And what was he being judged for? For bringing the undead to the lands of the living! Good joke, Snowstorm. Why didn’t you judge Mr. Horvac Onegut for his no less reckless actions? After all, he’s the one who started an endless war between the Commonwealth and the Empire!
Actually, don’t answer that. I know all your lame excuses: you have no influence on the Celestial Arbitration, you don’t interfere with the gameplay, it was just a coincidence… Blah blah blah…
Yesterday, I asked Chloe (Community and Connections Director at Snowstorm) a question: “Why this universal hatred for Scyth?”
I told her exactly what I think about recent events at the Games — that all this is an attempt by Snowstorm to give the other contestants an advantage, and that I’d bet my year’s paycheck that these obstructions to Alex Sheppard are from the corporation.
Cliffhanger answered, and I quote: “As you know, he’s a cheater! Everything he achieved, he achieved dishonestly, and people suffer because of his actions!” The tone of her words only convinced me that I am right — that Snowstorm is manipulating the voting results.
Our provisional estimate and surveys showed us that at least one third of the audience sympathizes with the class-A Threat, and another quarter, although they may not support him, would still rather see him in the Games than out. Two thirds of those surveyed are sure that Scyth will be a centrally important figure in the tournament.
In the meantime, what does your so-called viewers’ vote show? That 92.75% voted for him as the worst player?
You must know how ridiculous that looks. Not even the dictators of the past massaged the numbers this hard!
I felt the same excitement I had felt before the battle for Tiamat’s temple. Only yesterday, I was only just starting to think that Snowstorm was interfering. Now it was obvious not only to me, but to the viewers too. Now that was a damn good feeling!
Maybe the people weren’t standing up for me, but for the right not to have their opinions overridden by the corporation, but I still felt the powerful wave not pulling me down, but lifting me up, onto its very crest.
Below, it was clear that chief editor Clark Katz had enabled moderator mode, and comments in support of me showed at the top.
2kan | +14.11m | 3 hours ago
After the first day, I told myself: Scyth is hopeless. Both as a person and a player. He hasn’t done anything special. I don’t know who he is in real life, but it’s obvious he’s an ordinary guy who was just a kid yesterday. Four hundred contestants behaved like morons when they attacked him right out of the gate, and to be honest, I expected the response to be something serious. But nothing happened except poor Messiah and Destiny-Silver-Spoon-Windsor taking a dive.
I couldn’t have been more wrong, guys! Today Scyth showed us what we’ve all been waiting for. Amazing plays! Keep it up, Threat!
Poppa Scooter (+12.74m | 2 hours ago
LOL when those dumbass mages revived back at the Companions! I must have watched the clip 10 times! Their faces would make a great surprise meme lmao! Can’t wait for tomorrow!
Bosun | +7.69m | 12 minutes ago
Snowstorm, if all your meddling gets Scyth knocked out of the games tomorrow, I swear I’ll unsub from all your services! Who’s with me?
Uplifted, I tossed and turned in my bed for a long time. I fell asleep late and not for long enough. In restless dreams I fell victim to the ever ravenous Companions and the Atling slimes, plummeted into the abyss with no way to enable Flight, burned in hellfire and for some reason found myself naked onstage next to Octius, who shouted:
“A round of applause for Scyth, who has managed to find no clothes at all in three years in the Cursed Chasm!”
My mind accepted these tortures with surprising calm. After the real terrors threatening my friends and family with death, and the events I survived in the Nether, my threshold of perception had changed. That which would have been a nightmare for me a year ago was now just unpleasant. Not once did I wake in a cold sweat.
The morning began with an insistent knock at the door. Wiping my eyes, I covered myself with the bedsheet and shuffled over to open it like a sluggish specter. Miss Kalinovich from my health class would have noted with disappointment that my ‘growing body needs lots of sleep!’ But Miss Kalinovich was far away…
Kerry stood at the threshold, shifting from one foot to the other. Pushing me aside, she forced her way in. My assistant was breathing heavily as if she’d just run a marathon. I closed the door and followed the girl into the room, yawned widely.
“Good morning to you too…” I said. “Has something happened?”
“Sure has! I don’t know what, but you’re going to get killed today! You’re getting knocked out!”
“There are still three hours left before the Games start, Kerry,” I complained. “I need to sleep! You must know you aren’t telling me anything I don’t already know.”
Kerry thought for a moment, then nodded.
“Yeah, you’re right… Go shower, I’ll make some coffee. I’ll tell you everything after…”
I took an ice-cold shower, then sat down in an armchair across from my assistant. She nodded to a cup of coffee. I took a gulp and grimaced — three times stronger than I was used to.
“Alright…” the girl began, calmer now. “This morning, when I was having breakfast with the other assistants, I noticed them looking at me and smirking, whispering, giggling…”
“Uhm… Maybe because you forgot to wear a…” I shook my head and turned my eyes away from Kerry’s enormous breasts shining through her mesh gown. “A bra, that’s what they’re called, right?”
“Pfft…” She waved a hand. “Keirinia, another assistant, doesn’t wear anything at all. Who cares? There are no kids in the hotel.”
“Still, though…” I handed her a blanket. “Put this on for me, will you?”
Wrapping the blanket around herself, she continued:
“I listened in on their conversation, Alex. The other assistants were whispering, discussing some plan. Some idea the players have for taking you out. Nobody wants to wind up like the mages and the Readers. Even old enemies are getting together. Because everyone knows that you won’t have any way to resist them today and you’ll go down easy. You have to be ready..!”
“I think you’re exaggerating,” I said, trying to shrug it off.
“I’m not! This is very, very serious!”
For a second I caught some of her panic, but quickly pushed it down. What could I do right then? Nothing. How could I change anything? I’d only get worked up about it. All I could do was wait.
But two and a half hours later, as I logged into the game, I realized Kerry was right.
Chapter 11. Abaddon’s Curse
MY CHARACTER APPEARED in the Cursed Chasm where I left him, at the bottom of the Pitfall. My ability icons had lost their color, which meant I had no skills.
Flight wasn’t working. I tried to take a step, but couldn’t lift my soles from the ground.
The reason was a debuff:
Abaddon’s Curse
You have not killed a single demon. For your cowardice and lack of initiative, Abaddon the Destroyer, general of the demon prince Belial, has inflicted a curse upon you. Due to the weakness of mind it causes, you have none of your learned skills and earn no experience. You have lost your ability to restore health and you are bound to the location of the curse.
Nothing in Disgardium has the power to aid you!
Cowardice? Lack of initiative? I wished I could visit Abaddon in the Inferno and show him what Reflection and Sleeping Vindication could do!
Nether! I couldn’t even sit down properly; the soles of my feet were stuck to the earth. I couldn’t do anything at all, and I tried everything: lying down, jumping, standing on my tiptoes. Meditating didn’t work, and neither did Hammerfist and Ghastly Howl.
Toward the end of the first hour of the third day, the space above me began to ripple with a multitude of dots. They came steadily cl
oser, eventually taking on the shape of human beings. Three hundred contestants slowly descended, all carried by Feather.
Long ago, long enough to be in a past life, Crawler had cast that spell on us so that we could drop down to the Olton Quarries and complete the Evil from the Depths instance. The memory flashed up with a wave of nostalgia, but retreated when the present turned pressing.
As they came within firing range, the contestants attacked, driven on by Destiny’s triumphant shriek:
“Eat this, scumbag!”
Hundreds of enemy spells, arrows, darts, spears and bolts flew toward me.
The bottom of the Pitfall was round like a stadium bowl, yawning with holes and bubbling with tiny valleys and peaks. I stood on one of them, not far from the gates.
A desperate thought entered my mind: Abaddon had taken my skills, but did that include perks? Would Second Life work? Or would my death be final?
I hated the thought that in his final second in the Cursed Chasm, Scyth would look like a pathetic coward, that people would remember him that way. So I squared my shoulders, straightened my back, looked up at the glimmering mass of arrows, darts, spears and spells shooting through the air toward me. Gritting my teeth, I poured all my strength into holding back the urge to flinch.
It all took a fraction of a second that lasted a lifetime. A huge icicle reached me first, hitting me in the chest. My heart skipped a beat, and when it started again, I was still alive, but couldn’t move. A thick layer of ice blocked my view, the frost piercing through to my bones. And still I saw what was happening above me through the distortion of the ice.
An explanation appeared beneath my character portrait:
Iceblock
You are confined within an iceblock that protects you from attacks and damage for 60 seconds, but you cannot attack, move or use items or abilities for the duration.
The deadly hailstorm landed on the block of ice. Everything either bounced off or slid to the side. Enemy magic mixed with whirlwinds in a boiling mass of light flowed down the ice and dispersed, dealing no damage. It seemed Iceblock could shake off even an Armageddon. An unknown well-wisher had extended my presence in the Demonic Games by a minute. But what now?
In the glow of magical flashes I saw who my help had come from — Modus and the Travelers, who hadn’t showed themselves until now, and now I realized why: they didn’t think it was crunch time yet. I remembered that they’d been at the graveyard, standing behind Quetzal and Marcus’s group, waiting. Maybe they were ready to help me then too.
My thoughts cut off. Chaos was breaking out above. Two rogues emerged from Stealth in fountains of blood, stabbing unsuspecting players in the back. The victims fell down, and those beneath didn’t notice right away. Maybe the vanquished had a Seal of Silence placed on them, or something similar. I managed to make out the backstabbing bravehearts through the ice — I recognized both! They were Berstan and Filex, captain of T-Modus in the final of the Junior Arena. My heart skipped a beat — had Modus really decided to help me?
Staying shoulder to shoulder, the rogues continued their bloody advance, and at first met no resistance — the contestants had no idea what was happening, and fell in droves. And it wasn’t just dead bodies falling. It seemed a mage had cast Dispel, removing the Feather buff!
With a soul-destroying scream, one of the mage’s victims fell right onto me. The ice got covered in blood, but I could make out the dwarf girl Kimberley impaled atop the Iceblock. Her arms and legs twitched. I hoped Bleeding would kill her quickly so I could see properly again.
The corpse soon disappeared along with the blood spatters on the icy walls, and I saw not only a floor littered with corpses, but also the ice mage Kara, who had overtaken the others and come to help me. Hovering ten feet away, he fired off a Blizzard and slowing Cones of Cold at the players floating in the air. The meleers like destroyer Quetzal and bruiser Marcus suffered worst: Feather didn’t let them control their motion in flight, just slowed their fall.
Suddenly the space around Kara exploded in a rift and a gigantic rhinoceros charged through it! It was Messiah, the shapeshifter magician! The long horn was just about to tear open the mage’s stomach and disembowel him, when suddenly… Splat! The rhinoceros’s head exploded in a spray of blood and skull fragments. The horn flew off and stabbed into the unlucky lopher Urkish’s ear.
I looked to the side and saw who had killed Messiah: some ways off from the main group, Hellfish the shapeshifting sniper had taken up a position. He held a gnomish rifle, smoke rising from the end of its barrel. Boom! Even through the ice I saw the recoil push the sniper further back from the main group.
His name seemed very familiar to me… Wait… He was a priest of the Sleepers! That day when I’d initiated the Modus and Travelers officers, so much happened that I forgot the werewolf sniper’s name!
Next to Hellfish stood Koba the Hunter, Yen the Archer and Olaf the sorcerer. The mage Kara Blinked his way over to them. The warrior Kart, templar Alison and druid Kanu took up a position in the forefront to protect their allies. Now I was seeing our foes in the Arena final all together. If these guys know anything, it’s team PvP! I thought, feeling a rush of pride for my allies once again.
Destiny was the first to figure out what was going on. No sound got through to me, but I could tell by the silver ranger’s furious gestures that she had taken command into her own hands. Her people focused their fire on the two rogues cutting their way through the crowd of gormless contestants like foxes in a henhouse.
Curser Roman’s figure flashed by, pointing a finger at me. His “Hope you die!” was clearly out of place; I couldn’t use any skills then anyway. The point of the curse became clear when, forming into a wisp of directed smoke, it bounced off the Iceblock, sped up and hit Destiny, seeping into her. The elf girl twitched, widened her eyes, forgot what she was doing and ‘ran’ toward the nearest wall, but since she was ‘running’ in the air, she just continued her slow fall, her arms and legs waving. As soon as her feet touched the ground, Destiny ran as hard as she could for the wall.
I didn’t see what happened to her there — my view was blocked by the rogues Berstan and Filex, pushed away by Inchito the priest and barbarian berserker Geyserix… Inchito stood a little off to the side in a white toga, waving his arms, and the wounds on Geyserix’s body closed up before my eyes as he swung his two-handed sword. The healer and damage-dealer made a good team; shame they were on the other side.
Berstan nodded to his ally, who rushed off to take out the healer, but his curved dagger collided with a glowing shield. Then lightning struck the rogue, but didn’t kill him. By then the barbarian had sped up, and the sword in his hands flashed like a helicopter blade.
Youlang the spellcaster stood out with a sparkling glow as she attacked Filex and Berstan with chain lightning. Help came for the rogues from their allies: an arrow from Yen thrummed into Youlang and a bullet from Hellfish exploded through the side of her head a second later along with brains, blood and bone shards.
Five seconds left on the Iceblock. I was frozen with my head thrown back, able to move only my eyes, so all I could do was relax and pray my unexpected allies won.
By then, all the contestants had already landed. A chaotic fight continued on the ground and it was hard to say who was fighting for who. Once they felt solid ground beneath their feet, the meleers roared and rushed to take vengeance.
Hellfish’s people were forced back toward the wall. The paladin Equilibrium ran to their aid, jumping into an uneven skirmish against Marcus, Caville and Urkish. Equilibrium got help from… I whistled under my breath: Anna the sculptor wielded her long silver spear expertly, wrapping the enemies’ guts around it. Did that mean Miss Commonwealth from the White Amazons was on my side? Elizabeth’s clan was an ally of Modus, after all, so it made sense. But that raised another question — why was Tissa, soon to be another Amazon, not in that group?
It was as crowded as a rock concert on the floor, and that saved my allies
for some time: they pressed into a crowd and successfully deflected close-range attacks while the mages held back their area spells out of fear of hitting their allies. All the same, the forces were unequal, the ring around us tightening. I couldn’t see Filex or Berstan anymore. Beautiful Anna got her head cut off before my eyes.
By the far wall, silver ranger Destiny stopped trying to kill herself, gulped down a potion and rushed to the aid of her comrades. A rider galloped as if out of nowhere to meet her — the hobbit Dave! On a ghostly white horse! He loosed arrows at Destiny as he approached, then pulled out a thin elongated blade and slashed at her. Screaming, the elf girl managed to block the blow with a gauntleted hand, but the blade still slid across her neck. Blood sprayed… She somersaulted backwards and shot a volley of arrows at him, all blending into one.
The Demonic Games (Disgardium Book #7): LitRPG Series Page 17