City of the Dead
Page 1
City of the Dead
a novel
by Vasily Mahanenko
THE ALCHEMIST
Book 1
Magic Dome Books
City of the Dead
The Alchemist, Book # 1
Copyright © V. Mahanenko 2020
Cover Art © Ivan Khivrenko 2020
Cover Design © V. Manyukhin 2020
English translation copyright © Jared Firth 2020
Published by Magic Dome Books, 2020
All Rights Reserved
ISBN: 978-80-7619-159-4
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental..
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Table of Contents:
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Epilogue
Prologue
THE BLIZZARD BROUGHT with it driving winds, but Farmer-883-PR8 wasn’t giving up. He pushed on relentlessly toward the temple. With one hand held out to shield his face, in his other he held the dearest of burdens: a rosy-cheeked little boy sleeping peacefully despite the cold, gusting air. The father wasn’t worried about his son’s health—he was under the protection of the god. No snow, wind, or even stray arrows or spells could have hurt the child until it was initiated. The few passersby turned and stared, surprised to see the naked man carrying an equally naked child. It was only the snow-white underwear created by the god that covered their shame.
“Where are you going?” The guard statue at the main gate came to life and held out a threatening hand. A blue light enveloped its fingers as it prepared for combat.
“I want to ac-c-ctivate my so-o-on.” Unlike the child, Eight, which was what everyone called the man, felt the snow, wind, and cold, sharp rocks under his bare feet all too keenly. Already down to ten units, his shield level was slipping lower with each passing minute. He had to make it in time.
“Access confirmed. Welcome.” The glow left the guard’s fingers as it stepped to the side and turned back into a lifeless statue. Unwilling to leave the job to humans, the god always protected its temples.
The man walked stiffly inside. It was his fourth time there. The first had been when he was little, when they’d brought him in for activation. Since his parents had been poor, they hadn’t been able to afford a bonus to get their third son a good roll, though to be fair, they wouldn’t have gone for it even if they’d had the money. All they owned had gone toward their oldest, though he’d died a year before Eight had been born. His roll had been unlucky—less than twenty. That wasn’t even good enough to pick out a name, so they’d had to go with the randomly generated one. A good half the people in the small town of Culmart had similarly random names.
The other three times he’d been there had been with his wife to bring their elder children. Three times, they’d bought a +5 for the roll. The eldest had rolled a 13 and become a hunter. Ten years later, he was killed tracking boar in a local forest. Both daughters had rolled a 45, giving them a great shot at solid attributes, only there had been a raid. It was unexpected—there had been no way of knowing it was coming. Ringold’s green lixes had swept in to grab all the initiated girls. And by the time the baron’s forces had burst into the town, it had been too late. The whole thing was over. The lixes had disappeared into a portal, their captives disappearing along with them. Eight’s wife was beside herself. Her grief wasn’t for long, however, as she found herself pregnant once again that very same evening. But the god turned its back on her that time—even with her chances of dying during childbirth just 2%, she got incredibly unlucky.
Left alone with his son, Eight got to work. He took any job he could find no matter how much it paid and even if it meant leaving the child alone for weeks. That was fine—the god’s servants took care of children. And after living as ascetically as possible, Eight had come up with an unheard-of amount: a hundred and two gold. Of course, he had to sell his house, not to mention the clothes off his back, to pick up even that little bit extra. But there he was in front of the altar, resolute in his determination to do everything he could for his son.
“Farmer-883-PR8, welcome to the temple. What brings you here?” the god asked lifelessly. Eight shivered. The voice, bereft of emotion, raised the hackles on his neck, giving him the urge to fall down on his face before the god’s majesty. But he couldn’t do that without losing the blessing. There was something else he was there to do.
“My son’s initiation.” Eight held out the year-old boy. Lithe silver snakes appeared, wrapped themselves around the child, and pulled it toward the shimmering film by the wall. The locals called it the eye of the god.
“Your initiation request has been approved. Would you like to modify the initial data?”
“Yes,” Eight replied decisively. “I’m giving all my coins for the bonus as well as…”
The man faltered. Saying the words turned out more difficult than he’d been expecting. Back home, as he’d practiced his short speech, it had been easy to get out. But there, in front of the god, Eight stopped short. Who was he to ask something like that?
“One hundred and two gold were deducted from your account. The current bonus is +10. Would you like to modify the initial data?”
“I give my life for my son!” Eight blurted out, finally gathering the courage. His body shook. That time, it wasn’t from cold; it was the fear. He’d just doomed himself to certain death.
“Offer received, currently processing. Note! Confirmation needed. By sacrificing yourself for your uninitiated child, you don’t just give him additional bonus points. You also spawn a monster whose main goal in life is to kill the child.”
Eight hadn’t heard about that. Actually, it hadn’t been that long before that he’d found out it was even possible to sacrifice his own worthless life. Busy cleaning some animals, he’d overheard a conversation between two traders who’d somehow found themselves in his neck of the woods. One of them had been boasting about buying his son two victims, having paid their families large sums. The move had significantly boosted his son’s initial chances. Eight liked the idea. And while he couldn’t afford any slaves, what he was able to give for his son was his own life, doing everything he could to make sure his son’s was anything but the one he’d been cursed with. Death was worth the reward. Of course, he hadn’t known about the monster, but that wasn’t ba
d enough news to give him pause. If it took creating a monster, so be it. He had confidence that his son would be equal to the task.
“I confirm it!” he said as he hit the green square in front of him. When the god demanded confirmation, mere words didn’t cut it. Action was required.
“The life of Farmer-883-PR8 is valued at +22 to the bonus. Current bonus: +32. Initial settings accepted, the monster was generated. Rolling now. Farmer-883-GGN43 rolled a 71. Applying bonuses. Note! Farmer-883-GGH43 was renamed Tailyn Vlashich. Note! Tailyn Vlashich rolled better than 100. Mana initiating. Village elder informed. Tailyn is released from paying taxes until sixteen years of age. Between sixteen and twenty-one, the tax will be one crystal a year. Beginning at twenty-one, the tax will be adjusted to account for his achievements. Tailyn Vlashich’s activation is complete.”
But Eight heard none of that. His body had crumbled to the ground, a black dust that seeped away, after he’d done everything he could for his son. At the same time, somewhere deep in the Black Mountain, a black lix opened his eyes. His mother gone, the child was alone. If he was strong, he would survive. If not… His dozen brothers and sisters also needed food. Before she’d left the cave, his mother had glanced over at her youngest child and grinned. She knew which of her children would be leaving the cave they’d been born in. The newborn had a mana bar below his life meter, the first of the black lixes to have one.
Chapter 1
You found an Ordinary Loach (32).
TAILYN VLASHICH grinned happily as he dropped the flower into his bag. The god was merciful that day. It wasn’t so often he found more than five flowers, and that made thirty-two in the space of just the morning. Mistress Valanil was going to be happy to see him. And if he could come up with another eight loaches by the end of the day, he would have four silver coins coming his way—a fortune for a ten-year-old kid.
The boy gave himself another mental pat on the back for his courage and ingenuity. Heading up into the ruins had been the right move. While the adults generally kept their kids away from the ancients’ ruined city, Tailyn’s guardian couldn’t have cared less about him. The god’s laws made it illegal to send anyone with a mana bar to do physical labor, and the town elder wasn’t about to invest time and energy in someone leeching off society. Paying for the kid was enough of a burden.
For a long time, the boy just wandered the streets, unsure of what to do. His friends were all off working the fields, chopping wood, or mining stone, picking up at least one specialization in the process, but that wasn’t an option for Tailyn. Master Isor, his guardian and the village elder, announced that the treasury just didn’t have the thousand gold it would have taken to develop the sponging slacker. And while the god gave kids without mana a random work specialization when they turned six, Tailyn was going to have to wait until he turned twelve. Only then would he be permitted to stand before the god and find out what his life held.
It was only Mistress Valanil, the local herbalist, who took pity on the boy. She couldn’t teach him the herbalism skill, though what she could do was draw the flowers she needed and explain where they grew. And with that, the boy became an herbalist, albeit without the requisite skill, crawling around the fields as he compared every flower he found to Mistress Valanil’s sketches. It was quiet outside the city. The guards had long since destroyed all the monsters, leaving nothing there to threaten Tailyn. And the herbalist even paid him one silver coin for every ten flowers, which stunned and amazed him. Without his own expenses, as Isor begrudgingly paid for everything, the boy had managed to save up enough over two years of work to buy one divine gold. One day, he would have the courage to head over to the temple and make that happen.
Tailyn had decided to pick his way through the ancient ruins not far from the city that day. It was a forbidden area, which was why boys headed there to pick up their “valor stone” as soon as they turned six. That proved they were grown up and ready to work for the good of the town. And while the adults didn’t like it, a quick glance at their own stone sitting on a shelf reminded them to keep their mouth shut. Nobody had any intention of stopping a tradition that had already lasted more than a thousand years.
Even Tailyn had a valor stone. It was lying on a shelf in his room. Otherwise empty, the shelf made it painfully clear that he had no other evidence of his bravery—no weapons, no loot, nothing he’d mined or chopped himself. Even the flowers he picked for Mistress Valanil refused to find a home there. Until the boy unlocked herbalism, the plants wouldn’t be accepted.
Taking a deep breath, Tailyn headed onward, his path taking him higher and higher. His notes told him ordinary loaches grew in the sun, peeking out between rocks, with three bright-red petals each. Everything similar except for a different color was the dangerously poisonous shark flower. Mistress Valanil had instructed the boy not to touch them—doing so could result in the kind of enormous burn she’d earned herself when she was little. A shark flower had cut straight through her protection.
After finding his way to a high ridge that turned out to be free of flowers entirely, Tailyn decided to take a quick break. He pulled up his attributes. For whatever reason, staring at the semi-transparent window floating in front of him calmed him down.
Status table
General character information
Tailyn Vlashich
No class
Level
1
Age
10
Coins
0
Gold
0
Shield level
60
Mana level
60
Attack (physical)
14
Attack (magic)
16
Skills
None
The numbers in the table were low, lower, in fact, than any of the other children in the town above the age of six. But there was nothing Tailyn could do about that.
The most important entries in the table both clocked in at one: his level and his yearly tax. And while his level more or less made sense—it only increased when he did something extraordinary like enrolling in the magic academy or completing a mission from the god, should it deign to come down and offer one—things were more complicated when it came to the tax. Everyone paid a tax starting when they turned sixteen, be they a lowborn peasant or the emperor himself. May he enjoy many years of health. Crystals were extracted from the ancients’ deepest mines by the country’s most esteemed workers: miners. Being a miner meant prosperity. It meant everything. And since people with mana weren’t sent to the mines, Tailyn was worried his fate lay elsewhere. Crystals were all sent to the capital, where the emperor personally gave the god its due on behalf of his subjects.
Nobody knew what coins were. At least, none of the other boys had ever heard so much as a rumor. Gold, sure—that was what you could buy at the god’s temple for two hundred silver coins so you didn’t have to worry about anyone stealing your treasure.
The shield level was his personal protection. It formed around everyone as a gift from the god they received at birth, increasing by one with each passing year. From what people said, it also had something to do with your level, though there were too few people in the town who’d gotten past level one to tell. Mistress Valanil, who was all the way up at level twelve, had promised to tell Tailyn all about that when he turned twelve and got his class.
The mana level was something like the shield level. It also increased with each year, only Tailyn had no way to use it. Without special skills, mana was just as useless as the magic attack value that was tied to it. The boy really had no idea what it was about—Master Isor, the only adult with mana, categorically refused to answer any questions on the subject. Of course, there was one more “lucky” kid with mana, Master Isor’s son Dort. He was a year older than Tailyn and already had the designer skill. The town had obviously come up with the money for him. But no matter how hard he tried, Tailyn couldn’t make himself call Dort master. The kid was
small, scrawny, a young version of Master Isor. Three years before, Dort had been torturing an innocent dog when someone gave him a walloping. Master Isor had lost it, assigning to him a couple adult blockheads looking to become city guards. The thirteen-year-olds had clear orders to protect his darling Dort from all enemies. Six months later, the whole thing had gone to Dort’s head, and the rest of the kids were under his sway. That went for Tailyn, too. Every week, he was supposed to pay one whole silver coin, otherwise his back was introduced to a club. And that was as dangerous as it was painful. With each year that went by, the guards grew stronger, and it was only a matter of time before they were going to be able to take out his personal shield, leaving him defenseless against the world. Getting the shield back would have been nigh on impossible… The only option would have been to head over to the temple and beg the god for pity—he certainly wasn’t going to find an elixir off in the middle of nowhere.
If that last attribute, physical attack, had been higher, Tailyn would have tried to stand up for himself. It determined how hard he could hit with his bare hands. And yes, if he’d had a club, his attributes would have increased his attack strength, but who was going to give a nameless parasite a real weapon?