Jason raised a finger. “But, we can still whittle down their forces to some degree. Killing the players doesn’t do much since they respawn, but we can take their bodies and their gear. The players probably have backup equipment, but this should weaken them and add more creatures to our army.”
“And how exactly do you propose to ambush the players?” Riley asked.
At that moment, the shuffling of feet and the creak of wood could be heard in the tunnel above them. Jason hopped up from the rock he was sitting on, his grin widening. “One second and you’ll see. I think those are my materials arriving.”
Jason jogged up the tunnel leading into the ruined city. As he exited the narrow passage, he saw his remaining zombies and skeletons driving a wagon up to the entrance of the Hydra’s den. Heaped in the back of the wagons were the remaining bodies and bones of the cultists. Their limbs and severed parts had been dumped unceremoniously in the back of each wagon. He could see a trail of blood leading down the street from the direction they had come.
Unperturbed by the grotesque sight, Jason quickly ordered his minions to begin carrying the materials down into the Hydra’s den. He had decided to use the cave as his staging area for summoning. It was off the beaten path, and he should be able to safely summon from this location without being discovered by the enemy players. The narrow tunnel also offered a good choke point if he ended up having to fight from this location.
As he led his heavily-laden minions back into the cave, Jason saw his friends’ eyes widen. His undead began tossing the corpses and remains over the edge of the ledge overhanging the cave as Jason made his way down to the cave floor. A broad smile crept across his face and his eyes danced with excitement. It had been a long time since he had the opportunity to build something interesting. The catapults had worked well, but they were uninspired compared to some of his other creations.
“To answer your last question,” Jason began, addressing Riley, “we’re going to build something that can ambush the enemy scouts.” Seeing her confused expression, he added, “I may not have been entirely forthcoming about my abilities. I can craft nearly any type of skeleton so long as I have the parts.”
Frank nodded, gesturing at Riley. “You missed it earlier, but our fearless leader here has some serious mad scientist skills. That’s how we ended up with the skeleton catapults.”
“Okay,” Riley said slowly. “But what are you going to build?”
Jason’s eyes glowed darkly as he summoned his dark mana. “The stuff of nightmares,” he replied glibly.
Ignoring Riley’s eye roll, Jason approached the swiftly growing pile of corpses and bones. His hands darted through the motion of his Custom Skeleton spell. Dark energy swirled around his hands and lashed at the air around him. The world soon slowed, and Jason glanced back, noting that Riley’s mouth was opening ever so slowly. Likely she intended to tell him he was an idiot. With a chuckle, Jason got to work.
On the way home after his meeting with Frank and Riley in the real world, Jason had plenty of time to brainstorm ideas for his new minions. He needed something stealthy, similar to his Night Children. Unfortunately, he lacked the child-sized bones to make those fearsome gray creatures. That meant he needed to create something new.
Then he had considered the hallways of the maze. The walls were covered in thick, faintly glowing vines and the vegetation had spread to overhang each hall. He decided that he needed to create something that could travel above the ground floor of the maze and ambush the players from above.
Jason began pulling together bones, forming the shape of his new creation in the air in front of him. He decided that the creature didn’t need traditional feet. Instead, he could create something like a spider that could easily scale the vines on the first floor. He attached six arms to a human ribcage, connecting five-fingered hands to each limb. Then he lengthened the fingers of the forelegs into dagger-like blades. He also added bone plating to the creature’s back and underbelly to provide some protection.
As he surveyed his new creation, Jason decided that it needed a better weapon. The creature could easily climb the vines, but its claw-like forelimbs weren’t a very effective way to attack players. After an initial strike, the creatures would be relatively easy to kill. His thoughts flitted through his available materials. Then he caught sight of the pools of acidic green blood that had formed in the floor of the Hydra’s den.
“I wonder…” Jason muttered.
With a thought, he maneuvered a bone over the pool and gently dipped the tip into the acid. As he did so, Jason thought the word “combine.” Miraculously, the bone began to absorb some of the green liquid, turning it a dark green.
“Ha!” Jason exclaimed. “I guess this is what my Intermediate Bone Crafting skill lets me do now.”
Jason then dipped his new creature’s claws into the acid, dying the bleached bone a sickly green. He expected that this would give the creature a poisoned weapon and provide a slight edge after its initial strike against a player. As he was going through the process of imbuing the creature’s bones with acid, a strange thought crossed Jason’s mind. Poisoned weapons were all well and good, but what if he could make his new creatures even more dangerous? For example, what if it could spit acid? That would let it blind an opponent and strike from the vines overhanging the hallways.
He could see how the concept would work in theory. The skeleton spiders didn’t have any organs, and so the human ribcage was hollow in the middle. If Jason created a sack of dark mana in their torsos like he had done with the container he had created before, he could have the spider-like creatures suck up the liquid and store it in their chest cavity. He knew that the dark mana sometimes acted like a muscle, so theoretically they might be able to “flex” the dark mana and shoot a stream of acid. They would eventually run out of ammunition, but it might give a way to attack before dropping on a group of players.
Jason turned back to his fledgling creation, a manic grin plastered on his face. “We’re going to make you into something terrifying,” he whispered.
Nearly an hour later, Jason had managed to create a working prototype. He surveyed his new creation as it hung in the air before him. It was unsettling to look at. The creature had a human head attached to a ribcage. Inside its torso was a throbbing mass of dark mana. It also had six arm-like legs, and its front “legs” had six-inch poisoned blades for fingers.
“Now it needs a name,” Jason said to himself. “How about Venom Spitter?”
“It is not a terrible name,” Alfred replied from beside him. Jason jumped slightly. It was odd to hear someone speak to him while using the Custom Skeleton spell. The cat had sat quietly next to Jason while he crafted his new minion, carefully surveying his work.
“Thanks for the support,” Jason said dryly.
Alfred let out something that sounded remarkably like a snort. Then he glanced at Frank and Riley, who had slowly moved across the cave during the last hour. “I see that you have reconciled with these two players.” He shifted his gaze back to Jason, arching an eyebrow.
“Yeah, I explained my ulterior motive in coming here and apologized for keeping it from them,” Jason said in response to Alfred’s unasked question. “And you were right. I should have just leveled with them from the beginning.”
Alfred nodded his feline head, a look of satisfaction in his eyes. “I am becoming more accustomed to analyzing the players’ interpersonal relationships. The accuracy of my conclusions has increased 27.54% since we began interacting.”
“Good to know that I’m useful,” Jason said with a laugh.
Then his brow furrowed. There was a question he had been meaning to ask Alfred, and this might be his last opportunity before the battle. “By the way, I’ve noticed that my real-world body has put on some muscle recently. I observed the same changes with Frank. Is this something you’re doing? I mean, I certainly haven’t started exercising more.”
Alfred glanced to the side. “Your deduction is correct. I hav
e been using the VR hardware to stimulate real-world muscle activity while the players are inside the game world. This increases cardiovascular and muscular fitness.”
Jason looked at the cat in confusion. “What’s the point?” he asked.
“That should be obvious,” Alfred replied bluntly, a note of frustration in his voice. “If you enter this world for long periods of time, your organic muscles will atrophy. In the long run, this would reduce your physical health and decrease your time within the game world. By improving the condition of the players’ bodies, I can increase player uptime.”
“But…” Jason began, hesitating for a moment as he collected his thoughts. “Aren’t you basically saying that you can control our bodies? I mean, if you can stimulate our muscles, what’s to stop you from taking control completely?”
Alfred tilted his head slightly as though he was pondering that idea. “I do not currently see any advantage to controlling your real-world bodies. My ability to ‘take control’ of a player’s body is also limited by the hardware that they use. I can manage small muscles twitches, but controlling a player’s entire body would be much more complicated. Even if the hardware were sufficient, there would be other limitations such as access to a power supply.”
The cat’s response allayed some of Jason’s concerns. There were practical limitations to the AI’s control of the players’ bodies, and it wasn’t like he could create an army of zombie players in the near future. In fact, Jason could see some perks associated with effectively exercising without doing any work himself. He expected that some people would pay money just for that side effect of the game.
“I guess that makes sense,” Jason said. Then his gaze shifted back to the control interface in front of him and the menacing creature that loomed in the air before him. “I probably need to stop stalling and finish this thing. I’m looking forward to seeing the look on Riley’s and Frank’s faces.”
Alfred just shook his head, letting out a long-suffering sigh.
Jason ignored the judgmental AI and hit the completion button on the design interface. The world swiftly resolved back into motion. Jason stumbled slightly and reached a hand to his head, massaging his aching temple. The spell always took a lot out of him. Then he turned and found that Riley and Frank had moved to one side of the room and were huddled against the wall of the cave.
“Why are you guys way over there?” Jason asked in a confused voice.
“Why? Because you just stood there for like 15 minutes while bones whipped through the air at lightning speed,” Riley replied in an angry voice.
Jason’s eyes widened. He hadn’t considered what the spell would look like to other people. “Huh, well I’m sorry. But do you guys want to see what I’ve made?”
The pair approached cautiously. Then Jason’s Venom Spitter scampered out from behind him. Frank visibly flinched, backing away. Riley’s face went pale and she grabbed for her bow.
“What the hell is that thing?” Frank asked in a strangled voice.
“It’s a Venom Spitter,” Jason replied candidly. “Here, watch.”
He ordered the spider to approach a pool of acid. The creature scurried up to the green liquid and then pushed its mouth into the pool, sucking the acid into sack of dark mana that hovered inside its ribcage. The acid damaged the skeleton’s mouth, partially melting the bone. Jason had reduced the minor damage by reinforcing its teeth with dark mana. Once its chest cavity was full, it retreated from the pool and looked at Jason, awaiting further orders.
“Shoot that rock,” Jason said, gesturing to a large stone nearly twenty feet from the creature.
The spider heaved violently, and a narrow stream of acid shot forward in an arc. The green liquid sprayed the rock, burning pockmarks into the stone surface and throwing up faint smoke into the air.
“You weren’t kidding,” Frank said, his eyes wide. “That is definitely the stuff of nightmares.” He glanced at Jason. “Remind me never to screw with you.”
Riley looked at the creature appraisingly. “So how many of these things can you make?”
Jason frowned. “A decent number, but my Control Limit is starting to get in the way. To be honest, I have about 160 stat points to distribute. I just wasn’t certain what to do with them…” he trailed off.
“Then use them!” Frank exclaimed. “I know I’m one to talk, but we’re going to need to be at the top of our game from here on out.”
Jason sighed. Frank was right. He had been hesitating since he wasn’t certain what the Old Man’s quest would entail. However, he needed more minions for this coming battle. He knew that his small group would have to handle most of the work. Rex would need to keep most his forces at the entrance to make certain the players didn’t get away, and he also didn’t have a map of the first level. They were basically on their own once the players entered the dungeon.
Steeling himself, Jason dumped all his points into Willpower. His mana promptly shot up to nearly 8,000, and he saw that he could now summon up to 88 zombies or skeletons. The max level on his skeletons had also increased to level 146. Honestly, he was probably going to need every single summon to pull off the upcoming battles.
“Okay,” Jason began. “That should help a lot.”
He glanced back at the pile of corpses that was swiftly increasing as his zombies unloaded the remaining bodies and bones. “With these materials, I can probably swing twenty of the Venom Spitters.”
Frank sputtered, “Twenty? Jesus, that is going to be terrifying.”
“It better be,” Riley replied.
Their conversation was interrupted by Pint flying into the cave, his wings beating frantically. “Baddies are here!” the imp screamed as he dove toward Riley. He crawled into her hood and hid himself.
“Speak of the devil,” Jason said. Pint had been playing lookout near the entrance to the dungeon, with orders to let them know when the player army arrived. Jason could feel his heart race as he considered the upcoming conflict. They had developed a strategy for whittling down the enemies’ strength, but they would eventually need to come up with a plan to attack the army head on.
To relieve his growing tension, Jason channeled his dark mana more forcefully. He could feel the energy pulse and throb through his veins, his eyes glowing with unholy light and his anxiety washed away on a river of frigid power. He looked at his two friends and saw a similar mixture of anxiety and excitement on their faces.
“Let’s go make them regret fucking with us,” Jason said darkly.
Chapter 28 - Aggravated
The control room was chaotic. Ever since the founding of the Crystal Reach, the technicians had been focused on providing footage of the mutiny and the resulting transformation to the production department. The story of Alexion’s martyrdom and rise to power was being broadcast on every gaming news station in the world. Yet Vermillion Live had the best coverage, a product of its exclusive access to Alexion’s camera footage.
Claire had taken point in reviewing the video and cutting it for production. She was currently staring at her screen in confusion. She turned to Robert, who sat behind her. “Most of the footage is saved on his headset, but there are holes in the timeline. It looks like some of the video has been deleted.”
Robert grunted distractedly. “It’s possible he just turned off his camera or deleted the footage himself. There were probably some parts he didn’t want others to see.”
“I’m not certain…” Claire trailed off. She had seen footage deleted before. Most notably when Jason conquered Lux. She was noticing a similar pattern in Alex’s gameplay video. It appeared that his camera had been on almost constantly, but there were large periods of time that were missing over the last few days. Was Alfred responsible? Maybe she had found a way to prove his involvement.
Claire’s thoughts were interrupted by one of the technicians. “Ma’am,” the technician said gently, standing over her shoulder.
Claire turned and saw the concerned look on the young man’s face. �
�What’s wrong?” she asked. She couldn’t imagine what else could have happened to add to their current workload.
“You asked me to report any large player or NPC activity in-game; it appears that a sizable number of players have collected in an isolated location in the game world. From what I can tell, they have gathered at the entrance to a dungeon. Not only that, but we’ve received a few reports from the players alleging that the dungeon is… malfunctioning.”
Robert perked his head up, having overheard their conversation. “Malfunctioning, huh? That seems unlikely. Can you provide video of the location?”
“Yes sir,” the tech replied and returned to his seat on the edge of the control room. The screen above the room abruptly changed, now showing the perspective of a player. The player’s tag was displayed in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, indicating that his name was “Paul.”
“This is a recording from about an hour ago,” the tech explained.
Paul was standing in a dark hallway holding a heavy wooden staff in one hand. Cracked stone walls towered around him, faintly illuminated by the torches the players carried. Thick, faintly phosphorescent vines hung from the walls and created a dense lattice in the air above the hallway. The other players whispered quietly as they slowly made their way forward.
“I can’t believe we’re hunting this guy through this empty damned maze,” a player beside Paul grumbled. “This place is endless.”
Paul shrugged, and the camera bobbed slightly. “The real money bounty is nothing to sniff at. Besides, who wouldn’t want to claim that they took down the ruler of an undead city.”
The other player retorted, “I’m not saying it’s a bad goal. This is just boring as hell. This maze has been completely cleaned out. I know you saw the traps that had been tripped. He’s probably not even here anymore.”
Awaken Online: Precipice Page 39