“No, not anymore,” I replied, and that wasn’t just an answer. I really was beginning to suspect that I was anything but human.
Checking for human affiliation...
Check complete. Natural player Mark Derwin is a fire
elemental.
***
Because of the new race, changes were made to the absorber role. The temporary restrictions placed on mimicry
and invisibility were removed.
“A fire elemental?” the old man replied in surprise. “It’s been a while since I’ve heard of them. Well, that changes things. I accept your offer, Mark Derwin, and trade the lives of three personified units of noa for one core.”
You received three slaves.
You freed your slaves.
They got themselves enslaved? The game really had gone off the rails. Quickly finding the functionality for giving players complete freedom, I went ahead and pulled the trigger right away. Slavery wasn't my gig. Of course, Verloven shook its head and clucked its tongue disapprovingly.
“That was unwise. They had to obey your every command regardless of their own will. You could have left them here, handed them noa, and been guaranteed a respawn if ever anything went wrong. But now, they have a choice, and you can’t be guaranteed they’ll make the right one. Someone else could pay them more. That was a bad move, Mark Derwin.”
“How about we all mind our own business?” I was having a hard time keeping my emotions in check. Remembering Olsen, yet another function, was the only thing that helped. That character had reasoned exactly the same way as Verloven.
“It’s up to you. I’m just telling you what would be in your own best interests, though you can decide what to do with mv advice.”
“You didn’t ask me here to give me advice, did you?”
“How many cores do you have?”
“What do you care?”
“I can help you. Well, I can help you and humanity as a whole. I’m just not going to do that for free, of course.”
“And that’s why you asked me if I was human? There are some things you can’t tell humans, right?”
“Excellent, I so appreciate that I don’t have to drop hints about the obvious. You’re right — no functions are permitted to give game data to humans no matter what their relationship is. But you’re different. You’re a fire elemental. That frees my tongue, also making things very interesting for me.”
“Okay, let’s say I’m game. What can you tell me?”
“Quite a bit. Or better, everything you’d like to know. For example, who the owner is, where it’s located, and how to beat it. All we have to do is agree on a price.”
“How much would an hour’s chat with you cost?” I asked with a
crooked grin. Verloven knew which buttons to press.
“Each question will cost you two cores. The answer will be maximally complete, with no information hidden, the game itself serving as the guarantee. What do you think?” The old man cast its lure, though I wasn’t biting. I appreciated the mention about complete answers, however. They could have been too general to be useful. Anyway, I had a different idea.
“No, Verloven, I don’t like that approach. I need an hour with you, and I can give you three cores for that. Do you have any idea how much dragon’s blood they have?”
“Yes, I’m aware. Just three percent, not enough to fill a coffee mug. A great drink, by the way! The best I’ve tried in the last thirty releases — the other planets didn’t have anything like it.”
“And we won’t be enjoying it anymore, will wre?”
“Is that a question you’d like me to answer?”
I shook my head.
“I didn’t think so. Your offer doesn’t wrork, Mark Derwin. For your three cores, I’ll give you the answers to two questions. That’s the best offer you’ll get — they just don’t have enough blood in them. Deal?”
I waffled back and forth. On the one hand, the cores were useless to me; on the other, I knew how valuable they were. They were what the dragon had shown up on Earth to find. How much blood is there on Earth? A kilogram? A ton? It might not have been that rare, actually.
“We have ourselves a quandary,” I said. “I don’t know what you can tell me, and I don’t know how to value the blood. And the events of the past month have told me that trusting a function isn't a great idea. I’ve been through too much to think I can do that.”
“Nobody said you have to throw in all your cores at once. Just tty one — I’m sure you’ll appreciate the result. What do you want to know?”
Verloven held out a hand, and I placed two cores in it. One was for Grust and the other two; the other was for the question.
“You said you’d tell me how to destroy the release owner. Is there some secret to that?”
“I figured that would be at the top of your list. Yes, there’s a secret to it. You can’t hurt the owner with any of the game weapons. Actually, the point of the game is that it completely replaces physics, how beings and items interact with each other, and the normal logic of things. The nanoparticles on your planet cover almost 95% of its surface area. What’s so surprising about that? All the air as well as the surface to a depth of a kilometer and a half no longer has anything natural about it. Plants, animals, players, even dust particles — all of it belongs to the game and follows its rules. Except the owner. It isn’t a being in the game. It’s real.”
“I don’t get how that’s supposed to help me kill it.”
“Slow down,” Verloven replied. “Every time you use a game item, calculations are run for damage, blocking, shell trajectories, and much more. You think you’re doing damage, but you’re actually just imitating it. The other object’s nanoparticles follow the game and rearrange the way it tells them to. They might form a hole, maybe a charred or shredded body, even an electric block capable of withstanding your shot. Everything depends on the initial conditions.”
“So, since the owner isn’t a game creature, game items don’t affect it?”
“Exactly! You could shoot it, throw explosives at it, even use weapons you think are from your original world. But that would all be useless. You wouldn’t be doing a bit of damage.”
“Wait, human weapons were changed, too?”
“You’re not listening to me. Nanoparticles penetrated the earth to a depth of a kilometer and a half, replacing everything a few months before the game ever started. All those nuclear explosions, the ones that took out the cities? Nanoparticles.”
“That doesn’t make sense. A player mutated because of the radiation — was that nanoparticles, too? They can even imitate radiation?”
“You’re talking about Wart? That player was a mistake, which was why he was deleted. Logically speaking, nuclear explosions give off radiation, and it was simulated in the city. Wart tried to heal at the same time as he was being exposed to the radiation. One protocol overrode the other, and you saw what happened. Since very few of the worlds the game has been rolled out in use nuclear warheads, that process hadn’t been fully tested. But corrections were made, so that won’t be happening again. Mark Derwin, the world you remember no longer exists.”
“But it's still possible to take out the owner? How? You haven’t answered my question yet.”
“Like I said, you’re not listening. The nanoparticles went almost everywhere, but only almost. Ten percent of Earth is outside their area. That’s where you didn’t have cell towers, and I can show you where those spots are. For a fee. You can head there, find a weapon, and take on the owner. That’s your only shot at destroying it.”
“That’s absurd. You’re talking about wildernesses where nobody lives — how am I supposed to find weapons there?”
“I’m not sure, though I swear by the game that I’m giving you the only way there is to hurt the release owner. No weapons made of nanoparticles can hurt anyone not part of the game.”
“I killed its son, but it was part of the game.”
“Quite. Dragons are lon
ers, flying between planets by themselves. Everything that showed up on Earth with it is part of the game, including its son. From what I know, the owner of this release devoured all its children as soon as they were initiated. Eternal creatures have their own morals and logic.”
“What about the release team? Are they part of the game?”
“That’s a separate question you haven't paid for.”
“In that case, I need a clarification. You said only original weapons can kill the owner. I’m aware of a dungeon in the next hexagon over that only natural players can get into, and only if they don't have any game equipment on them. You have to beat it in your original form, too. Could I find something in there that would hurt the dragon?”
“There’s a Last Chance dungeon in this release?” Verloven asked with unfeigned surprise. “That’s news... No, I didn’t know about that. They’re as rare as the rainbow pearl you found... Having one thing like that show up in a release is rare, but two is unheard-of. At least, I can’t remember anything like that. And I’ve seen a good three hundred releases.”
“You didn’t answer,” I said firmly when Verloven fell silent.
“You’re right, I didn’t,” the old man said suddenly. “That dungeon really might give you a weapon with no nanoparticles, only it’ll be defended by your best fighters. I don’t really know how they show up, though the basic idea is that the best of the best at the start of the game are moved to that location. They and their weapons don’t contain any nanoparticles. And, to anticipate your next question, no, they can't leave the area. They're tied to it forever. I don't want to force my advice on you, Mark Derwin, but if I were you, I wouldn’t go there. It’s dangerous. Very dangerous. If you die inside, the game won’t be able to bring you back — it’ll think you’re still alive.”
You received a thorough answer to your question.
Verloven stopped talking and stared attentively at me. It looked like it wanted to say something else, though the system stopped it.
I pulled up my virtual inventory and took a look at my cores. There were just thirteen left. No, I'm not going to ask any more questions right now. First, I had to come up with good ones — I already knew where the owner was located, for example. I had Villian to thank for that. It and its group had been the owner's personal guard, and they’d visited the neighboring hexagon frequently. They'd always gone to the same spot, too.
Suddenly, Verloven’s eyes widened and began to glow with a golden
light.
“I consider the answer incomplete!” the old man said with a voice so thunderous that the house shook. Screens and statues fell off the walls. “No game items can hurt creatures that aren’t part of the game, though the absorber has one foot outside it, too. While all the abilities the absorber has were given to it by the game, they take it out of the game, as well. The defender could not know that — it doesn’t have access to that information. Don’t ask it anything else in the next three days, as it will be recovering.
Mark Derwin, become a full-fledged absorber if you want to protect your planet.”
The glow faded from the old man’s eyes, and it sank to the floor like a broken doll. But the damaged function was the last thing on my mind. A message had appeared in front of me, though I wasn’t sure what to think about it. Nobody had so obviously pushed me in a particular direction before then. And it was clear that it wasn't the direction I was looking for — someone else wanted me to move that way. The one pushing me.
You spoke with a messenger from the creator.
New mission: Level 10 absorber. Description: Become a level ten absorber and acquire additional qualities that will let you damage creatures outside the game logic.
Somewhere deep down, a suspicion awoke. The long string of luck I’d been enjoying perhaps hadn’t even been luck in the first place.
Chapter 14
THERE WERE no goodbyes. Without a word, I shook Grust’s hand, nodded to Milady, gave Little a hug, handed them each a unit of noa, transferred all of them a billion coins, and flew off. There was no desire to explain anything to them — I was going to be back in three days to finish my conversation with Verloven, anyway. I needed answers, and I wasn’t about to let the defender go until it answered them. And even the creator wasn’t going to get between me and that little talk.
The creator’s messenger stepping in really had me worried. And it wasn’t just that the creature existed; it was that it had been following the conversation and stepped in when it felt I hadn’t gotten all the information I needed. It’s never pleasant to find out you’re being led around by the nose, doing someone else’s bidding. On the other hand, there was a silver lining: I could hurt the owner. At least, as long as I could get close enough and rack up absorber qualities.
And that was my plan.
I had forty-five dragon’s tears. That was enough for nine qualities, though I was going to need 1,080 units of noa. But wiiile that was a staggering figure, I knew where to find them. First and foremost, I needed to take out the local noa concentration plants. The fewer there were, the longer the game would last. The owner wasn’t going to leave until it had sucked Earth dry, after all. Plus, I needed to get into the southern location, the one with the remains of the storehouse, to clear it of the players calling it home. Just because.
But before any of that, I decided to visit another interesting location. It was one I’d already been to, the one where I’d killed the first team member. The machine had lived deep underground, hiding under the church and using it to give off will-suppressing waves, though that wrasn’t the most important thing. I was far more interested in the enormous triangle that was presumably the aliens’ flying machine. While I hadn’t been able to do anything to it the previous time, I’d been weak and low-level then, so I hoped to have better luck the second time around. If Verloven was right, the only shot I had at taking out the owner was using equipment from outside the game. And where else was I going to find it if not on an alien spaceship?
The flight didn’t take long, as I was already comfortable flying at top speed. Plus, for the first time since the game had begun, I didn’t have anyone wThooping or hollering as they chased after me. While I’d only been gone for two weeks, that had been enough for everyone to forget who Mark Derwin was. That's okay, I'll remind them. Just a bit later.
The triangle was right where I’d left it, the enormous ship laughing at anyone who tried to hack into it. And there were no people left in the location — the players the owner had permitted to move around the hexagon freely had slaughtered everyone they could find. Scattered spots of scorched earth bore witness to what humanity could expect in the very near future.
I settled down on the alien ship and immediately activated my device control. With my current skill level, I was going to be able to say for sure if it belonged to the game, and I didn’t get a result. The hunk of metal didn’t have a single piece of machinery inside. Fang bounced harmlessly off it, too. It didn’t even draw7 sparks.
That told me the whole story was true — nothing from the game could hurt anything with nanoparticles in it. Verloven hadn’t been hang. But I did have another way to get into the ship. For that, I stripped naked and dropped all my equipment in my inventory. Experience had taught me that game items, even named ones, didn’t fare well at high temperatures. With the prep work done, I ducked into my settings and turned up my body temperature to the original level, the level of a fire elemental. The air around me immediately began hissing and popping as thousands of little specks of dusts, all nanoparticles, burned up in the primordial fire.
After standing there for a few7 minutes, there was still no result. The ship’s hull was holding up just fine. In fact, its temperature hadn’t even changed. My heat was all for naught. Sure, the nanoparticles around me were groaning in pain, but everything that w7as real just laughed in the face of my fire. Beside myself in rage, I slammed a fist into the stubborn metal only to quickly pull it back. The blow7 had been so powerful that I
’d felt bones crunching — my reinforced bones and skin were powerless against the alien ship.
Suddenly, I had a great idea, and I even began breathing heavily. Verloven had told me the owner was the only real creature in the entire release, everyone else, its son and even the team included, being part of the game. They were made up of nanoparticles just like everything else. But that wasn’t the key part. What interested me was how7 the spider-like creature had accessed the ship. It was part of the game; the ship was not. And what did that mean?
I needed to get down onto the ground.
After returning my temperature to a regular level, I flew down and got to work.
I’d only ever seen the spider once, having happily dispatched it by burying Fang in its head. And if I’d been limited to Fartira and its high-level but still game-limited mimicry, I wouldn't have even given my plan a try — I only knew' the 3R32-221 release team member at a rate of 2%. But I had something else: the absorber’s mimicry. That skill couldn’t have cared less about the acquaintance percentage, the only important thing being wrhether I’d met the creature before.
As soon as I turned on the spiders identity, a message popped up in front of me:
Identifying user...
You were identified as equipment that came to Earth with the 3R32-221 release team.
Staff access granted.
The monolith jerked to open up a small crack. With each passing second, it widened, turning into an opening big enough for me to step through. My breath caught in my throat, though I quelled my emotions and walked into the alien spaceship.
As someone who had seen every episode of Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy, I was mentally prepared for what I saw. Metal walls hung with unusual devices and rows of buttons. Wide hallways partitioned by transparent doors equipped with ID panels. Multiple robots inactive and frozen against one of the walls. Signs everywhere. My decoding did its best to tell me what they meant, but it wasn’t enough. The text had nothing to do with the game, and that meant it couldn’t be translated.
World of the changed 3 Noa in the flesh Page 17
