And Val had taken his life. An instinct so ingrained that the moment he had sensed the weaving of that spell, he knew just where to strike, and his attempt to impress his fellow player had managed to critically hit and kill him instead.
Val gazed at the approaching guards, half with the sense to draw their sabers, tasting their fear in the air. Val coldly unsheathed his claimed saber, raising it in a hanging guard even as he stuck his left hand out.
"You boys want to dance? Fine. Let's see how well I can cast this spell with my left hand. Glacie Pilum!" he roared, fury lending potency to the spell, his spear tearing straight through the unarmored security closing in on him, even cracking through the polymer armor of the soldier right behind.
Boosted Ice Spear successfully cast! 60 mana spent! Armor perfect for deflecting blaster fire was never designed to counter the force of a charger's lance. Double kill! Experienced earned! Intimidation check made! You are now one with your wrath, and foes sense your Dark Aura. Your enemies are intimidated! -4 to initiative and aggression checks. Kill on!
And with a bleak smile as he savored the rush of their life-force filling up that shimmering blue bar in the back of his mind, drunk on the sweet arcane potency bubbling up within him, Val unleashed another spear of ice, deliberately targeting one of the few guards with a saber, his spear plunging through the man's neck as he crashed to the ground. Critical Hit!
The hallway filled with blood and panicked screams, men desperately turning tail and running, the two remaining sabermen alone having the sense to rush Val.
"Glacie Pilum!"
The closest crashed to the ground, writhing and screaming as Val's spear of ice tore through his guts, the second man lashing out with his sword as Val parried in tierce, whipping his blade around in a cleaving blow that cracked against the man's wrist, vulnerable bones snapping as Val deliberately struck the armor in the gap between plates, his foe's saber dropping, Val instinctively whipping his blade now from low to high, catching the guard between helm and breastplate, the neck protected only by a shimmering fabric designed to counter blaster fire while allowing for perfect mobility, doing virtually nothing to counter his razor sharp saber as it ripped through the fiber, tearing right through the man's jugular, washing Val in a shower of crimson as his foe stumbled back, armored hands futilely trying to staunch the spray of blood as he crashed to the ground.
Val howled in darkest glee, seeing only a single guardsman in range, but seconds from turning the corner.
"Glacie Pilum!" Val roared, lashing out with his boosted spell yet again, feeling it arc through the air and blast through his foe's spine, and Val howled like a wolf over his kill as he felt the rush and roar of his foe's life-force flooding into him once more, and never had the thrill of gaining experience been quite so visceral as it was at that moment, heaving over his kills, having depleted over two thirds of his mana in that glorious battle, now slowly filling back up once more.
Val deliberately slowed his breathing, exhilarated to feel so alive, so brutally tested in what was just a simple simulation.
He turned to gaze at Hankro who was, strangely enough, decorporealizing even as Val gazed on, living flesh and blood turning to translucent jelly before Val's very eyes.
For some reason, this chilled Val to the quick.
Insight gained! Perhaps it's not a good idea to wander endlessly in the starter zone, where you are neither dead nor quite alive, so many skills and talents forgotten as you dance between oblivion and endless possibility! Who are you really, Val? Why don't you jump through that conveniently aligned gate and find out?
Val was chilled by the sudden thought of turning to gloop just like Hankro had, getting the strangest feeling that he wouldn't truly be himself until he crossed that final crackling barrier. He gazed down at his ivory white attire now spattered with blood, the pristine quality saber still held in his hand, remembering Arnythree's words.
As fast as he could, he stripped himself of anything that could be linked to him later in the game, determined to leave just as he had come to. Nothing but his naked self, no crutch or fingerprint marking him when next he reformed.
"There he is! The bastard killed half a dozen of our men and one of the slaves. He's a rebel. He must be! Strike him dead!"
And somehow Val knew that if he turned around he'd spy half a score of hardened troopers with sniping blasters well out of magic radiation range, and he now completely unarmed.
Val smirked and flipped the men behind him the bird before jumping into the doorway of crackling blue, finding the experience to be every bit as bad as he had feared.
7
Every nerve fiber screamed with pain. Cacophony unending, a semi-sentient shriek of endless potentials roaring through the ether.
Name?
Valor, he cried out as that horrid sensation of discord that he had mistaken for mere discomfort at last began to align itself, for all that he sensed how easy it would be to let go. Knowing all that would be left back in Julia's bedroom was a brain-dead husk, the final backlash of energies causing a convenient feedback loop that would flash fry his cortex before the power cut out, darkest fate laughing at his folly even now.
The hell I'll give up.
His name was Valor Hunter, and somehow he knew he had endured this before.
He could feel himself, his potential, pressing against the thinnest matrix of quantized probability, somehow catalyzing his own existence, forcing the entirety of himself into his mind's eye as he willed himself into being.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Valor Hunter - Level (?)
Primary Attributes
Strength 13
Vitality 13
Finesse 13
Quickness 17
Perception 18
Scholarship 13
Willpower 17
Charisma 13
Luck ?? +2
Health 10xVit+Str+IC= 148
Survival (Health+(10xLevel)+Luck) = 288+?
Stamina 10xVit+Str+IC= 153
Mana 343 (251 kg Elementium Stored - Rift inaccessible)
Psion 343 -inaccessible- (200.9 L Silbion Stored - Rift inaccessible)
Insight 17
Base Appearance 10. +1 (13 charisma) +1 (athletic) = +2 to reaction rolls. (+5 when you let your potency show.)
Dark Points 3 (+3 to reaction rolls and influence when you let your intensity shine. -1 if you try to hide the darkness in your soul. +30% potency increase when you embrace your wrath!)
Reputation
Champion of the Dwarves: +6 reaction from all surviving dwarves in Jordia’s northern hemisphere.
Skills of Significance
Arcane Perception Rank 3 / Arcane Artificer Rank 2 / Psion Artificer Rank 2 / Cypher Rank 2 / Meditation Rank 3 / Stealth Rank 4 / Magesight Rank 1 / Mageward Rank 1 / Basic Literacy Achieved! (Limited to texts of Arcane or Psionic nature) / Deception Rank 2 / Inquisition Rank 2 / Intimidation Rank 3
Small Arms Rank 3 / Demolitions Rank 2 / Laser Carbine Rank 3 / Grappling Rank 3 / Sword and Shield Rank 4 / Longsword Rank 4 / Psiblade Rank 4 / Intense Conditioning
Inaccessible Skills: Shadowmind Rank 5 (Adept) / Psi-Sense (Shadowmind Dependent) Rank 4 / Psionic Perception Rank 3 / Psionic Oathbinding Rank 1 / Rift Mastery Rank 2
Greater Skills Learned
Greater Alchemy Rank 3 (Specialization: Elemental Infusions)
Meta-Magic Feats: Stabilization Rank 2 / Spellboost Rank 1 (150% for triple cost) / Psiboost Rank 1 (125% for double cost)
Personal Resonance Mastery Rank 9
Greater Oathbinding Rank 1
True Artificer Rank 2
Potion Formulas Learned
Basic Restoration (Jordia)
Jordian Magical Arts Learned
Creation - Rank 2
Destruction - Rank 1
Manipulation - Rank 2
Transformation - Rank 1
Fire - Rank 2
Water
- Rank 1
Earth - Rank 2
Herbam - Rank 1
Jordian Spells Learned
Firestream Level 20 C/F - Cost 5 Mana
Explosive Retribution Level 30 C/F Must save against Oblivion when casting. - Cost 35 mana.
Condensation Collection. Level 5 M/W - Cost 0 mana.
Stoneflow. Level 1 M/E - Cost 0 mana.
Dwarven Catalyzation Level 20 C+M+T/E - Cost 20 mana.
Automative Folly Level 20 D+M+T/E - Cost 20 mana.
Plentiful Bounty (Greater Ritual) Level 40 C+M+T / E+H - Cost 150 mana. (20%+ Critical failure risk: This spell is far beyond your abilities!)
Ice Spear Level 20 C+M/E+W - Cost 20 mana. (Summon a spear of solid ice! Damage counts as physical, severity of wounds depends upon accuracy. Critical to fatal wounds for center body strike on unprotected level 1 human. Armor will mitigate, standard Mageward will not counter a direct hit.)
____________________________________________________________________________________
Even as Val shook with sudden insight as truths long forgotten poured into him, somehow recalling viscerally what it meant to cast those magics, to use those spells, he still had no idea where he had used them before. Was this implanted programming from the game? But it felt so real. So bloody real even as he fought and struggled with every fiber of his being to exist. To breathe. To live.
Choking on thick gloop oozing into his lungs, eyes blinded by brilliant yellow light shimmering everywhere, clawing and banging his limbs against what he suddenly feared would be the lid to his coffin before desperate fingers clenched tight a release wheel, twisting it with all his might, feeling desperate relief as it hissed open, bursting his head free and coughing out great gobs of yellow-green sludge, breathing in impossibly sweet air, gasping with relief.
Blinking in the gloom, realizing there was no artificial light at all.
His heart kicked up a notch, trembling hands quickly gaining coordination as he levered himself free of a vat of slime for the second time that day.
He scanned the room, noting the shadowy outlines of two dozen or so sarcophagi, eyes quickly adjusting to the minuscule light provided by the moon shimmering through the windows overhead. His nose crinkled at the strange smell that could have been cooked slime, or rotting flesh. He swallowed, suddenly having visions of other players, exhausted and shaken, coming to in this room, only to suffocate in horror, too disoriented and confused to free themselves from sealed lids in a chamber as dead as the grave.
He could see no way to open any of the other sarcophagi from the outside in the dim light. Hearing no trace of sound or vibration indicating another soul was trapped, Val made his way to the far end of the room, more relieved than he cared to admit to find the outline of a door, and one that opened without resistance.
Girding himself for whatever lay ahead, he made his first cautious steps into a whole new world.
And that was when he heard the frantic pounding behind him.
He didn't hesitate. Game or no, the memory of panicked suffocation was fresh and raw. If there were normally sensory limits, he hadn't found any. The feel of hard stone tiles underneath his feet, a cool draft of air tickling his bare legs, the chill of sticky slime drying upon his skin were as real and visceral as any sensation in the physical world. As was the horror of drowning alive.
Silence. He took a deep breath, heart racing, in the center of the chrome pods that were little better than death traps, desperately waiting for a sound.
There. Right next to him. And the one across from him... the faintest of vibrations. - How had he sensed it from the doorway? - Irrelevant. They needed his help, ASAP. He peered into the small circular pane of glass at the head of the pod, glimpsing the silhouette of a terrified face, writhing frantically.
Val did his best to mime twisting open the escape valve, but the drowning figure was clearly panicked, and he doubted they could see him in the dim light in any case.
Val swallowed. If he didn't do something, the trapped victims were dead.
Desperately, he closed his eyes, somehow pulling up a crystalline sense of his potential in a way that was almost like looking at a character sheet, but so brilliantly done that it felt more like glimpsing his soul than a lifeless stat card. There. It appeared he had been granted a spell to turn on or repair inert dwarven objects. But would it work here? He frowned. Hadn't he heard someone comment that he and Hankro had blown out the electronics, or electronic equivalents back in that pod chamber due to their magic? Electromana converters. That was it. The game, he supposed, automatically resetting the nearby portal to be magically aligned as a result.
The banging grew even more erratic. And frantic.
And weaker.
Think! - Wait. Personal Resonance Mastery! He nodded to himself, a quick flash of hideously complex charts and diagrams somehow explaining an encyclopedia's worth of complex ideas in a series of self-proving mathematically aligned concepts that synergized language and mathematics in a way he found dizzyingly complex, but could somehow understand. Yet deeper than that, he hadn't just studied the theory. Somehow, the knowledge was a part of him. Newly born, not even aware of his potential in the clone vat, he supposed, he had been rediscovering how to parry and cast magic on the fly, and hadn't even attempted to modify the radiation he discharged with his casting.
But now he could.
He could feel the wild chaotic storm of magics he had access to now coursing through internalized channels that tightly controlled their flow as he gently placed his fingers against the chrome pod holding a frantic, dying life, and somehow felt his soul flow into its structure. The terrified creature within had only the barest flicker of magic potential, but it gyrated wildly, and Val somehow felt he should sense an even deeper connection, but that was blocked from him. As if he felt the world around him through the thinnest of skins, and in order to taste another's psyche with his own, he'd have to break completely through.
He shivered at the thought, knowing he was wasting time even as he shivered in awe, the entire complex interlinking of hardware, electromana converters, and command switches somehow imprinting itself in his mind's eye. Only the glass panel he touched was somehow dead, as if his own radiation had ripped it free of the fragile harmony catalyzing the rest of the sarcophagus, but it mattered not. He knew exactly what he had to do.
"Open," he whispered, momentarily dizzy as he pulled himself out of the exquisitely intricate maze of electronics and hardware that was the pod, now covered in blinking lights and somehow drawing power from him still.
Congratulations! You have successfully altered Dwarven Catalyzation! Dominion Catalyzation learned! When you want to save trapped players feeling the exquisite agony of asphyxiation, this Level 20 spell is for you! (Strange, isn't it? It's almost like they are really here!) Cost to cast at your level of skill: 20 mana.
Congratulations! You have learned Lesser Power Manipulation. As Dominion artifacts require constant electromana current to run, it's a good thing you have plenty of juice to spare! (Far more than 50 points! What level are you anyway, Val, and how did you catalyze your potential before you ever donned a VR Helmet? So many questions! Base cost to cast this Level 10 spell at your level of skill: size dependent. (You could power this pod for days. It uses less than your rate of regeneration.)
Val blinked, the dialogue imprinting in his mind in an eye blink, for all that the words echoed as if told by the most snarky of game masters over seconds. He shook away the distraction, plunging naked arms into the translucent gloop, pulling out a naked girl whose terrified eyes pinned him as he pulled her free, trembling limbs too weak to do more than grip desperately as she took her first frantic, heaving breaths, coughing and sobbing and puking yellow-green slime all over him.
It was Arnythree.
"Oh god oh god, what happened? It wasn't supposed to do that. It wasn't supposed to do that!" She sobbed, gazing at Val in wide-eyed panic. "I couldn't get out, John. I tried to disconnect, but it woul
dn't let me! And the pain... I don't care if it's not the same sensation as getting stabbed, but drowning in hideous gloop is fucking torture!" She began to cry and Val let the beautiful girl sob against him for just a few precious seconds.
"Arny, you have to relax," Val soothed. "I think there's someone else still trapped in one of these things."
Her eyes widened with horror. "Rich. He's also trapped. Oh god, we got to get him out!"
Val nodded, immediately heading to the pod opposite Arny's, closing his eyes, placing his hands upon the chrome vessel once more. He closed his eyes, and taking a few seconds to tightly control the weave of chaotic energies surging through him, he plunged his spirit once more into what he now sensed were clone pods, racing through the intricate maze of conductive wiring and hardware as fast as thought.
Dominion Catalyzation successfully cast! 20 mana spent!
The instant the pod's lights flickered on, a high pitched beeping filled the room, and Val gazed down at the utterly still form of Rich, gazing in bug-eyed horror, a hideous contrast to the bemused kid who had been waving farewell, filled with excitement for the adventure ahead.
"This is bullshit," Val muttered, shifting his balance and pivoting the inert form out of the deathtrap these clone pods had become, gently easing Rich's slime covered body to the ground, biceps burning as he pivoted and shifted, making sure not to crack the kid's head against the stone.
He took a deep breath as Arny began to keen. "Arny! Focus! Do you know CPR?" The girl gazed at him in wide-eyed disbelief. "He should be out. Why isn't he out?"
"No time! Can you?"
Hesitating, she blinked and began to shake her head before suddenly nodding. "Yes... I, oh my god, this game really did plant some sort of basic training into my head."
"Good!" Val snapped. "Since there are two of us, you do mouth to mouth while I do compressions. Come on, hurry!"
Endless Online: Oblivion's Price: A LitRPG Adventure - Book 3 Page 11