Low Quality Communication Crystal
» Contacts: 0
» Max contacts: 100
» Max connections at the same time: 1
"Wow! Thanks! What is it?" I had a pretty good idea from reading the description, but it was my first time seeing it; whenever possible, it's always good to get a full explanation.
"God, you are a super newbie, aren't you?"
"Yup."
He sighed. "There is no native friend list for fast communication in Valia. This is a communication crystal, something like those old phones which could only be used to talk to people. I'll never understand those people of old; if they have to carry a big chunk of metal around, why not put something fun in it, like internet? Here, touch mine with yours and you will understand," he took out another crystal.
Forcing myself not to comment on the awkwardness of his phrasing, I did as instructed and an exclamation point appeared.
New crystal synchronized!
Please, choose a name tag for the new crystal
Ted, I thought and the window updated.
New contact added!
Name tag: Ted
"Did you do it? Good. Now you just need to think about contacting me, and you will be able to. You don't even have to touch the crystal, and it can't be lost on death."
"Sounds like a friend list to me."
"It sorta is. But NPCs can have this crystal too. And it cost some money."
"Really? Contact NPCs at a distance? That changes some things."
"Don't get all worked up, getting NPCs to show you theirs isn't easy."
This time, I couldn't stay quiet. "The way you say it, I get a little ashamed of touching my crystal with yours."
I could swear he blushed, even though he was completely white.
"You don't say that to a lady!"
"Just kidding. I'm straight, you know. One hundred percent. One hundred and ten. Don't worry about me."
"What are you talking abo- Oh. Oh!" Ted looked like he had just found the cure for cancer. "You think I'm gay."
"Obviously, since you said so yourself." Ted laughed for a long time while I just watched until I became annoyed. "What?"
"You silly," the ghost said between laughs. "I'm not gay. I'm a woman."
"Oh, right, of course. I always mix up transgender with sexual preference. My bad."
He laughed harder. "No, I was born a woman outside too."
I frowned. "What are you talking about? You have no sex change mark." Players of a biological sex which wanted to play the opposite sex received a small tattoo on their necks. That way V-Soft hoped to avoid some lawsuits from unhappy people who felt cheated.
"Of course not. My character is female."
"I repeat, what are you talking-" I stopped mid-sentence as I looked better at Ted. I couldn't see the ghosts features and his voice also sounded like a child's, but children didn't have defined gender voices. "But you said you'll become a strong man."
"No, you did. I thought you were joking around. That talk about since when I knew I was a woman was strange, but I wasn't expecting this!"
"Holy shit, my mind just blew." Ted laughed. Now that I knew she was a she, the laugh sounded more musical. That's psychology and preconception for you. "Wait, what's your name?"
"It's really Ted. My name in the real world is Theodora."
"Now even Ted sounds another way to me. What the hell, man."
"Not man, woman."
"Right. What the hell, woman!"
"No, not that way! It sounds like you will order me to go and make you a sandwich!"
"Well, what are you waiting for?" I forced myself to sound like an old man. "That sandwich is not going to make itself, woman."
She slapped my shoulder again. It felt completely different. My mind was really blown.
"Wait, I think now we should go back to the dead dogs and walk everything again. Now that I know there is a single girl next to me, I must hit on you. For my honor."
"Oh, right, because you are the alpha male, right?"
"That too. But mainly because you are rich."
"Hey!"
I smiled.
"What?"
"You rejected my interest for being rich but said nothing about being single. Are you pretty?"
She rolled her eyes. "Not interested, no matter what you say."
I had heard that before and two hours later the girl had been exhausted beside me on the bed. A ghost wasn't really my style, though, and I decided to drop it.
We walked in silence for some time.
"What are you thinking about?" She talked first like she always did when it became quiet for a time. Typical girl meeting a new boy: couldn't stand silence.
"I'm just thinking about all our conversation. It looks a lot different now that I know you're a woman. It makes a lot more sense."
"Oh," she sounded disappointed for some unknown reason. "Well, I must go. Dad is getting home soon, and he doesn't know I play."
"Naughty girl. I like it."
"Oh my god, you are just an ass like every other gamer, aren't you?"
"You offend me. I like to think I'm the master of asses. If you know what I mean."
She rolled her eyes. "I hate you. Please, die. I mean it."
I laughed. "Not happening. Too many asses to conquer."
"God. No wonder you became a virgin gamer."
"You'd be surprised," I winked at her. "Girls sometimes just want to have fun with the first brave idiot that appears in their way."
"Right, I'm sure you get lots of girls."
"I do."
"What about your nonexistent family's future?"
"What, you think this is a bad place for pick-up?" I opened my arms. There was no one around except for us. "I bet that's why you're here too. Just stop hitting on me, please; I'm not interested."
Crossing her arms, she sniffed. "As if. I'm just playing to annoy my dad when he finds out. I hate games and gamers."
I frowned. "So, if you want to get caught by your father, why do you want to log out before he gets home?"
"It can't be that easy, can it? It must look like I'm trying to hide it. He gets home and notices the ugly IR helmet is a little hot. At first, he thinks it's his imagination, but it keeps happening over and over again. Then he gets suspicious and asks me, and I deny it. Then he comes home early, find me, I cry about how he's not paying attention to me, and he feels guilty. We go to Hawaii, and he becomes attentive for some months. When he becomes distant again, I repeat the process using another excuse."
"Damn, girl. Can't you just talk to him?"
"Of course, I can. But where would be the fun in that?"
"Yeah, silly me. So, after this brilliant speech, I think I'll just forget about getting myself a wife and turn all my money into game cash asap."
"You better do that; you wouldn't last a single second with a smart woman."
"Oh, maybe I should find myself a dumb one, then."
"If you are half the smartass you look, you will just be bored by a dumb woman."
"You're a connoisseur, huh?"
"I like to think so. I'll introduce you to a gamer friend someday. I think you'll like her."
"Thanks, Madam. I'm eternally indebted to you."
"You bet you are. Nany is a piece of art, too good for the likes of you. But it'd be fun to see you two interact."
"Nany? Like in the woman who takes care of children?"
"Yes. But now I have to go. See you!" Without another word, she turned back and floated away. I watched her go until she simply disappeared out of existence a few hundred meters away.
Out of curiosity, I went to the same place. When I was a few meters away, two big headless ghostly horsemen appeared from what I supposed was an invisible barrier. They were not white like Ted; still semi-transparent, they at least had colors.
The horses were brown muscled animals and the riders' plate armors were metallic gray. On the breast, there was a symbol: an open white hand, drawn in a way that gave the imp
ression of someone having put their hand on paint and then pressing it on the armor.
They didn't act aggressively, just stood there in their plate, metal lances held high. The moment I took another step, the lances pointed directly at me.
"Ahmn... I'm Jack. Can I enter, please?"
Headless that they were, they didn't answer. I made a gesture as if I was preparing to take another step ahead and both horsemen got into a position that was clearly offensive. Not in a dying mood, I turned back toward the drow kingdom.
I tripped on a logus coming out of the ground, but it just ignored me while digging. Weird monsters.
Ted had been... A piece of work. Her open talk about how she was manipulating the situation to get attention from her father was touching, in a twisted way. Still, I had no intention of meddling with her. Too crazy for my tastes.
She seemed to make a nice friend, though.
The drow kingdom chamber was huge and completely bare. No rocks, no plants, nothing to obstruct the view or hinder movement. It was a different kind of protection than the straight tunnel leading to the prison, which forced people to walk one by one. Here, any invading army would have to bring their own defenses to a desolate area and be vulnerable to attacks from all sides while on the move.
There were three villages that I could see, all of them without walls. The constructions were made of stone and rarely were higher than two floors, except for some square towers on the outskirts of the villages. Guard towers, I supposed.
Each village was tens of kilometers away from each other. I went for the nearest one.
When I was still some hundred meters away, a big fire was lit above the nearest guard tower. I kept walking, and a few meters later an arrow hit the floor just before me.
Is this serious? First the ghosts and now the drow. How the hell do they even practice commerce?
"Hey!" My yell didn't see to go too far in the vastness of the cave. "I'm just a traveler! I'm looking for work, anything, from rat extermination to whatever you have that your people don't want to do! Please, let me in!"
Two seconds later a second arrow came, this time, closer.
Damn savages.
I gave the village a wide berth and went to the next one, where I received the same treatment. On the third, I got annoyed.
"Listen, you damn closed minded asses, can you at least tell me-" My yell was replaced by a scream of pain as an arrow hit my shoulder with such force that I twisted on myself and fell on the ground. After a quick heal, I got out of range as soon as possible.
That was it, the extent of my adventures on the three villages. How was a player supposed to do anything here?
As much as I hated it, I needed their help. Back to the first village, I yelled again.
"Hey! Please, could you, please, tell me, please, how to get to Ter'nodril? Please?!"
A few seconds later an arrow stuck the floor before my feet, but his time it had a paper attached. Feeling victorious, I read it.
No.
In a fit of rage, I shredded the paper to pieces. Then I left before I was shot again.
It was just bad design; I had only seen a single signpost since leaving the prison. How do the people of the Underworld even travel? Now that I thought about that, where were all the traveling people?
Oh, that made sense. Different races didn't travel between themselves in the Underworld. They were xenophobic, as proven by the way everyone blocked my entry. I wondered if the surface races acted the same way.
If there was no care for foreigners, signs were unnecessary. Which meant that it was the first sign which had no explanation whatsoever. Had it been put there by the Resistance, for incoming unbound deathlords? If so, where the hell were they?
Walking in what I figured was a straight line from the chamber entrance, a river appeared on the horizon, probably the same one I had seen in the previous chamber. That gave me a thought. Drow were not undead, just evil elves. As living beings, they required water to survive. A capital city would probably have thousands of people; if I traveled along the river, I would get close to the city. At least I hoped so.
Other villages became visible, so did a town with big stone walls, but I received the same hostile treatment every time I got close to one of them. I ended up traveling downstream by the river margin.
How is a place this big even possible underground? Where does fresh air comes from? Where is the food that this many villages and towns must grow to eat?
In other games, I might have ignored all these questions using the artistic freedom excuse, but since coming to Valia I had found none of such excuses, so I expected actual answers.
One question resurfaced on my mind time and time again:
When the hell am I going to be able to see the sun?
All those dark places were irking me. I wanted to play Valia to have a new, vibrant life, not to become depressed in a dark cave where everyone tried to push me away. Games were the single happiness I allowed myself.
It made me want to learn fire magic even more, just to create a giant ball of fire when I was tired of the lack of color.
Does this game have any kind of rainbow magic?
That would be nice. Painting these boring caves in all kinds of glowing colors. Even if I was killed right after doing it, I wanted to see how that would annoy and affect the Underworld denizens.
Boy, this cave chamber is immense.
For some time now I could see the end of the chamber up ahead, but it seemed as if I wasn't closing on it. Even more villages and towns had appeared, but I didn't even try to go for them; I just kept walking.
I eventually came close to the chamber wall. There was an opening in it and two big stone towers on each side.
Great. If I get one more warning shot, I'm going to go for it and try to kill the damn attacker. I'm tired of this bullshit.
The opening was a few hundred meters away from the river. I walked there, but thankfully no arrows flew my direction.
Lucky them.
Actually, nothing happened. The towers were silent, and no movement could be seen inside. It was an obvious invitation for an adventurer.
As soon as I stepped in the direction of one of the towers, I found out how wrong I was.
Six people just came into existence out of thin air. It was not like the horsemen who had walked out of an invisible wall; these people weren't there one moment and appeared the next.
All of them were wearing black cloaks with their hoods up, hiding everything about them. Even with darkvision, I couldn't see their faces. Underneath their cloaks, there were lots of hidden weapons, as I could determine by the outline they made on the cloaks.
"Deathlord," said a male. "What do you want with the Blackguard?"
Finally, someone who spoke. I smiled; after being ignored so many times, it was time for some politeness.
"Hi, I'm Jack. I didn't know the towers were occupied, sorry. Blackguard, huh? Sounds ominous. What do you guard?"
Seeing that I was obviously not a threat, five of the guards disappeared. Were they illusions? Is the one left an illusion?
"The Blackguard has the honor of guarding the Devourer, God of Darkness, Master of Ter'nodril and all Serharn, Lord Over the Drow, the First Guardian."
So, there was a sort of a king who thought highly enough of himself to call himself a god, and who was strong or smart enough to force all drow also to call him that. Or maybe I was thinking too normal; in the game, it might as well be a true god.
More important than that, I could have shed tears of relief upon being answered by the NPC. I decided to act even more politely.
"That sounds... Impressive. I'm honored to meet one with such important task. I find the ways of darkness the best, myself," I extended my hand to the right and sent a dark sphere flying at the river, immediately creating another to maintain my maximum of three floating around.
"I can see that. It is the only reason you weren't turned back from the entrance to Ter'nodril. Even one as weak a
nd ignorant as yourself can be enlightened by the Devourer. We allow all children of darkness to come and convene with him."
Jackpot!
"I'm grateful. I look forward to meeting the Devourer, should he wish."
"Should he wish it, you will be invited to his Temple."
"It will be an honor. Is the city on a direct path from here?"
"Yes."
"Thank you for your guidance. I will be on my way, then."
"Good. I suggest you get yourself a proper backpack. I feel embarrassed just looking at you." After a small nod, the man also disappeared.
What? Backpack? Weirdo.
I walked into the tunnel. It was time to see some drow.
Jack Thorn
Unbound Deathlord
Legendary Spotter, Dark Archmage
Level 8
Hit Points:235 / 235
Mana Points:365 / 370
Stamina:147 / 200
Attributes:
Strength:7
Agility:7
Dexterity:5
Constitution:7
Intelligence:10
Perception:4 + 10 [Items]
Willpower:9
Charisma:3
Traits:
Adept Mage:11 + 10 [Items]
Adept Controller:11
Gold Digger:2
Scavenger:2
Antimage:1
Crafter:1
Energizer:1
Healer:1
Meditator:1
Mind Seer:1
Nitpicker:1
Shadow:1
8. City of the Black Sun
'Your mother is right: politics bring true power. The next best thing though, is money.'
- Father
After walking for half an hour, I found a black metal wall blocking the passage. It had a symbol inlaid on it, of a vortex inside a circle.
Something made me stop about fifty meters from it. It was a feeling of wrongness that I couldn't explain. I didn't even dare walk away, afraid of having stepped on a trap or something. Only when I paid the floor much more attention than one should, did I understand what I was feeling.
Unbound Deathlord: Challenge Page 13