O would probably just send the messages one by one.
A delivery drone soon arrived with the cartridges. I quickly replaced the old ones, got undressed… I didn’t get into my capsule right away. First I set a forced-exit timer for twelve hours from now—I’d spend a little over eight months in the Nether.
Nether, take me… Logging in.
Synchronizing…
The melding of minds didn’t go as fast as last time. Scyth had spent another year here and lost almost all his weapon skills, along with Night Vision, Cartography, Cloak Essence and Imitation. With each death, he lost a mote of his humanity. I felt his joy when Nine and her friends almost killed Nine-Six, and Seven-Two was locked in his own castle and afraid to poke his head over the parapet. It was hard for me to feel Scyth s feelings as my own.
I found him where he spent most of his time—in the great nothing. Less than an hour left to resurrection.
When our minds melded, he came alive, felt my presence, felt his life continuing, and with that came emotions: anger, fury, pain, longing for his parents, his friends and Tissa. The events of the party awakened with him… I don’t know how to explain it… his spirit? He didn’t approve of my choice of Karina, but he still envied me. I was talking to myself. Some might call that schizophrenia, but it was just the way it was. However you span it, I had two personalities within me. The boundary between them was steadily fading, but it was still there.
“I would have chosen Rita, since you broke up with Tissa,” he thought. “She’s nice.”
“When you come back, you can choose for yourself. Let’s decide what to do and how to get out of here.”
“Don’t you think I’ve tried? I’ve tried everything so many times. Tried to negotiate, gain their trust, make friends, escape, steal something from the castle, find some kind of artifact… Nine doesn’t even punish me for escaping anymore, she doesn’t want to waste the time. She just kills me without a word and disappears.”
From there, we thought together, as one. But not for long. Revival in the castle yard, Nine’s indifferent face, a lightning bolt, death…
Beta flew straight off as soon as she killed me, to attend to her own business: farming shards or sieging Seven-Two. But then something failed to go to plan. One time, resurrection didn’t take twelve hours! I didn’t even go to limbo at all! Ten seconds after I died, I reappeared in the same spot. Technically I hadn’t even died: Second Life! You managed to dodge death!
“Lucky…” I thought aloud. “But how? My skills are blocked…”
Once sure that Nine was gone, I checked my other abilities—everything else was still locked. Strange. Second Life had a fifty percent proc chance, but this was the first time it had activated in so many thousands of years. Why? I spent some time pondering it, but couldn’t figure out what had happened. Nothing had changed, but the previously locked ability, earned for gaining two hundred and fifty’ levels without dying, suddenly activated. No point in wasting time wondering why. I was just lucky that Nine thought I would be dead for the next twelve hours. I hoped she didn’t show up any sooner.
I hid in a corner of the castle walls and started going through my inventory. The other ‘me’ thought that was a waste of time, since he’d already tried everything, but he didn’t protest. I couldn’t do anything with the still unidentified artifacts from the Treasury of the First Mage.
I scrolled through the whole list of abilities again, then scoured my inventory and found some cooking ingredients and tools. Food! What if I could create some new dish with some kind of effect? Wait… What if I put my skills on scrolls? I slapped myself on the forehead. That was it! Nether, how did I not think of it before? It was so simple!
I fitfully pulled out a blank sheet of paper, a pen, ink and…
Damn it. Crafts were locked too. I threw it all back in and fell onto my back, staring up into the sky. I could look straight at the sun without it affecting my eyes here. I’d never seen any birds. Maybe flying mobs didn’t exist in the beta version? I lay there a while and went through my inventory, pulling out each piece of gear and trying to think of what I could do with it. Out of sheer desperation, I lit a fire and tried to cook something, anything. Half my expensive ingredients burnt away fruitlessly.
I put the pan and cook’s hat into my bag, pulled out some Explosive Lollipops. I thoughtfully rolled them in my hand—I counted eleven—and put one in my mouth.
You ate an Explosive Lollipop.
Random buff received: you can walk through walls for 30 seconds!
Not what I needed. Although… I jumped up, dropped the lollipops and rushed to the castle. Clenching internally, I ran headlong into a wall, and as I made contact with the stone, I felt my skin melt into it… Twenty seconds… I dashed through the walls to the far corner of the palace, to the vault, not knowing wiiat I might find there, but hoping for something good. Ten seconds… I wasn’t going to make it. The castle was huge, and I’d covered only half of it. Five seconds… I could see the huge adamantite door of the vault, just ten yards away…
No! I didn’t make it. The lollipop buff ended just as I emerged from a wall. Phew. It was a good thing I didn’t get stuck in the textures and die.
I wandered the corridors an eventually reached some mannequins decked with equipment. Beta didn’t keep anything special there. She probably hid the best items in the vault, or maybe they just hadn’t deemed it necessary to add many items to the beta version. After all, the testers were mainly supposed to be testing playability and realism, finding bugs… All the same, I took a few full sets of equipment, just to get back at Nine somehow. I couldn’t equip any of it: Pacified prevented me from meeting the requirements. A Herald at level six hundred and two, with stats all equal to one. Damn it.
I went back to where I dropped some of the Explosive Lollipops and kept experimenting. I got an Insane Joy debuff and spent half a minute laughing like a madman. Gigantism tripled my size, but my stats remained the same. Bubblehead, Underwater Breathing, Loudspeaker Voice… The names of the lollipop effects spoke for themselves. I was afraid my head would explode. It swelled up so big that you could see me over the walls—or at least top of my head. The last lollipop turned me into a chicken. All my curses melded into just ‘cluck-cluck-cluck.’
All that experimenting took three hours. I decided I’d wait until closer to Nine’s return before I broke out, so I wouldn’t be tortured long if I ran into a Living Sieve. I didn’t have anything else to do anyway.
I wandered the castle grounds, watched the Lava Drakes for a while, held at the bottom of a pit by an enchanted fire-resistant chain. I dropped their level with Balancer and tried to kill them with arrows. I missed.
The clock was ticking. I was already starting to regret that I’d set the emergency quit timer for twelve hours. This was a drag.
Kicking stones in idle melancholy, I went back to where I’d been experimenting. I was somehow attached to the place. I picked a blade of grass, put it between my teeth and laid down on my back again. I kept lying there until the air clapped in the castle yard. Nine had returned. I didn’t bother getting up. Why rush it? She’d find me.
I just turned my head toward her—and saw it. A dropped lollipop. A shiny, greenish ball with a white spiral flowing across its surface. I’d missed it because it had rolled under the long leaf of a tropical creeper. I stretched out my hand, picked up the lollipop and put it in my mouth. An explosion of acid sweetness engulfed my taste buds, the sky went hazy, and then…
You ate an Explosive Lollipop.
Random buff received: you re lighter than air for 30 seconds! Get your Gnomish Parachute Cloak ready. The fall will be long!
With the speed of a balloon filled with helium, I began to ascend. The fortress w^all rushed by me, quickly disappearing below. Floundering in the air, I saw Nine walking through the fortress yard to the site of my death. She wasn’t looking up yet.
There was no wind in this world, so I wasn’t carried off to the side like I’d h
oped. Soon the tiny figure that was Beta began to get closer. I was around five hundred yards above her. Spreading my arms, I took a stable position lying on my stomach and studied the surroundings from a bird’s-eye view.
“How did you do that?” Beta’s voice was as clear as if she were next to me. “You hid Levitation or Flight from Three’s scan? But then why didn’t you fly before? Strange…”
My flight slowed. Stretching out a hand, Beta began to pull me toward her. The next second I realized I was looking at the wrong thing! All the castle debuffs were gone! My abilities were active!
Without a second thought, I hit Depths Teleportation to Kharinza. A storm of emotions filled me for five heartbeats, from fear that the cast would be interrupted to premature excitement. I closed my eyes, counted the seconds.
“What are you doing?” Beta asked, a note of surprise and alarm in her voice. “Stop tha…”
First I felt the ground beneath me and caught the tangv scent of wet earth. Then I opened my eyes. And saw Kharinza.
The first thing I did was change my respawn location. I didn’t care if I died as long as the local sadists didn’t find me. I had plenty of experience dying, and I could level up with Reflection. But where? There were no mobs here. Suddenly I remembered with fear how Beta found me in Tristad. She’d told Three via her comm amulet that she had me, which meant she knew where to find me and went there in search of me. Could she do the same now?
The next thing I did was make some Depths Teleportation scrolls. If Beta found me again, maybe I could use a scroll to escape. Thinking a moment, I made some Lethargy scrolls too. Could come in handy. Although I doubted it, with such a big gap in levels…
I pressed my way through the jungle and reached the shore. There were many islands near Kharinza, and some of them had life. I had no idea how long my freedom would last, but I knew that no matter what happened, the more I leveled up, the better my chances.
The gentle waters of the Bottomless Ocean lapped my bare feet as they sank into the snow-white sand. Standing up to my waist in the water, I tried to make out the direction of the nearest island, but the fog of war made it impossible.
Fish in all colors of the rainbow tickled my toes in the surf. I looked at one of them and my breath caught.
Spotted Blowfish, level 64729 fish
The fish were neutral, even this monster, which could have easily crushed Orthokon the kraken. Bomber would be so upset…
The peace broke as a horrible pain lanced through my foot.
Spotted Blowfish dealt you critical damage: 1,020,298,113,995!
Burning Poison: -5% health every 10 seconds (1 minute).
Damage fully absorbed by Equanimity.
The Path of Equanimity saved me! Resilience jumped up fourteen levels at once and extended my invulnerability at the start of the battle to sixteen seconds. That was enough for the venomous bloated fish to kill itself against my Reflection, deflating like a balloon.
I stood for a long time in flashes of light, flooded by experience. It continued so long that I even got bored, but I had to wait—a character couldn’t move while leveling up, as if paralyzed with happiness. No wonder. I would have jumped for joy if I could.
Good thing I didn’t catch aggro from anything else.
Spotted Blowfish is dead.
You leveled up…!
You leveled up…!
You leveled up…!
• • •
You leveled up! Current level: 2988.
11930 free attribute points available!
The creepy fish turned over and floated belly-up. Rainbow blood floated across the water’s smooth surface. I stretched out a hand and looted it myself. Magnetism was ignoring the loot because of my filter settings.
You got a Smoldering Nether Shard.
Smoldering Nether Shard
Common.
Combine 1,000,000 shards to make a Smoldering Nether Essence.
Used to activate a Lesser Rift leading to another dimension.
Sale price: 1 copper coin.
Beta said that a Lesser Rift was unsuitable for the Piercers; it could only let through one creature. But that was enough for me.
Now all I had to do to escape the Nether was collect nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine shards.
Interlude 1: Horvac
IN THE BEGINNING, Horvac Onegut wanted to become an astronaut. It was with those thoughts that he joined the military space academy, completed a mechatank piloting course and signed a contract that assured him a cushy position at SpaceX when it ran out.
There was a year left until his sendee in the peacekeepers came to an end. Hoi*vac was sent to North China, where he tried not to die alongside other peacekeepers.
There he saw a fast-burning but horrible war with his own eyes, and Hoi-vac changed his mind about conquering interstellar space. He felt death’s breath in his mechatank cabin, which just barely managed to jump onto the transport platform an instant before the nuke went off.
When Horvac ended his tour, no thoughts of space remained. He just wanted to live, with no more of the trials and tribulations of army service.
Three years after the war, in 2056, Disgardium was released. The full-immersion game had been announced a few years before the war and was a source of anticipation not only for gamers, but for the whole world. World War III distracted attention from it, but as it turned out, the game’s development hadn’t stopped for a single day.
The developer company Snowstorm announced that it was planning to pay online players—under certain conditions, of course. The announcement caused a range of questions. Some just rolled their eyes, certain that the company wouldn’t last long: its business model didn’t stand up to criticism and this was all just hype to attract new users. Some voiced careful hopes that Snowstorm would keep its promise, but all the same, nobody should count on decent payment. Others just saved money for a VR capsule, because Snowstorm announced that Disgardium would only be compatible with their corporation’s capsules. The game simply wouldn’t launch on any other.
In the meantime, Horvac was sick of having nothing to do. Fighting on the right side of a war had won him not only a high citizenship status and all the privileges therein, but also a sizable pension. Carefully invested money allowed him to live on dividends alone, with his pension payout merely adding extra to an already impressive account. Actually, he barely paid attention to Dis’s upcoming release, but you couldn’t get away from the adverts all over the internet.
He’d bought a premium Snowstorm capsule already, attracted by the promise of a soon-to-be-released space simulator where you could play as a space pirate, an interstellar merchant or a peaceful asteroid miner. But when Dis was released and Horvac registered out of curiosity, all thoughts of the space simulator disappeared.
This wasn’t just a game; it was practically a new reality’ in a magical world where the experiences were even more vivid than in life. Dis swallowed up Horvac. Everything he’d been missing in the real world, he found in Disgardium. A surplus of free time and a sizable bank balance allowed him to become one of the first hardcore players.
The skills he’d gained in war found their uses in Dis too. Soon Horvac had founded a clan, called Travelers. The clan was solidly average and performed no miracles, but became strong enough to advance the frontier line alongside the other clans.
The main event in Horvac’s life happened in year nine of Dis. For all that time, the players had been colonizing Latteria from the west, ever pushing further and further east. The Travelers managed to reach the Thunder Strait first, emerging onto it north of the Lakharian Desert, where the Nameless Mountains turned into the Flowering Hills. There was only one pass there, through a narrow gorge controlled by hill spirits. Flying mounts hadn’t been added yet. In fierce competition with Modus and the Azure Dragons, Horvac was the first to farm the required reputation level with the spirits and went out into the Thunder Strait.
They made a stop in
a narrow valley at the foot of the mountains. Leaving his clanmates to make a camp so as to found a clan fort there later, Horvac went to wander along the shoreline solo. He took off his boots and strolled along the wet sand, breathing in the sea air. The sands tickled his feet as they settled after fleeing waves, and shards of shells and stones jabbed underfoot. The water was cold, the sky over his head leaden, but at that moment Horvac enjoyed that place more than any tropical resort.
Peacefully stepping over scurrying low-level crabs, he walked to the end of the narrow bay and saw the broken tip of a mast jutting out of the water. Anticipating exciting discoveries in the holds of a sunken ship, he sped his pace. With all his thoughts he was there, under the water, so he only noticed the body on the shore when he tripped over it.
The brown-skinned corpse belonged not to a man, not to an elf, not to a dwarf or a gnome. It was none of the known races.
Eytrigg Bardukk, Ore, Level gi Sailor
Captain of the schooner Tistanna.
The ore was dying, but still breathed—his health bar was at two percent. Horvac hurriedly pulled out three Large Healing Potions and poured them one after another into the captain’s half-open, sand-filled mouth. He came round slowly, doubled over in the sand and coughing up seawater, seaweed and sand. After a while, the coughing subsided and the ore raised his head. For some time, his clouded eyes showed nothing but confusion. Thinking of something, he jumped up and shouted, baring crooked sharp fangs: “Pafund! Grombolar!”
It was later that Horvac learned that the common tongue that all the races of the Commonwealth spoke was rooted in High Elvish. The pointy-eared inhabitants of Latteria had distant relatives on Shad’Erung, thanks to which the dark races got their own common, Imperial tongue, a guttural mix of dark-elvish, orcish and trollish dialects. In the end, it was similar enough to the common tongue of the Commonwealth for Horvac to communicate with Eytrigg.
“I don’t know what you said, but I’m happy to help,” Horvac answered. “Do you understand me?”
Holy War Page 15