by John Gold
Everyone in the room began singing magic songs, and as they did, the stone glowed, and Rachel was bathed in a wave of the warm light. Her whole body felt light.
∞ ∞ ∞
You are now a vessel of divine energy.
∞ ∞ ∞
“All of your energy into this crystal,” Bernard said, focusing on new elements of the magic sign that he was drawing. Rachel obediently drained her mana into the crystal.
Almost an hour went by, until the box they had was almost full of crystals.
“Leon, it’s your turn. Lie down on the stone.”
The girl’s father bowed to Leon, a man thirty-five years old with a powerful demeanor. He turned out even to have the first and highest level of citizenship.
“Level 77 - nice work! This is going to hurt, so get ready.”
“This is nothing compared to what I would be prepared to do.”
Leon lied down on the stone, which let out another wave of light that engulfed his body.
“Let’s begin.”
The crystals full of divine energy started burying themselves in Leon. He cried out and reflexively tightened up, though he didn’t get up. As soon as his health approached zero, Rachel’s father healed him just enough to be able to take one more hit. That continued until the last crystal cut short Leon’s life there on the sacrificial stone. Suddenly, the room was flooded with light pouring in from the windows.
∞ ∞ ∞
Global message: A new god, Leon, appeared in the small pantheon.
∞ ∞ ∞
It had worked! For the ritual to work, they’d needed an innocent child who would lie down willingly on the altar of the god as a sacrifice. The one bringing the offering had to be innocent as well, becoming holy as the soul of the victim was taken to Hell. The saint cоuld receive divine energy from any altar or the sacrificial stone of their god, or, as in that case, a god without a firstborn. They use that energy to carry out the word of their faith and create miracles. Rachel had just become one such saint, and she’d charged the crystals with the energy of the divine.
The high priest of the temple had the strongest tie to the god, giving his blood the same. The final part of the ritual was to create a twisted seal that could be used to summon the divine avatar. Then, all the energy was poured into the person lying on the altar at that moment, which enabled Leon to become a god. The magic crystals served to temporarily store and then transfer the divine energy.
All of that had to be done within an hour after the death of the firstborn. They’d made it in time.
“Merlen, thank you. Everyone, thank you.” Leon, glowing brightly, addressed everyone in the room. “Just like I promised, you will all be acolytes in my cult, and top acolytes at that! Bernard… Where’s Bernard?”
Everyone looked around, but he was nowhere to be found. The mage had left without saying goodbye as soon as the ritual was complete.
“He ran away!”
“Hm, smart guy,” Leon laughed. “I guess he realized that we weren’t going to leave any witnesses. Nate, you can let the kids from the street go. We don’t need them anymore. Merlen, let’s go up to my office. We need to discuss finances for all the work we have to do.”
Rachel was overjoyed. She was the illegitimate daughter of Merlen Ruzh, the financial director and a shareholder at Star Ship, her mother a wide-romping woman who slept with him once. For all her seventeen years with her mother, Rachel had the fifth level of citizenship, subjecting her to constant abuse, betrayal, and intrigue. She’d worked the previous two years in her father’s office. Using flattery, lies, and her body, she’d been able to skip a few rungs on the career ladder, keeping her close to her father. Everything Rachel had done was designed to capture his attention. As soon as Merlen found out that she was his daughter and had access to the beta test for Project Chrysalis, he offered her the role she was currently playing, not to mention a promising future. Her job was to find the right child for the ritual and get him to the sacrificial stone.
“One more step down.” Rebecca Ruzh smiled.
∞ ∞ ∞
It turns out that psychologists can be useful. After telling her what I thought about women, I feel better. The pain Eliza caused by telling the other orphans that I’m not mute is gone. Still, I’m not going to talk with her. She can do whatever she wants with that.
I spent the two hours profitably. No, I’m not going to delete my character. It’s my family, my parents, my house, my city, my village. I’m going to fight for my place in the world. I got to Hell, so I can get back, and they’re not the only ones who can kill. Until Level 5, I won’t get debuffs for not eating, and I won’t die of hunger. What I can do is keep progressing. I have books, time, and desire; I’ll find a way and build myself an advantage. And then I’ll avenge myself.
∞ ∞ ∞
Damage taken: 500 (ignored: 421)
82/200
Resistance to physical damage +0.02%
Physical damage ignored up to 442/second
Resistance to mental damage +0.01%
Mental damage ignored up to 2/second
Survivability +1
That’s new. So, my mental body takes part of the damage. The most important part is that everything improves: my main and additional attributes, my skills, and my resistance.
You got a debuff: Astral anchor
Effect: You can no longer go farther than 30 meters away from where you currently are.
Duration: 6 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes, 59 seconds… 58… 57…
∞ ∞ ∞
Vaalsie’s making himself heard again. That’s fine though. I’m not in a hurry. Hell can wait for the great Vaalsie. I won’t be going anywhere until I can move around freely, and I’ll be leveling-up everything I can.
One thing I don’t like is how easy it would be for someone to notice and kill me. I look around, noticing a lone cliff with a convenient overhang. As I walk over, I notice that I’m leaving tracks in the ash. Thanks for that, father! I brush them out. Then, directly under the overhang, I dig a hole for myself and sit down in the lotus pose, scattering some ash on my head, too. My left arm is pinned to my body under my shirt, enabling me to continually heal myself.
All that’s visible above the surface is my eyes. I just have to avoid suffocating.
Camoflage +230
I’m the king of camouflage! It’ll be hard to see me under all the ash in the Fields of Ash.
And I’m just in time. Two enormous Level 213 gargoyles fly down onto the cliff I’m hiding under.
“Harol api, gorum ehl ishvan.”
“Gul Haros tush hek, zumo aprem.”
“Ushral.”
∞ ∞ ∞
Knowledge area: Demon tongue +0.001%
The more often you hear and repeat languages you don’t know, the faster you learn them.
∞ ∞ ∞
So, that’s how that works! Okay, I’m going to repeat everything they say until they fly away.
The first intelligent creatures appear on the horizon—a whole squad of demons—and start scanning the heaps of ash. It’s a good thing I got myself covered up. Then, a wave of fear hits me.
First, I see the ash heaving as if someone’s crawling under it, and then I see the demon himself.
Demons, Scavenger Worms, Level 117
It’s terrifying to watch as the worms crawl by just two meters away. All kinds of creatures at lots of different levels are out there looking for anything they can find. For four hours, they just cast a good hundred spells before jabbing their weapons into the ash. The whole time, I listen to the two gargoyles sitting above me. The more I hear, the more I understand. I start to pick out more phrases; the capsule must be automatically translating the words I’ve learned.
Finally, they fly away.
The squad of ten demons remains, however. Then, there are the two worms, four minotaurs, three imps, and one demon-possessed creature with a blindfold over his eyes.
Demons, Hell Wailer, Leve
l 172
Judging by the level, he’s in charge, and the worst part is that he was constantly sniffing. Sometimes, he gets particularly close, causing my heart to drop into my stomach.
You got a debuff: Veil of darkness
Effect: Complete loss of vision.
Duration: 23 hours, 59 minutes, 59 seconds… 58… 57…
∞ ∞ ∞
This is my worst day yet in Project Chrysalis. The hair on my head stands up, I’m sweating profusely, and sometimes it seems like the Wailer is practically stepping on my head. I hear him sniffing. My whole body senses where the worms are crawling through the ash, where the ash is compacted under the minotaurs’ hooves. I start clearly hearing everything the demons are saying, even when they’re far off.
New ability: Imp eye
Imps don’t have eyes. They see the world with their skin and catch sound waves from up to one hundred meters away.
∞ ∞ ∞
I’m only too happy to get any new ability that boosts my chances of survival. And it really does let me hear everything a hundred meters away and closer so long as there isn’t a barrier between me and the sound. In that case, it’s harder to hear. My perception reaches out for about thirty meters. It’s actually a good thing that I’m temporarily blind. My head spins a little, and just twelve hours later, I start to control the ability. I just have to concentrate on what I can hear or feel in order to get a better picture of where and how far away my opponent is.
The psychologist decided to start punishing me. Every day, she summons me to a virtual space. I sit in the corner and think about whatever I want. Just for kicks and giggles, I turn on my sound one day to hear her playing the piano. I don’t know the song, but it sounds nice. She plays for the whole two hours.
∞ ∞ ∞
Eliza was sitting at the desk in her virtual space. Moro, her ArtIn, also had access, so he was able to keep her informed of changes in the boy’s behavior.
“Miss Donovan, he just activated the audio channel.”
“Thanks.”
Elizabeth was talking with Moro on a different channel, so Anji couldn’t hear them.
“The sensors say he’s sitting with his eyes closed and listening to the music. He isn’t moving or smiling. I’d call his emotional field enjoyment.”
“Okay, so he likes the music. Let him listen.”
Anji sat in his corner, still motionless. The recordings from his capsule showed that he was suffering physically every day. First, his father threw him into the lake, and he didn’t know how to swim. On the second day, he just about lost a hand to a trap. After that, it was battles in the arena, days of getting beaten, and getting chased around the village by the dogs for three days, occasionally fighting off their attacks. He spent a whole week fighting the dogs in the back yard. It was hard to watch them rip chunks of flesh off the boy, though the wounds closed almost instantly. The worst was that his virtual father encouraged this kind of behavior. Just like the game panel, the psychologist didn’t have access to the audio track. Lunar law forbade that because it was interfering with game process, which is why she couldn’t have it. For the past three days, the boy had been lying on some kind of floor without moving as someone prowled around, and lately, the screen had just been black.
When she sent a query to Lunar about the cruelty of Anji’s virtual parents, she got a simple reply: In-game parents are tuned to meet the desires, needs, and emotions of the player, doing what they can to encourage the player’s own inclinations. In other words, Anji actually wanted what was going on.
∞ ∞ ∞
The third time I show up in the Fields of Ash, I’m convinced that I’ll be appearing where I left my character while I was in Hell. I don’t feel anything, just going back to continually healing myself. My blindness scares me with the unknown, though there isn’t anything out there besides lava a long way off. Besides that, there aren’t any sounds nearby, so I don’t feel afraid.
You got a debuff: Universal weakness
Effect: 50% cut to all your main attributes, skills, and resistances.
Duration: 23 hours, 59 minutes, 59 seconds… 58… 57…
∞ ∞ ∞
As soon as I get my vision back, Vaalsie hits me with another buff. There’s no time to look around. I’m too worried about whether I’ll be able to survive in such an aggressive environment.
∞ ∞ ∞
Damage taken: 500 (ignored: 317)
82/200
Resistance to physical damage: +0.02%
Physical damage ignored up to 634/second
Resistance to mental damage: +0.01%
Mental damage ignored up to 62/second
Survivability +1
Weak healing! Weak healing! I’m so tired of that miserable old idiot.
∞ ∞ ∞
Damage taken: 500 (ignored: 317)
84/200
That really scared me.
Yesterday, I noticed something surprising: continuous damage is always at least a quarter mental. My physical resistance stopped growing, though my mental resistance is catching up. Three days of constant healing has boosted my intellect to 45, too. At this point, I’m healing exactly the same amount of health as I lose, and the regeneration from my survivability is kicking in. Take that, Vaalsie! I wonder what else he’s going to do to me. Complete paralysis? No, he can’t do that. It would break human rights laws. Anyway, I have another day in front of me.
It’s a good thing I didn’t jump when the veil of darkness fell away. The worms had done a lot to level-up my perception over the three days. In the corner of my eye, I notice something on the edge of the cliff. It’s a good thing I’m used to lying down, otherwise I would be jumping up in terror.
What is that?
Demon, Harol, Level 250
He is using something like natural camouflage to blend into the cliff. Long red whiskers flick around, though the wind isn’t that stiff. His multifaceted eyes look around without blinking, and his body is large, similar to a lizard’s, only with wings like a fly.
When I read his name, I realize what’s probably going on. When the demons didn’t find anything, they sent that Harol here as the one to raise the false alarm. The search party had a hard time understanding him, too.
I lie here healing myself for another day. Sometimes, the demon flies around above where I am before alighting on the cliff and going back to sitting motionless. He must have nerves of steel to be able to just sit there like that. I’m an exception. Healing and reading the logs keeps me busy. When I’m done, I just read them again. Every time I do, there are fewer words I don’t know as the program translates them for me. When I’m done, I read over what I have.
Normal demons chatter constantly, while their commanders are generally quiet. It turns out that the Fields of Ash are just the threshold leading to the first circle of Hell. Once you get past them, you’re in Limbo, a place where minor sinners have to deal with their pangs of conscience. The souls sent here are doomed to constant suffering, and the castle of the local ruler creates an aura of pain and torment by using the energy it gets from the souls there. That aura is what does the constant damage.
The first circle of Hell is the largest, with all subsequent circles becoming sequentially smaller. The worst part is the aura created by the fortresses in the lower circles - it’s much stronger than the one here. There are auras of fire, ice, disease, paralysis, death, terror, and even parasites and stench. These spawn monsters right from the earth. The fields of ash separate the demon world from the misty shroud, on the other side of which are the Gray Lands. None of the devils have ever so much as approached the shroud.
The demons found strong distortions in the local magic field and sent four squads to check it out. Without finding anything after a check of everything within a hundred kilometers from the point of entry, three squads left the Fields of Ash. The fourth spent another two days keeping an eye out before leaving, as well. Harol was sentenced to five days here as punishment for t
he false alarm.
Things are starting to get a little boring - the game, then two hours with the psychologist, then my studies. Eight days of that! I haven’t even had to heal the last two. Today, Harol is supposed to leave, which means I’ll be able to leave, too. Vaalsie turned out to be quite the bastard. For every visit to the psychologist, I get a new debuff: lame, deaf, mute. I’ll get something new today.
Harol flies off. The whole time he was here, I didn’t hear so much as a sound from him.
I pull myself out of the ash and look around. My kid clothes have been completely eaten away, leaving me in nothing but my underwear. It’s white, and I can’t take it off or do anything to it until I turn eighteen. My body has turned gray, even my hair.
I need to do some leveling-up, and I need information, too. I have a ton of strength and health.
“Attribute window.”
Name: Sagie
Level: 0
Experience: 0/100 (100 left until the next level)
Race: Human
Class: None selected
Basic attributes
Strength: 20
Agility: 20
Stamina: 68
Intellect: 58
Wisdom: 45
Available attribute points: 0
Additional attributes
Speed: 20
Athleticism: 20
Morale: 40
Survivability: 60
Derivative ratings
Physical damage: 10 (strength/2, but no less than 1)
Carrying capacity: 50 kg (strength*10/4)
Mana: 450 (wisdom*10)
Health: 680 (stamina*10)
Strength: 680 (stamina*10)
Health restoration: 600/minute (survivability*10)
Mana restoration: 400/minute (morale*10)
Strength restoration: 200/minute (athleticism*10)
Running speed: 12 km/h (1+speed/10)
Defense: 1
Resistance
