Just to see what would happen, I went over to one of the robots and placed a hand on it. My device control told me it was a solid chunk of metal without a single electrical circuit, and so I wasn't able to do anything with it. But I’d still seen how things really were — there were all kinds of machines there. The bcistcii'ds!
All I could do was give each of the devices a try. Going over to them one by one, I tried unsuccessfully to take them off the wall. Touching them did nothing, too. None of the screens lit up, none of the switches did anything...nothing worked. I felt like a Neanderthal looking at a computer. Sure, I could jab at buttons, but lining up the logic of what was supposed to happen was beyond me. Taking a sledgehammer to it all would have been simpler.
Only I didn’t have a sledgehammer.
Already close to giving up, I went over to one of the doors. The panel next to it lit up and asked me to enter a password. Obviously, I didn’t know what it was. Placing a palm on the panel without really expecting anything, I jumped when the door slid noiselessly upward, and a gust of cold air hit me. At least, it hit Ulbaron, which I was wearing, though my armor did nothing to keep it out. The chill bit into me as if I were standing there naked.
I made sure nothing was going to jump out and kill me before turning on a light and cursing. Even my suit’s spotlight could do nothing — the beam was only visible where the light from the hallway fell. Where the shadows and darkness began, the spotlight was useless. Even the light turned out to be made of nanoparticles that cowered in the face of reality.
Stepping carefully, I moved ahead. The cold was extreme. The thought hit me that I could get undressed and warm up in my elemental form, but I brushed it away. From what I could tell, game conditions had no impact whatsoever on anything from the real world. I stood there for a while, having decided to give my eyes time to adjust to the lighting, though that didn’t help. It didn’t adjust a single iota. Whafs with this damn ship?
The space reminded me of a storage unit. There were containers with equipment, and I could even move them around. Grabbing one by the edges, I hauled it back where I’d come from, wheezing like a steam locomotive as I went. It was tough going. Still, I was eventually able to get the thing into the light, even though I had to stop a couple times to catch my breath. Throwing back the lid, I found myself staring at round tubes that looked exactly like sew^er pipes. They were made out of something that looked like stone, howrever, rather than plastic. And they w^ere hollow, thick-wralled, and empty. Each weighed wiiat felt like a ton, and I didn’t see any mechanisms or devices.
It hit me that the aliens had them in the cold for a reason. What if they’re poisonous or radioactive? The game wasn’t going to save me from a real threat, so I quickly closed the lid. Pulling another container out, I checked to see if its contents were the same and found similar pipes. They wrere equally plain, equally mysterious.
After feeling my way around the room, I had to admit defeat. There wras nothing else in the compartment. I went over to the opposite door and placed a hand against the panel, that time feeling much more confident about myself. Just as I’d expected, the security system recognized me and happily pulled open the door. On the other side wras a ray machine gun pointed in my direction. For some reason, I found myself rooted to the ground, well aware that any move could be interpreted as an attack.
“This is your last warning, machine!” the space rumbled. “You don’t have access to this compartment. Next time, you will be fired on without warning.”
The voice spoke in the game language to make sure the spider understood. For a little while, the barrel stared me down, the door finally closing to separate us. And that was when I realized I’d been frozen breathless the entire time. For whatever reason, it had been terrifying, possibly because I knew there was no way I could protect myself against a weapon like that.
Suddenly, I felt an overwhelming urge to run off and cause some problems. I weighed the pros and cons, ultimately deciding to pull the containers out and open the lids. The fact that the aliens kept them chilled meant a warmer space could ruin them. And that was exactly what I was going for.
That took me a few hours. I even pulled one big container off the ship, where I pulled open the lid and staggered backwards. The pipes began to smoke. Understanding perfectly well that Ulbaron would do nothing to protect me from gas, I dashed off. That was the end of my excursion into the spaceship, and there was nothing else for me to do there.
Wait a second!
Of course, there’s something for me to do!
I sprinted toward the church and found the passage leading underground. Nothing had changed since I’d last been in the machine’s lair. There were no monsters, and even the ones I'd killed had disintegrated. All that was left was the pile of equipment the spider had once needed, the pile taking up most of the area. Happily, with my spotlight working perfectly well, I didn't have a problem making my way down the shaft.
While I'd used Fang to rip my way through everything the previous time, Fd since learned that my ritual dagger could do nothing against nongame devices. And that meant something had to have survived. I wanted to find it, so I got down into the lair and grunted. My adaptive vision told me most of the ruined and remaining equipment belonged to the game. They lit up to make that clear. But there were also several devices that still didn’t shimmer, and they were the ones that caught my eye.
First, there was the desk. The previous time, Fd turned it upside down, though I had different eyes that time around. It didn’t shimmer. It was real. And therefore, I had to ask myself who would need something that massive underground. It wasn't just a game item drawn from scratch. It was real, dragged down from the surface.
The machine's favorite desk? I had a hard time picturing the spider sitting down at it. And really, I didn’t get how it worked. My hands began running over the surface in search of levers or buttons, but there were none to be found. The table was one solid piece of whatever material it was made out of. But as I crawled under it in hopes of finding something, yet another powerful bomb exploded in our world.
Only it was an alien bomb.
It cared nothing for obstacles like a thick layer of earth.
My incredible luck was all that saved me. The desk shuddered as sharp objects flew by, one of them slicing through my leg without meeting the least bit of resistance. Some shards kicked up sparks as they buried themselves in other game items left in the machine’s lair. I was also lucky in that the epicenter of the blast was far enough away from where I was hiding to result in a fairly wide spread. Not only that, but the desk was hefty enough to absorb most of the damage. A few especially sharp fragments pierced it, of course, though they stuck there, just barely scratching me.
Everything was over as suddenly as it had begun. With the hellish hail of shards flying by wrapping up, I wTas left once again with the prospect of being buried alive. Only the sharp pieces and the pain in my leg told me how real everything was — no, it wasn’t my imagination going crazy after so much time spent underground. Peeking out carefully from behind the table, I looked around. Everything I’d left intact after my previous visit had been completely demolished. Game equipment had been turning into scrap. The desk, which really had turned out to be a solid construction, was riddled with holes, though something new was poking out of the wall.
It was a safe.
A piece of shrapnel had knocked the storage unit out, and it was only the long-suffering desk that had kept it from dropping farther underground. While the door had withstood the blow, the sides had burst. A few other shards had apparently helped them along. And as I already understood how the game worked, I didn’t bother trying to pry open the holes. The only option was to stick my hand in and feel around to find what the machine from the spaceship had hidden in there.
But first, I had to pull myself away and concentrate on the messages that were popping up. The game had taken a while to analyze the explosion, though it was finally ready to explain what was
going on.
You destroyed the main shuttle used by the 3R32-221
release ship.
The release owner has their eye on you.
The game creator is impressed by you.
You earned a worthy reward.
***
Reward received: The time you have to absorb noa was increased by 24. From now on, you need to absorb noa once every 48 hours to survive.
You locked in 400 levels. Current level: 1047.
Body amplification boosted by 10 levels.
Damn it! The owner knew I was back in the game, and that was bad. Very bad. It didn’t take long to find out what its next move was.
A hunt was announced for Mark Derwin!
***
New mission: Hunter or hunted? Description: Survive twenty-four hour's beginning when the hunt was announced. If you are able to, you will earn a significant reward.
Wait, that was the ship that exploded? Why? Did the pipes overheat? Whatever the case, it didn’t matter. I had a minute to get as far away as I could, otherwise the players were going to start bathing the location in something deadly.
The safe refused to go anywhere, so I had to finish what I started and see what was hiding inside. My fingers gripped a small square with recesses around the edges. It felt like they went all the way through. Happily, it fit through the hole, though when I pulled it out, there was nothing to see. The light from my suit hit the object and disappeared as though sucked into a black hole. Without sunlight, it was impossible to get a good look at it, and so all I could do was check to make sure there was nothing else in the safe. That done, I dropped the square into one of Ulbaron s pockets, turned toward the door, and stopped. My loot had dropped straight through my suit as though it were made of smoke and mirrors. I could hold it, though I couldn’t put it in my pocket. And that was a problem.
Deciding to just carry it around with me, I took off and...headed toward the exit on foot. Flying with the object in my hand didn't work, either. I could walk; I couldn’t fly. I checked again to make sure. When I placed the square on the table, Ulbaron took off. When I picked it up, I crashed to the ground as though my engines had suddenly turned off.
Getting the object to the surface and taking a look at it had become a point of honor.
I got to the shaft. Everything was broken and demolished, the explosion having ripped through the lift. But that wasn't going to stop me. With blows from my fist, I opened hole after hole in the wall, making a kind of ladder that led upward meter by meter. It took a while to travel the short distance. In fact, I had to spend a good half an hour before I could collapse on the floor of the next level, an exhausted mess. And exhausted was right — the little square had sucked me dry. It was heavy, awkward. But I didn't give up, and I came away the victor. Once out of the shaft, I looked around sadly to see what had become of the spiral staircase. The explosion had riddled it, and quite a few sections had dropped down to block my way up. There was yet another climb ahead of me, that one, if I remembered correctly, even longer.
But there was no time to relax. The hunt had been declared, and high-level players were starting to show up in the hexagon. Even if they didn’t know exactly where I was, I had to assume they were going to start with that location, and the church couldn’t help but attract their attention. I needed to hurry.
Fang was a huge help. It cut through the game material without a problem, and my strength could finally help out as I moved chunks of stone the size of small cars. Finally, they stopped collapsing down from above me, which let me start heading up. Each meter was a battle. The brackets there to hold the supports in place helped, making that climb easier. Being that much closer to fresh air apparently helped, as well.
The foundation was all that was left of the church. The ship had been nearby, and the shock wave had swept its walls off somewhere far away. Speaking of the ship, all that was left of it was an enormous crater, not so much as a piece of rusted metal remaining where it had once stood. The pipes had been seriously overpowered.
Finally, I was able to take a look at my find. It really was some kind of device you attached to a hand with a strap that had enough length for someone very large. Rolled up, it clung so tightly to the device that they were almost indistinguishable. The holes that went through were also made for hands or, in my case, fingers. I decided to take a risk, sticking my index finger in one of them, though nothing happened. Either the device didn’t work, or it worked somehow differently. Maybe, you have to strap it on.
But I didn’t have time to check that, as I suddenly noticed a wetness on my chin. Pulling my helmet off, I ran a hand over it and stared down in surprise at the red streaks it came away with. I hadn't even noticed my nose bleeding. Suddenly, I lost any interest in studying my loot. Is this because of the explosion, how close I was to the pipes, or the device? I very much hoped one of the first two options were to blame, as I wasn’t about to toss the device away. Turning and switching on my absorber’s invisibility, I dashed off in the opposite direction from the epicenter of the blast. I needed to find somewhere to store my find. It was possible the nanoparticles had a hard time working with real items — that could have been why my body was acting up.
Five minutes later, my burst of energy was spent. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been that out of breath, in fact. My lungs were burning, my vision was blurring, and it was everything I could do to keep from vomiting. Actually, I wasn’t ultimately able to hold it in, and I found myself staring down in horror at a bloody mess. That was a problem. With the last of my energy, I tossed the square as far away as I could. My consciousness wavered, but I pushed myself farther away from the object.
When the darkness finally overwhelmed me, I felt positively heroic. There were at least ten meters between me and the alien block. That should be enough to survive. Otherwise, what was the point of it all?
Chapter 15
I WAS LYING on my back looking up at the clear sky. Players buzzed past overhead, all of them hungry to take me out and complete the owner’s mission. For a while, there were quite a few of them, though they thinned out significantly a couple hours later. All that were left were the toughest and most idiotic. Because while I wasn’t in the list of top location players, I was right there at the top of the list of players in the hexagon, with even Elhar Gee, the level 1288 demon, in my rearview mirror.
Raptor was good at mixing the good news with the bad. While I’d been unconscious, the game had recalculated the ranking, and I got a report when I woke up:
You’re the top player in the hexagon.
Access unlocked to the list of top release players.
***
You’re the top player in the release.
You’re the first natural player in the past 10 releases to reach the top of the list two months after the game began.
2000 free attribute points received.
The positive side was that there wasn't anyone better than me out there, though I had to laugh when I got the two thousand free points. Given that even my main infiltrator parameters took 1,600 points to level-up just once after level 160, it wasn't all that generous of a gift. Especially not for the top player in the world.
Although, was that really such a surprise? The point of the game wasn’t to let naturals win; it was there to distract them.
None of the players could see me. Before I’d lost consciousness, I’d switched on my absorber invisibility, which meant the world’s radar screens had nothing on me. And having returned from the land of dreams and dealt with the list of top players, it wras time to check in on myself. Everything looked to be okay at first glance. My strength had returned, I wasn’t feeling lethargic, and nothing was bleeding. The device I’d rescued from the spider’s lair was a fewr steps away, though I didn’t know7 if picking it back up again was worth the risk. What if it’s kryptonite for in-game supermen? Although, if that’s the case, how did that machine handle it?
The logs didn’t have anything for me. Sudde
nly, my body had started weakening, an unstoppable nosebleed had broken out, and the poor nanoparticles had had to build me practically from scratch while I’d been unconscious. The old particles that had made up my body had even been damaged beyond repair and completely replaced.
My loot wasn't doing anything to me in that moment. And nobody could see it from the air, as I’d gotten lucky with where it had dropped — it was concealed in some tall grass. After making sure there were no players within a few kilometers, I finally built up my resolve and headed over to it. Picking it up didn't result in the weakness I’d been expecting, though Ulbaron still refused to fly. After running a good distance, however, I concluded that the device wasn't having an effect on my body. The problem had to have been the pipes.
Noticing a small grove not far away, I headed in that direction to see if I could test out the device. And as I ran, I thought about the many surprises the game had been throwing my way. Game items didn't have any effect on real ones, though real ones could have an effect on the game. Still, the logic was unclear. The exploding shuttle hadn't just destroyed the equipment in the underground lair; it had also somehow taken out the stairs and church, even leaving an enormous hole in the ground. None of that made sense. I remembered all too well how the shrapnel had cut through the ground without leaving a scratch — the mechanics didn't line up. Someone was having their leg pulled, and I had a feeling it w^as me.
Running really wasn't a problem, and a little while later, I wras under some trees. Players were still flitting by overhead, and I even noticed some squads using ground transportation, but I didn’t pay any attention to them. All I wanted to do was test out the device. As I was running, I figured out how' to put it on — the strap w^ent around the back of my hand, the device itself was cradled in my palm, and the holes really did turn out to be for three fingers. Surprisingly, it fit a human hand much better than I imagined it did a spider’s claw.
World of the changed 3 Noa in the flesh Page 18
