Holy War

  “The dark ones are a bad influence on you, kid! What, ya got another castle? Yoruba? Eh… I’ll give ya twenty, no need for an inspection—and that’s my final offer!”

  “The castle is not for sale!” Yemi growled, but Kusalarix ignored him.

  “Mrs. Kusalarix,” I nodded. “Grokuszuid and Gruzelix said that the resources of the Goblin League are at my disposal. I need to get eight thousand sentients to the Lakharian Desert from two different points.”

  Kusalarix drew on her cigarette, breathed out a cloud of smoke, frowned.

  “Well… We could take eighty or eight hundred thousand, doesn’t matter. But who you calling sentient?” She stuck out a little finger, pointing at Yemi and Sarronos. “These two?”

  The chieftain pounded his chest with his fist twice.

  “A goblin is always a goblin! The ring of coin clouds the mind and poisons the heart. Merchant woman, the clan of the Broken Axe will pay you for a portal to the temple of the Shining One, Tiamat.”

  “The Yoruba clan is happy to pay its share,” Yemi added.

  “Coin…” Kusalarix chuckled and turned back to me. “We’re always interested in money. But, if I understand you right, these two ignorant assholes are planning to fight on your side in the war, right, Scyth?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Kusalarix, but they aren’t the only ones I need in the desert. There are others too.”

  “Don’t fret, kiddo, consider it done. The Green League will pay. Come see me, I got words.”

  The portal opened wider. I exchanged glances with Yemi and Sarronos, nodded to them and walked through the shimmering veil.

  “I’ll have him back to ya in five mins,” the goblin woman shouted to the ores. “Don’t break yer fangs grindin’ yer teeth!”

  I heard the end of the phrase from inside the assessor’s spacious office. Kusalarix sat dowm behind her huge oaken desk in a luxurious armchair and put her feet up, radiating acrid tobacco smoke. She handed me two silver coins and a golden bar about the size of a finger. The items were interconnected portal expansion devices. The goblin explained how to use them:

  “Stick the beacon where you need to unload your troops. The coins are onetime-use. They open a Great Portal to the destination.”

  “Thanks!”

  “That’s not all…” She drummed her fingers on the table. “When do ya expect the fight?”

  “Any moment. As I understand it, the leaders of NergaTs army are waiting for all their troops to arrive.”

  “Yeah, I got the same intel. Although the Alliance could be bullshitting. Better keep your guard up. Anyway, if it starts, whistle. The Green league will deliver a thousand experienced mercenaries and the best gladiators from the Arena to defend the temple if you help us get the protection of the Sleeping Gods. Can you do that?”

  “That won’t be hard,” I answered. “But I have to warn you, Nergal’s army will use Armageddon spells. Few will survive.”

  “We’ll give the centurions Maglubiget’s Umbj’ellas. It’s a onetime- use thing, so it won’t protect against everything, but it’ll save them from one Armageddon”

  “I doubt that’s all our enemies will use.”

  “What, you think our boys are just gonna sit and wait for them? By then, they’ll be mixing with the enemy forces and wrapping other people’s guts round their swords! Any more questions?”

  “Yeah. My clan needs builders to construct a castle.”

  “I’m not sure the Goblin League can do that for free…”

  “…but the Green League can hire ya some people who know what they’re doing. We’ll help out with materials too. Are you going to open one of the portals to the castle site?”

  I nodded, barely holding back a smile. Alex Sheppard, a good boy from a good family, was now rubbing shoulders in Dis with the undead, necromancers, the wild races and now the goblin mafia. Add the thugs and bandits from Yoruba to the list and we have a full house.

  “When ya open it, I’ll send ya some builders and haulers with materials. Anyway, what about the Sleepers?”

  “Like I said, that’s easy.”

  Grinning, I touched her by the hand and the Sleeping Gods had their sixth priest—Kusalarix the gobliness. The assessor’s huge green eyes widened when the power of over eight thousand attribute points dropped down on her. She looked younger, taller and even beautiful thanks to her skyrocketing charisma. With a brightened face, she slowly rose, moved, smiled and approached me. Standing up on her tiptoes, she pulled me down and kissed me full on the lips! She didn’t even grimace!

  “Huh?”

  “Do you know what you’ve done for old lady Kusalarix, ya handsome man?!” She span her head, grabbed a huge marble paperweight and clenched her fist. Stone chips fell to the table. “Mendacious Maglubiyet, who gave this young fella so much power? Scyth, my boy, think of it. Anyone you agree to make a priest of the Sleeping Gods will shower you with gold!”

  “Hmm… I never looked at the priesthood like that.”

  “Emperor Kragosh and King Bastian aren’t likely to betray Marduk and Nergal. But there are other rich people, and the most influential of ’em never come out of the shadows. How many priests can ya have? Alright, alright, keep it to yaself, the fewer the better, anyway! More exclusive! I gotta set up an urgent meeting with Grokuszuid…” the goblin woman muttered, deep in thought. “Hmm… Uh-huh… Hmm… Wait! What? You’re still here? Do you need something else? Don’t be shy, ask for whatever you want!”

  Her words reminded me of a certain still unfinished matter.

  “Tell me, Mrs. Kusalarix, does the castle that I sold to you still belong to you?”

  “Do you want to buy it back?”

  “Not exactly…”

  She listened to my request and smiled like a hyena, baring gleaming white fangs.

  “That’s the least I can do for you, chosen one of the Sleeping Gods.”

  Chapter 19: Terrastera

  THE UNDEAD FACTION showed off its neutrality again; Yemi the ore, Francesca the vampire and Babangida the ogre joined my party of five dead men and two humans without issue. We were nine—the limit for a non-raid group.

  The mages covered us in buffs. Everyone but me drank a few battle elixirs with an hour-long duration and ate a few raid dishes, including my own.

  “Ready?” I asked.

  Everyone nodded and I took the group to Terrastera. We reappeared in the place of power, within the area of effect of Isis ‘Blessing.

  Yemi stared glassy-eyed at his interface, tense. Once he saw no debuff, he sighed with relief. The others relaxed too. I gathered everyone into a circle.

  “Everyone unfamiliar with our tactics, listen carefully! Do not go beyond the bounds of the place of power. The creatures here are so dangerous that you’ll die if they sneeze on you. There might be ranged mobs here, so don’t even approach the edges. I’ve only seen barakatas—they’re like big cockroaches. They fight at melee range. We don’t have any healers, but we don’t need one—if you get hit, you wall die. But do not respawn before the battle ends! Ill raise you myself.”

  “You can do that too?” Francesca gasped.

  “Not like you think, but yes, I can revive you right here,” I said, activating Spirit Shackles. “On the condition that you don’t die too far from me.”

  “Can we fight at all?” Babangida grumbled.

  “I agree with the ogre!” Patrick said, with a bloodthirsty grip on the sword he’d gotten in Holdest. “The heart demands battle!”

  “You certainly can’t, Patrick. If you draw attention, you’ll die. And I’m not sure you’ll resurrect. You’re not a player. Everyone else—you’re all adults. Use your best judgment. Get ready to powerlevel by doing nothing, folks!”

  Everyone smiled, the tension faded. I heard the boys joking around, but as soon as I went out under the acid rain, the voices faded.

  A barakata appeared in the place of power and nearly took out the whole group. And the problem was Sleeping Invulnerability. Diamond Skin dro
pped off, Immortality hadn’t yet activated, and as soon as the cockroach put its mandibles into action and smashed into my ribcage, Invulnerability absorbed forty percent of the damage. The remaining sixty percent was split between my group members in proportion to their health.

  Low-level Patrick and Irita took one and a half percent of the damage between them, but that was enough. Everyone got hit bad. A single bite from the barakata had nearly killed the whole group. Francesca’s Vampiric Cunning buff saved us, allowing us to avoid deadly damage.

  When I saw my friends nearly empty health bars, I left the group and waited for Immortality to activate before I came back. The Destroying Plague ability absorbed damage completely, so we shouldn’t have any more problems of that kind.

  Once sure that everything was going to plan, I flew to the stone forest and gathered a few dozen cockroaches from all over with a Sleeping Vindication explosion. Each had over a hundred million health, so Vindication without Justice only annoyed the mobs.

  They crowded closer, the stamping of hundreds of legs grew louder. Soon I was buried beneath a giant pile of cockroaches. I wasn’t worried about my friends within the place of power, but I still set off Sleeping Vindication after the cooldown ended, to keep aggro on me. I didn’t use Plague Fury— it would kill Patrick and the others among the living. It took more than an hour to work my way through the pile, and when the pressure of cockroach corpses finally lifted, I stood up and saw a sight to behold.

  Babangida the ogre waved his huge hammer as he tried to deal at least a single point of damage to one of the barakatas hanging off me. Next to him, Bomber was doing the same, standing just as tall as the ogre.

  Two dolls also poked the cockroach with red-hot needles; a straw doll and a rag doll, both around half a yard tall, familiars of the ju-ju shaman Yemi. This was the first time I’d seen the class in battle—the Yoruba leader’s magic was based on sicknesses, curses and strong familiars. Right now, Yemi was leveling up his weakest skill tree. However funny it looked to see the dolls fighting mobs over level one thousand, they were dealing damage! Obviously, the familiars ignored penalties from differences in level.

  Patrick, in the knowledge that this death might be his last, had weaseled a low-level bow from Irita and was leveling up his archery from a safe distance. The ranged attackers clustered by him: the undead gnome Crawler, leveling up his weaker schools of magic; the battle mage and vampire Francesca alongside Yemi; the demon hunter Gyula, enthusiastically teaching himself new crossbow skills—while I laid the path to Terrastera, Irita equipped him with powerful bolts.

  It was fun. We even had music. The guitar riffs that Infect dropped on the barakatas dealt no damage and caused on slow effects like they were supposed to, but they helped me aggro mobs from all around. The bard had learned the important Artful Prelude skill, which redirected aggro on to whoever he wanted, and he chose me as the target.

  All I had to do then was stand under the acid rain and hit those pesky cockroaches in the face with all the weapons I had on me. Unarmed Combat froze at level one hundred, rank one. I dealt damage with Reflection, precise shots of plague energy and vindication— so it would be silly not to use this opportunity to level up one-handed and two-handed swords, clubs, daggers and spears, axes and archery.

  My weapon skills didn’t go up quite as fast as when we first started to conquer the Lakharian Desert. It seemed the barakatas’ weren’t ten times my level like those mobs were. Archery reached rank one and I kept to my traditions in choosing a path for it—Path of Justice again. Once I got level one in the new rank, I put my bow away—it wasn’t easy to use from underneath a pile of barakatas, and the acid rain quickly broke weapons. I had to change to a different weapon eveiy five minutes.

  Somehow, I managed to make some Plague Fury scrolls after all, but it didn’t work with Sleeping Vindication. The Sleepers’ abilities were in the list of available skills, but the chance of a successful Inscription was zero.

  My bag filled up with innards, blood and mandibles from the barakatas—my Magnetism, newly configured to pick up everything, was hard at work. Yoruba would get their third when it all ended.

  But most importantly of all— Resilience was leveling up. The group also leveled up, and by the time the flow of barakatas ceased, my main defensive skill that didn’t depend on the gods was at rank three, and I chose the path that I’d successfully tested in the Nether: Path of Equanimity

  You completely ignore all damage for the first 3 seconds of battle.

  New sounds joined the hissing of the falling acid raindrops—not trampling feet, but oil sizzling on a frying pan. Something huge was moving toward us. Stone trees rumbled, fell, and the culprit appeared.

  Devourer of Flesh, Giant Dalezma, level??? solitoid

  Local boss.

  “What a horrible beast,” Patrick spat, staring at the monster.

  The thirty-foot tall snail-like thing looked a distant relative of the cockroaches. The boss’s shell split into two halves. A powerful segmented tail stretched up behind the beast and shot something, blowing a hole in my chest and taking out all my ribs. A ton of poison flowed through me, causing absolutely no harm. My spine alone held the top of my body to the bottom.

  “A boss!” Babangida roared. “The gods are generous!”

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Ba!” Yemi frowned. “Scyth might not be able to handle that thing.”

  “Hah!” Bomber chuckled. “Time to play, Infect!”

  My friends and the trio from Yoruba had reached level four hundred by now. Gyula was over three hundred, and O’Grady and Irita were approaching two hundred. The ease at which we climbed through the levels stunned them all, especially the Africans, who were unfamiliar with our powerleveling. No wonder they celebrated when they saw the boss and felt a First Kill coming.

  Yemi cast his curses. Pulling down stone columns, the Devourer of Flesh spat out a long stream of sticky protoplasm that covered me like spit on a bug and began to slowly pull me back toward the monstrous snail’s open maw The jellylike substance was far more acidic even than the rain. My bones blackened, thinned; I could survive it, but I had no idea how to escape. The boss seemed to just absorb damage from Reflection. The pulling jelly had no health bar.

  I took a risk and fired off Plague Fury, and the plague energy just passed through the substance as if through air. The group survived thanks to Francesca’s buff and started to desperately gulp down health potions.

  Sleeping Vindication stirred the protoplasm, blowing it up from inside like bubble gum. That was my chance. I jumped to the stretched-out edge and tore through it with Hammerfist, but before I could climb out, the energy of Sleeping Vindication vented as if from a burst balloon and flew into the sky in an invisible stream, breaking through the clouds for an instant. The toxic and spring} mass enveloped me once more.

  Trying not to panic, I used all the offensive abilities I had: Ghastly

  Howl made no sound, Lethargy and Liberation did nothing… The monster was crawling away, and soon the others might be out of combat, which meant they’d lose the experience and achievement.

  I watched through the semitransparent mass as Yemi threw a bunch of strange threads into the creature’s back, sticking to its shell, but the Devourer of Flesh just sped up and tore them without even noticing.

  The mages fired a series of spells at the protoplasm. Its surface rippled, but that was all. The monster was protected from all magic, even divine magic.

  This could happen only in Dis—even enveloped in goo and unable to lift a finger, Harnmerfist, driven by the game mechanics, struck and broke a hole in the jelly. The snail creature got worried, started pulling faster. I worked both arms with Hammerfists and ordinary hits, tearing flesh, but the holes quickly healed up.

  The boys released the needlers, who ran out into the rain and had time to fire one larva each into the boss before they fell to the acid droplets. A second later, the Pai’asites Inside debuff dropped off—the larvae didn’t surviv
e.

  Yemi threw a magically compressed ball of stone at the boss, but it just smashed uselessly against the shell like a clod of earth. Crawler fired a powerful burning beam, trying to cut the slime connecting me to the boss, succeeding only to burn a breach that closed just as fast as it opened. Francesca ran to the very edge of the safe zone and caught the snail creature in a box of multilayer forcefields, but the monster broke through the barrier as if it was paper. One of Yemi’s dolls latched onto one of the boss’s antennae and immediately dissolved like a chunk of plastic on red-hot iron.

  In the meantime, I kept wriggling, trying to pierce through the protoplasmic tendril, nearly at the snails mouth. The boss stopped and opened its shell again, firing off a dozen stalks with eyes, each of which stared at one of my allies. I had no fear for my friends—they could leave through Depths Teleportation if things went south.

  The pool of bubbling liquid within the boss showed through its skin up close. I saw orange veins in the stomach walls, streams of steam from mysterious openings, undigested pieces of barakata shells. Even after two Ravagers and the Nucleus, I didn’t like the look of this. My Balancer was still on cooldown and the Thunderbearer trident with its ten million damage would be like a toothpick against an elephant.

  The protoplasm pulled me up, the pot-like stomach opened up and I was thrown inside. In the same instant, I saw the beast’s health bar of three hundred million, and fired off everything I could: Destroying Plague Immortality, Sleeping Vindication and Combo. My bones, reinforced with the power of the Nucleus, thinned before my eyes. My Hanunerfists began to look less and less like a combination of closed fingers.

  My plague reservoir and vindication bars filled up instantly, so from outside it must have looked like I was flashing with constant explosions. I watched with frenzied hope as the snail’s health fell, slowly but surely. When it reached the red zone, three explosions were enough for the boss to die. It exploded, spraying out concentrated acid and scraps of crystallized flesh. I fell to the smoking ground.