
"I shudder to imagine what other hidden talents you might have, earl," whispered Reece with deep admiration as he scratched his chin in contemplation. "But auntie sure is lucky. She'll never starve with you around!"
Yeah, the foxes had seen so many interesting places in their day, and those places had so many vaults. So, I wasn't surprised that Champion Lars' right hand could open them without trouble.
"Is something wrong, Krian?" Vaessa asked when she noticed my expression.
Raena ratted me out. "He opened that box, looked inside, then started waving his arms and cursing in that tongue of his." Sensing the magus' question, she clarified. "That short word he likes. You know the one."
"Kan is right. Teiran is assembling his army in the catacombs of Vaedarr." I shrugged and turned my attention to the item the knight-commander had given me. "I'll fill you in later."
Huh. No, this isn't just a bunch of library records.
Grimoire of Putrefaction.
Epic, expendable.
Allows you to learn one or two unique skills from the dark magic and necromancy talent trees.
Disappears after use.
Conditions: level 240, degree of master of dark magic and necromancy.
Penned by Great Master of Dark Magic and Necromancy, Inuar.
It had a darkened, cracked leather cover, with damaged edges and a barely distinguishable ornamental pattern. The devs had created books of this kind for all classes, and this one was for a necromancer. Naturally. What else would this library have—a guide to gardening?
"Here you go," I said to Vaessa, handing her the grimoire, then I gestured to the way out. "Let's get out of here. Time to end this."
"Dar, I... I... for me?" The necromancer's daughter's eyes were wide as she looked up from the book's cover and pressed it tightly to her chest.
I remembered how Alyona would do that very thing with the Harry Potter books. Press them up against her like that. It was a different time, a different world, but girls still acted the same, at least.
Well, it's not feed for the dragons, woman!" I shook my head and headed for the door.
"Thank you!"
"Thank Kan," I chuckled. "And have patience—don't just start reading it right here. We need to finish our business first."
Chapter 13
Going on Rynec's recollections, studies in Ahn Kulad were barely different from those on Earth, complete with desks, chairs, and a black board on the wall behind the teacher. Why should the devs reinvent the wheel, after all? But time was merciless to all things. Now, the auditoriums held little else but walls cracked and stained with time, and heaps of rotting plants that had been blown through the broken windows. The undead here were level 250, and there were more of them than I could've imagined, but they didn't slow us down. Ten minutes later, we stood in front of the tall double doors of the Testing Hall—I knew the name from Rynec's memories. But the young necromancer had had no clue what this room was or what actually happened inside it. The scene had only flashed through his mind once—only once during my vision, anyway. And I was grateful for that. No one wants to gain the entire body of memories of another person.
Wavy vertical lines ran along the time-darkened metal. Four symmetrically arranged rhombuses ordained the doors. The door on the right had one of those hemisphere-shaped handles with a ring running through it. The doors were made of some unknown alloy, but who really cared? It was what lay beyond them that mattered. The stairs up to the third floor had collapsed and the roof had suffered worse, and this hall seemed to be the last room in the university's destroyed wing.
"We'll go in following our usual plan. T minus one minute." I glanced a question at our mage. "Reece, why don't you have your culinary buff active?"
"Forgot," said the mage, pulling a sandwich from his bag and taking a weary bite. "I can barely stand looking at this food, commander," he said, averting his eyes. "You should ask Raena to cook us something. I'm even willing to eat frogs, like my namesake from your world."
"I sure wouldn't mind that, either," said the sorceress, surprising everyone by her agreement with the mage. "But I'm the kind of cook who'd burn a salad." She looked at Reece's sandwich and sighed. "I just don't hate you enough to make you eat my cooking."
I agreed with them. Everyone was fed up with these boar meat sandwiches, but how should we have known that the march to the bloody Hall of the Ancient Kings would take over a week? All of us had to munch a buff, though, on account of it granting +30 to all stats. Not so much, really, but I shuddered to imagine what would have happened had we fought the undead in Dorca without Vaessa enjoying that extra boost.
"All right, let's go. I hope the final boss of this stupidly long dungeon is just ahead."
I smashed through the door and took a left so the others could follow. When I lived in Moscow, I hated when people would put on the brakes and freeze, right on a busy staircase, to read a sign or map and get their bearings. That would be fine in other places, but with hundreds of people behind you ascending the same stairs in an unceasing river
of humanity, well, to them you looked like an idiot. This was much the same. The passage was wide, and the aggro-free areas in every dungeon were rather large, but that was from the perspective of humans and demons. Having a couple of winged ten-foot dragons tagging along changed those calculations considerably.
"Well, then!" I said involuntarily having looked around the room, though calling the space a "room" would be quite a stretch.
It was a massive, square hall with walls made of downward streams of fog. The mirror floor was adorned with a disarray of geometric figures, reflecting the constellations of the night sky shining in from overhead. In the very center, two hundred feet from the entrance...
"The thirteen masters," I heard Vaessa whisper behind me. "My father told me about them. Now I see why the goddess could not find them and question them about what happened to her companion fifteen hundred years ago."
Master Kiyaret was in the center, with the other instructors atop each point of the monstrous twelve-pointed star inscribed into the floor. They did not move. Only a wind from some unknown origin barely rustled the fringes of their mantles along the floor. Their name glowered red over their heads, and all of them were level 250. Kiyaret had four hundred million HP, and each of his subordinates had forty million. A serious challenge even for a twenty-player raid party.