by Arthur Stone
“As I was saying, you and I have difficulties understanding one another. You jump from one topic to another, without concerning yourself with logical connections. Your head is so filled with garbage that you too easily drown in it.”
“This is the player who cleared 50 levels in less than a month.”
“I understand that much. But why does his achievement matter? Is the competition really so important to you?”
“No, not at all. I just wanted to read you an example achievement, and lo and behold, it’s DimaBilik. Quite the coincidence, isn’t it?”
“I understand that this is a coincidence. But why do I care for the text of this achievement? Neither you nor I have anything to gain from it.”
“All players see the posts in red. Even I see them, despite being stuck here without access to chat rooms and messaging. It’s like I don’t exist—except that I can read those announcement messages. Well, the man who spoke to me advised me to keep my head down. He likely assumes I’m doing this. That I am keeping my level growth slow and limiting the advancement of more difficult skills by taking minimal advantage of unknown locations.”
“His assumption is correct, then. That is what you are doing,” Ancient Evil remarked.
“You’re right. But what if I started doing the kinds of things that were often selected for the red announcement chat? My nickname would be immediately noticed. I’m basically a celebrity in the world of X—everyone has been searching for me for a month now. This person then would realize I was not sitting like a mouse in his hole—that I was doing the sorts of thing that earn praise in this game-wide communication channel. One message. Two. Three. Ten. He would have to speak with me. And this time, I know what questions to ask.”
“Have you leveled up your Alchemy?” the Ancient Evil asked, out of nowhere.
“No. Only Knowledge has leveled up significantly. I spent a little bit of free experience on the rest of the Alchemy skills in order to raise that stat to 2.”
“You should have been working on it. You need Alchemy. Level it up and craft yourself a Potion of Heal Megalomania. Do it quickly, while there is still hope!”
“I guess you do have a sense of humor after all.”
“Ancient Evil has everything.”
“You’re saying that it’s difficult to get a mention in the red announcement chat.”
“More than ‘difficult.’ In order to be announced, you must do something no one has ever done before.”
Dark pointed out the window.
“This is uncharted territory, no matter which direction I take. In this land, I cannot take a single step without doing something that no one has done before.”
“That’s true. However, the system only pays attention to the most significant acts. And your acts, despicable mortal, are far from significant. You must accomplish a real feat, not just clip the wings of some hesh’ells. Now, killing the lich that defeated the chitin elite in single combat, that would be something.”
“He hit me for more than 6000 Health in a single blow!”
“So, you are too wise to heed the advice of the Ancient Evil? What good are petty deeds? Of course you cannot be lauded as a hero without doing something heroic. This is a very difficult task. Impossible for you. Players use their accumulated game experience in order to accomplish such feats. You have no such experience, and by my calculations, you never will.”
“But the player from that message didn’t have any, either. He’s only been playing about a month longer than I have.”
“You’re funny. And naive. His character may have been created recently, but there is a biological creature behind the character. A human. This person may have played from the release date until the creation of DimaBilik, observing opportunities in the game that could only truly be exploited at lower levels. He may have even obtained access to some insider information. Much money changes hands in the world of X. Anything can happen. Anyone who achieves excellent results from the start is most likely someone with a large amount of experience. All they did is start a new character. A fresh start. A new leaf. A third life, if you will. Like being born all over again, but with the knowledge of an adult. These are clever people. And we have already established that you are not among them.”
“But I have this massive territory with many bonuses. I am the only one with access to it. They do not have opportunities like this.”
“And how do those bonuses help you? Most of them don’t help you level up. You are inexperienced, you have no access to the market, and you fight in improvised copper pipe armor.”
“I need to talk to a human,” Dark grunted.
“Then you should level up your Alchemy.”
“Joking around again?”
“A joke told twice ceases to be funny, mortal. No, level up your Transmutation, and you can create Communication Crystals. Then you can communicate with some morally decent players and explain you have been kidnapped and trapped in virtual reality. Then, they will inform law enforcement, and the authorities will rescue you.”
“I doubt it...”
“You mean that you are unlikely to survive after so much time in the game? Don’t worry about that. As long as medical controls and personnel are in place, you will survive.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about. I can’t even remember my name, you see. Some sort of memory block. I have tried to get around it, but I cannot. So, let’s say I somehow contact other players, and somehow prove to them I’m not just an idiot. And that I manage to communicate my identity to them. The police come and get me. Except that’s not what I want. The police are looking for me.”
“You’re a criminal?”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“Then why are the police looking for you?”
“Complicated life circumstances.”
“Can you prove your innocence?”
“That would be difficult. I was a student, just out of high school. I went with some fellow students to a protest. A peaceful assembly—there was no other sane choice. But some freak started throwing junk at the police who had cordoned the area off. Things escalated from there. I got somebody away from there who had a serious reaction to the tear gas. That made me part of the club. They were ordinary guys, you see, just with too many stupid ideas in their head. And drugs, at times, you know. I was having money troubles at the time, but they invited me to join them at their place, which seemed like a commune. That meant a roof over my head and food for tough times. So, one day, I was sitting in class, and I got a message that our spot had been raided. One of the freaks in charge had a little room there he had turned into a lab. For making bombs. He was always into botany and chemistry, so I think he was just playing around. Or maybe that wasn’t even what he was doing, and he was just collecting a bunch of garbage and hitting up all the social media networks with jokes or threats about how he was a terrorist and all. The police don’t take kindly to jokes like that. In fact, most countries have a department that’s much more powerful than the police and handles all terror cases. Very serious stuff. The day before the raid, I had helped the guy bring in a couple of heavy boxes. I don’t know what was in those boxes, but it looked like something mechanical. And I don’t mean vacuum cleaners. My fingerprints were found on the boxes, and plus witnesses had seen me hanging around. Besides the fact that I lived there. Enough evidence to put me away for a long time. So I had to disappear. Go underground.”
“So explain to them that you had nothing to do with it.”
“Now it’s your turn to be the naive one, Evil. My country isn’t a bad place to live, on the whole. But it has issues. Serious issues. For example, our courts rarely release anyone. An arrest warrant is basically a conviction. Plus, I’ll lose a lot of time leveling up my Alchemy, and the results will be uncertain. My head really is a mess right now. I don’t know what to do next.”
“You said they carted you off to a different country. So that means a different police force, different security services, an
d so on, with no interest in you.”
“I think that as soon as the local police find out who I am, things will go downhill quickly. Best case scenario, I return to my home country, with a bag over my head. And they give me up to the people looking for me. Worst case, they shoot me on the spot as an evil manufacturer of explosives for terrorists.”
“You just touched a couple of boxes, not crafted bombs.”
“That doesn’t matter to them, they—What did you just say? Evil, you’re a damn genius!”
“That is beyond doubt. However, I fail to understand this particular outburst.”
“You don’t need to understand. I think I figured out how to get myself into that red announcement chat. A much simpler way than anything you’ve imagined.”
Chapter 48
Day in the Life of a Terrorist
Total stat levels: 45 +2.
Character level: 7.
Mastery level: 7.
The world of X was, at first, created according to a simple principle: “The more complex, the better.” Innumerable game options and pathways. Afterwards, a “trim the fat” initiative simplified things.
But even in its new form, X retained much of its origins. That included some of this complexity, which players often lambasted as confusing.
Despite the general swords-and-spells feel to the game, some of the possibilities bordered on technology. Alchemists, for example, had access to explosive materials. Any player could use these materials, even if their level was 0, though they would have a difficult time leveling up with them.
First, bombs were just too expensive. This exorbitant price was due to their main ingredient. It was a low-level raw material, but rare, and with a much slower respawn time than boring old copper: three whole days.
One bomb, then, required about as much raw material as a level 50 medium-quality weapon. A sword of that level could inflict a couple of million damage points on numerous enemies before it needed repairs. But a bomb could only hurt one or two enemies.
And it was no guarantee that they would even be harmed. X had no modern fuses to speak of—bombs were blown up the primitive ancient way, with unreliable rope wicks. By the time you lit the bomb and threw it at the target, many things could happen that might result in the complete waste of an expensive item.
But the high price of bombs was due to more than just the rarity of the ingredients needed to manufacture them. They were in high demand.
Why would any player want an item with such dubious advantages? Well, no single player would. But this was a multiplayer game. The main consumer of bombs were game clans and alliances. During inter-clan hostilities, situations often arose which required the capture of a stronghold belonging to the enemy. Large objects in the game could be granted partial protection from destructive magic, so at times, explosives became necessary. If two hundred players planted one decent bomb each against a wall, there was a high probability that the explosion would result in a large breach. No need to bother with drills for undermining, towers, or other complicated and risky attack strategies. Bombs greatly simplified this particular situation.
Sometimes a party of players going after one of the world’s strongest monsters wanted bombs, as well. Successful explosions could take a lot of hit points from the monster right at the start of the fight, in addition to giving it a number of nasty debuffs. Then the party could finish it off with conventional weapons, avoiding the penalties to experience and loot that came when you finished off an enemy with explosives.
But the lion’s share of the demand for bombs was the clans. These powerful entities kept their sources of the essential ingredient under close watch and control. The miners operated under the greatest security measures, and virtually none of this ingredient slipped out into the black market. When it did, it went for a fabulous sum.
That ingredient was saltpeter.
Only after his lengthy conversation with the Ancient Evil did Dark realize that the mine was priceless, not because of the copper and crystal, nor even because of the amethysts. The muted whitish streaks of saltpeter made it a site that any clan would pay a huge percentage of its treasury to obtain.
Dark had stored up significant amounts of saltpeter over the course of his week-long war with the ghosts. At the start, he had not known why. His interest had only been in leveling up his skills. But once his vague bomb plot began taking shape, he devoted a couple of days to mining more. At the same time, he continued to kill the luminous inhabitants of the mine’s lower level. They dropped ectoplasm, which was a core ingredient for a whole class of explosives. The forums had told him that.
But most of his time was spent, not in the mines, but pumping his Alchemy. A huge amount of raw materials were available in his collection for this purpose. After all, Dark had never failed to collect the loot from even the weakest of mobs. Crafting in X, like everything else, was complicated.
There were three ways to create an object: first, to mentally imagine the result you wanted as you worked; second, to mentally picture an object that you have created before at least once; and third, to have a parchment containing a complete recipe, listing all of the necessary ingredients and their proportions. The last option had the greatest chance of success, and it resulted in an item with the properties listed in the recipe. The second option had a much smaller chance of working, but the result was just as predictable.
The first option was the most difficult. Not only were your chances of success minimal, the item might not turn out as you wanted.
It might even be completely different.
Dark didn’t have any recipes for bombs. But he did have plenty of saltpeter, the main ingredient in all varieties of explosives available in this world. He had learned everything he could find in the forum on the topic. Charcoal and sulfur were the next most common ingredients in explosives. He had no problem obtaining the first material by burning wood, but sulfur was more challenging. Fortunately, he had managed to find a way to separate sulfur from the slag that was left over after smelting copper ore.
Incidentally, this at last made it clear why these waste products were classified as alchemical raw materials.
In the real world, saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur were sufficient to create black powder. The explosives you could make with this powder were weak, but at least they were something. But this recipe would not work in X without additional ingredients. Not much information on this was available in the forums. And while these ingredients could often be substituted with others, there was no database or list available.
So Dark would have to experiment, mixing together all sorts of ingredients in different proportions. Once he was tired of messing with saltpeter, he switched to potionmaking. That was much simpler, as low-level potions were easily made from common raw materials. During the process, he boosted several Alchemy skills.
None of his explosive experimentation worked out until Dark had put several thousand distributable progress points into the Explosives skill, a sub-skill of Alchemy. Once that reached 40, he finally achieved his first success.
Now, at last, he had a better method for making more.
It was the second day of intensive work along these lines.
A moderately powerful bomb in a crude glass case. Created with low-grade explosives and silver shrapnel. Deals direct physical damage, plus additional damage to creatures vulnerable to silver, plus various randomly selected negative effects with varying durations. Damage: 0-11825 Health. Range: 0-11 meters. Warning: This is a dangerous item. Handle with care.
Note: Each player may only carry one bomb in their inventory, in a bag, in a backpack, or in their hands. Each pet may only carry one bomb in a bag or, if applicable, with their limbs. Each mount may only carry one bomb in a bag or, if applicable, with their limbs. One wagon can hold up to five bombs, depending on the class of the wagon.
Note that killing enemies with explosives carries a penalty: you do not receive any distributed experience and receive only half of the normal dist
ributable experience. In addition, your chance of collecting valuable loot is reduced.
The damage ranged from zero to close to twelve thousand. Dark surmised that the maximum damage would only be dealt if the bomb was directly connected with the opponent’s body at the moment of explosion. The farther the distance, the weaker the damage. At maximum distance, the target would only get a minor debuff and no direct damage.
Placing the bomb on the ground, Dark counted out five meters in one direction, seven in another, ten in a third, and thirteen in a fourth direction. He placed another bomb on the ground at each of these distances.
Then, he set fire to the central bomb’s wick and ran thirty paces away.
The explosion was beautiful and deafening. Dark watched the aftermath. He wanted to be sure that the other three bombs would blow up, despite their wicks never being set on fire. Only the bomb that was thirteen meters away survived.
Perhaps his distances had not been one hundred percent accurate, but it appeared that all bombs that fell within the range of the exploding bomb also exploded. He would continue crafting, testing, and learning. All in all, he learned three different varieties of bombs during his experimentation.
It seemed that his assumptions were correct. The next day, he would begin work on the most complex portion of his plan.
First, he would conduct another experiment.
Just before he went to sleep.
* * *
Simple Staff of a Novice Mage. Magic weapon. Class: primitive. A high-quality ash branch fired in a furnace and adorned with pure copper. Its top is decorated with silver and rock crystal. When this rod was crafted, it absorbed the power of several soul essences bearing a level close to its own. Can be used as a melee weapon, for casting magic attacks, for buffs and debuffs, for healing, and for life drain. Required level: 7. Durability: 13/13. Base physical damage: 8 x (1 + Strength). Current physical damage: 8 x (1 + Strength). +29% base magic damage. Estimated value: hardly anyone would purchase this item. It is easy to obtain a much higher quality staff in X for free. If you managed to find a fool ready to pay a silver coin for this miserable stick, your name should be enshrined in the Merchants Guild Hall of Fame.
