“Spectral Archers!” Keith gasped next to me. “Dammit, that is a legendary spell!”
The Spectral Archers, as Keith had called those strange beings, released the bowstring, firing a cloud of green arrows at the Eagles’ fleet. It covered several ships at once, breaking their formation. I saw a gold-black frigate rapidly lose speed, caught in a shower of smoke and sparks.
The element of surprise was lost. The Pandas were coming back. I had to act quickly. The skiff gained altitude, moving around Atrocity in a wide arc and trying to stay away from the fortress and the battling fleets. Ellaria yelled, warning us that several dragon riders were flying to intercept us, enticed by easy pickings. As if things weren’t bad enough! I had only three charges of Bolide left in my blade—the same as the number of our enemies. Well, here goes nothing!
They easily dodged the first Bolide sent from a considerable distance and immediately split, attacking us from different sides while spinning around. With my teeth clenched, I waited for them to come closer so I could take no chances.
I released the second and the third Bolides almost at pointblank range. It was a horrifying sight, the riders burning together with their protodragons in the blinding bursts of True Fire. Two of them died almost immediately, and I gripped hold of my bow, preparing to attack the third one, but he turned back and fled.
The battle around Atrocity continued. The black citadel belched lava from all of its bastions. The fleets of NAVY and Pandorum blended together, peppering each other with arrows, cannon fire, and deadly spells. Everything burned and smoldered as players fought each other in the air on the decks of flying ships. It was an impressive display. It crossed my mind to check the battle report in the morning. Morning, however, felt impossibly far away.
In the meantime, the Pandas summoned a huge eyeless snake to fight Ananizarte. It had grey, steel-colored scales, a serrated spine, and a size comparable to the goddess’ draconic form. I had no idea from what depths of hell they released that creature. The snake coiled around the fire dragon, strangling it in its grip. They were surrounded by a host of various spell effects used by Pandorum mages. Juggernauts, including the one damaged by the goddess, rapidly retreated a safe distance away. One of them slowly spun around and suddenly expelled a huge pillar of scarlet light that immediately reminded me of the Ancient Colossus’ deadly glare. I realized that Panda flagships had played their trump card: Colossus, the super raygun with an hour-long cooldown. The goddess clearly didn’t like that; the sonic waves emanating from the writhing dragon were almost visible in the air, rippling throughout the distorted space.
“Cat! We’re almost there!”
We were hovering high above Atrocity, the two grappling giants, and the dome-surrounded juggernauts slowly spreading apart. Right below us was the vessel crewed with just forty players, the dark green behemoth belonging to the clan called Oblivion.
The time had come, now or never. I took a deep breath, squeezed Weldy’s hand, and reached for two items. I gave one to Borland: the epic skillbook, a gold title engraved on its brown cover.
“Control Astral Juggernaut?” the Octopus asked, surprised. “For me? Why? It’s worth a fortune, man!”
“Learn the skill and trust me,” I said, running up the bowsprit and looking down, one hand holding the rigging. The dome of the enemy juggernaut loomed right underneath us. Keith followed its course down to a T.
In the game, just like in life, people came in two types: predators and prey. It was important to sense when you turned into the second type and change back into the first. That’s what I was going to do.
HotCat: Are you ready?
Tao: Yes. Tired of waiting.
For the second time that day, the Signal Horn trumpeted. The vortex of an Astral Portal flashed into being just a stone’s throw away and spat out a swarm of mounted fliers in full gear—one hundred and seventeen players, each emblazoned with the PROJECT HELL tag.
Tao: I thought you were joking about Atrocity.
HotCat: Sense of humor is one thing you can’t take away from me, seeing as it doesn’t exist. I hope the Pandas aren’t your buddies.
Tao: Pandas have no buddies. But...
HotCat: Then follow me!
Without giving him a chance to think, I kicked off the pliant bulwark and swan-dove into the open air, as if jumping off a cliff.
My hands stretched forward as I plummeted through the pink mist of the Astral Plane right toward the bluish glow of the juggernaut’s protective dome. It was considered almost indestructible; only the coordinated efforts of an entire fleet and several raids could bring that shell down. But there was nothing impossible in Sphere. The only thing I was afraid of was miscalculating the timing of Blazing Warrior.
The dome drew closer and closer, and I could make out the players through its translucent veil. It was time. Still in the air, I unfolded a scroll of Slow Fall and immediately activated Blazing Warrior.
Flames ran down my body, and my hands turned bright blue, the same color as Aelmaris in my hand. The impenetrable membrane of the dome flashed before my eyes. The crash was supposed to kill me on the spot—if not for one thing.
You dealt 19998756 True Fire damage to the Ragnarok astral juggernaut (Oblivion)! Juggernaut’s protective dome is destroyed!
Just as I had planned, as soon as the dome collided with Blazing Warrior, it overloaded, losing all of its hit points at once. I hoped the reactor remained undamaged—I needed the ship intact and able to move.
Slowly, as if gliding down, I landed on board the juggernaut. The deck flooring turned black and crumbled under my feet, and messages about damage dealt to the ship flooded my log. Good thing I didn’t burn through the hull. Standing up in the center of a scorched circle, I waved my sword at the frozen Pandas, inviting them.
Saying that they were stunned would be an understatement. Just a minute before, they had felt completely safe, lazily peeking out from behind the protective dome capable of withstanding twenty million hit points of damage. Then it was all gone while dozens of enemy birdies swooped in on the deck, squawking hoarsely.
The first few players rushed at me, drawing their weapons. I was happy to oblige. While Blazing Warrior was active, all of them, no matter how powerful, were whipping boys to me.
The battle aboard the Ragnarok was short and insanely violent. I spun around in a combat dance, turning into ash any and all Pandas who dared to open their throat to the flaming sword. An avalanche of PROJECT birdies descended on us from above, smashing everything in their path. Tao led the charge—I recognized him by the white wings of his King Sildo’s Mantle and the incredible speed of his famed Black Sword that flashed in the midst of battle. The Pandas desperately resisted the assault, but we had three times their numbers, and it showed. Upon clearing the deck, the warriors of HELL hurried into the inner sanctum, finishing off the fleeing enemies.
Our skiff nudged even closer to the juggernaut, hovering right above it. Keith Borland, his pawns, and Weldy stepped onto the deck strewn with bodies. Nosquire and Ellaria deftly moored the boat, fixing it in place. Keith shook his fist at me.
“Are you in your right mind, even? Stealing a juggernaut from the Pandas! Do you really think I can drive this bucket?”
“You’ve told me yourself that driving an astral nave is a skill away from a juggernaut,” I reminded him. “Remember?”
“Eh, leave it to a drunk to let it slip!” Keith cursed. “Yes, I can steer it, I can even turn on the spelljumper, but that’s it! I mean, this is a twenty-slot crew you got here!”
“That’s all I need you to do, anyway.”
* * *
“Nosquire, get to the reactor room and try to reanimate everything there. Ellaria, go to the spelljumper and activate it on my command.”
Borland ran up to the command bridge and reverently touched the polished handles of a giant human-sized steering wheel masterfully carved from black rosewood. In his mind’s eye, he could see the translucent windows of the ship’s inte
rface. The juggernaut recognized its new captain, and for a second, Keith’s pupils dilated as he saw the ship’s rigging. All of its modules without exception were epic or legendary: a Snake Ring Reactor; vertical engines inlaid with Fireheart gems; a powerful armor forged from adamantine plates that protected the vital areas; elemental crystals enhancing the dome’s resistance scores (the best available in Sphere); an enchanted astral visor; the Eye of Colossus, a giant raygun based on the Ancients’ archetype.
Control Astral Ships increased by 10! Current value: 743/1000
Control Astral Juggernaut increased by 5! Current value: 5/1000
Borland launched a test, checking the status of the ship’s systems. Most of the icons were flashing yellow or red, meaning insufficient skill points or crew slots. Almost all of the gear was inactive—the magical shield, the rigging, the weapon modules, the slots for Pikes and Hurricanes...
Nosquire: The main reactor is charged 58%. The crystals are undamaged. Ready for operation.
Ellaria: The spelljumper is fine. I’m detecting a signal from Astr. Should I turn it on?
Keith knew that the ship was all but dead and inoperable without a dozen skilled assistants. The engines were silent, the spar was out of commission, and there was no sailsmaster around. Neither the dome nor the armaments functioned. He could do only two things: start up the reactor and activate the spelljumper to leap into an Astral Portal, maybe crawl there for a few minutes, thanks to the momentum gained during the jump.
The Pandas would easily find and catch a defenseless sluggish vessel, boarding it and taking it back. What was HotCat thinking, really?
* * *
While Keith tinkered around with the controls, reanimating the juggernaut, I glanced one last time at the battlefield. I shouldn’t have. Pandorum had recovered surprisingly quickly, and the situation was changing fast.
Ananizarte, tormented by the monstrous snake and bombarded by the juggernauts’ superweapons, finally gave up. She had clearly lost enough power while battling the Pandas in their stronghold’s dungeons and fighting her way out. The black fire dragon vanished, transforming into an incandescent dot that emanated waves of distorted space. Metallic flares flashed around her as if someone spun a blade at lightning speed. Pandorum’s snake, writhing in the void, burst into several pieces that fell onto Atrocity. The already damaged citadel disappeared in a cloud of smoke and ash. The dot–the goddess in another form—decided against continuing the battle and shot up, leaving a trail of cometary gas and vanishing in the pink mist of the Astral Plane.
The Spectral Archers kept raining down volleys of glowing arrows from the walls of Atrocity, and most of the NAVY ships were already ablaze. The remaining ones seemed to be retreating. Right before my eyes, one of the juggernauts that suspiciously resembled the Stormbringer discharged a blinding crimson ray into a cluster of enemy ships, incinerating a frigate. Another one descended, quickly gaining on the American fleet. The two remaining ones were rapidly approaching us, dragon riders swarming around them.
Keith Borland: We’re ready. Where to jump?
HotCat: Where? To Astr’s signal. Home.
“You’re crazy,” Tao said coldly as he came up to me. “Your stunt’s panned out, but what now?”
“And now, it will be fun,” I said with a grin.
“Jerkhan’s writing that we’re all dead,” the PROJECT leader informed me, a slight smile on his face. “I think he’s a little bit unhappy.”
Jerkhan? Well, maybe it was time to talk. I decided to contact the leader of the Steel Guard.
HotCat: GF!
Jerkhan: Good fight? We’re going to chase you down right now, and the Old Gods will gorge on your blood!
HotCat: I have a small proposal for you.
Jerkhan: You? For us?
HotCat: Are you speaking for the entire alliance? The Ragnarok belongs to Oblivion, not the Steel Guard, doesn’t it?
Jerkhan: You want to talk to the elders. Do the elders want to talk to you?
In any case, he sent me an invitation to a Courier channel, which I didn’t hesitate to use. It was a chat room for the leaders of Pandorum, and the nicknames there had become legendary long before my arrival to Sphere: Phantom, Kronk, Gor... All of them spoke English, so I turned on the autotranslator and wrote, “Hi.”
“FUCK YOU”
“DAMN YOU TO HELL!”
You were kicked out of the Pandorum Council channel.
Nice talking. Apparently, Jerkhan was a real sweetheart. All right, then. The customer wasn’t ripe yet. Time to continue the operation that I tentatively nicknamed Crystal Bells.
We entered the portal, and the oppressive pink emptiness of the Astral Plane gave way to the colors of the normal world: green and blue, forests and lakes. A river, the sun overhead... How could they live in that dreary Astral Plane? Maybe that’s why they were all so angry. Keith used the remains of the engine output to drag the juggernaut to two of our barques that hovered above the ground. There, Astr, Impie, and the other pawns belonging to the Octopus were waving at us. Metallic spheres of Crystal Bells glistened above deck.
“You’re going to blow up the juggernaut using the barques’ cargo,” Tao said, nodding in satisfaction. “That’s why you needed the Bells. Nice thinking. I hope you know what you’re doing. I wouldn’t take such a risk.”
“Why?”
“Do you understand what kind of fire you’re playing with? Pandas don’t like joking around. If you destroy the juggernaut, they’ll erase you and everything you care about from Sphere.”
I decided it was best to keep silent. Yes, I could deal Pandorum a blow of such force that their reputation as the strongest in all of Sphere would waver. But as my father used to say, money’s nothing compared to public image.
“Is our contract complete?” Tao asked. “I don’t want to take part in this mad endeavor. As you like to say, the shit’s about to hit the fan. The juggernaut’s not a needle in a haystack. They are already searching for it. Very soon, the Pandas will get here.”
“Great. I want them to find us.”
* * *
In less than an hour, Tao’s prediction came true. Two portals opened up, releasing two juggernauts. Each king was accompanied by a retinue of smaller ships and a lot of birdies. They hovered in the sky, inspecting the strange construction below.
The boldly hijacked Ragnarok hung in the air right above the ground, almost lying on its belly, held down by the anchor chains. Two cargo barques framed it on both sides like boats moored to a motorship. Their sails were reefed, their decks clear, not a soul in sight. The seekers had detected only one signal of a player who immediately disappeared, either logging off or turning on invisibility.
The first scouts landed on deck and spread around the ship—checking the command bridge, the engines, and the reactor room—and suddenly stopped, freezing in shock.
In front of them and next to every essential unit of the juggernaut—the engines, the gundecks, the powder room, the reactor area—lay small metallic orbs: Bells. The cargo holds were packed with them, too. The Ragnarok was rigged with explosives. The scouts didn’t dare to move, knowing that it was a trap. One shot, one spell, one blow, and the fragile shells of the Bells would blow up, allowing the alchemical admixtures to combine. The chain reactions of explosions, one after another, would transform the juggernaut, the barques, and the scouts themselves into a blooming mushroom cloud. Actually, the force of that detonation might even be enough to reach the two other ships that were about to descend.
Ding dong, ding dong! I knocked at the channel I had been kicked out of not long before. They added me again, and I sent them a link to a small file I had created just five minutes earlier.
Interlude: Pandorum
Ding Dong!
Hello! Let me introduce myself. My name is Cat, and I dabble in the trade of various items.
Would you like to take a look? Today, I can offer you an astral juggernaut fully fitted with legendary equipment. It’s a uni
que item with only one catch. In just one minute, several suicide bombers will log into the game in the cargo hold and blow it to smithereens.
Starting price: five million gold! Every ten seconds, it will increase by a million, so I suggest you hurry up. Oh, and I guarantee that the deal will stay confidential.
The countdown has started!
With a smile on my face, I turned over an hourglass, and a small trickle of sand dribbled down, counting the seconds.
59…58…57…
SHADOW EYES was a useful skill; I shouldn’t have bashed it. Where there is light, there are shadows; large and small, they prowl about their business, silent, immaterial, and intangible for everyone except a Shadow Listener. I picked one and used its eyes to watch the events on the command bridge of Leviathan, Pandorum’s flagship.
Shadow Seer (Rogue Merchant Book #3): LitRPG Series Page 3