The Enchanter (Project Stellar Book 2): LitRPG Series

by Roman Prokofiev

  “Exactly! So now in the light of these new developments, I would strongly suggest you install the Regeneration ability. Now that your host has become unique, we should do everything in order to keep this body. Just look what the Daat has done to your Source!”

  I hadn’t noticed it at first. The level remained unchanged. Ditto for the abilities... Still, Miko promptly enlightened me.

  “Look here, Grey. Most people’s Sources are weak, with few exceptions. That’s just something that’s typical for your species. In practice, it means that a Source can be upgraded to level 5, which we’ve done already. You do understand, don’t you, that these numbers are just a convention to make things easier for everyone? They’re just road signs to describe a Source’s potential. So as I said, most humans have what we call “Weak” Sources. The first Evolution will allow us to level it up to “Average” which is level 10, that is to say five more upgrades. The second Evolution brings it up to “Strong” which is level 15. And so on and so forth...”

  “I got it, Miko. Keep it nice and short, will you?”

  “I’m almost finished. Basically, what we now have is an average host with a potentially “Powerful” Source, which is the equivalent of level 4 in Evolution. This is incredible. At the moment, our Source is at 5/20 and we can continue leveling it. I have a funny feeling that once we’ve made the first Evolution, this number might grow even further.”

  “But that would mean that—”

  “Exactly. Normally, a Source maxes out at level 30 which requires level 6 in Evolution. But we can go further! We can raise the bar ever higher which would allow us to accomplish the kinds of things no one has ever done before. With a headstart like this, you could become the greatest Enchanter of all time.”

  That was probably the main modification the Daat had bestowed on me, granting me the potential to become a truly powerful Enchanter. On one hand, this was wonderful news and an incredible advantage. But on the other, it meant that I had no choice anymore. From now on, I had to focus on leveling up the Source.

  The Daat’s last gift waited for me in my interface. The gray line of a new system function had appeared in my Abilities tab:

  Gift of the Daat

  There was no description, nothing. When I tried to activate it, the system issued me the following notice:

  Warning! Your current level is insufficient to use the ability you’ve selected!

  Requirements:

  64000 Azure

  Source Upgrade (20)

  How much? Oh well. All it meant was that I wouldn’t be able to use this so-called “Gift” for quite a while. At least not for another fifteen Source upgrades! And that’s not counting the kind of progress I needed to make in order to expand my Azure storage to accommodate these kinds of numbers!

  “You need to make another 35 neurospheres, Incarnator. At the moment, we’ve only made 24. But it’s early days now, so it should be quite doable.”

  That got me thinking. Indeed, I’ve only been back on Earth for a few days and look at my progress now. So where would that take me in a year’s time? Or two years? Three even?

  “Your progress is bound to slow over time, of course. But as I said, it’s early days yet!”

  So all I had was the DNA replication, the doubling of the Source upgrades and the mysterious Gift which I wasn’t going to access for quite a while. Basically, all it did was improve my host’s potential in the long run. But what was the deal that slug had been on about? What could my predecessor have possibly offered that piece of slime sitting at the very center of the A-zone?

  “I have no answer to that, Incarnator. Too many unknown variables. But at least this way it considerably narrows our search. Now we know that you already visited this A-zone at some point in the past and even managed to make it back. Once we get promoted, it’s possible that we might get access to the list of all Incarnators, in which case I might try to pull a few most likely candidates based on the facts we already know.”

  I shuddered, remembering the moment of my psionic fusing with the Daat. A spine-chilling feeling. The moment when I’d fully grasped the creature’s true nature. Or maybe it had been him deciding to reveal it to me, I don’t know. I’d only glimpsed a single tiny facet of it, of course, but still. This was a being of a totally different order. Humans didn’t come anywhere near. It had spent hundreds of years just absorbing Azure and leveling up its sentience. This was a creature so advanced that its very shape, and even time and space themselves, had become irrelevant. An alien mind which had long surpassed the limits known to humanity.

  In actual fact, an Enchanter who’d chosen to level up Spirit might eventually achieve the same results if he or she kept absorbing Azure on a galactic scale. But they risked losing their very humanity in the process, becoming a Daat themselves. I was very curious what could have made him so interested in an annoying insect like little old me that he deemed me worthy of becoming his personal guinea pig?

  Lots of questions and not an answer in sight. Miko just kept shrugging, flashing me a smile.

  I climbed back to my feet and took a look around. I stood amid the green sea of foliage. The sun peeked through the mass of entangled fat stalks. This wasn’t a forest, more like a sprawling thicket of giant shrubs which domed over our cozy little clearing. The air was rich with the fragrances of the grass and the suffocatingly sweet pollen of some flowers. Where were we?

  “Grey...” Alice sat up, awoken by a rustling sound in the grass, and looked around her warily, taking in the air through her nostrils. “We alive. Not a dream. I saw him. The Daat. Death. Return to life. He spoke with me. Then he let me go.”

  She stepped toward me, then did something I hadn’t expected. She dropped to her knees and pressed her hot forehead to my hand. She then raised her head, looking up at me in an almost-religious veneration. This was the kind of expression I’d seen in Tara’s eyes back by the Monolith when I’d told her I was an Incarnator.

  “I saw you. You saved me. Took me with you. Thank you.”

  “Oh, give it a break, woman. Get up now,” I pulled her upward, embarrassed by this sudden manifestation of reverence.

  She rose to her feet, then clung to me momentarily, giving me a vice-strong hug which made my bones groan. Immediately she shrunk back, as if petrified of her own feelings.

  And I – I realized at that moment that now she was well and truly my comrade, not just an accidental hitchhiker using me to get her interface back. The Daat must have done something to her too, probably shown something to her which made her loyal to me in body and soul now.

  “Did the Daat speak to you?” I asked probingly.

  “Yes. No. Dunno. He showed me things. You, me. All sorts of people.”

  “Do you know who he is?”

  “Yes. No. He’s a Daat! He’s old. He’s smart. Azure. Death.”

  “Did he do something to your body?”

  She gave me an uncomprehending look, then shook her head. “Yes. No. Dunno.”

  “And the beast... is he still inside you?” I kept probing.

  Her face darkened slightly. She froze, as if focusing on something within.

  “Yes,” she mouthed. “He’s still there. He’s awake. Not good.”

  She cast a worried glance at the sky. I realized that she was afraid of the rise of the Black Moon the coming night.

  What a shame. I’d had a fleeting hope that the Daat might have removed the parasitic entity from her body, but for reasons known only to him, he’d chosen to leave it where it was. Which meant we’d have to deal with it ourselves.

  “Do you know where we are?” I asked.

  “Yes. The smell. The old eco-city,” Alice said with a faint smile, taking the fragrant air in through her nostrils. “Let’s go.”

  Once we’d worked our way out of the thicket, we saw the ruins of strangely-shaped buildings completely reclaimed by vegetation. I’d never seen such unusual architecture before. Some of the structures spiraled up, others were hemispherical whi
le yet others appeared to be needle-sharp, all of them overgrown by what appeared to be giant vines – a bit like regular creepers zoomed up to ten times their size. They had completely taken over the place, turning the abandoned city into a riot of multi-level jungle.

  “This is indeed the ecolopolis, Incarnator. Now I know our coordinates.”

  Miko pulled up a brief info sheet and a few images. According to the database, closer to the end of the Utopian era, humanity had begun to develop new types of urban spaces. Some of them were the technological megapolises for the unprivileged population – basically, giant human hives built around large business and production centers which abounded with various entertainment facilities. The eco-cities had become their opposite: the settlements built far away from civilization and in harmony with nature which used geothermal energy and were fully sustainable, growing their own clean foods.

  I gazed at the images of cities which looked more like freshly-opened blossoms; skyscrapers of glass permeated with greenery, white trains sliding soundlessly within transparent tunnels; family airmobiles taking to the sky like delicate birds...

  The eco-cities had been apparently meant for the more affluent classes. Luxurious villas replete with gardens and swimming pools; wondrous eco-houses with giant terraces overgrown with greenery – all this was a far cry from the uniform crampedness of the hives.

  I took a look at the map and heaved a sigh of relief. Although we were still in the A-zone, the Daat had had the courtesy of transporting us to its very edge. This place was only a stone’s throw away from the safe zones. He must have read my memory because he’d placed us at the best possible point to restart our journey, less than 150 miles away from the Monolith.

  I shared my discovery with Alice. She nodded without betraying her emotions. We had a quick bite to eat, sharing the last of my dry rations, then found our bearings and set off.

  Miko laid us a route. We had to cross the eco-city’s outskirts, trying not to delve too deep into the multi-level jungle at the city center, then leave it through its vast suburbs which had once been built with spacious one-story villas. From there, I could already see the familiar volcanic hills which marked the end of the A-zone and began the home stretch toward the Monolith.

  The whole area teemed with life. I saw lots of birds, isopodes and some other creatures which resembled giant lizards. Alice confidently made her way through the green corridors, walking over the tangles of branches with amazing agility. I too found it much easier to keep up with her now after the nervous system upgrade. Judging by her manner, she had no problem finding her way through this kind of terrain.

  “I lived in eco,” she explained as we walked. “Like this one. Long time ago. Lots of food. Very few people.”

  This particular biome seemed to have its own food chain, its deadly predators and their victims. We met one of the former – a giant carnivorous sundew plant – when the vines around us shifted, forming the nest of that botanical monster. In a way, it resembled the venomous A-morph plant which had killed the two contaminated Legionnaires who’d chased after me – but luckily, this one wasn’t as toxic. Still, the things could have taken a bad turn for both of us. I had to use Fang to chop through the hard stalks, while Alice brandished the broken-off sword she’d picked up by Gerda’s body.

  I’m saying “broken”, but that particular weapon soon demonstrated some remarkable Azuric properties. Its blows made the carnivorous vines freeze instantly, covering the fresh cuts in a layer of ice. A stronger swing would make the vines crack and break, disintegrating in cascades of frozen slush. After about ten minutes of combat, the frozen monster had lost the better part of its tentacles and slid back into the ruins, trying to retreat. Still, I finished what we’d started by sending a couple of Flashes right down the creature’s petal-lined jaws, turning it into a smoking heap of disintegrating vegetable flesh.

  4500 Azure and an unexpected update of the Hunt mission – apparently, the morph was considered a valuable prize. I had five out of ten now, counting Flector the super crab, Rat King and the three Armorclad Bloodhounds. When Alice had heard about that, she perked up and announced that hunting more sundews would be an excellent way to close the mission.

  After that, we made slight adjustments to our course. The weregirl got busy seeking out the nests of such vegetable predators, taking up the main role in finding and hunting them; all I had to do was watch her back. I got the impression that Alice really wanted to be useful, so she gave it her all. Which was logical because she was the one who gained the most from completing the missions and receiving promotions.

  Her tactic was simple. She’d find a sundew and let it catch herself, getting trapped down the monster’s throat which resembled a toothy hose. Her strength and regeneration allowed her to easily survive such a predicament. Then all she had to do was brandish Claw of Helheim and Gerda’s icy sword, slowly breaking the frozen and poisoned monster from the inside until she emerged from its intestine in one piece.

  The only drawback of that strategy was her gear which kept deteriorating from the contact with the creatures’ corroding stomach acid and the plants’ prickly embrace. Even though the reinforced jumpsuits we’d received on board Avenger were extremely strong, they just didn’t offer this kind of protection. By the time we’d killed the fifth and last monster, Alice’s jumpsuit was a sorry sight – and she wasn’t very far off, either.

  “Me dirty. Me hungry. Me tired,” she complained, peering anxiously at the disk of the Black Moon looming on the horizon. It was getting dark; night was about to fall.

  We left the eco-city and its living jungle behind us and found shelter in the ruins of what once used to be a large villa — a mansion, rather, complete with gardens, a park, several lakes and even an artificial waterfall. The traces of ancient luxury were everywhere: in the motionless remains of statues green with mold, the marble colonnade and the exquisite mosaics at the bottom of the giant swimming pool overgrown with algae.

  We found a few relatively intact rooms which offered a roof over our heads. Although the ruins teemed with large isopods, they felt so familiar by now that I was almost happy to see them. It meant that there were no other predators around which made this place relatively safe. With a bit of an effort, I activated my psi field and scared the curious creatures off. I set up some semblance of a camp, then allowed my body a few minutes of blissful idleness as I sifted through potential courses of action.

  I also checked out my new Genome, the one I’d received from the carnivorous plants. I could forget using it, though.

  Sundew Genome

  Requirements:

  Evolution (2)

  Skin Tissue Upgrade (5)

  Blood Circulation Upgrade (5)

  Metabolic Upgrade (5)

  Body Tissue Upgrade (5)

  Neuromatrix

  Available genetic modifications:

  Photosynthesis

  Allows you to use photons as a source of energy and carbon dioxide as a source of carbon in order to synthesize organic substances necessary to support your biological functions.

  Organic Acids

  Allows you to secrete a highly corrosive organic acid.

  Trapping Hairs

  Forms additional appendages on your body which serve as trapping tentacles, up to 10 or 15 yards long.

  The Armorclad Bloodhound genome was no good, either. It was virtually identical to the Devourer Genome I already had. The Fake Necro, Black Armor and the claws – thanks but no thanks. Which only left Rattus Genome available right now – but as it was only a feeble semblance of the Rat King one, I hated to waste a precious slot on it.

  “We need Azuric abilities, Incarnator. Something that relies on our Source and works in synergy with our other abilities, enhancing them. We shouldn’t just grab the first thing that comes our way.”

  Mentally, I agreed with her, thinking how leveling up my Source could increase the psionic power of the Leader of the Pack.

  I heard the splashing of
water outside. What was Alice up to now? I peeked out, scanning the area.

  She stood on the pedestal of one of the statues, stark naked and scooping up water from a small waterfall. The rays of the setting sun penetrated her wet disheveled hair, creating a quivering halo around her. She suddenly resembled a beautiful river nymph, her seductive curves quickening my pulse against my will.

  She immediately sensed my gaze, cast me a quick glance and slipped into the water with her back to me. I’d already noticed that if at first she’d ignored her own nudity entirely, these days she went to great lengths not to expose her body. It was as if my presence made her feel embarrassed. It didn’t work very well though because her every transformation required her to either strip down or lose the tattered remains of her clothes.