Holy War

by Sugralinov Daniel

  Her colleagues Roj and Sergei tooled up and left to check the alarm system in case of an incursion. I didn’t know whose house this was, but the security officers seemed to know their way around—this clearly wasn’t their first time here. I felt sure that if Hairo or Yoshi placed a hand on the sensor, the door would open then too.

  After eating, I started preparing for the interview. I created a private room, set a timer for an hour, audio and video recording and file transfers. Then I sent a joining code to Ian. After a moment’s thought, I didn’t just upload some views of Holdest, but also the recording of me attacking the Ravager and riding it. Three million had to be earned with something more than just words.

  Ian confirmed, and the agreed amount of dark phoenixes landed in my account. A third of that money would pay our new employees for a year, which was very handy. I didn’t know how it would all turn out, but they were helping us in the here and now. If it weren’t for Hairo, then I might be lying drugged in some clan’s basement right now.

  I spent the last ten minutes before the interview testing my capsule. The login to Dis was standard. No errors. Waving at the guardians as they relaxed by the temple, I logged out of the game. Unless I imagined it, they were over level seven hundred! At least, Nega certainly was, because she answered my wave and my eyes focused on her, expanding the succubus’s profile.

  The name of the Threat was now known, so there was no point in disguising myself for the interview. I didn’t hide, just scanned my own image with the capsule.

  The interview itself flew by. Ian was always interesting to talk to, but today I felt true investment in his questions. The journalist was worried, annoyed that the game mechanics set me up to reveal my name, but overjoyed to see a ‘sixteen-year-old teenager mop the floor with the preventers.’

  “I’m sure ‘mop the floor’ is far from fair, Mr. Mitchell,” I answered. “And it wasn’t really down to anything I did. The great random number generator gave me invulnerability. Progressing in everything else was just a matter of time, and not much. Half a year ago, I was stuck at level one. I could probably have been called the worst player in the history of Disgardium.”

  “The worst, huh?” Ian asked, laughing.

  “Absolutely. In a year and a half of gameplav, I never even got to level two!”

  Ian was surprised. “But why?”

  “Just wasn’t interested.”

  “How did it happen?” he asked, meaning how I became a Threat.

  Neither of us spoke directly about my status; the contract with Snowstorm was still in effect. It would be in force even after all this ended. But I had no plans to speak directly.

  “I can’t reveal the details. All I can say is that I had help. From a man called Andrew, who is no longer with us. But everything that happened to me was possible only thanks to his kindness and generosity. And to the fact that he, like me, loved space with all his heart…”

  Toward the end of the conversation, Ian asked a question that made me remember a certain handsome builder and hero. And mentally curse him.

  “Tell me, Alex, does a player by the name of Gyula, a demon hunter, have anything to do with the Awoken clan? He and somebody else who remained anonymous got a First Kill in the Lakharian Desert, and it happened just a day before Nergal’s Summons. It’s clear that Gyula couldn’t have arrived in the desert, let alone got an achievement there, without your help. We all know that your clan includes Crawler the mage, Infect the rogue, Bomber the warrior and Tissa the priestess. Today their names became famous all over the world. They are all your classmates. But! The entire editorial staff undertook an investigation and failed to find a single person from among your acquaintances named Gyula. It’s a Hungarian name, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know, Ian. Could be. In any case, I’m not going to reveal anything more to your viewers and readers than they already know. You have to understand… Unwanted media attention isn’t the only thing that threatens those around me. There are all kinds of bad people who want to profit off my status.”

  “Alright, then pull aside the curtain on another secret for our viewers. Our sources tell us that an unprecedented lot will be up for sale at the goblin auction house today. Everyone is certain that it belongs to you, but what is it exactly that you’re selling?”

  “Someone else handles the clan’s trading operations,” I answered. “We sell plenty of things all the time, as you know. We get so much loot that we don’t even have time to go through it all.”

  “Are you concerned by the preventers’ announcements of their losses? They hold you directly responsible and surely want some sort of compensation for their losses.”

  “I wasn’t the one that started the so-called Holy War. I’ve been the fox in this hunt from the very beginning, and all the world’s been after me. I never attacked first. I always just defended myself. Even when I attacked the fake Great Portable Altar, it was in self-defense, a warning measure. So all the preventers’ defeats and ‘losses’…” I made air quotes with my fingers. “Are their fault, not mine.”

  “I completely agree with you,” Ian said happily. “Nobody will complain except the Alliance themselves if their losses continue…”

  The interview ended there. Mitchell had time to shake my hand and extract a promise to video the next battle. In exchange, he promised to get at least ten million from the editorial board, if they could get exclusive rights to the footage.

  I climbed out of my capsule to get some fresh air before the auction. It was easy to talk to Ian, but the realization that billions of viewers were watching me, even just a recording made my hands sweat and my voice shake. I kept wanting to curl up into a ball and hide. There he is, your Threat! Colonel would shout as he watched the interview. A sweating boy who thinks himself a god… I really regretted not putting on a template avatar—strange as it sounds, hiding like that gives confidence.

  “Are you done?” Hairo asked, appearing in the doorway. “Is there still time before the auction?”

  “Yeah, half an hour.”

  “Follow me, kid. And put something on, we’re going outside.”

  As soon as we walked outside, he asked me to extend my arm. He attached an instrument that looked like a comm to my forearm. The device’s straps tightened, fitting to the form of my arm. Initiation lines zipped across the screen, then an analysis, then numbers: blood pressure, pulse, muscle and fat index and much more. Hairo examined them, snorted.

  “Healthy. Fit.”

  Then he looked at the grinning Roj. That one glanced at his comm, nodded.

  “Clean.”

  Then Hairo turned his eyes to me and muttered: “Follow me,”—and started running! I stood struck dumb for a moment, but he shouted again and I rushed to catch up. I heard steps and the rustle of clothes behind me. I glanced back and saw Roj running behind.

  We silently ran together until we reached the lake. Sweat ran off me in rivulets. My throat burned, my jaw ached. I bent double, gasped for breath. Hairo and Roj stood nearby calmly as if they hadn’t just ran half a mile.

  “You’ve let yourself go, Alex,” the security officer said. “I can help you get in shape, if you want.”

  “That’s… That’s alright, Mr. Morales. No need,” I coughed and spat out sticky phlegm. “I need to get back… I might be late.”

  “Then let’s go,” he grinned and sprinted off toward the house.

  Afraid to get lost in the forest, I ran after him. Roj ran behind me. Fire burned in my chest and pain lanced through my legs, but I didn’t give in. I nearly kept up with the veteran. I reached the house through sheer force of will, gritting my teeth and just trying not to fall over on my wobbly, disobedient legs.

  “It says in our contract that were responsible for your health as well as your life,” Hairo explained when I fell onto the couch in the lounge. “And health includes physical fitness. We’re going to be training.”

  Ignoring my friends’ jokes, I walked into the capsule room. It wouldn’t accept
me with my racing pulse, so I tried to breathe slowly for a while as I nervously watched the clock.

  Once calm, I logged into Dis.

  * * *

  The temple grounds were clear, but before I teleported to the Goblin League’s Auction for Special Sales, I noticed a few fresh player corpses that hadn’t yet had time to disappear, and the silhouettes of the guardians patrolling the area with Sharkon and Crash.

  Grokuszuid was waiting for me and led me straight to the auction hall, where the bidders were already hidden under a Mist Veil. On the way, the goblin gave me a strict talking to for nearly being late—that would have canceled the auction, which was held under strict regulations. Apparently, such was Maglubiyet’s will. Then the ASS would have had to compensate the attendees, some of whom flew in from other continents, for their time and travel expenses. The reputation losses were something else.

  Counting around thirty attendees in the hall, I remembered that I hadn’t asked Grokus whether the top clans had been invited. If not, then I might get far less than I hoped.

  The bidding began quickly, without introduction. Nobody had ever been on Holdest, and apart from the item itself, there was nothing to show or tell. At my request, Ian Mitchell held off on publishing the recording of the snowy continent.

  The auctioneer was brief. He greeted the bidders, quickly recited the rules of the ASS and barked:

  “Let the bidding began on a single lot item: The Portal Key to Holdest continent. Use unlimited. Starting price: ten million gold!

  A bright white flash lit up one of the bidders.

  “I have ten million! Ten million—going once…! Bidder thirteen—eleven million…! Eleven million once…!”

  I couldn’t watch. Every three to four seconds, my clan got a million phoenixes richer. I was on edge until someone decided to play for keeps.

  “A hundred million!”

  “A hundred million—once!” the auctioneer shouted in glee. “A hundred million—twice! A hundred million…” The goblin’s hammer froze in the air. Nobody could beat the bid. The hammer struck. “Sold! For a hundred million phoenixes to bidder number thirteen! By the will of Maglubiyet, the deal is done! The auction is now officially over, and I thank…”

  The auctioneer stopped mid-sentence. His mouth stayed half open. The murmur in the hall also fell silent. Everything froze. So did I, only I didn’t realize what was happening right away. The moment sti’etched, then the world flashed, and I was already enchained in magical shackles and surrounded with an energy field.

  My head brushed the ceiling of a tiny cell immersed in gloom. All my stats were down at a single point—just like at that kangaroo court Big Po and Atiyakari put on for me. The chat was disabled and my abilities were inactive. I couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything at all. Even the scrolls I kept for just such an occasion weren’t working. Never mind the scrolls; even Explosive Lollipops had no effect!

  I don’t know how long I sat there. I could have just logged out of Dis, but I wanted to know what was going on. So I waited.

  Suddenly, one of the cell walls lit up from the outside. It turned out to be bars on that side. I tried to reach them, but couldn’t. Just an inch too far.

  A girl appeared behind the bars, a dark elf. Like all her people, she was tall and stately. Her thick snow-white braid thrown over her left shoulder hung down to her waist. Fire burned in her eyes.

  Eileen, dark elf, level 390 Sticking Blade oflnnoruuk

  Clan: Widowmakers.

  So it was the Alliance of Preventers after all. And everything that was happening matched with what Snowstorm called ‘part of the gameplay.’ The Widowmakers were a young and daring clan that accepted no authority. They climbed the ladder of success rapidly, reaching the top of the leaderboard just last year, but they were accepted into the Alliance and respected. The Widowmakers scorned no methods, easily came to agreements and just as easily broke them. Nonetheless, people kept doing business with them.

  I realized why when the inseparable couple that led the Children of Kratos appeared next to Eileen. It seemed Widowmakers was a puppet clan of the Children of Kratos, against whom even Modus and the Azure Dragons refused to stand up.

  “Good work, Eileen,” Vivian said in a velvet voice. “Isn’t that right, dear?”

  “Very good,” her husband Joshua Gallagher agreed. He came closer to the bars, looked into my face, the real one, with no Imitation or Cloak Essence to hide it. “Undead after all. Hinterleaf was right.”

  “How dreadful…” Vivian shivered. “Undead… It’s a good thing we decided not to switch to this disgusting race.”

  “It’s wiiat’s inside that matters,” I answered with Uncle Nick’s words. “What do you want?”

  Shaking their heads and not answering, the Children of Kratos disappeared in the darkness, leaving me alone with Eileen. The dark elf girl approached.

  “We don’t need anything from you. You feel no pain, you can’t be killed… So you’re just going to sit here. Forever.”

  At that, Eileen left without another word.

  Interlude 2: Eileen

  HER NAME was Eileen Waters, and this day promised to be the most magnificent in her life.

  A knock at the office door, then Jade’s head appearing at the entrance, press secretary to the Widowmakers. Eileen nodded for the twenty-two-year-old girl to come in. Without walking all the way to the rest area occupied by the Widowmakers clan leader, she stopped and made her report: “The journalists are gathered, Miss Waters. Even Clark Katz is here.”

  Torn from her thoughts, Eileen glanced at the clock in annoyance. After making sure that there were still ten minutes left before the start, she pinned Jade with a look. The girl drooped. She shivered, Eileen thought with pleasure.

  “He’s editor-in-chief at Disgardium Daily,” the intruder explained.

  “I know who Katz is. I hope he didn’t bring that old ghoul with him… What was his name?”

  “Ian Mitchell? We didn’t invite him, but if he turns up, we have to let him in. You know he…”

  “I see!” the Widowmakers leader raised her voice. “Anything else?”

  Jade’s eyes flashed. She shook her head and started to pull at her skirt nervously. Eileen felt annoyance—she didn’t like the girl, she was too… perfect. A perfect figure, a beautiful aristocratic face, and she did her job perfectly. Her popularity among the clan’s fan base was almost as high as Eileen’s. That was infuriating, but Vivian Gallagher had vouched for Jade’s candidacy, and that old witch always got her way.

  “Alright, leave me. I need a minute—I must gather my thoughts.”

  Jade obediently left the room, carefully closing the door behind her. Eileen didn’t like to hear doors slammed, and everyone knew that. Especially the press secretary.

  Eileen approached the window looking out across the city of Brussels. She wanted to stretch out these moments before her triumph, savor them, especially considering how long it had taken her to get here.

  From a young age, Eileen lived for the approval of those around her. First it was “Clever daughter!” from her father for assembling a jigsaw, or “You’re my little helper!” from mother for washing a cup. Then stars and plastic medals in kindergarten—for good behavior, for the best drawing, for learning a poem. The praise of parents and teachers was for her the finest reward. It gave strength, inspired her, made her happy.

  In school, the stakes were raised, and Eileen encountered grades of success. Now it was no longer soon-forgotten words of approval that were the most important to her. Far more important were school grades—something that would remain with her for her whole life, and with time would help her to achieve a new level. The better the grades, the higher the chance for a high citizenship category. Simple, easy to understand.

  She was called a nerd and quietly hated… She persevered, kept smiling, at least in public. Then she understood that girls are far crueller than boys, who simply didn’t pay her any attention. Eileen’s classmates might o
utshine her in everything, but never in study. All they could do was try to wipe the happy smile off her face after yet another A. They failed, and that just made the bullying worse.

  She was strong. Sometimes (often) at school, she wanted to cry, but Eileen held back her tears, envisioning how she would get rich and punish her bullies, laughing under her breath. She wrote the name of each into a black workbook and only regretted that she began to do so too late—in the senior classes. Every last drop of those unshed tears poured through the ink of her pen into that notebook, and by the time she was twenty-five, it was full. It held the names of all the losers (she liked to think of them like that) who didn’t understand who they were dealing with: classmates, teachers, students at the local college and university, colleagues, envious neighbors, all her idiot exes whose names she loathed to even write down. All of them would me the day.

  Eileen knew that some of the misdeeds of those imbeciles (another enjoyable word for loser•) were not in proportion to the punishment she had planned for them, yet she would have no mercy. Especially since she had so far failed to punish her wrongdoers. Worse, she was even no closer to it—her academic success and brilliant grades made an impression, but they were insufficient in the real world. Eileen’s dissertation on the subject of community hierarchies in the modern age caused no furor, and the title of Ph.D added just one level to her citizenship category. “Interesting, but of little significancewere the five words of a certain academic, a puffed-up cockerel with ideas of station who put a cross next to several years of industrious labor and life plans.

  She knew that high status in society couldn’t be achieved through effort alone. Something else was required. But what? That same cockerel had dropped some entirely transparent hints. Eileen wrote his name down in her little black book in large letters with a whole page to themselves.

  The need of that something disappeared when Eileen started to get attention in Disgardium. As it turned out, you could achieve a great deal there, and effort was the primary ingredient. Eileen felt childish excitement when she realized the whole point of the game: her beloved graded numbers of success! And most of all, game achievements could influence citizenship category!