The Enchanter (Project Stellar Book 2): LitRPG Series

by Roman Prokofiev

  This was a biotechnological nightmare of synthetic muscles, cyber parts and artificial organs grafted to her natural ones. Now I could see why she’d been so reluctant to die: Evelynn Mail was at least 50% cyborg.

  “We have little time! Collect her Azure!”

  I gingerly pulled Fang out of her skull. Immediately my interface exploded with an avalanche of messages.

  Update the Reference Book: mission updated. You’ve studied 7/10 Azure-altered creatures!

  You’ve eliminated a dangerous criminal!

  Judge: mission updated (1/10)

  You’ve received 43200 Azure!

  Neurosphere complete!

  Neurosphere complete!

  Total Azure count: 13594/16500

  You’ve received a Genome of Ice Anubis!

  You’ve received the phenotype of Evelynn Mail!

  You’ve received ???

  “Excellent, Incarnator! Can’t get much better! Now go and retrieve the fragments of the Black Moon... oh no!! Back off! Go back! GO BACK!!!”

  Miko’s voice rose to a desperate high-pitched command which meant the highest degree of danger. Instinctively I backed off.

  Only now did I notice a small puddle of black liquid forming under the body, viscous and unable to reflect light.

  I’d seen it before, escaping that black sarcophagus.

  Darkness.

  Chapter 4

  DARKNESS!

  The puddle was small — more like a spot the size of a saucer. Its frame in my interface changed color, flashing black, then deep purple, then black again. I’d never seen this happen before.

  ???

  An unidentified xeno virus

  Class: Nergal

  ???

  Just like the one that had escaped the Black Sarcophagus, this one too seemed to be capable of sentient movement. Although admittedly not fast — maybe at the rate of a person walking — it did roll over the floor like a blob of mercury.

  Gingerly I stepped back. The shapeshifter girl leapt softly aside. She didn't seem to be happy with this new arrival, either. The girl hissed, a deep furious growl forming in her throat.

  “Miko? What the hell is that?”

  My cogitor’s voice rang with anxiety as she shouted rather than spoke:

  “An unknown xeno threat! Its entry in Stellar’s archives is classified! I advise against either touching or approaching it! Any contact with it is strongly discouraged! You must destroy it at all costs! Use an Azuric weapon! Employ Flash now!”

  Flash, oh yeah? That’s what I myself had been thinking, giving the thing a “security shot” with my signature A-ability. The only thing that stopped me was the presence of the weregirl, for two reasons: firstly, I was reluctant to hurt my accidental ally, and secondly, she might have taken it as an act of aggression and attack me back. And considering her speed and power, I stood no chance against her.

  I suddenly realized that she’d already turned back to her human shape and was standing right next to me. She was absolutely drenched in blood (Evyl had roughed her up quite badly) — but still her wounds and burns seemed to be healing right before my eyes. Incredible resilience. She must have had something similar to the regeneration ability of Hydra Genome, only considerably more powerful.

  I took a good look at her. She was small and stocky; sinewy rather than burly. Her broad shoulders and athletic figure hadn’t detracted from her feminine shape. Totally nonplussed by her own nudity, she was baring her teeth like a wild animal, making strange guttural sounds as if trying to tell me something. She didn’t do a very good job of it; the words sounded unintelligible as if she’d long lost the articulation habit of human speech. It did sound like Globish though. I even managed to make out a few root words in the flood of growling and guttural noises. Kill... lite... ra... az-zur....

  Kill lite ra? Yes! Kill with Light of Ra! The werefox gestured desperately, pointing at Darkness. She too insisted I used Flash!

  “Do it now, Grey! Use Flash! Activate it!”

  I conjured up a new Spark of Light and prepared to direct it toward the slowly moving black thing.

  I didn’t make it. Just before I could do it, the little blob reached a crack between the steel sheets of the floor and promptly slid down, taking cover behind the paneling.

  I’d misjudged its actions. It had no intention of attacking us: it just tried to escape. And we’d given it every opportunity to do so.

  Miko cussed out loud. The weregirl growled something snappy too, just like an animal which had missed its prey.

  Then she leaped toward the trailer’s only door.

  I looked back. My wingsuit and Angel’s silvery wings must have been here somewhere, buried deep under all the junk which used to be Evyl’s lab. Although admittedly damaged, I was pretty sure I could have it fixed and use it again. I’d borrowed it from Angel’s museum, after all. This was their sacred relic, so I really should start thinking about taking it back to them.

  “That’s not rational, Incarnator! You’ll lose precious time. Besides, you just won’t be able to carry it. You need to escape ASAP before the other Technomancer arrives!”

  Sadly, she was right. The huge exosuit just wouldn’t have fitted in my tiny cryptor. The Rogues must have already sounded an alarm and were hurrying toward the accidented trailer lying on its roof. But most importantly, the other Technomancer must have indeed been somewhere very close. The fact that I’d managed to defeat Evyl was a mixture of wild luck, surprise effect and the weregirl’s help — but Gnarl was way out of my league.

  I had to leave. I paused momentarily by Evyl’s carcass to once again try and retrieve the fragments of the Black Moon but they seemed to have fused with her skeleton. Wrenching them out might take some time — which was something I just didn't have.

  In the meantime, the weregirl had managed to wrestle the door open and disappeared inside a small passage which connected the trailer to the cab. Apparently, Evyl’s other cyberwarg ambushed us there. Silently he went for the girl, aiming for her throat. I only caught a glimpse of their brief combat but that was plenty: the girl simply ripped the giant dog apart with her bare hands, not even bothering to transform back into an Allys.

  The cyberwarg’s blood gushed all over the walls and ceiling. I gingerly touched his remains with my fingertips. Nothing. No Azure. That was weird. All feral garms, including the cyberwargs they were made into, were A-modified creatures, so they contained some Azure by definition. Could... could Evyl had syphoned it from them?

  In the meantime, the weregirl wrapped herself in Evyl’s blue cape. It was far too big for the stocky girl. Its skirts brushed the ground, its hood hung like a sack — but this disguise was still better than nothing.

  Before whacking the mangled door open, the girl swung round. Her inhuman green eyes glistened under the hood.

  “You. Me. Run!”

  Her speech was slightly better now even though her upper lip kept rising in a beastly snarl. I nodded. She clicked the outer lock and swung the door open.

  Sunlight poured into the room, together with the clangor of voices and the roaring of engines. The girl jumped deftly to the ground; I followed.

  The noise outside made my ears pop. The rattling of the vehicles’ treads; the shuffling of wheels; the screeching of badly fitted parts and the roaring of primitive engines — all of it added to the deafening cacophony. We were stuck right in the midst of the Convoy. To our left and right, two streams of vehicles of every shape and size drove past, swerving to avoid the accident scene, honking and revving up their engines.

  Our trailer lay on its side, leaving a wide furrowed skid trail in its wake. It had brushed along several smaller vehicles, completely squashing them, before it had finally come to a halt by ramming into a monstrous two-story machine which looked like a surreal cross between a blade grader, a bus and a combine harvester. Thick smoke billowed out of its charred cab. A few cars had stopped, their drivers and passengers gawking at the gory scene. A few of the men were alread
y trying to fight the fire, dousing it with jets of foam.

  Men? Oh no. Rogues. You could tell these techno nomads in any crowd simply by the way they looked: long beards and dreadlocks, sunburnt skin which appeared almost bronze, the mishmash of tattoos and piercings covering every body part imaginable, and a paraphernalia of miscellaneous weapons. The dull grimy metal of their primitive body augmentations and the yellowed tooth necklaces, the shapes of their helmets imitating animal heads — these were the true children of the Apocalypse who had long lost the superficial sheen of civilization.

  There were several of them already standing next to the trailer, right next to the door. Judging by their body language and the tools in their hands, they were trying to open the trailer’s door which had been locked from the inside.

  Seeing Evyl’s blue cloak with me in her wake, they shrank back. The one in front shouted something to the weregirl in a guttural language. The others reluctantly reached for their weapons.

  Miko immediately covered them with a grid, marking their vulnerable spots.

  “They’re about to raise an alarm! Open fire, now!”

  Too late. You had to be blind to take us for the two Technomancers, even from a distance.

  I missed the moment when the weregirl materialized next to them. Neither did I see the blow, only the torrent of blood that gushed out of the nearest man’s ripped throat. The blue cape flashed through the air as the girl appeared next to the others. She didn’t even bother to shapeshift back into an Allys as her human speed and strength allowed her to make quick work of our enemies. She snatched a machete from one of them and used it to literally shred all the others: no one had survived the first blow he’d received. I lowered my Crusher: I hadn’t gotten the chance to loose off a single round.

  “Her speed exceeds the physical abilities of a human body, Incarnator. She must be on her second Evolution at least. We need to hijack a vehicle and attempt to escape without attracting much attention. I’m researching available options...”

  She instantly highlighted all the potential cover positions in green and placed little arrows next to all the cars that had stopped by the trailer. Her idea made sense: despite the turmoil caused by the accident, we still had every chance to lose ourselves in the busy traffic still driving past the wrecked trailer.

  I took a quick look around. I couldn’t get my bearings: all I could see was a wide dirt road riddled with deep wheel ruts and tread prints from monstrous trucks and other vehicles. I could make out green volcanic hills at a distance overgrown with woods — and lots and lots of rattling mechanisms all around me.

  You didn’t have to be a mind reader to know we were stuck right at the heart of the Convoy. For the first time I was witnessing their fabled mobile homes in which they spent the most part of their lives, traveling from the moment they were born. Some of them new, others crumbling apart; covered in graffiti or decorated with horse tails on gilded spikes — they screamed past, roaring in thousands of different voices.

  There were hundreds of unusual varieties among them, from DIY bikes and single-seater buggies to heavy treaded behemoths topped with the antlers of unknown monsters, the sky above black with the emissions billowing from their ancient engines. Buses, trailers, mobile homes... I noticed a few dilapidated wagons pulled by some truly wondrous beasts which looked like giant scaly rhinoceros. Bikes and hoverbikes threaded their way amid the bigger vehicles; I even saw some men and women riding garms.

  There were thousands of Rogues here! I suddenly realized that the Convoy was every bit as populous as a small town — it was a town, if fact, albeit a mobile one. I could make out the giant outlines far ahead which looked like many-storied buildings: true mobile fortresses crawling unhurriedly along and surrounded, like queen bees, by other vehicles only marginally smaller, which appeared to have been pieced together by generations of these techno nomads who kept adding to them, building them up ever higher.

  The sky above this rattling, smoke-billowing Gypsy-camp mayhem was crowded with pot-bellied hot air balloons; I even glimpsed a long zeppelin, its propellers spinning, surrounded by tiny dots of either giant birds or the Rogues’ gliders like the ones they’d used to attack Fort Angelo.

  Predictably, the weregirl’s fight with the onlookers created quite a commotion. There were just too many eyes; too many people had already gathered around us. Vehicles kept honking and stopping, more Rogues were running toward us shouting; the first gunshots had already sounded. They could raise a full-blown alarm any moment now.

  The weregirl sneakily backed off and ran along the upended trailer, trying to blend in with the shadows. I followed, trying to keep up with her.

  Another silvery trailer had pulled up about five hundred feet away. It looked brand new and identical to ours. Logically, if the first one had served as Evyl’s lab, it stood to reason that the other one could belong to Gnarl. And I had no intention of running into him today.

  I couldn’t work out where the girl was heading. All of a sudden, she’d become the leader of our little escape party. I had a funny feeling she was just following her nose. Or was she? Rogues kept coming, shouting and shooting in the air, more vehicles kept pulling over, my ears were exploding with all the honking, screaming and firing.

  We had no hope in hell of sneaking out inconspicuously. We were well and truly in it. Two long spurts of gunfire struck sparks off the trailer’s bodywork right above our heads.

  The weregirl dashed toward the nearest vehicle: an open pickup truck with an empty machine gun mounting set up in the back. She leapt, arching her body like a tiger as she transformed into an Allys in mid-air and landed in the truck, growling as she span around it, killing the Rogues who were trying to shoot her. A hell-raising commotion ensued. She was one hell of a fighter. A regular human being stood no chance against her.

  “Initiating a survival probabilities analysis... Grey, I think that our best chance is in changing our tactics. While the Rogues are busy with the girl, we could sneak away and lose ourselves in the crowd.”

  We could. She was right: this option gave me a reasonable chance. If I slammed my helmet on, I’d be virtually indistinguishable in this motley crowd. Miko had a point — but I was reluctant to leave the girl in the Rogues’ hands, to be tortured and slowly killed. True, I had no idea who she was or what she was up to, but we’d just helped each other by killing Evyl. Here, in the thick of my enemies, she was my only ally.

  The areas around the pickup truck was in turmoil. I could see what she was trying to do — she wanted to hijack it — but the crowd of Rogues around her was growing, dousing her with fire.

  A black net flashed through the air, unfolding. The nearest men tried to scatter but the net had already dropped, covering them with the truck and the girl inside. She growled, trying to break out but only getting entangled further. The net had slowed her down for maybe ten seconds at most — but that was plenty. The Rogues had already rolled out a large caliber; several more trucks with mounted machine guns reversed toward her and opened intense fire.

  The high-pitched yell of the wounded shapeshifter reverberated through the air, drowning out the Convoy’s clanging cacophony. The girl thrashed inside the net, doused with bullets at point blank. The Rogues catcalled triumphantly.

  Should I try to sneak away and indeed lose myself in the crowd? Or should I try and rescue her instead?

  I had to think quick. So I went for the second option.

  The Speck of Light that I’d summoned back in the trailer was still hovering just over my shoulder, never leaving my side. I focused and sent it into the thick of the crowd surrounding the weregirl.

  Flash of Light!

  A long zinging sound. The brief boom of an explosion. The crackling and sparking of electronic equipment fried by the EMI.

  This worked on Rogues just as nicely as on those rats back in the fort’s sewage tunnels. The nearest ones had been roasted to a black crisp, many others singed by the impact. Each and every one of them had been bli
nded; many rolled on the ground, engulfed in flames, their faces charred, their eyes burned out. Everyone within the direct line of vision had been stunned and disoriented, the nearest vehicles colliding and piling up.

  The shapeshifter girl had gotten her fair share of it too. Although she’d managed to disentangle herself from the net, she wasn’t capable of much else. She reverted to her human form but she could barely breathe, her body covered in burns and bleeding wounds.

  I slung her over my shoulder, amazed at the hardness and the sheer weight of her body. What a beast! A regular man wouldn’t have been able to lift her at all. Even I had to struggle: she felt like a collection of rock-hard muscles and sinews. She must have weighed at least 200 lbs.

  “Her weight is an absolute anomaly, Incarnator. She must have been through quite a few Evolutions, focusing on skeleton upgrades which is what must have made her bones so heavy. It might also be a side effect of her transformation into an A-morph... Grey, over here, quick!”