The Enchanter (Project Stellar Book 2): LitRPG Series

by Roman Prokofiev

  “Just take it,” Kai insisted. “You’d better give me my Snowflakes back. They've always been my piece de resistance.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Alice handed him the shuriken sling. Kai nodded curtly, accepting it.

  Immediately the Snowflakes – as he called the Blue Steel shurikens – shot up into the air and whooshed around in circles, then banked sharply to land on Kai’s right forearm, clinging to it.

  Seeing my surprised gaze, he shrugged. “Telekinetics. Just a genome I got from the Bank. Listen, sweetheart, that thing is called a rapier. You think you know how to use it?

  Alice spun in place by way of answer. The rapier’s thin blade whooshed, slicing through the air. The girl’s swift stealing movements, the way she swung and lunged — it all turned into a tempestuous blur. The temperature in the room dropped considerably. A surge of fiercely cold air assaulted us; a few prickly snowflakes landed on my face.

  “Look at her speed,” Kai mouthed to me. “That’s Evolution 3. Holy shit, Grey. I dread to think what she might be capable of with that thing in her hands...”

  Finally, Alice stopped and took a long look at the rapier in her hands. She then looked up at Kai and gave him a curt nod. I might be wrong but the animosity in her stare was all but gone.

  “Did you like it? Good. Now you, Grey.”

  He handed me a heavy energy rifle with unusually smooth angles which looked like some space trooper’s weapon. I remembered where I’d seen similar ones before: these were the kind of guns used by the Myles – the synthetics on board Avenger, only in a different color.

  “Why energy?” I asked, admiring the exotic weapon. This was a replica of the best Utopian army-issue ones, in mint condition. Modification: Moon Spear. Its rough gray plastic was marked with Stellar’s logo. Its ergonomic grips felt as one with my hands.

  Kai shrugged. “Normally, they’re more effective against A-monsters than kinetic ones. Aren’t we going to check the Roc’s nest? And here’s another little something for you. I was a bit pressed for time and short of materials, so this is the best I could do.”

  My ex-Crusher thudded onto the tabletop.

  He'd modified my handgun! And I think he was underplaying his skill. The weapon had changed radically. Its body was inlaid with black bone which made it look truly impressive. Rat King’s Azuric heart was built into the gun’s handle. The Crusher now looked truly sinister and massive.

  When I picked it up, the gun surged with the greenish glow of Necro energy. This wasn’t your regular large-caliber Desert Eagle replica anymore – this was an Azure-modified handgun with some very peculiar perks:

  The Rat

  Azure-modified kinetic weapon.

  Properties:

  Toxicity. When loaded, the bullets are infected with the necro toxins of Rat King which paralyze and poison the target.

  Squeaking Rat. Firing the gun produces a powerful acoustic attack, stunning your enemy and dealing them additional injuries.

  Expanding bullets. As the name suggests, they expand on impact, dealing serious internal injuries to the target’s body.

  I raised a quizzical eyebrow. “The Rat? Are you serious?”

  “I’m afraid so. My imagination isn’t that special. But just look at this cutie! Toxic bullets – they paralyze and poison the target and also slow down its regeneration,” he pushed the gun toward me. “The poison also deals a bit of corrosive Azuric damage – not much but still. That could work against monsters as well as other Incarnators. A regular human being would be dead within seconds of toxic shock. Plus the Squeaking Rat dealing acoustic damage. No, please don’t test it now! There aren’t that many expanding bullets with it, so you only use them when absolutely necessary.”

  “Thanks, Kai,” I said, weighing up the gun in my hand. “Is that all?”

  “No. This is for all of us,” he flung a bunch of tattered gray capes onto the table. Seeing my befuddled stare, he explained, “These are Chameleons. Nano camouflage.”

  The amount of work he’d done the night before was truly impressive.

  “Thanks for the gear, man,” I invested all my appreciation into the words. “I hope you left something for yourself.”

  “You bet I did! This may be a new host but I checked all of my old stashes, and look at this!”

  He stuck his hand out, clad in a technological gauntlet. A pale-blue hemisphere of a force field opened up before us, shielding us like a giant umbrella.

  His helmet’s impermeable visor lowered, concealing Kai’s face. A single crimson light came on like a threatening eye. A moment later, a hissing beam of scarlet light sliced through the air. The demonstration was completed with Snowflakes – the blue-steel shurikens – swirling around Kai in a buzzing swarm, each following its own unpredictable path.

  Alice recoiled with an unfriendly hiss. She seemed to have been duly impressed by his performance.

  “The Shield of Void, the Eye of Death and Telekinetics,” Kai said intently, ignoring her reaction. “That’s what I’ve got for short range. For anything that’s far flung, I can play this baby fiddle,” he stroked the massive flank of a pulse gun almost twice as big as the rifle he’d given me.

  That was heavy duty warfare. Kai was kitting us out in dead seriousness. It began to dawn on me that our journey to the Roc’s nest might not be the walk in the park I’d thought it to be.

  We left the Monolith early in the morning. Originally, it had taken Tara and myself several days to get here – but at the time, we’d made a large detour in order to visit the hive city. If we walked straight on, we could get to the Roc’s nest in just a couple of days. We moved stealthily, avoiding open areas and trying to stick to the cover of trees and cliffs. Those Chameleon capes were all good and well, but they didn’t offer complete invisibility, at least not against Pilgrim’s equipment.

  Luckily, the sky remained clear and the area, completely deserted: nothing but loads of little critters which bred freely in the ancient ruins. Alice would go far ahead to recon the surroundings while Kai and myself followed her in the tireless trot of seasoned wolves. This hike had in fact tested our physical resources to the limit: Incarnators can run like this for days and nights almost without stopping, thanks to all the numerous body upgrades they receive. But Kai and I weren’t quite up to it yet, so after a twelve-hour marathon we had to stop for the night. We’d covered half the distance already, anyway. I could already see the familiar mountain ridge loom on the horizon.

  We had a bite to eat and got talking, discussing our further development. I really wanted to pick his brains as an experienced Incarnator who’d already walked the path of an Enchanter and must have learned everything the hard way.

  Kai gave me several valuable pieces of advice, mainly regarding the abilities and Genomes I needed. According to him, Enchanters came in two main types. Some focused on developing support abilities, such as healing, buffing and controlling, while others honed their combat skills. Enchanters were the only class which could successfully fight the creatures of Azure or communicate with them. And yes, there was a particular number of Genomes required to make it happen. For instance, Kai had mentioned Azuric Vision and Azure Control as absolutely indispensable in my line of work.

  Also, I shared with him my suspicions about the Stellar system. Your own cogitor spying on you; the whole atmosphere of secrecy; all those ranks, terminals and the very means used by the system to keep the Incas afloat seemed too far-fetched and long-winded. I struggled to put it into words – but if anything, it reminded me of a set of rules created for some strange and cruel game, the purpose of which remained a mystery.

  “It’s the Possessed that have put these words in your mouth,” Kai said with a crooked grin. “That’s their propaganda tricks. Destroying Stellar used to be their main objective.”

  “But what if they’d found out something really important up on the Black Moon?” I offered.

  “Those of them who came back were already possessed by Darkness,” Kai re
plied with a bored yawn. “A pseudo-sentient symbiont which had infected them and taken over their animas. The Possessed are only its receptacle. They may think they’ve preserved their mental facilities and that they can contain the contamination process but it’s far from the truth. The whole process has been researched to near death. Once contaminated, the person is lost for humanity. Darkness puts its own thoughts and desires in their heads, even though they claim them as their own. There’s no way you can free them, so you’re obliged to kill them. That’s what makes them so preoccupied with the idea of destroying Stellar and infecting all the remaining Incas. Darkness wants to spread, and the only thing that can threaten the Black Moon is the actual Stellar system. Darkness wants to finish what the Impact started. It wants to eliminate humankind.”

  “So that’s what caused the war?”

  “Yeah, but not only that. There was also revenge. You know what the crews of Avenger and Illustrious did when they’d finally returned to the City? At the time, no one realized the extent to which Darkness had rooted in them. People tried to reason with them, they hoped to heal them... But the Possessed called up the Council and summoned all the Incas to it. Now we understand that they simply wanted all of their enemies to be in one place. So once the Council had begun its work, the catastrophe struck. What we call the Battle. The Possessed wanted to destroy the Nucleus and Stellar’s main Terminal. They employed the Absolute weapon. Over a million people died, thousands of Incas among them,” he said through gritted teeth. “The crème de la crème of the First Legion met their death that day, on both sides. Prometheus, Isis, Darr Veter[1], Gilgamesh, Circe, Number Thirteen... the list goes on and on.”

  “But they failed to destroy Stellar, did they?”

  “They did indeed. No idea why. All of them perished in the blast, the attackers as well as Stellar’s defenders. So there’re no survivors to tell the tale. The City was badly destroyed. The casualties were mind-boggling on both sides. We’ve never managed to rise from our knees since.”

  I raised a quizzical eyebrow. “You mean the Legion?”

  “Well, at first the Possessed were getting the upper hand, weren’t they? They got a lot of support. The victory was as good as theirs. Ash was unstoppable.”

  “Ash?”

  “That’s right. And also Lycan, Cannibal, Witch, Gnarl – the Possessed had many leaders, but Ash was the top of their pecking order. Before that, he used to call himself Phoenix. Phoenix, one of the First Legion’s Legates. He was Prometheus’ right hand.

  “Phoenix! Flames! Killer!” Alice snapped. She sprang to her feet, swung round and disappeared soundlessly into the dark.

  “That’s right,” Kai nodded. “Phoenix used to be in command of all of the Legion’s main raids. Including the elimination of the Undying clan. He was one hell of a powerful Enchanter. He used the Light of Ra, just like you do. His Kisses of the Sun... you should have seen it, man. They set everything on fire, even the things that couldn’t burn by definition.”

  I remembered the deserted city where I’d first met Tara. The blackened skyscrapers which looked like molten sticks of wax. Now I knew what had caused it.

  I gave a small cough. “I saw it.”

  “Our Vixen is still pining over them,” Kai mouthed, casting a quick glance after her. “Who would have thought. To tell you the truth, the Undying were a right bunch of shitheads. Typical New Agers, a totalitarian sect controlled by a guru, which somehow managed to seize power on one of the islands of Old Europe. They were worse zealots than the Zealots. They created their own little princedom with an old Alpine eco-city as its capital. At the time, they developed quite fast and had a rapidly growing population of several hundred Incas, not to mention regular people. Phoenix erased every trace of the Undying Pack. The few survivors were brought to the City and locked up in the Cube with an Omega seal.”

  “And after that, he became the leader of the Possessed?”

  “Yeah. He was the most prominent figure among those who’d made it back from the Black Moon.”

  “What happened to him afterwards?”

  Kai yawned. “That’s a whole nother story...”

  He was interrupted by Alice who lunged at us from the undergrowth and pinned us to the ground, draping her Chameleon cape over herself.

  The pale-blue shimmer of the Black Moon faded. The familiar furious squawk echoed through the sky. You couldn’t confuse this sound for anything else.

  A gigantic winged shadow covered us. The treetops above shuddered with the gusts of powerful wingbeats.

  The Roc. He was now soaring over the forest, not a small dot anymore but a giant monster with a wingspan to match. We froze in our camo capes, trying to keep perfectly still – trying not to breathe even. The probability of this colossus being tempted by small fry like us cowering in the undergrowth was minimal – but somehow we didn’t feel like tempting providence.

  “Holy shit! He’s big, isn’t he?” Kai cussed once the danger was over. “He’s put on some weight next to all those A-zones! Your eyesight is not a patch on his. This guy can notice a groundhog in its hole from up in the stratosphere,” he added, squinting at me. “To tell you the truth, wild Rocs are one of the few useful A-morphs around. They’re great for controlling A-Morphs’ populations. They can clean up an area of monsters better than an Incarnator raid ever can. Their hunting areas spread for thousands of miles and you can be sure there’ll be no big A-bastards anywhere near them. Talking about which. What’s your plan of action, commander?”

  “I haven’t thought about it yet,” I admitted. “Maybe we should wait for him to leave, get to the nest, pilfer the egg and try to start the airmobile.”

  “I’m not sure it would work,” he murmured. “We simply might not make it. I have a better idea...”

  Chapter 26

  WE TREKKED THROUGH primeval pinewoods until we reached the foothills of the already-familiar mountain. The sharp trident peak of the grayish yellow cliffs shot up toward the clouds, narrowing like a sword’s blade. That’s where I’d died not so long ago when the Roc had pushed me over the edge.

  Kai asked me lots of questions and even watched the footage of my earlier visit to the nest. The monster had chosen the summit just next to the ruins of an ancient observatory. Strangely enough, we couldn’t find any such object on the Utopia-period maps. According to them, this particular area had looked completely different from what it did now. And yet the ruins were still there and therefore, there must have been some sort of road leading up there. I had my doubts that the place had only been accessible by air in its day.

  Turned out, I was right. Moving warily past the precipitous cliffs, we finally found the remains of an old road, almost completely overgrown. It took us to the remains of what looked like an ancient hoisting elevator mounted on the rock wall. Predictably, it was inoperable, its rusted steel beams looking very suspect. Still, we had no other way of scaling the insurmountable height.

  Kai had already rejected my idea of attacking and killing the monster. This was a class-Gold A- Morph, virtually impervious to our weapons. With his rock-hard plumage and unknown Azuric abilities, the Roc was a true master of the skies, lethal even for a large raid group. All we could do was singe or graze him, infuriating this vindictive bird even further. No amount of toxins or poisoned bullets would work against him: morphs of his caliber didn’t give a damn about subterfuge like that. The risk of losing our respective host bodies was way too big, and none of us had any desire to hike all the way back to Monolith just to get a new one.

  No, our new team member suggested we do something else. The Roc is a daytime hunter. He soars high in the sky keeping a sharp eye on the ground in search of suitable prey. Trying to climb into his nest at night made no sense: we really should seize the opportunity while he was out hunting.

  Kai suggested that Alice distracted him by finding a herd of Khutakh – the blue-and-orange dinosaur-like giants – and scaring them up, driving them out into open terrain. According to Kai,
those monsters made part of the colossal bird’s regular diet.

  Alice wasn’t amused. The Khutakh – who indeed looked like a bunch of primeval Diplodocuses – were big and extremely dangerous. If infuriated, they could trample us into the ground without even knowing it. Before, we used to give them a wide berth.

  Still, Kai insisted saying that a Khutakh’s carcass was too heavy even for a creature as powerful as the Roc, so there was a high chance that he might start devouring his kill on the spot. That might take him some time – enough for us to search his nest, anyway. In addition, his abundant meal might make the monstrous bird slow and sluggish.

  His idea seemed to make sense. We sent Alice out to look for a suitable herd and began scaling the rock face up the ancient elevator. A crazy undertaking, even with the rock-climbing equipment that Kai had turned out to have. Still, I managed to pass this dangerous test with flying colors. A regular human being devoid of an Incarnator’s agility and balance would never have survived the climb up the elevator’s wobbly rusty framework.