The more I thought about it, the more attractive the mission became in my eyes. There was no arguing that the Roc was one hell of a dangerous creature, but even he couldn’t watch over his nest twenty four-seven. I could sneak up the mountain, wait for him to leave hunting, steal the egg and try to hijack the airmobile. It all appeared quite doable, with one reservation: the deadline was barely three days away.
Rat King
Reward: unknown
Reward type: Commendation
Yes, Rat King. The urgent combat order to eliminate the Azure entity which possessed the Rattus pack leader. This was a tricky job. We knew nothing about his abilities, strengths or weaknesses. Before planning anything, I had to have a good talk with Alice who’d already fought him once albeit being captured as a result. This was a rather uncomfortable fact: if she, who was infinitely stronger than myself, had failed to defeat him, was entertaining the idea even worth it? Most likely, Rat King was way out of our league. Tackling a monster of his caliber might require some additional leveling.
The Monolith Garrison was something that would have to wait for now. This was a long-term project which required the rank of Tribune and a whole platoon of assistants. At the moment, I was just starting out, even though the idea of using the Monolith as a base from where I could control the surrounding area in order to level up, sounded admittedly tempting.
Dead or Alive – this was out of the question, period. They could reprimand me all they wanted, but I had no intention of reporting Alice.
The missions available to everyone seemed both easier and harder to complete at the same time.
Cleansing (mission progress: 1361/1000) was well complete, judging by the number of the A-monsters I’d killed. Easy. All I had to do was close it and receive the commendation due.
Ditto for Elimination: it had closed automatically when I’d picked up the fragment of Azure from Flector’s dead body, thus eliminating the A-zone formed around the good old crab.
But as for all the others…
Harvest (mission progress: 1/10) required me to collect 10 Azure artifacts and bring them to the nearest Stellar terminal. It could be anything: the remains of Azure-modified creatures such as Devourer’s claws, shell and heart, or fragments of an alien xeno object. The mission very obviously required a trip down an A-zone.
Same for Hunt, which required killing the most dangerous of A-monsters, classes Orcus, Tiferet, Helheim, Sha’ir and Void. I hadn’t even heard half of their names, nor did I have any desire to meet them in person.
As for Judge (mission progress: 1/10), it was a complete mystery. According to the mission’s description, I had to either kill or neutralize ten criminals. As far as I understood, Stellar’s System delegated the ability to administer justice to the Incarnators themselves. The problem was, it had its own very weird algorithm of deciding who qualified as a criminal. According to it, Evyl was a criminal all right, and so was Alice, but the Rogues who’d attacked Fort Angelo weren’t. I really needed to look into it.
“That’s because for the moment, we have no right to judge anyone, Incarnator. Our rank isn’t high enough to do that. All we can do is carry out sentences from the lists of already-condemned criminals.”
Ranks, it was all down to ranks. What did I have now? I had two commendations behind my belt plus two completed missions, that’s four commendations in total. Three commendations were enough to get me promoted to Private. The next rank – the one that gave me access to transmission services – was Allarch, which already required five commendations.
So I had to earn four more of them somehow. The quickest way to do so was by completing the Reference Book and stealing the Roc’s egg. Miko had been dead right there – as usual.
Alice came back a couple of hours later. By then, it had gotten completely dark, the pale-blue light of the Black Moon streaking through the foliage. The crunching of claws against the wood made me sit up and draw my weapons – so imagine my relief when I saw the Allys leaping skillfully from one branch to the next, the creature’s silhouette so familiar it felt almost like the return of a good friend.
When she’d climbed back up to me, I saw that she was holding something in her teeth. It was some kind of elongated fruit the size of a child’s head, yellow with a rough skin. I’d never seen anything like it. What was that?
“Food. For you. Eat,” Alice said hoarsely, squatting next to me, already in her human form.
Her eyes had a strange glint. She smelled of musk and fresh blood. Her hunt must have been a good one. So she’d decided to take care of my own dinner, hadn’t she? What an eerie show of concern.
Gingerly I used my Fang to slice the fruit open. The pulp inside was almost orange, dripping thick juice everywhere. A strange aroma hit my nostrils, tart and intoxicating.
“Miko? What do you think this is?”
“An identified piece of fruit, Incarnator. Edible, apparently.”
Warily I tasted it. It was indeed tart and so juicy it wonderfully quenched my thirst. But that wasn’t the main surprise. All of a sudden, my interface informed me of the fruit’s rather unorthodox property:
You’ve absorbed 2 Azure
Total Azure count: 12136/16500
“This is an Azuric plant, Incarnator! It has a minor Azure content. Normally, you can only see them in A-zones. You need to find out where Alice found it. This is an easy way to replenish our Azure stocks!”
“Azure?” I said in surprise.
“Yes. Azure,” the weregirl repeated, leaping onto a thick bow and draping her body languidly over it. “You weak. Eat.”
I greedily devoured the fruit’s juicy pulp, feeling my stomach grow pleasantly heavy. Almost 80 Azure, not bad at all. If only I could stock up on these things, I would have no problem getting the upgrades I needed.
“Thanks,” I said. “Are there more of these… these things where it came from? Think you could take me there?”
Alice shook her head. “No. Monsters. Many monsters. Dangerous.”
Miko heaved a disappointed sigh. Oh well, you’d expect something like this. Many A-morphs were out on the prowl for more Azure. In fact, Alice might have had to fight them just to get this one.
“You want some?” I asked, raising the remaining slice up toward her.
“No. Bad idea. Man. Woman.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, uncomprehending.
Her eyes glinted mysteriously. She chuckled.
Suddenly I realized what she was driving at. This intoxicating fruit must have had some sort of side effect; it went right to your head but not the way regular alcohol would. Alice was lounging overhead in the languid pose of a well-fed panther. Suddenly she appeared so desirable I had to suppress an unruly bout of desire.
I forced my gaze away from her naked bronze body barely covered by the disheveled wave of her matted hair.
“This fruit is a powerful aphrodisiac, Incarnator. A strong hormonal surge detected. Keep quiet, it’s not gonna last. Still, I would advise against stuffing yourself with more of it in the future. The consequences may be, er, rather funny.”
In order to distract myself, I began questioning the girl trying not to look in her direction. “Are the rats gone?”
“Yes. No. Dunno,” she replied in her usual way which, as I now understood, must have meant “I haven’t seen them”.
“Rat King used to keep you prisoner. Tell me about him. What are his strong points?”
Alice bared her teeth and hissed. I could see I’d struck a sensitive chord.
“Monster. Old. Very old. Angry. Smart. The pack are his eyes. His ears. His pack is part of him. Understand?”
“She must be talking about the psionic contact between Rat King and his pack. He might actually be able to remotely control them. Which means that they have a single psionic field and some form of telepathic control… Keep asking, Incarnator!”
“What else can he do? How did he manage to catch you?”
“He’s strong. His voice stop y
ou. His screaming stun you. His tail freeze you. Paralyze with venom. He has a staff. Azuric staff. Dangerous. You want kill him?”
“Yes, I do. Know how to kill him?”
“Hard to say,” she said pensively. “He call rats. Many rats. They help him. You kill rats first. Then him. Need Azuric weapon. Or Enchanter. That’s the only way. Hard to kill. Many rats.”
Aha. So the reason Rat King was hard to kill because the entire pack would defend him? That’s what I myself thought. Plus he had a stunning scream, a paralyzing tail and his staff – apparently an Azuric artifact which he used as some sort of energy weapon.
Quite a dangerous opponent. In theory, both Fang and the Claw of Helheim could kill him. Still, I had no idea how to approach him without being ripped to pieces by all the others. This called for a distance weapon…
“Tell me,” Alice suddenly said. “You. Your source, Ra. You Enchanter?”
“Yes, I am,” I said. “I level up Spirit. And you?”
“Alice is Warrior,” she said with a bitter grin. “Was. Speed. Agility.”
I knew what she meant. Warriors – those who’d chosen to level up their physical bodies – could choose from a variety of leveling scenarios too. Apparently, Alice had focused on speed rather than strength. I could see traces of it even now, after all the spontaneous modifications she’d suffered. She could be lightning-fast when she wanted to, and her reaction times were mind-boggling. I was pretty sure she could whip out Fang from its hip sheath, cut my throat, shake off the blood and put it back in, all in two blinks of an eye.
“Tell me,” she said. “Who you are. What you remember. What your voice say. Who you were before.”
“I remember nothing,” I said. “Just nothing.”
“You man? Woman?”
At first, I didn’t understand. I’d never even thought about it. Subconsciously, I’d always considered myself a man. But if you think about it, an Incarnator could enter any human body, male as well as female. How did you know an Incarnator’s gender to begin with, after the hundreds of hosts he or she must have had?
“Dunno,” I said. “Why, you know how to do it?”
“Yes. Your cogitor. Women get a male voice. Men get a woman’s voice. Cleo. Sandra. Ding. Normally. Sometimes not, but rarely. Very rarely. Who do you have?”
“My cogitor’s name is Miko,” I said warily.
“Miko! You a man,” Alice said resolutely. She then smiled, as if to her own thoughts, and waved her little hand at me. “Miko good. Miko smart. Hi, Miko!”
The virtual Miko chuckled, stuck out her tongue at the girl and turned away, mumbling something unflattering.
“Me had a friend. He too had Miko. Alex. Alex Holger. He was Undying. Then he died. Died for good.”
“Some say I might be Angel,” I said. “Ever heard of him? Have you met him, by any chance?”
“Angel,” she repeated pensively. “Angel. Enchanter. Hero. No. Never met him. Alice is regular woman. Ordinary Inca. I was afraid. I was on the run. I hid. I didn’t want to fight.”
“Could you tell me more about the Possessed Ones? What happened to them?
“They came from over there. From the Moon. They came back broken. Contaminated. Darkness inside.”
“What is this Darkness?”
“It’s inside you. Hard to say. Is it alive? No. Is it dead? No. It thinks. It contaminates. It controls.”
“Sorry, I don’t understand. Could you tell me more, please? The Possessed Ones – can they still control themselves? Or is it Darkness that controls them?"
“Dunno. They’re broken. They say they can control themselves. Stellar say, it’s Darkness. Dunno.”
I paused before asking her the question which had been nagging at me all along. Miko didn’t want to answer it – but now I had a new source of information which didn’t give a damn about ranks and clearance levels.
“Okay,” I said. “You see, I don’t remember anything. And you seem to know quite a lot about this whole Stellar thing. What is it? How did it come about? Who created Stellar? And who activated the Incarnation protocol?”
Chapter 10
“YOU MEAN, who made Incas? Stellar. People. Hard to say,” Alice replied reluctantly, stretching her whole body and draping it over the bow. She didn’t seem too enthusiastic to discuss the subject of Darkness.
I’d already managed to work out most of her broken speech. “Hard to say” meant that her vocabulary wasn’t big enough to explain certain things. Still, her speech patterns seemed to be improving in leaps and bounds as if she was remembering a skill she’d lost a long time ago.
“Was it people who built Stellar?” I insisted.
“Stellar,” her voice filled with disgust. “No. It came from up there. Like Black Moon,” she pointed a languid hand up at the darkening sky. “Blue Bird. Blue Steel. A message. A warning. A threat. From up there.”
“What, did it come from outer space?” I asked in amazement. “Just like the Black Moon?”
“Yes. Maybe. Dunno. A secret. A legend.”
Unwittingly she’d just repeated what old Rico the Enchanter had told me. When he’d studied my heirloom dagger and cryptor, he had indeed said that the steel they were made from had come from Stellar’s starship. Blue Steel, an unknown isotope of some Azure-modified metal. The very mention of a starship meant that Stellar was an alien object. Blue Bird? How interesting.
“Could you tell me that legend, please?” I asked.
Alice yawned. The subject seemed to annoy her for some reason. Also, she must have been really drowsy after several sleepless nights followed by a successful hunt.
“Blue Bird. From up there. It came a long time ago. People studied it. Studied the technologies. It took them a long time. Azure. The Edge. Stellar. Stellar System. Incas…”
“So does that mean that although Stellar too came from outer space, it had happened way before the Black Moon?”
“Yes. A message. A warning. Knowledge.”
“Whose message? Alice?”
She gave a disinterested shrug. It looked like the name of Stellar didn’t hold any iconic significance to her. For Utopians and first Incarnators, the notion must have been utterly mundane – an integral part of their world like the sky, the moon, or the wind.
“Dunno. A message from up there. A secret. Grey… sleep. Need rest.”
“Okay. One last question, then. What is the Stellar system?”
Alice yawned again. “Miko. The Voice. Ask her.”
“She won’t tell me. I don’t have the clearance.”
“Ha! That’s Stellar,” she murmured with a hint of spite in her voice. “Ranks. Clearance. Each one knows a little. No one knows the whole truth.”
“That’s not what I asked you. What’s Stellar?”
“Hard to say. A system. Alien system. Bad system. Alerts. Commands. Monsters are bad. We are bad. Everyone around me died. Lots of them. Others died. A whole lot. Incas were dead. It wasn’t right. It was bad.”
“Why bad?” I insisted.
“Tomorrow,” she mumbled with her eyes already closed. “Now sleep…”
In a split moment, she was already dead to the world.
I leaned my back against the tree trunk, trying to make myself comfortable, and wrapped my blanket around me. Listening to the sounds of the woods, I soon followed her example.
I’d gotten less than six hours of sleep when Miko raised an alarm. I awoke with a start, very nearly falling off the tree.
The dawn was barely breaking. I could make out Alice’s outline in the twilight, her arms and legs dangling off the branch. She was fast asleep without a care in the world.
I could make out new sounds in the dark: the rustling, the swishing, the repeated creaking noises. Something was climbing the giant tree.
“Incarnator! Rattus alert!!”
She was dead right there. They were approaching from downwind, all but soundless and invisible, had it not been for the red embers of their eyes.
T
hey were really close. Lots of them, too!
I sprang to my feet and gave Alice a shove, all the while summoning a Speck of Ra and whipping out Fang. Just as I’d done so, a lithe red shadow left the tree trunk and leapt onto me with its claws splayed.
I caught its heavy fetid body on my Fang. The bow was so narrow there was no way I could have dodged the attack – nor stay on my feet. The momentum sent me flying to the ground still grappling with the rat which clung to me for dear life.
The Enchanter (Project Stellar Book 2): LitRPG Series Page 13