You met your personal enemy after he was modified.
The ground shook with the shout of millions of deformed vocal cords. Halas had received an analogous notification, and he’d somehow found a way to pass his feelings on to his forces. Over in the steppe, Tailyn’s perception pointed out an odd construction that hadn’t been there the previous time, and he zoomed in to see Halas. At least, the human he’d turned into.
The enormous, dark-skinned giant astride his golden lion would have engendered envy from any self-respecting man. Since their last meeting, Tailyn’s enemy had gotten his companion even stronger, adding armor and spikes. Even looking at the beast instilled fear, not to mention fighting it, as the boy’s dragon looked like a bedraggled kitten in comparison. The boy couldn’t see from that distance even with his binoculars, though he had no doubt Halas had used a regeneration potion. He looked exactly the same as Valrus. Actually, that wasn’t the only potion that had been used—his high command mustered around him were also looking remarkably human.
A building in the city crumbled, releasing a new column of black smoke into the sky. One’s troops were being pushed farther and farther away from the walls. And with their cards out of charges, they were resorting to hand-to-hand combat. Each was far superior to any of the freaks, even capable of taking on two or three at a time, but there were just too many. The latter grabbed the minions by the tentacles, jumped on top of them, pinned them down, shredded them, and stuffed the pieces in their mouth. Even human-like, the beasts hadn’t lost their old habits.
Suddenly, Tailyn’s intercom vibrated. Valia immediately told him it wasn’t coming from the city—Forian, Valanil, and Sadil were all busy on the build sites. The intrigued boy hit the button to answer, and that was when he found himself staring at a gray fog.
“I know you’re here at my city, and I know you completed your mission. Come on down—nobody will stop you.”
One showed he was still in control of the situation despite what was happening in the city. His mechanical voice betrayed none of panic, rage, or even simple annoyance. Instead, it was a request to finish the deal. The ancient wasn’t even asking Tailyn to hurry. That impressed the boy, and he found himself looking for a way down off the cliff. If it hadn’t been for Fang on his left hand, that wouldn’t have been an issue. One step forward, and his wings would have taken him wherever he wanted to go. But being robbed of flight meant he had to move along firm ground, and that raised issues. The walls around the city no longer belonged to their defenders. Pushing through a crowd of the changed creatures wasn’t something Tailyn wanted to do, the issue actually being less that he was afraid of not making it, and more the realization that he would have had to killed were actually humans rather than lixes.
That was when he hatched a plan. It was so nonsensical and dangerous that Valia forbade him from trying it, calling him an idiot, only the boy didn’t see another way around the problem. He shrugged.
“Let’s go!” Tailyn barked, and his dragon flashed downward toward the ground. With more than ninety-four meters between him and the nearest roofs, Tailyn needed to get closer before he could use his teleportation. Because, while Fang didn’t let him control his flight, it didn’t keep him from flying altogether. Heading straight down counted, after all.
Ready! he heard his companion call back, and Tailyn stepped off the cliff. Emotions burned in his chest, his breath caught in his throat, his stomach threatened to leap outside his body, a prickly feeling between his hips tingled, and whatever soul he had dropped all the way down to his feet. With only his consciousness maintaining its grip on reality, he kept his eyes fixed on the dragon. It was holding the stone in its feet and holding its feet up in the air.
Tailyn had to get it right. As he’d been jumping away from Mark Derwin, he’d figured out that there was a pause between leaps that lasted about half a second. And while that was normally an eternity, it was nothing at all in the middle of a vertical drop. Accidentally activating his ability with the stone outside his visual or ability range would have done nothing. He would have had to try again. And the problem there was that he wasn’t sure if he would have time for a second attempt. With that in mind, he waited until practically the last possible moment, the ground just a few dozen meters away. Everything around him swirled as his flight instantly turned horizontal. At the speed he was going, the boy found himself practically smeared across the nearest building. Vargot helped, taking the main force of the blow, but blood still began pouring from his nose. Even named armor had its limits. Freefall gave way to a stunned feeling. But even though Tailyn wanted nothing more than to lie there, he wasn’t given the time by the snow-white tentacles that picked him up and carried him inside the temple. He was on his way to One’s lair.
“I need the blood to accept your work.”
Tailyn pulled his head up with an effort. From the enormous screen taking up one whole wall in the underground space, an emotionless face was staring at him. Strangely, it was different—One had tried to show his human side the last time Tailyn had been there with Valia. Had that been a mask? Or was One too busy with his defense to spare anything more than a sliver of his consciousness for the boy? From what Tailyn had read in the ancient books, artificial intelligences were capable of that kind of thing.
“Coins first! Once I transfer them to the city’s account, I’ll give you the blood,” Tailyn replied. Everyone had warned him that he’d get nothing if he handed over the goods first. Everyone, at least, who knew the ancient.
“You’re giving me conditions at a time like this?” One’s intonation didn’t even change. “The city could fall at any moment, and my only chance at protecting all of us is in my body.”
“You couldn’t protect a fly!” Another voice, that one impudent and rude, had joined the conversation. The doors flew open, and Halas strolled into the room. “The battle is over; my troops are retiring. Pull your minions back—I couldn’t care less about them. You, neither. When I take control of this world, you’ll be useful, so I’ll give you ten seconds to think. After that, I’m going to have to assume you’re declining, and my forces will wipe Grivok off the face of the planet. Your temple will end up just another lake.”
One made his decision instantaneously. The white minions quickly left, clearing the room. The doors locked. A small golden drop slipped off Halas’s wrist to turn into a golden lion and crouch. It was ready to tear anyone to pieces.
“Why did you come back to my city?” One couldn’t help but ask, betraying emotion for the first time. “And why did you stop the battle? You don’t make any sense.”
“I knew you’d call everyone you could if I pushed you hard enough, and that includes Tailyn,” Halas said with a chuckle as he pulled out a long sword. “That was the only way to get him out of Mean Truk. While the god won’t let me break the rules there, it has nothing on me here, so you can relax. This has nothing to do with you. It’s between me and that corpse—it’s time to write the last chapter in our story.”
Chapter 16
THE NEMEAN LION got its orders and rushed forward to dispatch the enemy, though it ran smack into an invisible barrier and was sent flying backward. Everyone, Tailyn included, was shocked. Halas’s companion leaped to its feet, shook its head, and tried again, though it was just thrown backwards once more. Growling, Halas crouched and got ready to attack on his own. Since the last time they’d met, Tailyn had done some serious developing, though the former lix hadn’t been standing still, either. At level 157, he had level eighteen named items, a complete set of armor and weaponry, and a few fairly rare accessories. One had prepared his fighter well, not suspecting that he would be betrayed. The only problem was that the knife Halas threw forward just ricocheted back. The invisible field protecting the human was still there.
“Done yet?” One asked. “Are you ready to listen to my terms?”
“You’re not the one giving orders!” Halas barked.
“Do you see someone else doing it?” The virtual
intelligence allowed himself a short laugh. “I can’t have two favorites at the same time, so I decided to let you battle it out. It was a good choice you made showing up here, my first slave. I didn’t want to waste time hunting you across the whole planet, and now you’re both here to fight for the right to be my top servant.”
“I’m going to level Grivok for that!” Halas was clearly not catching One’s drift.
“Do you really have an army?” the ancient asked, once more without emotion. “I don’t need the freaks the System turned the lixes into—they’re useless and need to be destroyed.”
“I’m going to...” Halas fell silent. His armor’s built-in screen had begun throwing up numbers reflecting the size of the army that had come crashing down on Grivok. And the speed at which they were dropping had him nervous—one percent each second. Giving the order to attack, he heard nothing in reply. His command had been killed in the first wave, having been standing by the temple unprepared for the counterattack. A few dozen ray blasters had turned them into black dust. And with their loss, the hordes of modified freaks had been stripped of what had been left of their minds, falling quickly under the concentrated fire of the towers. The first targets were outside the city walls; the ones inside weren’t going anywhere.
“Did you really think my city could be taken with sheer mass? I let your forces get inside since I knew that would spur Tailyn into action, and that was the only way I could get you to show up personally. And now, I can enjoy the spectacle of the final showdown. The victor will serve as the go-between for me and the rest of the world.”
“Okay, then what are we waiting for?” Halas barked. “I can turn his head into a bloody pulp in seconds, and then I’m going to deal with you! We’ll see what your troops are capable of.”
“We will, indeed, but I have to take care of something with Tailyn first.” The face on the screen fixed its gaze on the boy. “Before you start, he has to finish his mission.”
“My requirements are the same—first, the coins.” To his own surprise, Tailyn found that he wasn’t afraid in the least. The situation he was in could have been his last, though even that wasn’t enough to scare him. The virtual Valia held his hand. As she started telling him what to say, the Tailyn in the real world passed on her messages to One. “But that’s not all my demands.”
“You have more? Your impudence intrigues me.”
“You betrayed me by bringing Halas here. I was planning on meeting him in a month and a half at the walls of my secure city, one just as secure as Grivok. That was your promise. If I lose now, and I very well may, your promises will be meaningless.”
“If you lose, you won’t be sticking around long enough for that to be your problem.”
“Still, there are people who are aware. They’ll decide that you in your new body is too pleasant a dream to be built on a lie.”
“I couldn’t care less what humans think.” An emotion flickered through One’s voice—annoyance. He wasn’t happy to be pulled into a discussion with a kid playing a part. But until the blood was in his new body, he had to swallow the rage he was surprised to realize he felt.
“Perhaps not, but what about Mark Derwin’s opinion? Does that mean anything to you?”
“The Absorber left this planet three thousand years ago.”
“Did he? You have access to all the System’s inner workings. Why don’t you see who has requested access, when they did it, and, most importantly, why.”
There was a pause. Regardless of how preposterous Tailyn’s story was, One couldn’t take a risk—he needed to check. If the boy was lying, Halas would be handed the automatic victory and take his place. First among slaves. But the more information One gathered, the more his virtual mouth hung open in shock. Mark hadn’t just been on the planet; he’d arrived to see Tailyn. And just like three thousand years before, he’d found a group of smugglers. The planet was dying. Still, there was much more pleasant news that shuffled One’s plans. A hundred years later, the planet was going to be populated by nothing more than minions. All other living organisms were going to be dead, which served them right. It would be cleaner without them. And that meant One could do without a representative, which made his life much simpler.
Halas croaked. Invisible but terrifyingly impenetrable walls had started crushing into him from all sides, threatening to turn him into a pancake. And while Vargot was holding on, it had already begun signaling that the situation was bad. The Nemean lion’s bones crunched before its emergency withdrawal system kicked in to turn it into a golden droplet spilling over its master’s wrist. Halas had been forced to invest in that system when his lion had been reduced to its last life.
“Stop! If you keep going, you won’t get any blood!” Tailyn yelled when he saw what was happening to his personal enemy.
What are you doing? Valia asked in surprise, and she wasn’t the only one. One stopped, just as stunned by the turn of events.
“Halas came here to destroy you. While I was leaning toward him, I see I’m going to have to work with you, and I’m helping you get rid of this little complication so nothing distracts you from your main objective. This world must belong to me.”
One wasn’t bluffing. Given the new information he was privy to, it made no difference who he worked with. The lixes had been at the front of the line due to how good they tasted—the minions liked them much more than humans. But there were no more lixes to be had, and One had to make a decision. Tailyn looked much more naïve and malleable than Halas.
“Don’t kill him—I want to do that myself,” Tailyn said, surprising even himself by how easily the words came. “But before that happens, we need to discuss my new terms. I need more builders, materials, and tech. Because I brought the blood here, the System reduced the time left until the siege by half, and you should know that I had a choice. Give the blood to the god and earn a reward or bring it here along with new problems for me to deal with. I went with the latter, I’m here in Grivok, and I want compensation.”
One went back to the system files for confirmation. The information on the boy’s punishment wasn’t that far away, and his virtual intelligence quickly learned that it was all true. The lifelong debuffs were no walk in the park. For a second somewhere deep in the ancient schematics, emotions flashed by—he felt bad for the boy. But that was unacceptable, and that part of his memory was quickly removed and defragged. No emotions could be tolerated toward someone about to die. For an immortal intelligence, a hundred years was nothing, and there was no point getting attached to the humans. Still, he was going to have to pay up. That was the only way the idiotic piece of meat was going to hand over the materials he needed. Why had the game pulled hacking? Everything would have been so simple, and he wouldn’t have had to pay anyone anything.
“Agreed—you’ll get what you’re looking for. You have my word.”
“No, none of that. First, the payment, and after that, I’ll give you the blood.”
“Watch it,” One replied, having a hard time restraining himself.
“How naïve do you think I am? The System’s rules don’t apply to you since you’re outside it, and even Mark Derwin warned me not to trust you.”
“He knows about me?” The news wasn’t particularly uplifting, especially given the fact that the Absorber had already applied for access to the planet in six months.
“Of course. His job is to find everything that doesn’t belong to the game. For the time being, he doesn’t care about you, he said, but that could change over the next six months.”
If One could have, he would have gasped for breath. Tailyn’s stock was rising, and the ancient didn’t like that at all—he absolutely would have started looking for another way to get the blood, but with Derwin’s return visit just six months away... He had to grab as many resources as he could and get off the planet. For his part, Tailyn was going to die as soon as he handed over the blood. Halas, too. They were all going to die. The body One had designed was capable of carrying him aroun
d the universe for millennia as he looked for a planet suitable for life. And with how long that was going to take, the resources of some System or other didn’t mean anything. If Tailyn needed them, he was welcome to them.
“Okay, I agree. How are you going to get everything to your city?”
“A portal. As soon as you get it all here, I’ll open it up, and your minions can toss it through.”
“Good idea—they don’t even need to come back. The equipment you’re getting needs to be installed and configured, and while a builder could hander the first, it takes training to do the second. Somehow, I doubt any of your people work with this kind of technical equipment. Okay, I’m going to need an hour. Are you going to wait here?”
“Yes, but I’m not going to wait. I’m going to destroy Halas.”
“Go for it. He’s completely blocked, can’t move a muscle. All you have to do is land twelve thousand five hundred and two shots to break through his protections—the difference between you two is pretty significance.”
Tartila Mine (The Alchemist Book #5): LitRPG Series Page 22