While she spoke, I couldn’t help but remember Patrick O’Grady. There was a high chance that he was once someone like this Beta. Only with false memories.
“We tried even which way. Hundreds of years of attempts. I leveled up the skill high enough to make a Greater Rift that everyone could walk through at once!” The girl laughed bitterly. A tear shone on her face, fell down her rosy cheek. “It was useless. The mobs and Piercers can go through the rift easily, but not us. Three thinks there’s some connection between the worlds. Maybe our world was even integrated into the main universe of Disgardium.”
“I’m sure it was,” I nodded. “Integrated and turned into a legend. The divinity that protects me calls your world the Nether, from which another… let’s call him a god, takes his power, and from which beasts appear. Hey, if the database works the way you say it does, then why did I keep my character and progress?”
“That’s the whole point. When you break through to here, our database gladly rewrites itself to accommodate everything new that came from there. For example, we didn’t have any kind of alcohol for thousands of years. Then one of the new arrivals happened to have a bottle of ale. The mechanics changed. We got the ability to not only create ale, but other kinds of booze too. Three is sure that it will work in the other direction if a rift can be made from the other side. Your managing AI will decide that a player expansion to a new plane has begun, and so everything that comes from our side will be integrated into the main Disgardium.”
“Who will make the rift? A Ravager?”
“That’s the plan. The problem is that it’s a highly mana-intensive spell. The Piercer needs at least level one thousand to make a Greater Rift from there to here.”
“How many do you have? I’ve seen Ervigot and Harnathea so far…”
“Those names mean nothing to me. Like I said, your AI renames my pets. You came here along with Smoke. Before him, almost ten years ago, I sent Lil Spit.”
I remembered Ervigot spewing out massive fountains of anthracite slime that instantly liquefied mobs. Lil Spit. Of course.
“Ten years ago?”
“I guess it wasn’t so long ago for you?” She waited for my nod, laughed. “Well, that fits.”
“Why do you send them so rarely? Is the cooldown that long?”
“A Lesser Rift isn’t good enough. A Piercer sent through one alone can’t level up. It takes a Greater Rift, and that requires a hundred times more shards. They’re not so easy to collect.”
Beta answered with annoyance, like a tired parent answering a child’s dumb questions. She was obviously sick of it, but I still wanted to learn the thing that troubled me most of all.
“What happened to the others that got here? The others like me? Back in reality, I never heard of any cases like this…”
Beta smiled a carnivorous grin. She’d been sitting cross-legged six feet up in the air the whole time we talked, but now she stood.
“Nobody’s heard of any such cases. Three is smart. He got a free ride to MIT, and he planned to work as a beta-tester at Snowstorm to kick-start his career. Anyway, he thinks that players that end up here always get pulled out sooner or later. But you see, they still get left behind here. Like I already said, the database in this version of Disgardium happily rewrites itself when something comes in from outside. I don’t know how it happens, but when new arrivals are pulled out, their consciousness stays with us. I’m certain of it. All of us—all the beta-testers—are living out our lives in reality as if nothing ever happened. Our imprints were left behind here, full copies. Only…”
“Only you don’t think of yourselves as the copies,” I whispered.
“Exactly. Just like you don’t think you’re a copy, right? Your capsule will spit you out of Dis if it hasn’t already. But you’re not Alex. You’re Scyth, and you’ll stay here forever.”
“Wait. You said yourself that there used to be a hundred of you, and now there are only six! Where did the others go if they got stuck in this world forever?”
“The founding fathers strove for pure realism. They wanted players to take Disgardium seriously, to fear death. Punishing players who die by taking away levels is one thing. Disappointing, but just another rule of the game. But how do you punish players who drop down to level one? Or die more than once at level one?”
“By taking their character?”
“Right. In this world, level-one players lose experience points when they die. When there’s no experience left, the character dies a final death—and no resurrection can fix it. We’ve tried.”
She raised her head. Her eyes shone with tears. Her face was flawless, with no sign of the weight of millennia in her beautiful eyes, just sadness for fallen friends. Her voice was young, sonorous, and now it said words that chilled my heart.
“My name was June Curtis before I became Nine. I collect abilities. When I kill a target, I have a very low chance of absorbing one of its skills. You have a couple of interesting abilities that I haven’t seen before. With luck, I’ll get them out of you before you die your final death.”
A second later, she removed the Undying buff from me and I saw nothing but fire.
You are dead.
Reviving in 11:59:59… 11:59:58… 11:59:57…
Twelve long hours in the great nothingness awaited me, then short moments before the next fireball, then death, waiting, revival… And again, and again, for all eternity or until my final death.
Chapter 7: Another Life
THEY SAY HUMANS can get used to anything. Maybe that’s true, but unless Nine and Three were lying, I was no human. Just a copy of the real Alex Sheppard, a sixteen-year-old schoolboy. So I didn’t get used to anything. Each time, I felt it vividly, intensely, regardless of how many times I went through the same thing. Pain remained pain, death remained death. I remembered each one.
There was nothing to mark the time that passed except the timer counting down the hours until my next respawn. I counted my deaths instead. On average, there were two and a half every twenty-four hours, because Beta #9 didn’t always kill me right away. Sometimes she wanted to talk. Sometimes, when I revived, she wasn’t there, and then I tried to run with Depths Teleportation, which she hadn’t taken yet.
My skills were blocked within the castle, so I tried to get the hell away whenever I could.
I died every time. Not to Nine, but to the mobs. The land around the castle teemed with enemy life. I doubted that Dis had anything like it. Ten thousand years of evolution in the Nether had created truly nightmarish creatures, but it was the Living Sieve that I hated worst of all.
It was invisible, but you could detect it from distortion in the air, like the kind you see over hot asphalt. The sieve moved by blinking or leaping from one spot to another—there it was thirty yards away, and then suddenly—poof!—it was pulling you into its insides through its fine sieve, grating your flesh to molecules. Worst of all, you didn’t die right away. Layer after layer, your body turned to a fine paste until the Living Sieve finally absorbed its prey. The torture dealt no damage until the beast finished the process, which meant you had a long time to fruitlessly try to escape while you screamed of pain and dreamed of a quick death. I tried to hasten the end by literally pushing myself into the sieve, but the speed never changed—just layer after slow layer in strict sequence.
I tried dozens of times, but I never managed to get far enough from the castle to use my skills. The Pacified, Amnesia and Enchained debuffs seemed to work in a half-mile radius around it.
After learning from me everything she wanted, Nine no longer showed much interest in my life or what was happening in the real world. For her, it was all something unimportant and remote.
Somewhere near my three-hundredth death, which meant around four months in, I managed to listen in unnoticed on a conversation between her and Three. Maybe they weren’t even hiding, in the same way high-category citizens don’t notice servants. By then, I’d long ago fallen down to level one. To ensure that I didn’
t die my final death, the girl grouped up with me and took me outside to kill a couple of packs of mobs. I got crumbs of experience, but it was enough to send my level skyrocketing up to a few thousand.
Beta complained to her would-be MIT scholarship student that she’d gotten a ‘stubborn donor.’
“I knocked out Liberation, Ghastly Howl and a few other skills that I already have. You know, Stealth, Swimming, garbage like that. Either I’m just unlucky or there’s some catch here…”
“You have an eternity ahead of you, Nine, relax,” Three answered. “Or do you want something specific from him?”
“I need everything, obviously. That’s the whole point. Anyway, the donor is interesting. Probably the most curious of all the ones weve gotten. Second Life, Divine Revelation, Depths Teleportation— some very interesting skills and perks. Especially the second one.”
“Don’t worry about it. You’ll get them sooner or later. What do you think about Nine-Six and Seven-Two? They serious…?”
From scraps of overheard conversations and rare chats with the closed-off and silent Nine, I managed to learn that the remaining beta testers lived single lives. Surprisingly, Three was the only heterosexual man among them. Nine-Six and Seven-Two were gay. Apart from Nine, there were also two women, and Three was in a relationship with Twelve. Five-Four was his ex, and Nine was his first love.
From what I understood, each of them valued their digital eternal life, so they lived apart and trusted no-one. Three met with Twelve on neutral ground. It made sense after I learned that they all had castles that worked the same way as Nine’s, blocking the skills of uninvited guests and dropping their stats down to a single point. And their mistrust was natural, considering everything they’d been through. The initial hundred beta testers had become six not because of the mobs, but because of feuds, treachery, stabs in the back… and Nine’s fanatical drive to collect abilities. She was responsible for snuffing out life’s flame in far more than one beta tester in the Nether.
I also managed to figure out why none of them had gone insane.
Their digital existence meant that they all had perfect memories, bodies that didn’t age or get sick (not counting debuffs) and minds that stayed sane. Their thinking was always rational, and so was mine.
I was sure I still had a tiny chance to escape. Based on my calculations, I had to spend at least a local year here before I’d be missed and rescued from my capsule. And even if I remained here after the emergency exit, the main ‘me’ would come back and pull me out to the real Dis. How? I didn’t know. I held out hope that Snowstorm would help. Scyth was no ordinary player, after all. The character was enmeshed in the script of the Destroying Plague, and the Sleeping Gods depended on him too.
Nine punished me for my escape attempts. The worst part was that my Resilience was blocked from leveling up while she tortured me, not letting me die. On the other hand, I saw all the Ravagers, which she called Piercers. Nine usually kept them small, around the size of a dog, so they wouldn’t take up too much space. There were nine of them, and I doubted that number was random. They were just as horrifying and warped as all the creatures there. Nine said they were all tamed with a special talent. Each Piercer had the Smoldering skill, which both temporarily served as a killing aura and gave the ability to absorb experience from other beings.
Once, after respawning yet again, my stomach clenched as I braced for more pain and a new death, but Beta just nodded at me to follow her. As she walked, she seemed to recall something and handed me some legendary leather pants, boots and an epic silk shirt.
“Get dressed. You don’t look too smart.”
Puzzled, I did what she asked and we started moving again. We headed out to Beta’s beautiful garden in the castle grounds.
“Want a drink?” she asked, stopping in a small glade surrounded by gardens filled with fantastical flowers.
I didn’t refuse. The girl magicked up a dining table, materialized a bottle of brandy and some cups out of thin air, invited me to sit.
“Eat,” she said, filling the glasses serenely.
When we finished the brandy, she materialized a bottle of wine, and not common quality, but legendary. It added three points to charisma.
We sat peacefully talking for a few hours and both got pretty drunk. The wine made us feel so charming and charismatic. The chink really did untie tongues and bring people closer together.
Beta opened up and told me how the Greater Rift works. As it turned out, she went to grind Smoldering Nether Shards for days on end without breaks.
“One Greater Rift costs one hundred million shards,” she said, slurring her words a little. “Some dumb game mechanic makes ’em drop only if the mob is the same level or higher than you, so they’re tough to get. At least the other betas help out—they all wanna get outta here. When we have the amount we need, we all meet up, I take the shards and I make a Greater Rift. First we put some ordinary mobs through it. We just pull ’em to the rift and throw ’em in. After the second wave, I send the Piercer through, giving it a command to kill everything it meets. When it lands, it drops to level one, but thanks to our mobs and Smoldering, it levels up. Then it can get started on the local mobs.”
“How do you find out wiiat’s happening there?”
Instead of answering, Beta waved a hand. I don’t know what kind of spell she cast, but an impenetrable dome suddenly covered the garden and the sky seemed to darken, then lights lit up on the trees. Bright butterflies fluttered through the air and shone in the flickering dim light. The calming sound of ringing glass hung in the air. I didn’t quite know where it was coming from—everywhere at once, it seemed.
“Beautiful,” I said. The spell seemed to affect me too; suddenly my soul felt at peace and I wanted it never to end. “Magic.”
“Beautiful,” she agreed, a young girl that nobody would have suspected was over seventeen. “You asked how I know what happens to my pets through the rift… It’s very simple. I see them in a panel, I analyze the data, then I think of what I need to send next. I think I’ve gotten pretty successful if your guys need the gods’ help to banish them.”
“How do they come back? Can they be killed at all?”
“The Piercers are trained to return if their health falls to half or lower. Once they’re back, they go back to the same level they left with. I can’t lose them, or else…” Beta didn’t finish the thought. Silently, she poured herself another full cup of wine, drained it.
“Does it take long for them to come back?” I asked, remembering the differing flows of time. “How quickly do they return?”
“Sometimes right away, sometimes after a year or so. I tried to send them to continents that you guys haven’t explored yet, but the Piercers can’t survive them. It took many centuries to figure out that they last the longest on Latteria and Shad’Erung.”
“How do they know when to activate Greater Rift? How do they have the skill?”
Again, she didn’t answer right away. Her armor snapped as it disappeared into her inventory. Nine was now just in her dress, barefoot. She adjusted her hair, looked at me sidelong. She looked nothing like a coldblooded psychopathic murderer now.
“I taught them,” Beta shrugged. “Gave them the ability. When they go into the rift, I order them to activate it as soon as they get enough resources. From what I understand, there are no shards in your Disgardium, and the skill requires mana. But not a single Piercer has managed to save enough resources.”
“What stops you from sending all the Piercers at once? Then you’d have a better chance that at least one would reach the required level.”
“It’s pointless. They’re level one when they arrive, and they only level up from the mobs we send through with them. If we split those mobs among multiple Piercers, they’ll all stay weak.”
“Listen… Let me help,” I said, deciding to push my luck. “I level up very quickly, you know that. I promise you, as soon as I can, I’ll make a Greater Rift if you teach me how.”
“No. Either you’re an idiot or you’re trying to trick me. You won’t be able to keep the ability wiien you go through a rift made here.”
“But we could try!”
“Forget it. Three and I have discussed all the tales you told of yourself. Even if you weren’t lying, you won’t succeed. They’ll eliminate you as a Threat. And then we’ll be in trouble too. Snowstorm could get scared and just switch us off. What’s happening here is one thing—it doesn’t worry them too much. If a player who can make a portal to the Nether shows up back in main Dis, that’s another matter entirely…”
I tried to change her mind, but Beta just showed me the image of a Lava Drake. That shut me up. It was an eloquent argument. I would have stayed quiet forever if it meant avoiding a day in that lava.
Now that we’d exhausted all topics of conversation and silence reigned, Nine gave me an appraising look. It seemed her usual scanning, indifferent gaze, but I swear on the Sleepers, there was a gleam in her eye.
“You know, Scyth, there’s something about your dead flesh…” That must have been one of the first times she’d called me by my name. “And I’m feeling lonely today. Follow me, zombie boy.”
The girl led me into the castle. It was the first time I’d been inside, and my head span with interest, but I didn’t have time to check out the decor in much detail. Beta walked fast and ordered me to keep up.
Along luxuriously furnished corridors lined with endless rows of mannequins decked out in legendary armor sets and weapon stands filled with top weaponry, we walked to the bedroom.
Beta’s dress fell to the ground, leaving her in a bikini, which she quickly took off. She told me to undress too. She paid no attention as I hid her loaned legendaries in my inventory.
Holy War Page 11