by Andrew Novak
Shadowslayer Dagger
Level: Legendary
There was nothing else – no bonuses, no instructions. The ancestors had been terse, but the modern design of Alterra provided much more informative descriptions.
The updates finally finished downloading and the image smoothed out. Jack took a few steps into the basement depths, to wherever Andrew Vigo had once set out. Because that man trekked down here for something. This place might have nothing valuable, or there might be something there. Jack walked around several pieces of black debris covered with carvings. Ahead, something glittered among the stones. Jack started to move closer, but the image in front of him began to shake and an admin message floated before his eyes:
Attention!
User "Andrew Vigo", you have been absent from Alterra for 2.#?? / undefined / years.
To verify your identity, enter the six-digit code sent to your personal communication device. You have 30 minutes to verify your identity. If you do not enter the code within this period, your account will be suspended.
Aw, dammit!
Although, not surprising. Without retinal identification, you had to jump through these kinds of hoops. What was with the personal communication device? Jack checked Andrew's conversations but there was nothing resembling a six-digit code. Nothing new, – a few admin messages and a single letter. Andrew hadn't been a very sociable guy.
Out of curiosity, Jack looked at the letter since it wasn’t very long. Someone with the username Doblin-Doe wrote to Andrew:
That passage from the legend that you were asking about goes like this:
"When the Dragon God cast out the King of Demons Azeroth, he, dying, peered at his shadow and said:
'Oh, how splendid my Shadow is!'
The King of Demons let a tear of delight fall, the only tear of his entire life because Demons do not cry, and Kings least of all. This tear held within it all things, life and death, beauty and ugliness, cruelty and compassion. The tear fell onto the Shadow of the King of Demons and pierced it, like a thorn pierces silk."
There wasn’t anything else. I don't know why the hell you need the overwrought crap that the writers come up with.
After he finished reading, Jack suddenly realized – he hadn't done what he should have from the very first minute! It could only be explained by the fact that he was in the body of someone else's character and it still didn't feel like his own. Remembering himself, Jack opened the map of Alterra. He examined it – oh, boy, he was very far north. At the edge of the Fasheer marshes. Jack's own character hadn't made it this far north and this area remained uniformly gray for him. In Andrew's version of the map, a bizarre, winding line led to this place from Svetlograd, the capital of Havian. It looked like Andrew had doggedly walked specifically to this place. Jack pushed on, avoiding the debris... He had less than a half an hour to figure out what he was looking for.
Frowning, Jack looked at an area on the map near the spot where the tiny triangle representing his character was. Ruins... and a portal. It was the familiar silver circle of a standard portal, but with a golden lock superimposed on it. A closed padlock. What did that mean?
He shook his head, gathering his wits. It was a locking spell. This sometimes happened when a guild or high-level player discovered a new area or, more likely, got stuck in a place without people, then performed the ritual to seal the local portal, making it difficult for others to use. To ensure no one would block all public portals, this ritual was expensive enough that people didn't use them too often.
Did that mean that there was someone else here? He looked around, thinking. No, not necessarily. The portal may have been locked and whoever did it was outside somewhere. Or was in here... it was impossible to tell.
Closing the map, Jack looked very closely at the glittering thing he had seen earlier. Dim light filtered in through the opening above, rainbow sparkles playing off the small object that was lying on the floor among the black debris.
He cautiously approached it and bent over a crystal-clear droplet, incongruously clean and transparent in the surrounding black stone.
Tear of the Demon King Azeroth
Level: Epic
Attributes unknown
Epic? That was essentially the highest level. Epic-level items in Alterra could only be what they called "prime relics". Only a few of them existed and dated back to when the gods created the world. Jack couldn't even begin to imagine how much such a thing might be worth.
"Well, well... So this is where the final battle of Azeroth and the Dragon God happened..."
Now Jack looked around the ruins with a great respect. None other than the Dragon God himself made that hole in the roof when he had caught up with his enemy in his last refuge. It was in exactly this spot where the King of Demons last saw his shadow.
"Whatever its attributes, an epic-level item can't be cheap," Jack said, resuming his conversation with the long-dead pickup driver, "And I understand why you died as you did. In fact, it's a shame. To reach your objective, to see the epic-level Tear, and – bam! The world falls to pieces, the electricity cuts off, Alterra won't load... and then your pickup flies into a pit... Fate – what a bitch!"
Jack bent over the Tear.
"All that's left is to figure out how to get my avatar here. Judging by your map, that old thing, there is a portal here, but I can't use it because if I sign on my account, this portion of the map will be gray to me. Moreover, the portal is locked, which means that neither of us can use it. To come to you here, I’d have to stomp across half the continent. Maybe while I still have Vigo's avatar, I can take the Tear somewhere and hide it a bit better within half an hour? I don't know when I'll be able to come for your legacy."
The Tear was one quarter the size of a fist and was quite light, but when he tried to lift the artifact he felt resistance. The sensation didn't last long, though; the bottom part simply had a conical shape and was stuck in the inky stone. It wasn't too difficult for Jack to pull the tip out of the pile.
Then the floor came to life. A concentric wave ran across the coal-black tiles. Something made of the same ebony as the room gathered toward the center, toward the little recess left by the Tear. The thing was swelling and rising... Jack backed away and a dark figure, similar to a man draped in a loose cloak, began to grow out of the floor in front of him. It was black, of course. The stooping, silent figure grew and grew... the Shadow! It was the Shadow of Azeroth himself!
"Like a thorn pierces silk," he remembered the words from the letter! The Tear had pinned the Shadow to the floor, the darkness fastened to black stone, and Jack had pulled that "pin", releasing the Shadow. Although the Shadow hadn't done anything threatening so far, Jack sensed danger. A dark, deadly danger. Such a malevolent and insidious creature like the King of Demons couldn't possibly depart this world without one final trick. And Alterra's writers, even those who wrote the texts for the beta version long ago, could not pass up the opportunity. Fortunately, Andrew Vigo had prepared for this. Remembering the black dagger, Jack yanked it out and when the dark, stooping figure lurched at him, he met it with a long thrust.
The dagger pierced the blackness. The impact of steel against the Shadow was noticeable but... nothing happened. The Shadow continued to move toward a recoiling Jack, who was backing away, stammering,
"Hey, that's not fair! Shadowslayer should have killed you! What the hell?!"
He turned and ran to the opening, shot up the rockslide toward the light and tumbled out. It turned out that, in his hurry, he had climbed the pile of rubble up to the second floor. The ground was three meters below him, so that fall came hard.
You receive damage!
You lose 4 hit points!
To hell with it, it would regenerate.
Judging by the clatter of stone behind him, the Shadow wasn’t far behind. Jack glanced around. Ruins stretched out around the destroyed palace. Fallen columns, statues, and remnants of walls – everything was black. Even the creeping shoots entangled in the
rock. There was no end in sight to this demon city’s boneyard.
Winding through the ruins in the direction of the sealed portal, Jack glanced behind. The Shadow was headed for him and picking up speed. Daylight didn't scare it. Here it touched a piece of stonework in the place where its shoulder should be under the dark cloak, and rocks sprayed out in different directions. The Shadow raced forward, colliding with remains of the building and destroying everything that it came across.
Among the ruins ahead, Jack noticed movement and swerved toward it. The sound of smashing stone didn't cease; the Shadow remained on his tail.
On the sunny lawn between the boulders, a bunch of ugly green goblins were scurrying about. Jack ran straight for them. The one closest to him dropped the black boulder he'd been dragging and bared its yellow teeth. Jack kicked it with his boot and kept running. The rest of the little beasts scrambled after him but the Shadow crashed into them. Jack, already turning the corner of a squat building, heard a piteous squeal. He ran along the wall, hunting for a place he could slip into and hide.
The Shadow tarried a bit. Goblins were screeching so pathetically that it was clear they wouldn't keep it long. A small green figure flew over the wall that Jack was running along. A dead goblin flipped in the air, its limbs swinging limply, and smashed to the ground. The squealing ceased. Jack, not stopping, slipped into a moss-covered crevice, turned again, then once more. It looked like he had lost it, but probably not for long.
Attention!
User "Andrew Vigo", to confirm your identity, enter the six-digit code.
Time remaining: 20 minutes.
Chapter Two. The Shadowslayer
MECHANICALLY WAVING away the messages obstructing his view, Jack started running toward an arch. Were these the remains of the old city's wall? No, it was just some courtyard wall. The ruins continued beyond it. On the other side of the wall, he could hear voices. Young, clear, and excited... This area wasn't completely deserted, then. There was someone else here besides the goblin NPCs. Jack took off across the courtyard in the direction of the voices.
"Kill it!"
"These two are mine! Don't touch them!”
He could hear the clatter of weapons and goblins screeching. Jack looked around but the shadow was nowhere to be seen. He then very carefully peeked through the opening.
There were a dozen players goofing off on the other side of the wall. They were too far away for him to read their stats, but he got the general idea. A group of low-level players was here killing goblins to earn XP. There was no one else in the ruins, so it was a special location. In these kinds of places, players can earn XP faster by killing NPCs. They looked like the initiates of some guild.
Jack had never been in a guild. He was too... How to put it? It was just that he didn't like being responsible for others and always believed that people should be in charge of themselves. It wasn’t right when the head of your guild calls the shots for you, nor is it right when you do the same for other guild members. That was why he appreciated the way the man who created Andrew Vigo set up his own death. He had chosen for himself and followed through.
Most players in Alterra adhered to entirely different principles. Like this situation, for example: one of the more experienced guild fighters opened the way to the abandoned city, sought out the portal, and now he could lead the initiates here to hunt. They were having a ball – Jack heard their excited shouting, heard the goblins squealing. The goblins were small and very aggressive. Their programming instructed them to attack without hesitation, not even realizing that they were simply skewering themselves on the player's swords.
If he booked it to the portal right now, the hunters might get caught up in the moment and attack him... And what was the point? The portal was locked.
Then something changed, and Jack could easily guess what it was. The crevice through which he had been watching was narrow and it was difficult to see, but the excited shouts ceased. The players were retreating, huddling together. Jack saw them look toward their leader- the experienced warrior who had brought them here. He was easy to pick out by his powerful armor.
"What the hell?" the warrior asked loudly. "This wasn't here before. Try your arrows!"
Now that the entire group was in Jack's field of vision, he could see there were more than ten people. Some of them equipped crossbows. Arrows rained down, but the squad continued to retreat. The players backed away; it was clear they couldn't win this battle. It was one thing to hack little goblins to pieces, but it was another thing entirely when a creature that swats arrows away like flies is chasing you.
"Come on, come on, run for the portal," Jack urged. "That's right, get worked up enough that you don't even notice the strange player run out with you. I'll teleport with you, find a bank, and leave my treasure there for my character. It's easy, you guys, just run for the portal! The Shadow will chase after you and I’ll slip through!"
Attention!
User "Andrew Vigo", to confirm your identity, enter the six-digit code.
Time remaining: 15 minutes.
"What are you doing?!"
Jack even pounded his fists on the rocks in frustration. These idiots, instead of booking it to the portal and saving their own asses, decided to fight the black apparition. While the portal, judging from the map was just on the other side of the yard! The Shadow floated closer... Now Jack could take a proper look at the creature – it was a tall, dark silhouette, a shadowy plume trailed behind it along the rocks, like a long cloak. The beast was corporeal in the sense that it cast a rather normal shadow in the sunlight, albeit one with a slightly grotesque form.
The dark figure stretched out its arms, two spears of absolute darkness, toward its attackers.
It was a quick encounter. The Shadow easily blocked any weapons aimed in its direction and broke them effortlessly. It increased its speed and crashed into the crowd, darting around between the fighters. Now their cries, which they initially used to motivate themselves, became cries of alarm. The Shadow managed to kill a few people before the rest scattered in different directions.
"Fools!" Jack declared in annoyance when he checked the map and saw that no one was running toward the portal. "What a bunch of dimwits."
The Shadow darted around the ruins – overtaking, thrashing, and destroying. And remained between Jack and the portal. The timer was steadily ticking. A new message popped up before him:
Attention!
User "Andrew Vigo", to confirm your identity, enter the six-digit code.
Time remaining: 10 minutes.
"Time to change the plan," Jack said to himself.
He walked to the end of the wall, peered out to be certain that the Shadow was focused on the fleeing group, then scrambled from one hiding place to the next, making his way to a pair of fighters hiding in a pit behind a fallen column. They were laying low, watching the clearing, where the Demon Shadow of the King flitted in a complicated zigzag – from the prostrate form of one enemy to the next target. Their bodies were slowly vanishing.
Jack went around the would-be warriors' hidey-hole and crouched over the pit.
"I see that you're in a bit of trouble," he announced in a hushed voice.
They nearly jumped out of their skins.
"And who are you?!” one asked. “Where did you come from? These hunting grounds belong to our guild!"
Jack spotted their guild insignia, two crossed shovels. "Brotherhood of Gravediggers". It sounded badass, but this pair definitely didn't look all that bold.
"I'm an errant knight, saving all who find themselves in danger. See the white horse and suit of armor? No? Oh, well. Just tell me, are you in trouble or not? Do you need help?"
"Well..."
Jack's new friends looked at each other uncertainly. Got it. They were used to living under the command of a senior officer. And here he was! The warrior in charge of the goblin hunting party, in full heavy armor, fell into the same pit, where the pair of guild members was already hiding.
> "Bastard," he muttered, "shit… my helmet and dagger! I dropped my helm and dagger! And the rez point, damn it, is right nearby, just inside the chapel! Two minutes and you're right back in front of that monster. Just barely got away before it noticed me.”
Attention!
User "Andrew Vigo", to confirm your identity, enter the six-digit code.
Time remaining: 7 minutes.
"Here's the deal," Jack said, interrupting their complaints. "Decide quickly – do you need help or not? I won't wait forever."
The senior member turned toward him, "You're not one of us."
Above him floated:
Burt, Scand
Expertise: 31
Health: 45
"I repeat, I'm willing to help you. I will draw the creature off, distract it, while you haul ass to the portal. You got a better suggestion?”
"Not a good one," Burt sighed. "But what is that thing? It cut me down in two hits. And I'm wearing the Breastplate of Courage, by the way."
He was supposed to ask threateningly what a stranger was doing in an area that the Brotherhood of Gravediggers claimed for themselves, but their present situation was lousy.
"I'm not sure, but something demonic. But I do know someone who can help you get rid of that thing. At the very least, he'll try."
"Go on, go on," Burt nodded nervously.
"Where does that portal exit?"