The Cheater's Return

by Brian McGoldrick

  Morgan smiled. "Until your family is relocated. Everything needs to be complete before the start of World War IX, but there should be little trouble."

  Patrick nodded absently. "Okay."

  After taking care of their physical needs, Patrick and Morgan returned to their capsules.

  "Crom, you should log in first. I want to try and get a rough estimate of how long it is taking for you to upload."

  "Alright." Patrick lay down and closed the lid of his capsule.

  "Initiate Connection!"

  Once she heard Patrick's nearly shouted command, Morgan lay down in her own capsule.

  Dead Islands, Toraigh

  First Month 3, 10 RC

  When I log in, I am in a black void. There is no sight, sound, smell, touch, or sense of physical sensation. It feels like it lasts forever, but that could just be my perception.

  With no external source to judge time by, I start counting one, one thousand; two, one thousand…five thousand one hundred twenty-seven…

  The faint greyish light of predawn fills my eyes, and turning my head, I look at Raven Goddess. "How long?"

  "One hour and twenty-one minutes."

  "Fuck. It took between six and seven minutes for me to upload. I'm gonna check the settings on my capsule, when we get out." Long upload times are one possible side effect of a badly tuned capsule, but I have never seen anything like a six to seven minute upload time.

  At least, our sheathes are considered to be in a resting state while we are offline, and I have my full HP and MP again.

  Leaving the cabin, I go to take a look over the edge of the plateau. In the fallow fields below, there are some twenty-odd zombies shambling around.

  "There should be several rifts in the area. The entire world of Tathlum is inundated by them." Raven Goddess' words come from just behind me.

  The words startle me, and my head snaps around to look over my shoulder. I am more than just a little surprised at how close Raven Goddess came without my noticing her presence. Either she has very good personal stealth techniques or she is Rogue and not a Fighter, as I had assumed she was. She did say she was a Fighter herself, so it should be personal skill, rather than Skills.

  "Tathlum?" The name is not familiar to me.

  "Tathlum is the name of this world. Toraigh, Avalon, Tir, and the other lands from the earlier Primacy Online games are all on this one world."

  "How the hell big is Tathlum?"

  Raven Goddess smiles, but it is more an expression of sadness than joy. "More than a hundred times the size of Earth."

  "That makes no sense. The gravity from a world that big should crush us."

  "This is the world of Primacy Online . Magic works here. Gods once walked these lands. Do you think it obeys the exact same laws of physics as your Earth?" Raven Goddess laughs, but the hollow sound contains no humor.

  I use Identify Monster and look at a zombie.

  Common Zombie (Fighter) Level 1

  » HP 120/120

  There is no difference between these zombies and the one we killed the day before. Like the other zombies, they came through a rift. Rifts are what repopulate the monsters in an area in the Primacy Online games. Once a day at local midnight, the rifts in an area open and monsters come through from other worlds. The typical yard trash repopulates on a daily basis, and there is a chance that Elites and the various Boss type monsters will come through, as well.

  The general difference between Monsters and NPCs is that Monsters come from the rifts and NPCs are natives to the world. Undead seem to break that rule, and I have no idea why. While the majority of undead come through the rifts, NPCs can be turned into undead, as well. When an NPC is turned, they become Monsters. Monster specific spells, like Identify Monster , become usable on them.

  Identify Monster does not work on player sheathes like on Monsters, but according to information on the net going back more than a thousand years, the natives in every version of Primacy Online called players Outworlders, and see the Outworlders as blessed or cursed immortal existences.

  Players can pass themselves off as NPCs. At least, it can be done, if you do not die. Once you die, if you show up again, the NPCs will know you are an Outworlder.

  It seems the term Outworlder is being used here, and the NPCs are already aware of our existence. The big village elder called us Outworlders but does that mean that he understands the nature of our existence? If so, how? There has been a Church of the Sun Reclamation Campaign active here for ten years, laying the groundwork for the starting towns for Primacy Online VI . That means that there might have been players here for as many as ten years.

  "Raven, the NPCs call us Outworlders, so we should be no different from Monsters. Do you know why Identify Monster and other Monster specific divination type spells and Abilities do not work on us?"

  With a mix of surprise and confusion visible in her expression, Raven Goddess just stares at me for about twenty seconds, before saying anything. "Character sheathes are directly created as a part of this world. Even though our minds originate on Earth, the laws of magic seem to be treating them as native to Tathlum. I am not certain of the reasons. My understanding of the natural laws of this dimension and the laws governing magic are not perfect."

  I just nod my head. I am certain that Raven Goddess is not telling me everything she knows, but if she does not want to tell me, what can I do to drag the information from her?

  "Let see what's up with the tomb." I head for the back of the plateau.

  Nearly at the point where the east and west slopes of the valley meet up, we find an irregular rift in the west cliff. From the spread of rubble on the ground, it looks like there may have been a boulder blocking the rift that shattered. The stench of rotting meat fills the area.

  Looking into the rift, I see a drop about four meters to a cave that has a mass of zombies, filling it from wall to wall. Unlike in horror holovids, zombies do not moan, groan, or growl, but they do reek. It looks like the floor of the cave is made of a carpet or rotting flesh.

  I check the zombies with Identify Monster .

  Common Zombie (Fighter) Level 10

  » HP 780/780

  "It's zombie hell in there. Everything I can see is Level 10."

  Raven Goddess smiles mirthlessly. "What threat do they pose for the two of us?"

  I chuckle, and the sound is as mirthless as Raven Goddess' smile. "That depends on whether we're up here or down there."

  Taking a look at the cave walls, I spot a few outcrops big enough to use as footholds, which should allow me to stand above the reach of the zombie horde. With my staff in my storage, I climb down and brace myself. It is not an ideal position, but I can stably maintain my balance.

  Below me, the zombies crush into one another, but my feet are above their reach. Mindless zombies cannot jump. Zombies have no ability to think, so the idea of just jumping up, even a little, never occurs to them. They are capable of walking, clawing, biting, and eating, but I still do not understand why a dead thing like a zombie needs to eat.

  This zombie horde is the perfect fodder for grinding experience.

  I take out my staff, and stab down into the head of a zombie. It takes three hits to kill it, and the zombie is helpless to resist. Since the links of loose experience always seem to rise, being above the zombies makes it easier to cheat and suck it up. I repeat the process a few times to be certain that it will work.

  I look up at Raven Goddess. "They are helpless targets. There are more footholds on the other side."

  With a faint smile, Raven Goddess shakes her head. "I never would have taken you for a perch exploiter."

  I laugh. "I don't normally do it, but the cave has this yard trash too tightly packed."

  Grinding monsters this way is about as much fun as watching paint dry and takes almost as long. We kill so many zombies that the bodies of the zombies we kill first get used as hills by the later zombies, and a couple times, we have to climb to higher perch points. Eventua
lly, the bottom corpses get crushed into rotting paste underneath the weight of more corpses and the new zombies trying to reach us.

  I have a strong stomach, but the stench gets so bad that I have to struggle to keep from vomiting.

  Our sustained Leveling speed is not phenomenal, but it is not bad. Because of what we have been doing with the village and the doll quest, we have been jumping up in spurts, but this is one long, steady grind.

  More normal players would be more likely to steadily grind through quests and monsters in a regular starter village and steadily raise their Levels, but they would need a day to get the amount of XP that we get in an hour doing this grind.

  With periodic breaks to stretch, eat, and take a leak, more than ten hours pass by the time we finish grinding through the horde. It may be mind-numbing, but with the XP values of the x6 monsters, our Levels skyrocket. Raven Goddess hits Level 9, and I reach Level 8.

  The farther you Level-up in Primacy Online , the worse the experience grind gets. Level 1 to Level 9 is not too bad, but Level 9 to Level 10 takes as much experience as the entire Level 1 to Level 9 grind. Level 11 to Level 20 take 10x as much experience as is required to go from Level 1 to Level 10. After that, each block of twenty Levels take 10x as much experience as the preceding twenty Levels, and the amount of experience you acquire from monster kills and quests does not rise at anywhere near the same rate. This is the reason that it takes most players decades to reach Level 100 and beyond.

  Once the last zombie falls, Raven Goddess and I leave the cave and draw in huge breaths of fresh air.

  "That was nasty."

  With a faint smirk, Raven Goddess looks at me. "I thought you said that you loved the reek of dead zombies at night."

  "Yep. I love it at night, but this is the day."

  "Ah, I see." Raven Goddess nods in a condescending manner.

  "For that much yard trash to accumulate, there must be a rift in that cave somewhere."

  Raven Goddess nods. "There probably is, but if we wait for it to open, it will just slow us down. We should find the actual tomb."

  "Yeah."

  After finishing our break, we climb down and head into the cave. Raven Goddess follows behind me. As best I can tell, the cave is pitch black, but she does not use a torch or any other source of light. Since she is human, I am not certain how she is seeing in the dark, but I do not question her about it. With the length of time she has been playing Primacy Online , I am sure that she has entirely too many secrets. If she thought there was a reason I should know what she is using, she would say something.

  Toward the back, the cave curves to the right and narrows to the point that I have no more than ten centimeters of room on either side or overhead. After a few minutes' walk, the tunnel that the cave has become ends in a broad cavern that should be somewhere under the mountain.

  The cavern has a roughly oval shape, with a fifty or sixty-meter height, and the far side has a section that has been cut so it is a straight wall. On that straight section of cave wall, a demonic face has been carved from it in a high relief style, so that it protrudes heavily from the otherwise smooth wall. Below the face, there are the mouths of five halls leading into the stone.

  There are no signs of zombies loitering anywhere in the cavern, and after glancing at one another, Raven Goddess and I silently approach the wall with the demonic face.

  The five tunnels leading deeper into the stone of the mountain are of unequal lengths. All five of them have been smoothly finished, and floors are tiled with one-inch square, black and white tiles that form repeating knotwork patterns. Each of the tunnels is about nine or ten meters wide, with a similar height, and there are one or two doors at the end of each tunnel. Counting from either side tunnels one, three and five have large double doors, and tunnels two and four have two separate smaller doors.

  "This is one hell of an elaborate setup for a tomb entry."

  As her eyes roam across the tunnel mouths, Raven Goddess frowns thoughtfully. "Since this is a tomb we can expect traps."

  I snort. "That goes without saying."

  Raven Goddess looks at me and smiles brilliantly. "Since you now have Danger Sense, you can go first and evaluate the status of the corridors."

  I do not reply, but as I start with the first tunnel on the left, I do not bother to keep the frown off my face. I have this persistent bad feeling gnawing at me. It feels like someone put a block of ice around the base of my spine, but whether it is just the usual case of nerves from exploring a potentially trapped area or my new Danger Sense, I have no clue. From floor to ceiling, the walls have continuous low relief sculptures of scenes of torture, and the level of anatomical detail is more than just slightly impressive.

  The low relief sculptures are so detailed that they could be actual torturers and victims that have been turned to stone, shrunk to quarter size, and attached to the walls. The detail and facial expressions of agony are so lifelike that I would not be surprised if the figures in the sculptures came to life right in front of me. Even the textures of their organs and the blood from their wounds have been perfectly reproduced.

  Using my slightly more than three-meter long quarterstaff, I press heavily on the floors in front of me as I advance down the tunnel. When a section of the floor completely gives way under the pressure the first time, I nearly lose my balance, and as I pull my staff back, the floor closes up again. Pushing on the section of floor causes it to open up again, and I look into a pit more than ten meters deep with metal spikes lining the floor.

  The tunnel is only about sixty meters deep, and I find five pit traps on alternating sides of the tunnel before I reach the end. At the far end, each of the double doors is two meters wide and five to six meters high.

  At about the height of a little more than one and a half meters, a ring is set in the center of each of the doors. That is the perfect height for a Half-Giant to grasp them. It seems that the Tomb Lord might really be a Half-Giant. For a moment, I smile in anticipation, before grasping the ring and pulling the door open.

  Fwoosh! Fwoosh! Fwoosh! Fwoosh!

  Feeling like a spear made of ice piercing my stomach, a sudden feeling of 'Oh Shit! I'm gonna die!' hits me like a runaway truck, and I dive to the side of the tunnel. Out of the corner of my eye, I see four waves of at least thirty arrows each fly down the tunnel.

  Looking toward the mouth of the tunnel, I see Raven Goddess peek around the corner.

  With her hair slightly disheveled, Raven Goddess smiles. "You do not look like a pin cushion."

  In the universal sign of acknowledgment, with a sardonic smile, I display my raised middle finger, and Raven Goddess laughs at me.

  Looking at the open door, these doors have nothing behind them but thick stone with holes to fire arrows out of.

  Making sure to avoid the pit traps in the floor, I pound on the walls beneath the light relief sculpture with the tip of my staff, but I cannot find any signs of hidden doors or anything else.

  The second corridor is more of the same pit traps and nothing apparent in the walls. After making certain there are no arrow holes between the two separate doors at the end, I open one and get another arrow spray. The other door is the same.

  The middle corridor has cells in both walls, but the occupants have long since rotted away, and their bones turn into piles of dust at the touch of my staff. The floor has yet more pit traps, and when I open the doors at the end, another arrow spray fills the tunnel. I am getting really, really tired of pit traps and arrow sprays.

  Corridors four and five are carbon copies of two and one.

  After I finish with all five corridors, Raven Goddess and I stare at one another.

  "What the fuck?"

  "Maybe, we should try the cells."

  I shrug. "Might as well. I don't have any better ideas."

  The cells are all locked, and we have to pry the doors open. If my starter staff was not classified as 'Starter', meaning indestructible, it would have been a problem, but an unbreak
able lever combined with my mass and strength makes breaking the rusted locks possible.

  With all the cells doors being locked and no scratch marks on any of the locks, we do not hold much hope, but we still check the floors and walls carefully. In the end, we waste a couple hours with no results to show for it.

  Standing back far enough to see the demon face and all five tunnels, we stare at them in frustration.

  "What are we missing?" Raven Goddess has an irritated frown on her lips.

  "I don't know. It feels like the whole thing is a blind. The demonic face, the tunnels, the doors, the cells, everything is just meant to distract us."

  Raven Goddess turns in a circle and looks around the cavern. "If that is a blind, as you say, what is it meant to distract us from? I do not see anything."

  "Could we be looking at this from the wrong angle? Is this is a tomb, or is it something else?"

  Raven Goddess sighs. "It should be. The design of your Tomb Lord's Pendant of Obfuscation is an exact match to a pendant that belonged to a Half-Giant warlord nearly a hundred thousand years in the past. He served Balor and led armies against the Sunset Lands, the setting of the first Primacy Online , and was killed. I never found any indication that his pendant passed to another. This Tomb Lord is probably that ancient warlord."

  I stare at Raven Goddess. "Are you sure about this?"

  Raven Goddess smiles at me, but there is darkness and loneliness hidden in the depths of her eyes. "Almost no one still living has spent more time in this world than I. If there is anyone alive that knows more about this world of Tathlum than I, I have yet to meet them."

  "As far as I know, a tomb is meant to protect the dead. Could this tomb have just been sealed from the inside by someone, who teleported out or died?"

  With a sigh, Raven Goddess starts walking toward the center tunnel. "It is possible, but not likely. There should almost certainly be a way to gain entry. Come and open doors for me."

  We stand to the side of the double doors, and when I pull one open, another swarm of arrows flies down the corridor. When the door closes, it must reset the traps.