“Well… I think you get it, Horns,” I said, smiling. “We’re going on a long and tiring journey through the other floors, but hopefully we’ll get some good loot. Perks like this are rare. Let’s grab everything we can! And while we’re at it… we can pay a visit to your fellow demons.”
The brazier of his face distorted into something like a smile. I knew it! I’d heard that a demon is another demon’s worst enemy. They hate each other! Despot himself, it seemed, had cleared the whole floor out of boredom…
“But first, you’re going to help me deal with some bad mortals. Do you know why they’re bad? They bully people..!”
Now that I’d found an understanding and grateful audience, I kept chattering away happily for the rest of our walk. We soon reached the gates. The epic was still sitting there for me when I went back for it, now at level 102 and with a mighty nightmarish demon in tow. And although Stealth had stopped leveling up at level 36 of rank two after I tamed Despot, Cartography had reached level 19!
All that was reason to celebrate, but I didn’t get long to enjoy my triumph:
The fifth day of the Demonic Games is over!
And tomorrow we go to war! I thought as I climbed out of my capsule.
Chapter 22. Son of a Bitch
IT WAS LIKE the Kerry I was used to had been replaced. My assistant met me, and that was fine. Her behavior wasn’t. A frowning expression on her face, no jokes or teasing, the corners of her mouth drawn down.
“Thanks for warning Hellfish, Kerry,” I started to gabble, uplifted by my victory over Despot. “You saved my ass…” I stopped when the girl winced at my words and shook her head. I frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“I didn’t warn him,” she muttered, looking away. “That would be seen as interference in the contestants’ gameplay and a non-game advantage, Mr. Sheppard.”
‘Mr. Sheppard,’ too, instead of the usual ‘Alex.’ My joy blew away like leaves on a breeze. Vito Painter must have remembered my words in Boom Boom after he sobered up, and decided to help. But I didn’t want to discuss that with Kerry while she was being so distant and unfriendly.
So I silently walked into the shower and stood for a long time beneath the forceful streams of water. The game day on the whole had been incredibly successful, but at what cost? What happened to Meister, Quetzal, Hellfish and their people? I couldn’t have been much help to them anyway, with Sloth’s Blessing, but I could easily imagine what awaited them after my escape. Destiny Windsor and Marcus Jansson would have searched for me first. They probably combed the forest, the village and the Pitfall, and then, enraged by missing their chance to take out the Threat, they would have gone to get even with the others.
A sense of foreboding made me dry myself off hurriedly and run to find out what had happened. Joseph Rosenthal, Nico Knowles and Roman Romanenko met me in the corridor.
I opened my mouth to thank them, but hesitated when I saw their heavy gazes. All the same, I asked how they were doing. The old jeweler sighed and answered:
“Three quarters of the raid are still in, God willing. The others got zeroed and disincarnated…”
“Those bastards didn’t let us out of the graveyard!” Nico-Bloomer growled, grimacing. The poet wasn’t himself. His mask of intellect had fallen and his real face showed through. Now the large man ground his teeth, worked his massive jaws and looked like a caveman in a rage. “We were lucky Roman was with us. He cursed the campers and we managed to break through to the village, hide in our private rooms. But the others…”
“How are you doing?” the curser asked, his voice dead. “I hope it was worth it and you managed to save yourself, Threat.”
We were walking down a corridor full of people, our helpers following behind, so I waited until we reached the elevator.
“I was sent to one of the floors.” Realizing that we were being recorded, I avoided specifics. “Fortunately, there were no mobs, and the boss… He was slow, I spent the whole day running away from him.”
I didn’t go into how that run had ended, squashed a strong desire to brag. If Octius showed my triumphs in the highlights… Well, we’d lose the element of surprise, but my allies’ morale would go through the roof. For those who survived, at least.
“So no help from you,” Bloomer said grimly. “Well then, tomorrow is the last day in the Games for all of us.”
“Of course it is!” Roman said bitterly. “What can he do against them?”
A bell rang — we’d arrived at the media center floor.
“I can help,” I said quickly before the elevator opened. “Will you wait for me?”
“For an hour,” Joseph groaned. “We’re allowed to spend only one hour a day in our private rooms, then we’ll be thrown out.”
“The game’s subtle way of taking away hiding places,” Roman explained. “So nobody can sit there and end up at the top of the leaderboard at the end of the Games for doing nothing. That achievement is pretty well rewarded in big Dis, you see. As a cheater, this probably doesn’t matter to you, but…”
“Sure it does,” I said, and Roman snorted and continued:
“Let’s say you get into the top 25% of the survivors out of all the entrants, you can get a hundred free stat points or a bonus to something else…”
Roman loved to explain everything, and usually his information was helpful, but right then it was just annoying. And more for his partners than for me.
“Shut up already, Roman!” Bloomer interrupted him angrily. “We aren’t getting any achievements!”
“Why not..?” I asked, stopping. I put my arms around Meister and Roman’s necks and waited for the poet to complete our circle, then said quietly: “I defeated the boss. Help will come…”
The jeweler, curser and poet walked into the hall of ceremonies inspired. I planned to take my usual seat alone, but before I could choose my food, Michelle came over, leaned on the table and smiled.
“Hi! Sorry I left you alone last night. I ran into some girlfriends and just totally forgot…”
“Doesn’t matter, I wanted to sleep anyway,” I answered.
“Sit with us, Alex,” she said in a singsong voice. “The seniors told us that not all is lost, and tomorrow we can expect pleasant surprises from you. Pleasant for us.”
I accepted the invitation and moved to the same table as the trio of leaders and Michelle, then looked across the hall. Hellfish looked a question at me, apparently wanting to know whether Scyth had survived. I nodded. He gave me a thumbs-up.
Meister’s people looked downtrodden, frowning. For many, this was their last supper at the Games. Even the jeweler’s toast, in which he said in a suspiciously upbeat tone that “sooner or later we would have been thrown out anyway, believe a six-time contestant at the Games,” failed to uplift them.
Bloomer, sitting nearby and also not at his first rodeo, explained:
“The fighters give us a week or so to get into the spirit of the Demonic Games, enjoy talking and hanging out. Makes it more fun for them. The craftspeople just stick to the upper floors, who cares? But at a certain point, when people start to talk about the spots in the final leaderboard of contestants, they start killing us and zero us all. This year it happened a little sooner, but what can you do?”
“We knew what we were getting into when we made the deal with Mr. Sheppard…” Meister added loudly.
At those words, the entire raid turned to look at me. I saw reproach, anger and disappointment in their eyes. I wanted to look away, but I withstood the urge. Although I couldn’t finish off my food: their mood was catching, and I couldn’t force another bite down.
The day’s dinner seemed to last longer than usual. Michelle tried to distract me with gossip. I kept turning around, looking off to the side, watching the clock, waiting impatiently for the highlights to start. What if Snowstorm tried to memory-hole my successes again? What if I got another terrible debuff as worst player of the day, and couldn’t help my friends?
I just couldn’t get it together and stop
worrying. Finally, the gamesmaster’s appearance distracted me from my gloomy thoughts. Octius descended from the ceiling in his already familiar armor, shouting:
“Good evening, contestants!” He waited until the hall fell silent in anticipation, then continued: “Day five of the Demonic Games was the most tragic yet! Twenty-nine contestants lost their characters today! Let’s see what happened…”
The knocked-out contestants leaned over their hard drinks. Someone shouted:
“Not what, who!” He was a thin, stooped man at a table nearby. He stood up and pointed at me. “Damn Sheppard!” His cheeks and nose reddened. “Curse you!” His finger moved from me to Meister. “And you, you greedy old sellout! I hope you die!”
“Copycat…” Roman muttered.
The scene escaped the viewer’s attention, because Octius was already describing the events in the forest glade:
“Scyth, undeservedly declared worst player of the day yesterday, began the day surrounded by enemy contestants and with a debuff, ironically called Sloth’s Blessing by the game designers. Yes, yes, I know. Undeservedly, but to my greatest disappointment, the viewers’ choice cannot be overruled! No, don’t argue with me,” he said, although nobody was planning to. “It is written into the core of the Games! But let us speak of happier things! Let’s see whether Scyth managed to save himself this time..!”
The gamesmaster devoted most of his overview to the battle in the clearing, then moved on to what happened next, as if forgetting all about me. When Meister’s pentagram killed Destiny, the girl got camped in at the graveyard. Quetzal took out his anger on her, and Hellfish rabidly pumped her full of bullets with sadistic pleasure. In the end, Des dropped four levels, and the process was bloody and cruel: Hellfish’s bullets turned her face to mush and tore her body to shreds, and Quetzal crushed her skill.
Then reinforcements came, and the sides swapped places. Now Destiny, surrounded by powerful allies and her own people, stalked the edge of the graveyard, not letting any of her foes slip by. Everyone got it in the neck, including Meister’s raid. The craftspeople got distracted hunting Destiny, realized too late that they’d been surrounded by Marcus’s people.
In the end, Quetzal and Hellfish lost just two. All the other victims were from Meister’s group. The fighters managed to slip out and spread all across the Cursed Chasm. We weren’t shown who went where, but apparently there were contestants hiding even on already cleared floors.
Marcus and Destiny didn’t spread out their forces too much. Some of their fighters guarded the graveyard while the rest cleared the village and combed the forest in the hope of finding not only runaways, but also me. They didn’t bother checking through the Pitfall — that would have taken too long.
“Today, despite a somewhat botched morning, was a successful day for the groups of silver ranger Destiny and bruiser Marcus,” Octius summed up. “The viewers might be inclined to name one of them the best player of the day, but let’s not jump to conclusions just yet. Aren’t you interested to hear what Scyth was up to while the rest ripped out each other’s throats above?”
The master of the Games cast a sly glance across the hall. The holocube above the stage froze at the moment I disappeared in the pentagram.
“I don’t care!” the man with the red nose shouted.
“It’s boring!” I shouted.
“No it isn’t!” others argued.
“Then look,” Octius said, laughing.
He showed everything, and thank the Sleepers that he limited it to only my long run and the taming of Despot. The improvements to my skills remained behind-the-scenes.
The image froze in the moment when the demon knelt before me, holding his halberd-arm to his breast.
In dead silence — and Octius was in no hurry to break it, smiling with a twinkle in his eye, — I clearly heard a shout from Bloomer:
“That son of a bitch got himself an imba pet even here!”
“Our son of a bitch, remember,” Meister corrected him, laughing.
I felt the eyes of my enemies on me — thoughtful, stunned, shocked, even angry. But without a trace of their former mockery.
The viewers were stoked too. Beating Marcus by 42%, I became the best player of day five.
Destiny was declared the worst.
Interlude 2. Destiny
PRIZE TURKEY Guy Barron Octius chuckled in self-satisfaction and declared, with clear pride in his voice, that Sheppard was the best player of day five of the Demonic Games. That was the last straw — the anger in Destiny’s heart exploded, rolling out like a blast wave, her fingers clenching tightly all on their own. The neck of her champagne glass shattered, piercing into her palm. Blood poured from the cut, but the girl didn’t seem to notice.
“Bastard!” Destiny hissed, glancing up at Sheppard’s somber face on the holocube.
The boy frowned out from beneath his eyebrows, as if he’d never learned to smile. Couldn’t he have forced one out for his profile, at least? Well, what could be expected of a low-class mongrel? He was brought up wrong from the beginning.
Two hundred years ago, Alissa Dezire Destiny Sophia Sommerlat-Windsor would have been considered a princess, or at least a lady of royal blood. Even in the first half of the century, she would have been called Her Royal Majesty.
But after the Third World War and the formation of the one-world government, purity of blood no longer played any kind of role in citizenship status. On the contrary, a new aristocracy emerged, gaining its rights not through inheritance, but through service to society. But what did the 99% of society represent? That’s right. A gray mob. Cattle. Those who live only for short-term gratification, for pitiful, pathetic dreams. Like those of this boy on the holocube screen.
“My God, Des, what a disgrace! Did you hear that? Sheppard? Best player? Whatever for?”
Bella, aka Isabella Christina de Paula, went on complaining and kept touching Destiny on the arm:
“Tell me, Des, am I wrong? Since when do they reward kiting a boss all day?” Bella rolled her eyes, then looked at her companion and shrieked. “Oh my God, you’re bleeding!”
“Shut up!”
Destiny loved her childhood friend, but right then, Bella was getting on her nerves.
“Calm down, Des,” Ezekiel-Urkish muttered.
“Do you really not see Destiny’s condition, Bella?” Messiah snapped. Turning, he called over a waiter droid and asked it to bring an autodoc, a compact version of the Home Doctor.
“And now…” Octius said, walking around the stage and pausing for effect. “We will start the viewer’s vote for the title of worst player of the day! Remember, every adult citizen can vote in any of the following ways…”
The waiter brought over the autodoc. Destiny reluctantly stuck her cut hand into it. It dripped something burning on the wound and the edges drew together.
She thanked Loran, then sighed, got a grip on herself and apologized to Bella:
“Listen, sorry. I’m just out of sorts. Everything is getting on my nerves!”
“I can see that,” Bella answered. Like any high-status citizen, she maintained her composure, but her displeasure still seeped through.
Today Destiny had had two chances to knock Sheppard out of the Games, and, all emotions aside, she only had herself to blame for what had happened.
When she was aiming at Scyth’s face the first time, she deliberately drew out the moment, looking into her victim’s eyes and enjoying the panic she saw, the fear, the anger, the resignation. Oh, she understood him perfectly.
Put bluntly, the boy had surprised her by showing remarkable tenacity. Even with all the pressure and the hatred against him, he stood strong and fought to the very end. But Destiny’s setback cost dearly: young Melissa Schafer chose that most inconvenient time to use her best player reward from the opening day, and the killshot didn’t land. Destiny called herself every name under the sun for not taking the girl and her boyfriend into her raid, although both had practically begged for it.
And then she’d had another chance, practically guaranteed! All she had to do was release her bowstring when Scyth stood opposite her, completely alone, motionless and without allies. In the name of all the gods, why, oh why did she approach him?! Did she want to look him in the eyes again? See the fear, savor the moment of vengeance? An incarnation of the world’s injustice — an upstart who had the luck to become a top Threat, laughable in his desire to seem cool and self-possessed…
Destiny wanted to destroy that self-possession, see that pretty-boy face twisted in terror an instant before the long serrated tip of her arrow pierced his bright-blue and helplessly wide open eye. And so she made a mistake — she walked toward Scyth. Who would have thought that even here he had managed to grow his skills to the point that he could kill her in a second? And at level one! Cheater, cheater, bastard cheater!
The Demonic Games (Disgardium Book #7): LitRPG Series Page 33