Edge of the Abyss (Respawn Trials Book #1) LitRPG Series

by Andrei Livadny

  The day turned out to be hot and sunny. Birds were singing. Midges hovered over the meadow grasses growing around the mine.

  My thoughts flitted uneasily from one thing to another. Where was I going to find the remaining money to pay for Sasha’s treatment?

  We had to reach the regional capital as soon as possible. Walking no longer seemed quite so sensible. Although using a portal without first changing the anchor point was also incredibly risky.

  I flicked through the parchment pages, lost in thought. Each page showed a magic symbol. There were handwritten explanations below. The auto-translator didn’t work in this case. Even though players from different countries could understand each other, bypassing the language barrier, one had to actually learn the ancient magical language.

  Aha! Here was a familiar rune. The same one that provided phantom protection.

  I took a suitable burin from the set and decided to conduct an experiment. I remembered creating a makeshift spear by attaching a knife to a staff. Then there was the staff that I had made out of moss and a stick.

  What if I carved a magic symbol on the old dwarven shield?

  Why not? VR was adaptive. It was easy to obtain the baseline skill. All you needed was interest, just like in real life. But to develop it, to gain a certain level of skill, that required considerable effort.

  I plugged away at it for about half an hour, carefully removing the metal shavings but ultimately creating only deep scratches in the beaten metal surface. The rune ended up looking crooked.

  “Ugh,” I wiped the sweat off my brow and studied my creation, hoping that the shield would gain a new characteristic, but alas, the system’s verdict was harsh.

  Useless piece of metal. Hit points 0.

  …

  What was the matter?

  The image that I had scratched onto the shield was suddenly enveloped by a ghostly light and the metal began to corrode as if someone had splashed acid on it. I barely had time to fling it away from me when there was a flash and the shield disappeared, leaving behind a burnt patch of grass.

  A message appeared:

  You have destroyed an object.

  You have angered the air elementals (negative effect: you cannot use spells or abilities relating to the element of Air for 24 hours).

  Be careful: clumsy experiments with magic can have a fatal outcome.

  …

  That was a serious debuff! If I had been a Mage or an Archer, such a ban would have seriously complicated my life for the next 24 hours!

  My life?

  I caught myself on that thought.

  That was quick... Less than a week had passed and yet the authenticity of the surrounding world had already won me over, gradually replacing concepts. The border between realities was being rapidly eroded and my mind was beginning to perceive VR as a fully-fledged world.

  It was hot. The forested slopes and the Dark Frontier cliffs towering above them were wavering in the sultry haze. I understood that the Land of the Chosen truly was a blessed place. It was a pity that it had been broken, reshaped and given over to human passions and vices. Nobody wanted a beautiful but static world anymore. It was we, with our thoughts and actions, that were breathing real life into it...

  I suddenly felt overwhelmed. It turned out that my nephew’s words had struck a chord but I had gotten used to keeping my emotions in check.

  Yes, he was right. I had been left homeless. But surprisingly, the worry about this crossed my mind and disappeared like water through sand.

  Why, you might ask? I’d answer honestly.

  I had no regrets. What kind of future did I have waiting for me in the real world? A tiny automated apartment in the metropolis? Gray days. Annoying, constant reminders of past wounds. You can’t even imagine how terrible it was to feel weak and to understand that this wouldn’t pass in time.

  Here, I felt young and full of energy again... I wanted to stay. To experience the full depth of immersion, to travel along the unknown trails of neurotechnology.

  “Dan, what are you doing over there?” Jeb called me over voice chat. “I found a cave in the cliff. Weasel showed me that the back wall in one of the sheds is fake.”

  “Hey, don’t go anywhere without me!”

  “I’ve already ripped away the boards, I’ll just take a peek!”

  “Don’t go in there without me!”

  “Are you coming soon? What are you doing?”

  “I’m busy. Wait a bit, I’ll be right there.”

  * * *

  I did have some unfinished business. There was no escape from the problems of the real world.

  After checking that there were no signs of any danger, I shifted to my personal digital space, from where I had access to the global web.

  You have three unread messages.

  I opened the first one. A notification from the auto real estate agent. The construction company was willing to buy my house and land for 20,000 credits. This was more than I had expected!

  I agreed because the second letter contained a contract for the provision of paid medical services attached to it.

  I approved it with my electronic signature and created a daily auto-payment to the specified bank account. Now, even if I couldn’t exit to the real world, the banking system would automatically make payments for Sasha’s advanced treatment.

  Now all that was left was to obtain the missing amount.

  The third message was a short one, from Denis.

  Sorry I overreacted yesterday.

  Fine. We’ll work things out later. I simply didn’t have time for family dramas right now.

  I quickly wrote a short reply and suggested that we discuss it all a bit later. And now, back to the Edge of the Abyss. Jeb and I still hadn’t found a working respawn circle to change our anchor point. This bothered me the most at this point, while the other problems seemed solvable.

  Nothing had changed in the few minutes that I was away. Passing by a flooded gap that indicated the entrance to the old mine, I looked at the reflections on the dark water. They formed a distorted inscription in an incomprehensible ancient language.

  I took pictures. This was certainly an instance, which had never been explored. It was a priceless find. We wouldn’t be able to go through such a dungeon. We would need lots of underwater breathing potions, plus, we couldn’t handle the specifics of battling monsters in a narrow, flooded labyrinth. So, the information would go on sale.

  I found Jeb by following a pointing marker. Weasel was also showing up on my minimap now, as a cheerful green spark. Both signals were showing up against a shed huddling at the edge of the cliff.

  The impressively large doors were open. Boxes were piled up inside. They had probably been neatly stacked in the past, but the timber had rotted over time and the stacks had collapsed. Rays of light cut through the gloom, coming from the gaps in the roof and illuminating the motes of dust spinning lazily in the air.

  I studied the contents falling out of the broken crates and worn-out bags. It was some kind of ore. I had no idea if it was valuable or not. I tried to get a hint but the interface wouldn’t provide me with any details, simply labeling the find as ‘rocks’. Perhaps I needed a special skill to identify them more accurately.

  There was a break in the far wall, where Jeb had pulled away several boards. I could see a faint glow from a torch.

  This place only emphasized the realism of the digital world. The design of neglect had arisen due to natural processes. I wasn’t attacked by mobs, which (if the location was planned) would have certainly been nesting in the abandoned buildings and guarding some valuable items.

  Nothing like that. The mine had simply been abandoned. The clearing was full of bushes and young saplings. The buildings were dilapidated. The mine had been gradually flooded with rain and groundwater. Virtual reality was living its own life. I thought that if all the users had suddenly disappeared, this virtual reality and the NPCs living in it would continue their everyday activities, and would
maybe begin to develop themselves…

  “Well, did you find anything?” I climbed into the gap and looked around.

  “Nope,” Jeb replied with disappointment and added as he raised the torch higher, “It looks like the dwarves had unearthed something valuable here,” he pointed to marks made by mining tools. The ceiling was low and angular. The limestone was riddled with cracks, yet I couldn’t see any supports. The cave wasn’t large overall, as if the miners had indeed stumbled across a small deposit of valuable ore, extracted it and abandoned the space, without even using the resulting cave for storage since it was safer to build a shed than to reinforce the unreliable ceiling.

  “Weasel didn’t find anything either,” Jeb sighed and then jerked his head up, staring at me, “Dan, what’s happening to you?”

  I felt suddenly dizzy. My breath caught and my mind went fuzzy.

  I didn’t understand what was going on myself! Jeber_Arium’s face blurred, the torchlight became a distant spark and then...

  …

  You have discovered a new region, Path of the Doomed.

  …

  I was bathed in cold sweat and barely kept my balance. I clung to the cliff instinctively. A crumbling, unreliable ledge lay under my feet, clearly created by something other than nature!

  Streaks of fog (or cloud?) slowly floated past, touching me and briefly obscuring the view, encasing everything in a gray shroud.

  It was hard to breathe and my legs trembled with the strain. I had to spread my arms out along the stone surface.

  How could this be happening again?

  A sudden gust of wind nearly threw me into the chasm below. The white haze was torn into shreds and driven away. Looking around brought on an attack of vertigo.

  Far below, I could see the foothills of the Dark Frontier.

  Suppressing the wave of nausea, I tried to assess the situation. I took pictures automatically. I was very high up, between two gloomy and weathered fortifications. A road used to run between them. I could see miraculously preserved supports here and there in the rock, which used to hold up the planking. Most of them had been snapped off. Vultures sat on some of them. The path that the system notified me about had been created using elemental magic.

  The stone looked like it had been melted. I had come across this before, when the people above had mistaken me for a necro. The narrow recess looked like a very long niche cut into the rock. It was the only thing connecting the two ancient towers.

  There was a flash on the left as I was studying my surrounding. A portal! The special effect had the familiar purple shade.

  Confirming my guess, a player appeared on the stone staircase. A Dark Warrior, judging by the aura and presence of armor. He confidently descended to the path. He was followed by a line of shuffling figures who were chained to one another. Prisoners. I counted fifteen of the unfortunate folk. A Dark Mage made up the rear.

  Only two guards! I couldn’t read their frames yet because they were too far away and the smoky aura also got in the way.

  Remaining in the middle of the trail was madness. I wouldn’t save anyone and would likely perish myself. If I was to take up the fight and try to free the prisoners (why else would I have been teleported here by some unseen force?), then I needed to do this from the nearby tower.

  Who knew what was in there?

  Overcoming my natural fear of heights, I began to make my way to the right fortification. It was awkward going. I had to put away my weapon and keep my hand in constant contact with the wall, otherwise, I would panic and fall.

  The scraps of cloud came back. They floated by, hopefully masking my presence.

  A little more. Some twenty steps and I would reach a small platform with a stone staircase ascending from it.

  The vultures were suddenly disturbed by something. I could see them spreading their huge wings, pushing off from the wrecked wooden beams with their talons and soaring up on the streams of rising air.

  I hoped that I hadn’t scared them and that the tower was empty...

  There came the distinct clunk of a crossbow and a heavy, short bolt, capable of penetrating metal armor, struck the stone above my head.

  Forgetting about my vertigo, I dashed forward, reached the staircase, ran up the steps and hid behind my shield.

  The upper platform was windswept, with a lot of bones scattered about and two archers standing by the loophole — skeletons in rusty armor!

  A bolt struck my shield with a dull thud, not causing any damage but using up some Stamina. I automatically rolled to avoid the second shot — my training with Jeb hadn’t been for nothing! As I regained my feet, I chopped off the undead’s head, with the skull clattering across the cobblestones.

  The second archer scampered off to the side and was hurriedly reloading. I dispatched him quickly since they were weak enemies, only Level 15.

  One dropped a soldier’s crossbow and the other one dropped five ordinary bolts.

  I glanced through the weapon characteristics. Shooting range was 30 meters. Damage was 4-5 with scaling according to Strength. Ideal for me, except for the fact that I had no practice in firing this sort of weapon.

  I hid beside the loophole and peeked out. The prisoners were moving slowly. A Dark Warrior, Level 35, walked at the front of the line. He was wearing light leather armor that didn’t restrict his movements, and was armed with a pole axe. He moved confidently. A dangerous opponent. The Dark Mage, on the other hand, was nervous and lagged behind, clinging to the rocks and clearly unfamiliar with the narrow path.

  They hadn’t notice me for sure! I lifted the crossbow and aimed at the Mage. I hoped that the very first shot would disable him and ideally, cast him into the abyss. Hopefully, the captives would realize what was going on, otherwise, there was a risk that they would fall too. One clumsy movement could be a death sentence since they were all chained together…

  All the characters (except the two skeletons) were players.

  I took aim and fired, but the heavy bolt seemed to snag in the suddenly dense air so that it flew only a few meters and dropped below.

  Damn it! I had completely forgotten that the air elementals were still mad at me because of the failed experiment and the debuff was still active.

  A sudden chill touched my back.

  There was a grinding of stone slabs shifting aside. The ancient fortification vibrated.

  I turned sharply.

  The creature that climbed out of the gloomy depths of the tower could hardly be described. It was twice as tall as a human being. Skinny, with stooped shoulders, two legs and very long arms. It wasn’t wearing any clothes. The pale skin was patterned with a bluish network of veins, in some places stained with flaking purple patches, as if this creature’s distance ancestors had been covered in scales but now only rudimentary areas remained.

  A bare, elongated scalp, small, watery eyes, a sunken nose, with the mouth framed by fine, constantly moving growths with suckers on the ends.

  Obviously, players had met such creatures before, but I could see only question marks in the red frame, and, Poacher, a creature from the Abyss. I shivered. So, nobody had published any information about these beings.

  “What have we here?” there were notes of disgusted surprise in the hoarse voice. “A Guardian, eh? But too small... Too small...” he grinned creepily, quite pleased with himself. “Things can’t be going very well since the defeat if your masters are willing to send anyone these days.”

  I covered myself with the shield, preparing for the fight.

  He laughed huskily, “Really?! You want to try?”

  In the next instant, a crushing blow of the long, thin arm swept me into the chasm below, together with a section of the ancient masonry.

  I was falling, my breath stuck in my throat. Everything froze inside me and my mind went dark.

  * * *

  “Dan, what’s the matter with you?”

  I lay on the cave floor. It was hard to breathe, and even harder to speak.
<
br />   “Was this a portal summoning again?” Jeb persisted.

  “Yes,” I croaked as I stood up. I could taste blood and felt like I’d had my breath knocked out of me. “Let’s get out of here.”

  We climbed out of the cave. The sun’s warm rays dulled the nasty sensations a little.

  Weasel immediately scampered off into the nearest bushes, probably looking for something to eat. I drank the cold spring water until I felt full. Then Jeb and I sat down in the shade of the awning, and I briefly told him what had happened.

  “I don’t understand. Why wasn’t I sent into respawn?”