by John Gold
Everyone here is rotting alive and constantly moaning. I’m used to pain and suffering, but this is awful. I’ve always felt the anguish people around me are going through and even if I don’t feel it myself, I can clearly sense it.
It’s only when I get closer to the center of the circle that I start to take damage from the aura of rot. It’s physical, and not as bad as the auras of pain and suffering in the first circle. The fat slobs don’t represent much of a threat, either. And now I can say I’ve seen a fat elf. Of course, he’s rotting alive in the rain, and I have a hard time looking at him without commiserating.
I don’t kill anyone but Cerberus in this circle. I can’t even look at the sinners without feeling pain, on the other hand. For the third day in a row, I’m struggling through the wall of rain and hail, the cold water drenching me. As long as it doesn’t start snowing. The stench is so bad that I could vomit, only I haven’t eaten in almost a month. I threw out all of my food.
On the fourth day, I hear thunder and see lightning.
∞ ∞ ∞
Damage taken: 500 (ignored: 0)
1534/2000
Resistance to electricity: +0.01%
Lightning damage ignored: 6/second
I keep going. I need more damage. The farther I go, the colder it gets, and there’s too much lightning for me to count. It’s just a deafening roar.
∞ ∞ ∞
Damage taken: 1 (ignored: 0)
1531/2000
Resistance to cold: +0.01%
Cold damage ignored: 6/second
It’s getting colder. Large hailstones keep smacking me in the head, and there are snowflakes coming down with the rain.
What could be more fun than going for a swim? The last time I did that, it was with father in the creek by our house. In real life, I’ve never been swimming. We only have showers at the orphanage.
I could stay here for a while and enjoy the gift fate has given me. First, I need to boost my resistance to electricity and cold. Second, I can practice my swimming skill and holding my breath. Third, I’m just having fun.
That does it. I decide to stay for a while.
I take three weeks to learn the crawl and breaststroke. Learning butterfly didn’t work. On the other hand, I was able to learn how to do the dolphin kick. My speed, strength, and agility are all doing great. I leap out of the water, take in air, and dive right back where I came from. The magic torches even work under water, so I can see the bottom perfectly. I end up liking swimming on my back, too. I feel calm and peaceful… That’s impressive, since lightning is striking just a kilometer away, and the air is filled with a stench that disgusts me. Well, disgusted me. I don’t pay any attention to it anymore, too busy enjoying what I can do.
∞ ∞ ∞
Damage taken: 35000 (ignored: 33811)
1142/2000
Resistance to electricity: +0.01%
Lightning damage ignored: 33896/second
Damage taken: 650 (ignored: 430)
881/2000
Resistance to cold: +0.01%
Cold damage ignored: 455/second
Water is an excellent conductor. I used to jump every time lightning struck, and a few times I even almost drowned. Now, even the strongest charges do nothing to break the peace and quiet I feel. My body feels a bit chilled, even throwing out some heat of its own.
A week later, I’ve had enough of swimming. I can go at a good clip: three meters a second the usual way, holding my breath for four minutes and twenty seconds. Under water, with a completely empowered body and my demon appearance, I can top 15 meters a second with my dolphin kick. That’s what I was going for more than anything else.
There weren’t any victims for me to use to boost my health and work on my resistance, so I had to get my stamina up as high as it would go and swim next to the bottom under the storm front. The water there was boiling. Down there, I didn’t feel the charges as strongly as I felt them on the surface, though I had all eleven streams of consciousness working to heal me - more than ten times a second. It worked. It just didn’t work exactly the way I expected it to.
I flew out of the water at full speed, heading straight through a waterfall flowing into an abyss. The dark hole sucked me and my cries in together.
∞ ∞ ∞
Once again, it’s Hell and the lifeless Fields of Ash, the misty shroud with the lords and Death. They’re at the beginning of every circle.
I’ve always been met at the beginning of each new circle by guards, and here’s another one. What do you expect from an animal-like old man three meters tall who looks more like a behemoth? He’s even blind. Yup! You expect death. He appeared ten minutes after I did. “The guards follow the intruder until they catch him and make his soul suffer.” The gargoyles had been kind enough to tell me that. I’d better just kill him right away.
Beastman, Plutos, Level 400
It doesn’t look like I’m in for a fair fight. I hurl my destruction spikes at him, followed by the vampire spikes, and finally just big rocks. My last spike hits him in the head, and he isn’t expecting me to hit him after a running start. Just like I wasn’t expecting to survive after a hit that does 25000 damage. Plutos hits me so hard with his club that I go rolling off along the ground. What saves me is that his hit isn’t that strong. He still had the spike in his head.
∞ ∞ ∞
Damage taken: 25513 (ignored: 26700)
2000/2000
After passing through the Fields of Ash, I see a strange picture. Humans and non-humans alike are hauling rocks, pieces of iron, and the bodies of other people. Everyone’s carrying something, and they’re all overloaded. When they bump into each other, they start fighting. Okay, so the most important thing here is to avoid touching anyone. The mental damage I’m taking from the auras of rage and annoyance tell me that there’s a fortress here, and that it will only intensify as I get closer. It’s a good thing the mobs are provisionally neutral.
I don’t actually take damage, though I feel anger building up inside me.
Plutos gave me two rings and a necklace, all with hidden attributes. I take my spikes back and toss the body away. It’ll disappear in an hour anyway. It’s time to work on my resistance to mental damage.
As soon as I find the right damage level, I start looking around for victims. There are two Level 280 profligates near the cliff where I’ve holed up, and I use them. The heavy work they’ve been doing has done them good. During the ritual, our combined health totals 229520. They’re beasts, with ridiculous stamina! Excellent.
I’m very close to the spot where mental damage really picks up. It’s easy to see. There are the same red waves the crystal on top of the fortress in the first circle of Hell gave off. The whitish barrier is about five meters away.
The closer you get to it, the more damage you take.
Once again, I spend 50 hours in the game, completely engrossed in my artifact work and blood magic. Until the last two months, I didn’t know the extent to which you can learn by reading, but there it is! The most important part is to never forget to heal myself. I already caught two victims, so I have plenty of blood.
Artifactors create items that affect the mental body, giving it new skills or boosting its attributes. The mental body, in turn, affects the physical body. For now, I’m using bones, wood, and pieces of metal to create simple items, then drawing runes on them. It’s the usual kind of artifact creation, only with ritual, blood magic instead of normal magic.
My next job is to max out my blacksmith and carpenter professions. If I can do that, I’ll be able to create items with a +200% bonus. I don’t have a crafting skill, so I’ll just be able to make high-quality items with basic bonuses taken from the materials. I have much better ways of making my own bonuses.
Ritual magic is built on items of power: mana crystals, sacrifices, herbs, animal body parts, and so on. In my case, they give me a +200% bonus, along with the little bump I get from my blood magic.
Master artifactors wo
rk the same way, while ritual magic only uses mana crystals. The methods I use are too bloody and ancient.
I need a bone-carving knife, so I’m forced to make one in the primitive conditions I’m in. One of my healing spikes serves the purpose. I end up with something between a knife and a file, though I can throw it, at least. I use it to carve rings out of bone, something that turns out to be very easy. When I stop growing as quickly, I move on to carving runes out of bone. Then, it’s bone needles, knives, spoons, and doorknobs. Finally, I’m out of bone, so I break them all down into bone meal I can use in rituals.
Working with metal takes some doing. I can’t make slender strands for rings or chains, so I have to make forms out of stone and pour molten metal into them. The fact that I can bend red-hot ingots with my bare hands turns out to be a nice plus.
I focus everything on making thin rings. All the usual items I get are broken down into their components, with cloth thrown out and metal kept. The only things I don’t touch are valuables with hidden attributes. Those I keep.
I have to kill my victims and stop working on my mental resistance as I need new materials. Collecting them is all I do for the next two days.
The profligates, misers, moneylenders, and other sinners have a veritable mountain of material, and I drag everything I find back to my plateau. Stealing iron chests full of rocks and running away is hilarious. And I really need the metal.
I’m having so much fun that I don’t even realize it’s been fifty hours. Hurriedly, I dig myself into the dirt, leaving just my eyes and nose above it.
∞ ∞ ∞
Eliza had been keeping an eye on Anji for almost seven months. The whole time, she played in Project Chrysalis, too, watching how her charges played. For all of them, the new world was one of discovery, a ray of hope. They were happy to find parents, even if they were in-game, as they seemed real. All the many projects that had been created before Project Chrysalis were like four cardboard walls in comparison, and all children and in-game parents were offered the opportunity to move there after the beta test ended. When the children logged in, they found themselves with the same family, only in a different world.
Anji was an exception to that rule, although his psychological data said that he was feeling fine. Eliza didn’t believe a word of it. He’d spent seven months in a location where it was always evening, and where the sky was blanketed in black clouds outlined in red. First, he laid there without moving for ten days, and then he ran along the ash desert for two weeks. Finally, Eliza stopped watching. It was terrifying just to think how the boy had tried to make friends with the creatures in the misty shroud. Could that be a cry for attention? Then, he ran away on his own. It looked like a kind of hell, though she wasn’t sure how he’d got there.
He ignored all her attempts to break through to him, and threats only made it worse. Even silence was a welcome relief to him. Neither she nor Anji had said a word at any of the last ten meetings. He just sat there motionless, and then went back to playing the game happily and actively. At least, that was her impression.
The previous six months, she’d asked Moro to collect the recordings of his gameplay, though she didn’t keep an eye on him. She needed a break and more information before she made a decision. Anyway, she decided that it was a good time to check in on him right then.
∞ ∞ ∞
It took me three weeks to get my carpenter and blacksmith skills to 250. Then, I spent another three getting my artifact skill to the same level. Today, I can finally get to work on what all of that is for. I break down all of the items I’ve created, leaving just my spikes. I need metal! So much metal! And lots of spikes.
The strongest of the blood magic seals I have access to is a three-level seal for 85 sacrifices. Fifty of them go in the outer ring, 25 in the second ring, and 10 in the third ring. In the center, you put the item you want to cast the spell on. The magician needs to be holding onto it, and the artifact you create will become yours, powerless in the hands of others. Then, the item grows along with the owner’s level until it hits its limit, at which point, it is destroyed. That’s basically how blood magic attaches items to their owners.
For that reason, I look around to see what kind of valuable materials I have. Everything highlighted silver in my inventory is made out of mithril, something I figured out after breaking down my first ring. Forty-seven rings, two swords, and ten necklaces go toward making eight rings and a chain.
I decide not to reset the gems in the rings. I don’t want to look like a girl! They attract attention I don’t want, too. All I leave is a bloody malachite, grinding it up and adding it to the heated metal. Even though you can barely tell that it’s there, the finished product has slight flecks of a cold white color. If the ritual works, I’ll have to wear gloves. I don’t want to attract attention to myself with something that beautiful.
I spend another hour making gloves out of the leather cloak I got from Cerberus. Now, I’m ready. The seal lasts four hours before disappearing, so I need to find some victims.
Finding and catching them is easy. Leaving part of them in the outer circle, I go back to the rest. They all have to be pinned to the ground with spikes and stun runes. One spike stuns for an hour, four for six.
The next part is both the simplest and the most complex: I have to kill my victims in a particular order, gradually increasing the flow of energy to the rings. The problem is that the ritual is designed to be carried out by at least two people, so I have to hold the ring with one hand and use my second to kill the sacrifices with magic. As the lines of the seal glow red, a hum breaks out, and suddenly, the space inside starts to flicker a dark red color. Evidently, the mana itself changed color and became visible to the eye.
As soon as the first part of the ritual is complete, the concentration and astral transfer runes activate. My victims and I are supposed to be taken to an island of calm in the astral, though the danger lies in the fact that I don’t know what will happen there. Will I be just as strong, have all my stamina? Happily, it works. I turn out to have my same body and even the same equipment. I just have to run away from the crowd of angry men. They’re all at Level 280, too, so that’s pretty scary. Their number thins quickly, however, as I turn magic damage and destruction spikes on them. As soon as I kill the last one, I’m sent back to reality.
Forced transfer to personal virtual space
Initiator: Eliza Donovan
Transfer in: 10… 9… 8… 7… 3… 2… 1 second
∞ ∞ ∞
“Miss Elizabeth, you should see what Anji Ganet is doing right now.” ArtIn Moro was polite, always telling Eliza when there were problems with her wards. They didn’t have that many in the game, though there was the odd occasion.
“What’s going on? I’m in a meeting.”
“From what I can tell, he’s conducting a mass sacrifice that equates to the level of a blood magic master.”
“I’ll be done in ten minutes. Bring him to my virtual space. Kids can’t do that! The rules of the game don’t let them.”
A minute later, Moro addressed Eliza again.
“I’m sorry for interrupting, but the situation just got complicated. According to the Project Chrysalis ArtIn, no rules have been broken. The boy is in another world, one without those restrictions, and the ArtIn is refusing to force him into the personal space until the ritual is complete.”
“What’s going on over there?! Okay, I’m leaving for the personal space. Bring him there as soon as the ritual is done.”
Eliza waited for almost twenty minutes. When Anji showed up, he was practically glowing with joy, even smiling at Eliza. Is that how a boy who has sacrificed almost 85 intelligent creatures should look? she thought.
“What are you doing? Why are you torturing people? You decided to use blood magic, and now you’re doing mass sacrifices? You think you’re going to get away with this? Your karma’s going to be terrible as soon as people realize you’re a blood mage. Do you have any idea what’s going
on? There’s a war! And all you can think about is knifing people by the dozen. They can see where any item came from! Any! If an item has anything to do with black magic, the owner is either executed or sent to the mines. How did you even figure out how to use blood magic? The game doesn’t let kids anywhere near it!”
Anji’s only reaction to her wrathful tirade was an attack of Homeric laughter.
“I’m going to write a petition to have you kept from using blood magic. And I’m going to tell the supervisor to cut down on your free time!”
∞ ∞ ∞
It’s incredible! I’m holding in my hands a ring that I created myself. It whispers something about a wish to serve its master, turning out to be just as semi-intelligent as the book said it would be. The only problem is that I was summoned by the psychologist as soon as I left the astral, and I don’t have much time left if she’s going to follow through with her threats. First, though, I want to see what I came up with.
Superior vampire acolyte ring
A crazy blood mage killed dozens of people to create this ring, endowing it with consciousness and a thirst for blood. The blood malachite and mithril give the ring incredible power, though only its owner can wield it. The ring would destroy anyone else who tried to wear it.
Effect:
Power +25
Stamina +25
Survivability +25
Requirement: Scalable item
Durability: Indestructible, with damage to it taken out of the owner’s health
∞ ∞ ∞
I’m the crazy blood mage! I’m a psycho, sadist, and masochist, too. That’s what Eliza is going to think when she sees what I’ve been doing for the last six months. I need to hurry if they are going to approve her petition - I won’t have access to blood magic or sacrifices anymore. What a ring!
