Probability of successful hack: 37.5%.
Attempt 1... Successful.
Block... Wait, no! No blocking!
As soon as I had access to the locators inner workings, an interesting thought crossed my mind. I was planning on getting into the general's location. And the battle I was currently in had taught me where humans placed in the grand scheme of things — no matter what I was wearing, no matter how high I got my skills and attributes, a good locator could still find me. And that tended to lead to all kinds of unpleasantries being hurled in my direction. No, I need to be smarter about this.
The trick I was thinking of had worked once, and I didn't see any reason why it wouldn’t work a second time. Taking care to calculate every move, I pulled up the locator’s settings. Raptor was going to be indispensable when it came to whitelisting myself, and I was going to need my phone to get to Raptor. That all took time. A second or two for my phone, a second for Raptor, and another second to strap it onto my arm. In other words, I had to blind the locator for what felt like an eternity.
But how? How was I going to get the system to glitch without triggering the self-destruct mechanism? I wasn’t really sure why the destroyer had exploded, though I assumed the locator was rigged with just as many explosives. And I wasn’t going to be able to take control. There were too many question marks, and my knowledge of mines was too limited.
Time was of the essence, so I decided to sacrifice a pawn. I wasn’t sure how good the machine was at handling multiple targets at the same time, but I couldn't think of anything else, and so poor Drone came soaring down out of the clouds right at the destroyer. At first, the latter didn’t pay it any attention, though that quickly changed when Drone got to the remains of the dead destroyer. It had seen that my invisible little friend had an arm it could use to get my loot back.
Wait a second! Why hadn’t it occurred to me to hide the noa and pearl inside Drone? It had a special compartment there for just that purpose. Unbelievable! Wien am I going to get some smarts?! Such an obvious move, and still... The emotions had clouded my mind.
While I was busy berating myself, the game printed out my phone, following it quickly with Raptor. The locator perked up and even popped out another antenna. As it was clearly working in tandem with the destroyer, I saw7 the killer robot stop digging around and turn toward me. It needed just one good hit to end me, but it wras at exactly that moment that Drone dropped its invisibility and reached its arm out toward the crumpled remains of the first destroyer.
Even from my distance, I heard the enraged squeal the big machine let out as it turned sharply to greet its new opponent. Drone banked hard to the side, though the robot was faster. One flash, and the part of my brain responsible for Drone went blank. It had died the death of the brave. The destroyer began turning toward me to finish the job, but that’s when Raptor appeared in my hand and stretched toward the locator. Come on, baby, don't let me down!
You added yourself to the white list.
The destroyer finished turning toward me, took aim, and...nothing.
Slowly, almost as if it couldn’t believe what was going on, the machine turned back to the remains of its comrade and resumed digging around for the pearl. There was almost no time left until the players I assumed were coining were going to get there, so I had to hurry. No longer hiding, I dashed over to where the explosion had taken place. Nobody paid me any attention. The locator wasn’t acting up, so everything was all right, and that was the second destroyer’s undoing.
Yet another explosion rocked the location — as soon as I blocked the machine, the self-destruct system kicked in. Time was running out, though I still stopped to print out Ulbaron. I had no desire to make my way across open ground without it. The good news, at least, was that I’d still gotten credit for taking out the destroyer.
You destroyed a larva-level creature.
Level 4-20 (421).
The explosions had left no loot behind, and that hurt. As I'd been going through the fight, Yd been at least looking forward to a few million hitting my pocket at the end. But no, the general was taking care to choke off my income. Well, there's one way I can still make some money. It wasn’t much, but it was still something.
You took the first picture of 2 dead larva-level creatures.
280000 coins received.
Placing my hands on the still-hot metal, I didn’t bother trying to pull it off the way the second destroyer had been going about it. Things were easier for me — I could turn all the different parts into dark dust. I'm not sure why the destroyer didn't just do that. It was way faster.
The pearl was right there in the hollow where I’d left it. Of course, I did have to print out Fang and dig around in the brick-hard earth, though nothing had happened to my treasure itself. The noa was in good shape, too — all five spheres had made it through the thermal processing. Although, to be fair, they’d turned softer, more compact. I’d never seen noa like that before.
Shrugging and assuming it was just a visual effect, I picked the stones up and —
Note!
Concentrated noa was processed at temperatures exceeding 5000 degrees.
Absorber attribute unlocked:
You can absorb processed noa to begin your journey as an
absorber.
Time left to make your decision: 42 seconds.
I froze. Five balls of heated noa were ling comfortably in my hands, though it didn't hurt to hold them. Actually, I got the sense that they were somehow more real, or the way they were supposed to be. The timer ticked steadily downward, the noa cooling in lockstep with it. Their suppleness also receded.
What's an absorber? What does it absorb? How? Why?
With the edge of my consciousness, I noticed that the locator was telling me about a friendly target that had just gotten into range of its radar. Some player or other was less than ten kilometers away and closing fast in its quest to make off with the pearl. That did it. Even if something bad happened, I figured, I still had the pearl, and so I could just reset myself back to the way I’d been at the beginning. Fine, I'll do it. How do you absorb noa?
Place processed noa in your mouth and swallow.
Oh, hey, there’s a tip! That meant the process wasn't entirely unique, as it had been built into the game functionality. The stones tickled my tongue, almost the way a hot pepper might have. Swallowing, I immediately started printing out Valkyrie. My new opponent was coming in way too quickly.
But the process didn’t have time to finish. A gust of wind caught the half-printed pistol and whipped it off into oblivion along with the remains of the trees, the locator, and the approaching players. I found myself in the middle of an enormous, perfectly smooth cone. Looking around in amazement, I couldn’t help but notice the edges far off on the horizon. My stomach grumbled, and my muscles twitched as though from an electric shock, but I didn’t feel any kind of discomfort. I was thrown around, battered, and shaken. Some kind of black liquid oozed ominously from my skin. Still, I felt fine. Great, in fact. I felt purified, free of the damage that had been building up. The only problem was that my brain wras putting up a fight — it was like it didn’t want to part with something important to it, though it calmed down wrhen the black liquid beaded on my face.
I'd heard of nirvana before. And in that moment, I understood that it really did exist, and that it had taken me in its arms. All my cares were gone. I was pure. Enough. Complete. It wras hard to find the words to describe howT I felt.
But that’s when the text popped up:
General notification!
An absorber, a creature belonging to the creator and bereft of game limitations, was bom in World of the Changed!
The game owner set a l billion coin reward for the destruction of the absorber.
***
Congratulations!
You are the third absorber to appear in the entire history
of the game!
/> Startup bonus received: you can add a personal quality.
***
Processing available qualities...
Note! You are the creator of Fang, a named item. Quality selected automatically.
***
Quality received: Sacrificial offering. Description: You can saturate targets with necrotic energy to sacrifice them. Limitation: All
creatures within a radius of 2.g meters away from you are sacrificed. You can expand the radius of sacrificial offering by leveling-up your named items.
An unusual stream of information had cascaded down on me, something about qualities and requirements that I didn't really understand. I’d apparently stuck my foot in it yet again. Still, I didn’t get what it meant to be an absorber, not to mention how that limited me as a player.
“What’s an absorber?” I yelled into the air. I wasn’t expecting an answer, which made it quite the surprise when I got one.
“You’re an absorber,” a voice that was very much alive responded. Turning quickly, I found that a ghost had appeared behind me. It was amorphous, with no arms, legs, or head. Just a concentrated cloud, though I somehow still knew it was talking to me.
“But what am I supposed to do?”
“Absorb noa,” came the simple reply. “That’s your main objective.”
“Some details would be nice. This isn’t the kind of thing you come across every day.”
“You made the decision yourself, not forced by anybody. Absorbers are outcasts. Nobody likes them. Safe zones will no longer open their doors to you, and you will be hunted until you are destroyed by both
players and functions. Everyone wall be trying to take you out.”
A chill ran down my spine. Im really in a pickle this time. The ghost continued.
“As an absorber, you have no in-game limitations. The game’s nanoparticles no longer work on you, and you’re entirely dependent on noa. But that’s your weakness. You have to absorb at least one unit of noa every7 twenty-four hours — that’s the only way you can survive.”
“But what’s the upside? The advantages?”
“There are no advantages to being an absorber. You’re just a creature with a different game mechanic — the creator made you to collect compensation from the owners. In fact, the creator is even okay with letting planets live if it can get enough compensation. Each living world has exactly one million units of noa, though the units swallowed by the absorber remain there forever. We can call that your advantage. The more noa you absorb, the better the chances that your planet will be able to survive. Also, for every unit of noa the owner doesn’t receive, it slaps down a hefty7 penalty. That’s why everyone’s hunting you — if they kill you now, they won’t have to pay as much.”
“What about the quality' I got? Is that some kind of bonus?”
“It gives you at least a shot at living a little longer. The creator takes care of its creations, so you’ll be able to use sacrificial offering even without your dagger and regardless of the level and development of your
opponents.”
“But I can still use the dagger itself, right? And the rest of my named items?”
“Sure. Almost nothing has changed for you, with the exception of your new quality, the new requirement to absorb noa every' day, and the fact that everyone wants to destroy you. Everything else is the same as it’s ahvays been. It’s just like I said — noa is now responsible for your existence instead of nanoparticles. So, no need to boost introversion, closure, or expanded consciousness anymore. It’s impossible to see you in the ether.”
“I need them for Zelda,” I replied automatically, though the ghost said nothing. The silence dragged on, and I decided to ask another question.
“What now'?”
“It’s up to you. You have twenty-four hours to find and eat another unit of noa. By the way, you can’t absorb it in advance — every day, you need another unit. You aren’t just personified noa anymore. You’re an absorber. Good luck, Mark Derwin! I wouldn’t stick around this location — it’s going to get crowded with players, the changed, and a variety' of functions.”
The ghost started to dissolve away, and I realized I still hadn’t gotten an answer to my main question.
“Wait, who are you?”
But the answer wasn’t forthcoming. My mysterious interlocutor had disappeared, leaving me alone with my problems.
The first thing I did was pull up my status table. If any changes had been made, they were going to be reflected there. But there weren’t many. The titles and ranks section had changed, leaving me with the lone title of absorber and not a single rank. And that was pretty much it. Worried that Valkyrie might have been printed out and destroyed, I opened my virtual storage, though everything was fine. My pistol was right where it was supposed to be. I quickly strapped all my named items on and sighed in relief — in that moment, I was alive and well. The fight wasn’t over yet.
The second important thing I had to do was take care of my own safety. Grust answered immediately, almost as if he’d had his phone in his hand waiting for me to call.
“Hey! Well, you really did it this time. Verloven is furious, and he told me to get you over here as soon as possible.”
“Do you have the noa?” I asked without bothering to say hello. It really had been a good idea to hand Grust a couple of the stones before leaving the location. I'd bought myself two days to react and put together a plan.
“Of course! Are you about to die?”
“No, I just need them. Fly over to the edge of the location. It’s important, so get there right now, and without Verloven. There’s only one thing he wants to do with me...”
“Got that right — a whole billion! It’s pretty obvious what he has in mind for you,” my former partner replied with a snort. “Okay, I’ll be there in five.”
“Great! Call me when you get there.”
I was going to have enough noa for two days... In that time, I had to find more, preferably a whole bag of it, and figure out what to do about my sister. That latter problem really had me stumped. The battle with the destroyers had shown me how powerless I was against a locator, at least, as long as I was wearing game equipment. And I was positive the general's location would be even more heavily defended. After the changes that had just happened, I also had to assume the general wasn’t going to be as willing to work with me.
Okay! I still had two days to find more noa and rescue Squirrel. That was enough whining — it was time to work. The monsters weren’t going to destroy themselves, and I needed to save the planet. A measly seven units of noa wasn’t the legacy I wanted to leave behind.
Chapter 4
THE RED TIMER in the bottom left corner of my field of vision was my life sentence. If the ghost was right, as soon as the number dropped to zero, it was game over for me. The prospect wasn’t a great one.
But I still found a positive for myself: the noa Grust gave me went right into my inventory. Having the absorber status had changed something in the settings, and the game no longer gave me problems when I tried to send the stones off into virtual reality7. Sadly, the same trick didn’t work with the rainbow pearl. I was forced to drop it into my pocket.
I flew around the crater under cover of the invisibility Zelda offered. The ghost had been right — I got the feeling all the players in the hexagon had gathered in one spot. The variety was impressive. Some races I’d already come across, though they turned out to make up just a small portion of the army that had invaded Earth. There were all kinds: robots, giants, creatures with fur and long teeth, tiny beasts, and others that dashed around nimbly. And they weren’t just on the ground, as the air was packed with thousands of flying machines, winged creatures, and all the other players that wrere able to fly one way or another. The latter worried me most — it took a special player to get their hands on Ulbaron and its flying modules.
The key figure in the entire menagerie was Two. Off looking like a colossus, the general’s spawn was giving ord
ers to everyone else there. And it wasn’t an iron astride a platform; Two could move around confidently on its own two legs, though it was hovering above the rest of the army on the ground in that moment. I zoomed in as close as I could to check out my opponent’s armor. It was... Perfect? No, not that. It was exquisite. Even my advanced Ulbaron looked like a cheap knock-off in comparison. When my perception kicked in to give me a picture of the inner workings, I sighed in disappointment — I'd never come across anything like that. The general's spawn was one solid mechanism without a single weakness. When I tried to think of a comparison, the T-iooo from the classic movie was the only thing that came to mind, and it was made of all kinds of self-contained parts capable of adapting to meet any threat. In fact, Two didn’t have any vital nodes. Everything wras spread out across its body to the point that it would have remained dangerous even if you tore off its legs, arms, and head, and left an enormous hole in its body. I also assumed it was capable of splitting itself into multiple parts that could attack from different angles.
I wasn’t even sure how7 it wras possible to take it out... There was just hacking, though something told me I’d have to hack every individual part. Whatever the case, I was in no hurry to engineer a confrontation.
Although... The T-iooo had been unbeatable, too, though a few choice words and the aborigine’s quick wit had proven equal to the task. There was a way, I just wasn’t seeing it. Ill find some liquid nitrogen and give that thing a bath. And then burn it alive.
Zelda had just ten minutes of invisibility left, so my only option was to beat a hasty retreat while quelling the urge to drop a few dozen thermal mines on the players from above. They were going to live to fight another day.
I decided to stick to the plan. Making my way over to the closed location had been my intention, and so that was what I was going to do. But once again, life got in the way of my plans. Just as I arrived at the edge of the funnel, Raptor told me I was getting a report. And that surprised me to the point that I had it push everything to my screen.
World of the changed 3 Noa in the flesh Page 4
