***
Leshy’s stolen body stood in the very center of the Modification Laboratory. But something was odd about the menu: there were no special modifications, no different body parts, no physical characteristics... It took me a moment to realize that the Modification Laboratory was merged for all creatures and that the “standard” one opened if you scrolled to the left.
Masks
Entities
Names
Charisma
...
Those options were now in the Laboratory. However, most of them were still locked: either Mental Mask was too low, or some other skills were required to unlock them.
I immediately selected the “masks” tab and looked at the options. I was surprised that by “masks” the System literally meant masks — the tab was filled with images of all sorts of wooden masks painted in different colors. I could pretend to be a Goblin, a Bargola, even a Black Pilgrim — and I didn’t have to alter my body or take someone else’s to do it! I wagered that I was being offered these options as I had interacted with these mobs and NPCs before. I could’ve been wrong though. It was a small set but it was better than nothing. I also wasn’t sure how long the disguise would last. And if the “God” would be able to see through my charade, wondering why on God’s green earth would an ordinary Goblin possess the skill necessary to summon them.
The second tab, marked Entities, had only one option:
Scarlet Baron
Gray Mage
Relationship with dark beings: neutral
Relationship with light beings: neutral
I recalled this being one of the options that I was given when I was picking my specialization. I almost chose it, but Blind Eye suited me better. Though, this could be really useful... True, this wasn’t the path of a light mage, but it wasn’t the path of a dark one either, whose main goal was to kill any servant of Light.
All in all, it ought to work.
***
The river Aal, seen as a goddess by the locals, began at the mountain ranges in the north and cut through the entire location, disappearing in underground caves in the southeast. When asked why none of the Bargolas had tried to swim out of here, Lorkal gave me a rather vague explanation that I couldn’t properly understand since my Linguistics skill was too low. Surprisingly, Ulter butted into the conversation. He was walking in the very center of the group, carefully looking around and trying not to get in the way of the rest of them.
“The river goes downhill. The current sweeps away the Bargolas who attempt to swim there, and smashes them against the rocks. Many tried, but no one managed to survive.”
Amoeba almost choked on a piece of jerky.
“Ulter! How can you speak Russian?! And so fluently at that?!”
But Ulter himself seemed to only now realize that he could understand us. And not only understand, but also talk with us. He bulged his already large eyes and didn’t answer for half a minute. Then there was a change on his face: bewilderment was replaced with fear, and he spoke in a shaky voice:
“Urv-krav! The hum is like a dream... Provl!”
Just as surprised as the young Bargola, Lorkal exchanged a couple of words with him and then turned to us.
“Ulter urv-krav... He doesn’t know what happened. Provl.”
“Ulter, you don’t have to pretend!” Spider laughed. “We’ve figured you out!”
But the young Bargola had either really lost his gift or he played the role of a fool too well. He looked at Spider in confusion, spread his arms, and muttered something incomprehensible that even I couldn’t make out with my skill.
“You heard that, didn’t you?” the startled biologist insisted.
“Crystal clear,” Valkyrie assured him, looking with interest at Ulter who was staring at his feet and muttering to himself.
It was odd. An hour ago, the elders assured us that they were the only ones that possessed the Linguistic skill and that the rest of the Bargolas couldn’t properly use skills. And now it turned out that a fool, who almost went crazy after being kidnapped by some dark entity, spoke fluent Russian. There were only two explanations for this. The first was that the Bargolas were hiding something from us and that the fool, due to being stupid, almost gave the secret away. And the second was that something really was wrong with Ulter: after the abduction, he had seriously changed. I was leaning toward the latter as even Ulter’s friends seemed surprised by what he was doing. Third Eye confirmed my suspicion: it marked Ulter orange — the sign that he possessed some magic, and also showed extremely high mental parameters that exceeded the capabilities of the Goblins and other Bargolas by a large margin.
My gut had been right. Ulter wasn’t an ordinary village idiot who had accidentally survived in the woods but had lost his mind in the process. But so far, I didn’t know how to get to the bottom of this.
After a while, we were at the river again, which, as it turned out, made a big detour toward the west, so that after a few miles it turned north again. It was much easier to walk along a riverbank than through a forest. And even though the place had been cleared of mobs, it was still quite dangerous, overgrown with trees and shrubs, which hindered walking. We moved much faster on the shore.
***
During the rest of our hike, we had to move away from the river only once.
Amoeba was still trying to communicate with Ulter. But this time, it was Lorkal who interrupted him. The hunter held up one of his hands, making us halt. The expression on his face said: “Quiet. Get ready.”
I looked around but saw and heard nothing that could pose a threat. Still, I stopped. It was better to trust a hunter’s intuition than to go ahead and end up as a Boar’s dinner.
A moment later, instead of a giant Boar, an even more gigantic Leshy ran out of the forest.
“Damn it,” Ivan whispered, almost dropping his club, and pointed somewhere ahead. The rest of the group tensed, peering between the tall trees. The Bargolas trembled.
“It’s him,” one of them whispered. “Vrakl-ston! Ur far shu!”
A bit further north, ash trees swayed wildly on the opposite river bank. Two or three fell with a crash and leaned on the neighboring oaks, like drunkards on their slightly less drunk pals. Then there was an inarticulate cry, and he came out of the woods.
A naked, stocky humanoid about fifty feet tall, with a long beard that hid his nakedness, and a wrinkled face that expressed madness and unquenchable bloodthirst. He was twice the size of the conglomeration I had made with the Pilgrims!
Lorkal gave the order to retreat and the Bargolas ran south at once, momentarily forgetting the outsiders and their leader. It seemed that if Lorkal hadn’t given the order, they would’ve run away on their own in a few seconds, realizing the futility of fighting with this monster. Only Lorkal and Ulter remained and didn’t break the formation. The hunter’s pride prevented him from retreating, and Ulter... Only God knew what was going on in his head.
“Scar...” Lorkal said, pointing at the Leshy while hurrying us, and rushed after his comrades who had run away to the forest.
The big fellow did have a scar that ran across half of his face and disappeared somewhere in the folds of his skin near his thick red lips.
I didn’t want to think about what he fed on. Though, there were plenty of big mobs here, and they fed on each other. But how, then, did Nature regulate the food chain? The sheer size of these things made it impossible to kill them so that one could consume them. Or did one’s intelligence decline the bigger they got? The small Leshyes, although they were bloodthirsty cannibals, still lived in a pack and worked together. Scar, on the other hand, saw only food in other mobs, and his size probably attracted attention. Gather a group of three of four dozen hungry mobs, and even he wouldn’t be able to beat them all off.
Meanwhile, Scar ran to the river, crouched down, and began to drink greedily, bringing the water to his mouth with hands that looked like the buckets of an excavator. Water fell on the sand, washing it away, whil
e he continued to drink. Only a few minutes later, as we disappeared through the trees, did his small eyes follow the fleeing prey, and his lips stretched into a grin.
He saw us, but he didn’t follow us, yet.
***
Mountains.
The dense rocky ring became an impassable obstacle for the Bargolas, forcing them to live in a dangerous world for hundreds and even thousands of years, slowly degrading and falling back to more and more ancient forms of civilization.
All for a fragment of the key.
The rocks did look intimidating. Perhaps a professional mountain climber could traverse the steep slopes, avoid falling on the sharp ledges, and cross the deep crevices... But we weren’t professional mountain climbers. According to Lorkal’s hard-to-translate story, at least thirty Bargolas had lost their lives in an attempt to scale the mountains. Some of them had never been found. Perhaps those had managed to leave but couldn’t pass the information to their comrades about what was on the other side.
The sun was setting; the shadows of the mountain peaks, standing apart from the rest, reached the forest, plunging the trees into semi-darkness. It was getting colder. The temperature here, it seemed, could fall below zero during the night. In retrospect, leaving our winter clothes on the other side of the portal seemed like a bad idea.
Despite Amoeba’s and Spider’s numerous attempts to get Ulter to talk, we didn’t manage to make him do it a second time. The more they tried, the more convinced we were that he really couldn’t understand us.
***
“The gorge,” Lorkal informed us, pointing to a dark gap between the rocks after half an hour of wandering through a rocky maze.
Willow, who had been riding Rat for the past few hours, shivered and moved closer to me. Third Eye revealed her true mood: fear, regret, pain...
“I don’t like this place,” she said after a moment. “It reminds me of the gorge in which we fought the Burgundies...”
Valkyrie just rolled her eyes but the rest supported the girl. Ivan awkwardly patted her on the shoulder, Spider nodded understandingly, and Amoeba tried to comfort her.
“Don’t worry, Willow, that’s all in the past... A new challenge is ahead of us, we just need to be cautious.”
“Oh, stop whining already,” Valkyrie mumbled to herself.
I looked at her and sighed. I couldn’t expect her to put herself in the shoes of someone who had lost a group of people close to them, a group with which they had been since they arrived here, and formed familiar ties with. Then again, would I ever feel sympathy toward Pavel? Or vice-versa? Imagining someone as battle-hardened and collected as he was, bawling about the past was, frankly, a difficult task.
Willow was quick to pull herself together and we entered the gorge.
***
After half a minute of walking in almost complete darkness, we came to a brighter area. Smooth stone walls, polished to a high gloss, resembling mirrors, reflected the light of the setting sun. Jutting above the rest of the rocks, they seemed to catch the sunlight going beyond the horizon. It was a strange picture: a long, narrow corridor, hundred or so feet high, with walls made of some strange stone, growing whiter with each step, lit up like glass-covered skyscrapers on a sunny day.
Lorkal and the other Bargols didn’t seem at all surprised by this. Like believers entering a church of their God, they observed the walls with awe. Here, they were sure they’d be protected by their deity. Only Ulter walked, staring at his feet, pondering something.
“What a magical place!” Amoeba exclaimed. “No wonder the locals consider the white stone sacred! Imagine an ancient person who saw a meteor, a simple flash in the sky... I think no one would ask them questions if, at the sight of the next meteor, they raised their hands and bowed their head, asking it to grant them a wish. Then again, such nonsense persists to this day...”
No one commented, especially since only Spider could argue with him on scientific and philosophical topics, and even then with varying degrees of success. Our eyes were fixed forward, on the solid, snow-white surface that gradually emerged from the gloom.
White Granite
A Sacred Abode
“We’re here,” Lorkal said.
Chapter 17
THE RED BARON
“We are?”
Third Eye outlined a vague anthropomorphic silhouette hidden under the thick layer of white stone. Yeah, we were at our destination.
The Priest
Level 400
“So, the first thing I need to do is... Use the Red Baron form...”
Mental Mask has been activated.
Appearance: Red Baron (Gray Mage)
Bright sparks flashed in front of my eyes for a moment, piercing my entire body. A colorful mask appeared out of thin air and smacked me in the face, disappearing as suddenly as it had appeared.
“Loki?” Ivan asked in surprise. “Is... Is that you?”
“Who else would it be?” I began to ask, when I suddenly realized that my voice was much lower than before, almost a bass.
Judging by everyone’s expressions, my appearance had also changed. Or rather, their perception of me had changed: my body didn’t transform, as was obvious by the snakeskin-covered limbs.
“Arvag! The magician!” Lorkal bowed his head in respect. The rest of the hunters followed his example, except for Ulter, who was carefully studying the changes that had happened to me.
I found their surprise weird. As if the lightning bolt with which I had killed the Boar wasn’t proof enough of my magical abilities. Or perhaps they weren’t surprised by that because they possessed some sort of a weapon that could shoot lightning. Something like a taser maybe. That’d explain a lot.
Still, in their eyes, I wasn’t as powerful as their elders. But the fact that I possessed magical powers still put me high up in their hierarchy. Lorkal, though he had been ordered to bring us to the gorge, only now realized that the “mage” was an actual mage. It was like trying to explain the concept of a lighter to a savage. Just hearing about it wouldn’t make them believe that summoning fire out of thin air was possible, but showing it to them, they’d proclaim you a deity, and start bringing you gifts.
“What... What do I look like?” I asked Amoeba.
“Ridiculous,” Spider answered instead, carefully examining my chainmail, which had remained the same despite my transformation.
“I’m inclined to agree,” Amoeba said. “The tinsel is too much. And you’re as colorful as a parrot.”
When I saw amazement in Willow’s eyes, I gave up on trying to learn anything from my allies and turned my attention to Rat. He’d send me an image or a video recording of myself.
Transmission pending...
Sender: Rat (level 89), pet
***
Having seen myself, I realized why everyone was surprised. Not only did my appearance change, but so did my name.
Gray Beard
Level 107
My new, stocky body was covered with a doublet decorated with silver armor inserts, and thick maroon trousers that didn’t hinder movement and looked rather lavish. I had a pair of heavy boots and a wide-brimmed hat that covered my head. All in all, I looked like a nobleman who had turned into a pirate. My face remained the same, save for a long silver beard.
“You look like you’ve walked off the set of the Pirates of the Caribbean!” Valkyrie laughed, looking at Willow for some reason.
“You better show some respect for an esteemed mage!” I grinned.
I doubted that I’d be able to pull off something as complex as this without draining myself of both magic and mental energy. Still, I had to be careful. A high-level mage could easily reveal my true form if they so wanted to, and then...
I didn’t want to think about what could happen, so I exhaled and took a step toward the White Granite.
***
“Light Mage, I summon you!” I threw up my hands and pretended to shudder from strain to emphasize the “complexity” of my work.
I could’ve easily done it without the theatrics but I was being watched by my allies, who had little idea of how the process of summoning a magical entity worked, and the Bargolas, for whom I had to make this look like something akin to the magic of their respected elders, or even much more powerful. Willow, a relatively new member of our squad, was also looking at me. And, well, I wanted to impress her.
After a few seconds, the scarlet silhouette of the Priest twitched and began to move upward, out of the stone. Despite the fact that I looked calm, I wanted to scream. The thing was level four hundred! Four! Hundred! If it figured out who I really was, it’d kill me on the spot. It’d erase me from existence. I’d be dead. Gone. Donzo.
Turning to the others, I said in a low voice:
“You’d better take a couple of steps back... just in case.”
“Indeed,” said a strong male voice from behind me.
The Priest
Level 400
Noiselessly climbing out of the White Granite, the Priest stopped a couple of feet away from me. Tall and thin, dressed in a dirty robe, with a thin beard and a wrinkled face, he still looked frightening, capable of destroying a black mage with one glance if he so pleased. His face was vaguely human but the absence of a nose and the presence of two additional eyes located on his forehead, hinted that he wasn’t a human. He didn’t have a staff like Graybeard or a pipe like the Piper or even a magic wand... though the latter would’ve looked really strange even in this world. All in all, he inspired respect rather than fear. His weapons were his hands with which he both created and destroyed.
“Greetings, Priest.” I bowed my head, showing respect for the high-leveled mage.
My example was followed by both the players and the Goblins. Even Rat crouched as if to bow. Looking around at the crowd that had gathered outside his house, he fixed his eyes on me and smiled.
“Gray Beard, did you summon me?”
“I did.”
The Priest chuckled and nodded toward the rest of the group.
“A bunch of ragamuffins,” he said. I found that very strange as he himself was dressed in rags. But I kept silent. “Your allies are decently dressed but the locals have turned into beggars.”
Reborn: Evolution: A LitRPG Series (Warlock Chronicles Book 3) Page 19
