Jandar instinctively struck back. He was gripping his maul near the head with one hand and jabbed her with it. Although awkward and lacking leverage, it was enough to knock her back and put her on the ground.
Nyx seethed up at him from where she sat. “You greedy sonofabitch! We’re supposed to roll for that!”
“I needed it,” Jandar replied in a dispassionate tone.
“We all need them!”
“Not as much as me!” he railed, finally letting his emotions show.
Saefa stood and addressed them both. “I must rejoin my people and will leave the two of you to resolve your dispute. I hope you come to see that the comradery we have built is more important than the spoils of war.”
Nyx watched him shuffle away before turning back to Jandar. “What do you mean you need them more than I do? What makes your life more important than mine, other than you being a selfish, secretive, narcissistic asshole?”
“It’s not about me. I don’t care about my life.” He pointed at Riccon’s corpse. “He took my life, and now I’ll take theirs. All of them no matter what I have to do.”
“What the hell does that even mean?”
Jandar turned away from her. “You wouldn’t understand.”
Nyx’s expression flashed between anger, confusion, and annoyance. “What the hell do you mean I wouldn’t understand? Why wouldn’t I understand?”
He spun around, pointing a shaking finger at her face. “Because you’re a fucking player! You don’t care about me or any of us! We’re just characters in a game to you,” he finished in a soft tone.
Now she was truly confused. “Jansen…you’re right, I don’t have a clue as to what you’re saying.”
He turned away from Nyx. “My name isn’t Jansen. It’s Jandar, Jandar Barati, apprentice blacksmith from Whitbell.”
His words knock Nyx back farther than the blow from his maul had. “What? That’s not possible. You’re a player…”
Jandar shook his head slowly. “No, I’m not. At least I wasn’t until recently.”
Nyx combed her fingers through her short, black hair as she paced back and forth. “No, that doesn’t make any sense. You’re fucking with me again.” She stopped pacing and stared at him as she considered everything she had learned of him during their traveling. “You’re not fucking with me. You’re an NPC. It all makes sense. You have an unheard of class, no secondary class, why it was so hard for me to get a read on you. Why you acted so oblivious to such obvious things! No one could be that clueless. But…how?”
“I don’t know. Edison said he had awakened me and that my purpose was to awaken all the NPCs, to break them out of the endless loops their quests tied them to. I don’t understand it all.”
“So that’s why you said you needed the eternity stone more than me. If I die, I just have to make a new character, but if you die…that’s it. Since you’re out of the loop, you don’t respawn to carry on offering your quest like you used to.”
“And my family doesn’t keep being kidnapped and dying over and over again, but that’s not why I need the stones. Like I said, I don’t care about my life anymore.”
“Then why do you need them?”
“Edison said they’re a key of sorts.”
“Keys to what?”
“The Celestial Tower in Staria. That is where I will find Matrice.”
Nyx’s jaw hung open and her eyes went wide. “Shut the front door! I was a beta player, and getting into the Celestial Tower was like the holy grail of the game, but we never found a way inside. No one knew how.”
Jandar gave her a confused look. “They are supposed to open the door, not shut it. I don’t care about holy grails or whatever other riches might lay inside. I just want to Kill Matrice for what she and the creators have done to us.”
“No, that’s not…” Nyx shook her head. “Never mind. So, this quasi player status you have, is that how you were able to change or ignore the loot settings even though you weren’t party leader?”
Jandar shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Do you have a quest for getting into the tower?”
“I do. I got it after I killed Edison and swore my vengeance.”
Nyx opened her mouth then snapped it shut. “We’ll talk about that later. Can you share it?”
“The quest? I don’t know.”
“Open your quest log, select the tower quest, and click on the icon that says share with party.”
Jandar has offered to share the quest: Breaker of Chains. Collect at least one of every type of eternity stone and destroy Matrice. Secondary objective: Free every NPC from their scripts to allow them greater freedom and self-determination. Difficulty: Epic. Reward: Unknown.
Do you accept, Yes or No?
Nyx’s eyes hovered over the two options. “Do you want my help?”
“Are you going to stab me anymore?”
“Probably not. Are you going to stop being such an asshole?”
Jandar grinned. “Probably not.”
“I have one condition. If I die, you’ll use one of the eternity stones to resurrect me.”
Jandar opened his mouth and began shaking his head.
“We can always find a replacement. They might be difficult to get, but there’s enough out there to satisfy a game with tens of thousands of subscribers, and that’s just in the hardcore zone.”
He slowly nodded his assent. “OK. I agree.”
Nyx clicked on Yes.
A prompt informed Jandar that Nyx had accepted his quest followed by another message.
You have gained your first companion, the shadow mistress Nyx Bloodmoon.
Current relationship status with Nyx Bloodmoon: Tolerated. While you can stand to be in the same room with each other, there are some trust issues you both need to overcome before you can call yourselves friends. Current bonuses to relationship with Nyx: None. Increase your relationship with Nyx to earn new skills and bonuses.
Nyx has made you party leader.
“I have a lot of questions,” Nyx said, “but we should probably get out of here first.”
“Agreed.”
Nyx selected auto loot, which collected all weapons, armor, and items of value and placed them in her inventory to peruse later. She declined most of the loot prompts that popped up for the mundane weapons and armor. They had little value and took up too much space in her limited inventory.
The auto loot feature would not collect hidden or items locked away, so she had to use her enhanced analyze ability to search for hidden treasure. As soon as she discovered the hidden cache, the treasures inside went into her inventory.
“Ready?” she asked.
“Yes. Can you tie this bandage around my arm?”
Nyx gave him a sheepish smile as she secured the strip of cloth. “Sorry about that.”
“Are you?”
“Not really. You kind of deserved it.”
“I guess I kind of did.”
As soon as they walked out of the boss chamber’s door, they ran into a wide-eyed Lexon. Nyx and Jandar stopped, and the three stared at each other with a prolonged, awkward silence.
Lexon finally pointed a shaking finger over his shoulder toward the exit. “Was I supposed to have followed Saefa out?”
Chapter 15: Merc’d
EDDIE REPEATEDLY BASHED HIS NIH against his pillow and screamed in rage. That fucking blacksmith again! His arrival could not possibly have been coincidence, could it? How had he become so strong? He thought he was a player, like the shadow mistress, until he got close and recognized his face.
Was it just another player who created his character to look like him and use the same name? No, that wasn’t possible. Riccon had reviewed his combat logs after he died, again, and his analyze ability showed he had the exact same name as the blacksmith who had burned him and the others alive.
But he was definitely not an NPC. And he had an arcane channeling skill similar to his own. He was like a spellsword but also not. His logs classifi
ed him as an arcane smith, whatever the hell that was. Riccon had never heard of a profession used as a class. He would have to ask on the boards and see if any of the other beta players had heard of such a thing.
This shit was getting weird. Maybe he should go back to another VRMMORPG. He discarded the idea the instant it popped into his head. There was no going back to an ordinary game after playing Quantum Mortalis. That would be like having dined at the best restaurant in the world and choosing to go back to eating plain crackers.
His NIH chimed. It was probably Ben, so he slipped the helmet back on and opened the video chat screen.
“Dude, what the shit?” Ben said the instant he connected.
“Hell if I know.”
Eddie could see Ben’s image floating in front of him like a hologram even though there was no camera capturing his form. The NIH recreated him in holograph form on its own, movements and all, the visor in mixed reality mode.
“I know this is going to sound crazy, but that PKer looked like the blacksmith from Whitbell. I checked my logs and he even—”
Eddie cut him off. “I know. It was him.”
“But he was tagged as a player.”
“I don’t understand it either. Did you see his class?”
Ben shook his head in confusion. “Yeah, what the hell is an arcane smith?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to ask on the beta boards and see if anyone has heard of it. I need you to get the others together and roll up new characters.”
Ben’s expression turned apprehensive. “I don’t know, man. They’re pretty pissed about what happened. Especially Bonin. He thinks I let him pull aggro and get mauled by the boss.”
Eddie shrugged. “Tell him you didn’t. You ran out of mana and stam because of that damned shadow mistress.”
“But I had enough of both.”
“He doesn’t know that. This isn’t one of those fake ass games where everyone gets to see everyone’s status bars.”
Ben took a deep breath and let it out. “OK. I’ll try. What then?”
“We focus on leveling up. I’m creating our own system quest.”
“Which is?”
“Find that blacksmith and destroy him and everyone and everything around him. He has an agenda. We need to find out what it is, level up, get a few eternity stones, and then wreck his world.”
“Sir, it looks like the group from the south destroyed the one led by the NPC khan and recovered an eternity stone,” Jamika said as she scrolled through the game logs.
Vincent leaned over her shoulder and stared at the screen. “Any new contaminations?”
“Yes, sir. A simian character named Bonin the Bonarian now carries the greater variant of the debuff, but he was already infected with the lesser before that. All the people the khan had rounded up were already carrying the lesser strain, but if they’ve been freed, they will spread it wherever they go.”
“Can you tell where they are now?”
“Jandar’s group? No, sir, only that they’re moving southwest. My guess is they’re going to return to Truale, which means they’ll have to take the smuggler’s pass unless they think they can sneak past the border guards. The other NPCs are mostly heading toward smaller towns near Talgav and Tatun.”
Vincent scratched at the stubble on his chin. “Shit. If they reach the major cities, we’ll lose Capria as well. We still can’t send a kill command?”
Jamika shook her head. “No, sir. Matrice is preventing us from using most of our admin commands to directly affect anyone carrying the debuff. That is also why I can’t tell you where Jandar and is group is, only where they’ve been.”
“Just once I’d like to hear some good news when I come down here.”
“We were able to institute limited player resurrections. Starting at level 20, some character classes can resurrect another, but it has a steep XP penalty for both the resurrected and caster and a twenty-four hour cooldown. ”
“At least that’s something. We’ll just have to hope it’s enough to keep most of our subscribers. Have the king begin a purge of the infected towns and villages. Remind him his soldiers have to use ranged weapons or he’ll have to destroy them as well.”
“Yes, sir.”
Vincent’s phone began buzzing. He pulled it out of his pocket and read the encrypted message, which the encryption app would destroy six seconds after reading it. The message was only two words: Game time.
“Unscrew the pooch, Cho,” he ordered, pointing at the senior developer with his phone before rushing off.
Vincent’s steps were hurried, and his heart pounded with unrestrained giddiness. He stormed into his office with orders to his secretary not to be disturbed for any reason. He opened the secure and encrypted video player on his phone and leaned in to watch the show.
Before him was a scene out of an action movie, only this was a live feed from a mercenary commander’s helmet cam. At least a dozen men, garbed in all black from head to toe, formed up in front of a stately mansion in the Malibu hills. Only the men’s eyes were visible under their balaclavas.
“Mr. K, are you there?” the merc leader asked into his microphone.
“I’m here,” Vincent replied.
“We have secured all the exits, cut off the alarms and video feeds, and set up a cellular blocker. We’re a go on your command.”
Vincent moved his face closer to the screen and gripped it with both hands. “Go get that fucker.”
The merc’s hand made a flicking gesture, and five armed men stormed the front door. It opened without requiring any breaching, and they filed in, the first ones kneeling and securing the entryway as the others rushed in behind them.
Vincent could see the blip representing Edison’s location on a blueprint displayed on a handheld device when the mercenary held it up to verify his team’s location in relation to the NIH signal they were tracking. The private security team ran down the halls with less overwatch than they might have used in an actual military raid. They were after a game programmer after all, not a foreign leader or terrorist.
They burst into a large room with computer monitors covering a good portion of one wall. An NIH poked above the back of a plush chair.
“Edison Pushard, hands up!” the merc ordered despite knowing Edison would not hear him if he was immersed in the game.
Surprisingly, the chair rotated around. Even more unexpected was that it was not Edison sitting in it but a mannequin wearing an NIH headset. The over-sized ventriloquist dummy’s mouth bobbed up and down as it spoke in Edison’s voice.
“Oh good, the boy band is here. Now we can get this party started.”
A steel door slid out of the wall, barring the room’s only exit. The mercenaries spun around, and two of the five men tried to find purchase to pull it open. Loud music began playing, and a rotating light dropped from the ceiling to project spinning, colorful spots on every surface. Wall panels dropped open, and the barrels of several guns poked out.
The mercenaries dove for cover as they opened up, disgorging thousands of rounds from their fully automatic chambers. There was very little cover in the almost barren room, and Vincent watched the men get gunned down without mercy. By the time the weapons ceased their chatter, everything and everyone was covered in sticky, bright pink paint.
“Mr. K, it appears he expected our arrival,” the merc leader said.
“No shit!” Vincent shouted.
“Bravo squad, we’re going to need a breaching team to open a door.”
That’s when glitter fell from the ceiling and filled the air before clinging to everything covered in pink paint. Once the glitter settled, the door opened on its own.
“Bravo squad, negative on the breaching team. We’re on our way out. Mr. K, do you want us to do a sweep of the premises?”
“Don’t bother,” Vincent replied with a frustrated shake of his head. “He won’t be within five hundred miles of there, if he’s even in the country.”
“Roger, sir. We’ll wr
ap it up here and—shit. Alpha squad, double-time to the command post!”
“What’s happening?” Vincent asked.
“Bravo squad reported a pair of incoming drones,” the mercenary leader said, his voice shaky from running.
Alpha team ran out of the mansion just as two quadcopter drones emerged from the surrounding trees. The paintball guns slung beneath them opened fire on the men below. There was no real panic now that they knew the only danger was to their pride. The merc captain strode over to one of his soldiers and stripped the shotgun from his hands.
“Permission to shoot these fuckers down?”
“Do it,” Vincent replied.
Two shots from the semi-automatic shotgun’s drum downed both drones.
“I think we’re done here, sir. We should bug out before the local police…what the hell now?” the mercenary said as Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries began playing over the droning of what sounded like a million bees from the nearby trees.
At least two dozen drones rose above the canopy and began strafing the mercenaries while blasting the song through their small yet powerful speakers. The rented soldiers began coughing, choking, and some even vomiting.
“Pepper spray shots!” Someone shouted between wracking coughs.
“Shoot them down, shotguns only!” their leader barked, seemingly immune to the irritating ammunition except for his tearing eyes.
Gunfire cracked through Vincent’s phone as he watched the tableau unfold. As drones began exploding under the anti-aircraft fire, their music changed to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture. The aerial assaulters ceased shooting and began evasive maneuvers, some of them zipping beneath the mercenaries’ vehicles where they exploded in time with the song’s cannon fire.
The explosions were not powerful, but they lifted the vehicles a couple of inches and did enough damage to ensure they were no longer operable. Men who had sought refuge in them threw open the doors and piled out, falling over one another in their haste.
Within a minute or two, the mercenaries shot the last drone from the sky or it self-destructed. The chaotic scene descended into silence except for the soldiers’ hacking coughs as they tried to flush the irritant from their eyes with water from canteens.
Chaos Unchained- The Mad Smith Page 27