by Arthur Stone
A wave of green mist spread across the glade, covering half the players that had still been standing at once. They stopped hurling everything they could at Thyri, freezing where the magical attack had hit them, and started coughing so loudly one could have expected to see lung fragments flying out from all that strain.
But while Ros was busy with the mage, Thyri got hit. Her ability must have raised her Speed for a short time, and once it ran out, one of the archers got lucky. The girl was hiding behind the trees and trying to pull out the arrow that had run through her thigh. The remaining reds started to ascend the slope cautiously, forming a semicircle. They would encircle her and finish her off any moment now, and there was nothing Ros could do about it—he was too weak, and too far away from Thyri.
A fiery streak flashed through the trees, hitting an archer, who was just about to pull the bowstring, right in the chest. He became engulfed in flames instantly, and fell to the ground in less than ten second—a charred mass still aflame and falling apart into embers. His companion was already falling down right next to him, and then a third "red" player became a human torch a little further away.
Ros saw a group of players marching in formation from the direction of the deciduous forest. They kept pelting the "reds" with spells and arrows. The hapless noob hunters realized that they were greatly outnumbered and tried to scatter, but their pursuers were experience, and didn't leave the retreating miscreants a single chance. And then there were none. Almost. Two of the luckiest ones were taking their very last breaths.
Thyri pulled the arrow out, jumped up, slid behind a fir tree, stood still, then crouched suddenly, disappearing into thin air. Ros drew a sigh of relief. Now she wouldn't be killed indiscriminately just for the color of her name.
But his relief was premature. One of the approaching mages noticed the girl's maneuver, and hit the fir tree that she had hid behind with an area spell. Thyri was never particularly quick—the only time Ros saw her move fast was today, after using an Assassin's ability. But the effect had worn off, and she didn't manage to leave the danger zone.
A fiery whirlwind dealt her some damage, dispelling her invisibility as a result. She tried to hide behind the next fir tree, favoring one leg as she moved, but two arrows hit her right then, immediately followed by some spell that looked like a huge ball of boiling water. Thyri fell. She started to rise right away, shooting an arrow without taking aim, but a new spell set her and everything in the radius of a few feet around her on fire.
"Attention! A member of your party has been killed: Thyrinawerria Raynayila."
Damn! Ros had really hope she'd be safe now that she was invisible. He had witnessed her prowess at remaining unnoticed, so he assumed she would make another brilliant vanishing trick once again.
But she never did.
Plague jumped up and started to shake her fist at them.
"Why did you kill her, you morons?!"
"Why are you yelling?" asked one of the warriors from below as he checked the bodies of the fallen "reds" for loot.
"Why would you have to burn the archer girl? She was OK! She was killing the reds here!"
"She was red herself."
"Just a teensy bit! Slightly pinkish!"
The warrior made a dismissive gesture.
"Well, no one's gonna get into the finer details now, so pipe down already. You should be glad—if it weren't for us, you'd all have been killed."
Daddy waved to the warrior.
"Nah, it's all cool! That was real rad! Respect!"
The warrior grinned,
"Always happy to please."
Daddy explained,
"They're from the APK clan, and they keep raiding this area. They sure did a cool job tracking these twerps down. Right, what do we do now? Hey, Bubble, are you sure you don't want to level up with us?"
Ros wanted to fly instead of going anywhere, so that he could reach Thyri's body right away and revive her. But he'd never make it. She would not stay there for too long, and climbing down and running over would just take too long. There, that was it. Her body vanished into thin air, leaving nothing but the bow behind.
How would she manage in the Locked Lands without a weapon?
"She lost her bow, too!" Plague yelled, pointing at the scorched spot.
"Who was it?" asked the mage as he approached the lake.
"Thyrinawerria Raynayila, or simply Thyri," Ros answered.
The mage made a surprised face.
"Hell, I didn't recognize her! Guys, we've made a mistake! We've just killed Thyri by accident!"
The APKs started to babble and banter. Only one of them—a mage dressed in white with a luxurious gray beard—shook his head.
"This wasn't well done at all. We'd have to return the bow somehow."
"I will take care of that," said Ros, climbing down.
"You mean you know where to look for her?"
"We have arranged to see each other, but it won't happen right away. Once I get there, I'll give it back to her."
"Just so as you know, I have memorized your name. Whenever one of you meets Thyri, ask her whether this guy had returned her bow to her. If you decide to keep it for yourself, you'll run into big trouble. Hey! Where are you off to in such a hurry? Gonna level up some more, or what? We haven't cleared everything. There may be a few reds left there still."
"I don't need to level up. I'm headed for the capital."
"You still need to cross the ruins to get there. Hold on a little. Once we get ready, we can go together. You'll be safe with us, and once you cross, things will be a lot more peaceful."
Ros didn't mind. He'd had enough adventure for the day.
* * *
The man that lately bore the name of John Shelby and the moniker "Octopus" has been on many assignments—some of them easy, and others, less so. And this was the first time he ran into a mystery he couldn't solve. He, on the other hand, was the author of many such mysteries, so that no one would find out the truth about certain events that had to remain secret.
Suffice to remember the case of Professor Barbarossa. They were still searching him, and there were even rumors that someone had seen him with the pretty young woman that disappeared at the same time. The general public was certain they'd been having the time of their life on some tropical beach for the last five months.
But people were stupid and prone to falling for simple explanations or even completely ridiculous fabrications. Octopus was one of those few who knew how the rumor got started. It was but a minute detail of what had turned out to be a very uncomplicated cover-up op.
Barbarossa's disappearance was no ordinary thing. He was gone so thoroughly he'd never be found under any circumstances. There was simply nothing left to look for. A special set of reagents turned his body into jelly, and then into a liquid. Nothing remained—no bones, cartilage, hair, fat, or even tooth enamel. The very same thing happened to the body of the woman designated for the role of the professor's romantic interest that he had been supposed to have eloped with.
Not even any identifiable DNA molecule fragments could have remained. All of it was flushed down the drain, and soon dissolved in the enormous sewers of a large city. Their bodies joined the great natural cycle of matter some five months ago.
This Rostovtsev character was a real mystery. An oddity. And Octopus had to make sense of it. The first time, he got the pointers to his likely location from the management. The second time, he found all the necessary data on his own. But he didn't get lucky the second time, either, just like back then, at the hospital in San Francisco. The strange customer gave him the slip again.
But nothing ever truly vanishes without a trace. You just need to know where to look. After the hospital episode, Octopus was helped by some of the staff overly fond of money and completely allergic to pain as well as physical and psychological discomfort in general. Then he'd had to deal with certain logistics agencies' employees in the same way to find out how and why they'd managed to send his target a
long such a convoluted itinerary.
However, Octopus managed to solve this puzzle. He found out about the warehouse where the container he'd been searching for was stored.
It was made of steel sheets and contained a life support system with a supply of all the necessary nutrients and medicines, as well as the very object he'd been searching for all this time, going to such unbelievable lengths—the body of the elusive Mr. Rostovtsev. A trickster beyond compare capable of defying the attempts of the most experienced hunters to catch him even in a coma.
But any quarry stops and faces its hunter sooner or later. It was Rostovtsev's turn this time. A few people would like to see him through the Octopus's eyes, and he would oblige in a moment.
The capsule's lid opened. John Shelby studied its content dispassionately, turned around, left the premises, opened his car door, climbed into the driver's seat, and turned towards the tiny webcam in the corner of his rear view mirror. Any audio or video feed from this car was scrambled and passed on though a long chain of servers to the other party—his superior, who oversaw the entire operation. Even if anyone managed to tap into the feed, they would understand nothing.
Those were but standard security measures.
Octopus trusted no one, but even he had to admit that the company's state-of-the-art computers could not be hacked. The brightest minds working in that field created them, and it had cost an enormous amount of money. Those machines could be trusted with the most important secrets; they would stay safe with them.
Octopus stared at the webcam unblinkingly, as though trying to look directly at the person on the other end of the line, and said, in a perfectly flat voice,
"He isn't there."
Rostovtsev had managed to slip away. Yet again.
Chapter 11
Ros had already visited the capital of the Western Empire twice. It was the largest city in the region where he had been incarnated in the game for the first time; he had never ventured anywhere else. He may not have liked everything here, but there were certain circumstances that prevented him from traveling far.
It was a major trade center—you could buy or sell everything here, including incredibly rare items you wouldn't find at any game auction. This was where the most powerful NPCs lived. With enough fortune and persistence, they could give you quests that, upon successful completion, would give you opportunities unavailable to the general public. The capital was also an excellent place to just roam the central streets, showing off your stellar equipment and letting every gawker see just how high your level was and what a mighty player you were. This was also the place where you could forget all about levels and stats, and spend all your times partying, attending festivals, and all other sorts of events where you could get properly entertained, without doing any of the boring things required to level up.
Indeed, if you had money, why bother with all the tedious leveling-up? There were so many options for entertainment here, after all. You could party every minute, have all the fun in the world, and open yourself up to all kinds of new experiences. There was no point wasting your life on battling digital monsters. They wouldn't appreciate it, anyway.
The capital was the land of opportunity for those who didn't care about the standard character development model. One could, for instance, visit any of the city's two hundred high-class brothels to find partners of all races—and a lot of those weren't remotely human. It didn't have to be soulless NPCs, either—there were always enough level zero players willing to make a few quick bucks, trading them for services of a specific nature. All you need was a small investment. A special designer could create a unique appearance and choose a set of outfits to match. You could have acne all over, weigh 400 pounds, and have a face like a brick IRL that even a worst-case-scenario virgin would hardly find attractive. Yet here you could become the king or queen of the demimonde, should such a fancy take you. You could dazzle everyone, through expensive gifts out of the window with hysterical laughter, and pick out anyone you fancied from a long waiting list, while the maids washed the floor of your boudoir with champagne.
But you'd need a modicum of intelligence to accomplish this, apart from everything else.
There were millions of players in Second World who had played for months on end, never killing a single measly mob. They didn't even have any weapons for it. They squandered their characters' lives, never venturing outside the walls of the larger cities. They could find everything they needed within city limits, after all. Those silk-clad wastrels lived in a parallel universe, sincerely failing to understand why one would waste so much time on something as uninteresting as leveling up when there were so many ways of finding entertainment—and it didn't cost all that much, either.
In real life, they would have limited access to most of those, or none whatsoever.
How could you get an enormous villa of green marble with furniture hand-crafted from precious hardwoods IRL? You wouldn't need to do so much as drive nails into walls. There were NPC servants to help you with that. Not much of an option in real life, really. How could you, provided your income was barely enough for accommodation of the most modest sort? But in Second World it was all available to you.
No one cared that they spent nearly all the money they made offline here. It was worth it. Everything was much brighter and of a much higher quality. Out there, there was nothing but greyness and tedium.
To many, real life became an unpleasant chore. Like scheduled visits to hell. People leave for a few hours, do their time dejectedly, and hurry back to the capsule to return to the place where life felt real, as opposed to the frozen dreariness of everyday existence.
Ros didn't come here to waste time on mindless entertainment. He had some business to take care of, as always. And the business was important, obviously.
Digits met him outside the city gate. He looked nothing like the pathetic noob spending his time hunting frogs in a moat around a backwater town in a nondescript province.
However, it ceased being nondescript shortly after Ros had first fallen on his ass onto the paved streets of that very town, seeing the game world with his own eyes for the first time—the flabbergasted eyes of a noob. Back then, Digits helped him quite a bit (on the other hand, he had also set him up a little). At any rate, Ros was grateful to him, and remembered him when he was already in a position to do something in return.
"Hello there, Bubble," said Digits in a conspiratorial manner.
"You should use Ros. It makes no sense to use all this cloak-and-dagger stuff between us."
"What about security?"
"The capital is a posh and a very uptight place. No one will manage to just grab me on the street."
"Do you intend to change your name and your appearance yet again?"
"I'm sure there are dozens of eyes watching you. They'll be surprised to find out you were talking to some random noob. And they're pretty good at drawing the right conclusions."
"I covered my tracks pretty well."
"That's what you think. They're good at sniffing things out."
"I'm pretty capable of covering my tracks, rest assured about that."
"What I have found out is that they can find you no matter how thoroughly you cover them. There's weird stuff going on in this game, Digits."
"Are you gonna tell me?"
"Hopefully later. I've lost a lot of time already. I've got to hurry back."
"Didn't you have to complete some sort of quest here?"
"Yeah. I need an audience with the Emperor."
"Are you kidding?"
"Not one bit."
"In that case, you're up shit creek. And there aren't any paddles to be had for miles around. You can spend months in the queue and not make any progress at all."
"For some reason, I have a feeling it should take me less than one day."
"Huh… I'd like to make a bet on that, but something tells me I might lose all my money."
"In that case, don't bet. Talking about money…"
&nbs
p; "I have a full report handy. And I've been sending you all the info I had at the forum, so you know everything about every transaction."
"It's not that. I'll need a rather substantial sum—I've got far-reaching plans. I've brought you a few items to sell—take a look at what we might sell at once, and what would be best held back for a while. Ideally, I'd need fifty thousand in about three hours—there are a few things I'd like to buy.
"Only very recently I'd have had a stroke if someone had asked me for that much, but there has been some considerable progress lately."
"Your little enterprise keeps growing."
"Indeed. I have a hunch we'll soon deal in millions."
"We definitely will."
"So, what kind of items?"
"All sorts of stuff. Weapons, armor, jewelry, and so on."
"No junk, as usual, I presume?"
"Perish the thought. No junk at all; some of the items are enchanted, and most of those are pretty cool. Let's go to the bank—I'll dump it all in your vault."
"Why waste time? Here's my bag."
"OK, but would you be able to carry a ton, for example?"
"How much?!"
"I don't have the precise weight, but there's a lot."
"Well, sure… that's the spirit. Makes no sense to bring stuff from afar in small batches. You wear your shoes out too quickly that way."
"My point precisely."
"I'm sorry. I forgot you were the Great Emperor of the Noobs. Sure. One emperor will see another at once."
Someone suddenly butted into their conversation.
"My greetings to Mr, ah… Bubble. Is there any chance you might spare some of your time before you go on about your own business?"
Ros turned around to see a player of the human race. His features were Asian in a cartoonish way and looked strange, given his height and his enormously wide shoulders. Still, anyone in Second World could go for any look they wanted, so this guy's appearance wasn't that unusual, after all.