Apostle of the Sleeping Gods

by Dan Sugralinov

  Special effects when eaten:

  +50 charisma;

  — significantly increases attractiveness in the eyes of the opposite sex;

  — gives a more youthful appearance.

  Effect duration: 24 hours.

  Value: 350 gold coins.

  Cooking trade: +10.

  Current level: Expert (327/500)

  Just then, reading the message, I took the pan off the heat.

  “Plate your dish!” Arno shouted, pleased.

  I took a big flat plate, set the fish on it, added a few slices of tomato and a round of lemon. It was still missing something. I remembered going to restaurants with my family and picked out a lettuce leaf. Thinking for a moment, I stuck it under the fish.

  “Ready!” I raised my hand.

  The siren blasted out shortly after that and a column of green light lit up around me. A scantily clad she-elf picked up my dish and brought it to the jury, which was sitting at the other end of the room. Not knowing what to do next, I walked over to Arno. While we awaited the judges’ verdict, we discussed recent events in the city. Then Unifelda led a mysterious gaze over the whole room and announced the results:

  “Our viewers have probably already guessed where our honorable judges stand based on their reactions while tasting, but our contestants are still waiting eagerly. Before I tell you how our jury decided, let me remind you who is in charge of today’s judging, head of the Chefs’ Guild herself, Grandmaster Lady April Bloomfie!”

  The crowd started whispering and, Arno told me that the eminent woman had invented hundreds of epic recipes and was friends with the former noncitizen Rachel Kessler from Cali Bottom. A player!

  “So then...” Unifelda unraveled a scroll and stood stock still as she read it. A few seconds later, she coughed, looked baffled and started to speak: “Ladies and gentlemen! This is the first time in my memory something like this has happened and believe you me, I’ve seen a lot! By unanimous decision, the unqualified victor of today’s Sunday cooking tournament is a contestant who is not a member of our guild! The winner is... Scyth the Expert from the free city of Tristad!”

  What a start! Noise, bluster, shouts of indignation and surprise! While Arno suffocated me in his embrace, I saw a game notifications that my trade skill went up by a hundred points, and others increasing my fame and reputation with the chefs’ guild, Tristad, Unifelda, April Bloomfie, the chef of the Bubbling Flagon and another whole list of names I’d never seen before.

  I had to respect the power of magivision!

  * * *

  For a long time, I just sat on a big shiny stone polished by rain and wind, unable to come to my senses. The cooking tournament had given me a taste of big Dis, and I liked it. I got a sense for how huge and multifaceted the world was. There was no reason to farm mobs or do routine quests out there. You really could just live, do whatever your heart desired.

  After announcing the results, I was most surprised by Jenkins the halfling and Oliver. Both, not hiding their surprise, congratulated me on what they called a hard-earned victory.

  “You’re a clever one, boy! We underestimated you, of course,” Oliver admitted. “I want to give you a little gift. I saw the way you were looking at my knife. I can’t give you that, it’s personal. I got it for winning a yearly tournament. But I do have another one like it.”

  He extended a hand and a knife of unbelievable beauty and utility materialized in it.

  Kaizen Chef’s Knife

  Rare

  Kitchen knife.

  Bonuses from food prepared with this knife last twice as long.

  Durability: 120/120.

  Creator: Miyabi.

  Sell price: 150 gold.

  I accepted the gift and stuck it in my pocket. Not my inventory, of course. That left it vulnerable to thieves, but I’d get it to my personal room somehow.

  Jenkins didn’t give me anything but he did invite me to some secret society of chefs:

  “Add me as a friend, Scyth. When you get out of the sandbox, drop me a line. Me and a few other chefs get together once a month in a restaurant to exchange trade secrets. The guild is great and all, but the real top recipes aren’t just handed out to every Tom, Dick and Harry. You see, there’s a lot of money in this. And let me give you some advice for the future: don’t share your recipes with the guild.”

  As he said that, he shot a glance at the guild leader, gave a mysterious chuckle and walked away. Standing in front of flickering magic lights, April Bloomfie herself handed me my reward. After the buff from my dish, she looked unbelievably attractive. A middle-aged woman with her dark, gray-streaked hair up in a bun, she was wearing the black and gold robe of a grandmaster. She gave a congratulatory speech, then bid me farewell:

  “You have a gift, young man, a real talent! Don’t bury it. At your age, people are usually rushing off on adventures but let me tell you something: us chefs know real adventure, and it requires lots of strength and energy, and the only way to get that is tasty and nutritious food!”

  She laughed at her own joke and I smiled politely. I caught a hint in her words that players bought up many stacks of expensive dishes before raids, and noted that I could always keep the trade in my back pocket in case I had to work in Dis someday.

  To widespread applause, Madame Bloomfie inducted me into the guild and extended me an epic recipe for a raid dish called Highland Feast: +200 to highest main attribute, +50 to all the rest, +50% to health and mana regeneration. And all that lasted for three hours or until you died. The recipe required seven rare ingredients and, based on my most modest estimates, one portion for a raid group was worth one or two thousand gold in ingredients alone. I wasn’t planning to sell it, but I couldn’t learn it right away either. My level in the trade wasn’t high enough. For lack of free space, I sent both the recipe and the kitchen knife to Bomber for safe keeping. I could get them when we met up, then stick them in my chest.

  After the awards ceremony, I was interviewed for the publications Commonwealth Herald and Disgardium Daily. The second newspaper existed only for players and the questions they asked me were the most idiotic I’d ever heard in my life. Still, I did my best to answer them.

  “Say, Scyth, what’s it like to be a teenager in a little backwater like Tristad?”

  “Us Tristaders would be happy to answer that question, but you’ll have to come there and ask again.”

  A guild employee named Bob gave me access to the guild store, where I bought up a bunch of recipes I was high-enough level to learn. He also registered a few of my original recipes: Well-Done Carp in Sour Cream, Miner’s Fish Soup, Marinated Filet of Swamp Bighead with Onion and Herbs and Fried Spicy Stone Grabber, Stuffed with Herbs. As for Roast Undead Rat Chitterlings, I kept that recipe to myself, remembering Jenkins’s advice.

  “The guild will add your recipes to the registry. Do you have a bank account? Not yet? No worries, we will send you the royalties by mail. You are entitled to one percent of all sales, and payment comes monthly. But bear in mind, Scyth!” Bob said at the end, raising a hand. “The more unusual the recipe, and the more beneficial its properties, the higher your cut!”

  Then Arno and I said a fond farewell, and Master Romm the Dwarf sent me back to the area near Olton Quarries.

  Perched on a rock, I thought about what to do next. I was still required to spend a bit more time in Dis and I had no desire to farm mobs, so I came up with a different plan.

  I teleported to Tristad. I was given the choice of either there or Packston’s Vineyards. Thankfully, RNGesus was on my side. In the town, I rented out a room in the tavern, locked the door and sat at the window, where I had a good view of the square outside.

  I had a theory, and the time had come to test it out. If I was right, we’d be able to get into the dungeon tomorrow no problem.

  I looked around for a target, settling on a scurrying girl dressed in the garb of a Priestess of Nergal.

  Imitate level-19 Priest Healiann?

  Oh ye
ah.

  Chapter 27. Imitation

  MY CRAZY PLAN stopped seeming so foolish after the cooking tournament. That very evening I hit Imitation level two as soon as I changed apparent class from archer to priest. That taught me to imitate not only class but level as well. Changing again did not give another skill-up, and I saw no system messages or even progress bar for the herald class ability. Thanks, developers.

  After becoming a level-12 barbarian, I stopped swapping my identity and went to bed. I stayed right there in the rented tavern room, catching up on what I’d missed at Glastonbury. After a few hours’ sleep, I saw no progress. I changed class and level again. The streets were empty by then, but there were still a few players walking around town. Without even reading notifications, it hit me: Imitation was up to level three. Now I could also copy gear and, unfortunately, only external appearance. All that confirmed my suspicion: it wasn’t the number of times I used the skill that mattered, only time spent in the different form.

  So I went back to bed, setting the system alarm clock for morning. When I woke up, I sighed in disappointment: my Imitation was still the same level.

  In school, I saw the Awoken. They were doing much better. They even looked rested and fresh after their two days in treatment pods. When I got home, I went straight into Dis. The skill level hadn’t changed. I realized that Imitation only made progress while I was in the game and in a different form but, even if the invisible bar hit one hundred percent, the skill would only ding when I changed again.

  The day was very fruitful. I leveled Depths Teleportation to five, finally gaining control over destination, though the cooldown remained very high. After that, we spent some time catching Stone Grabbers. I showed the recipe to the guys and suggested that the rare fish would soon be taking off in value. The Hypnotic Toads begged for food yet again, but this time they got a whole lotta nothing.

  After fishing, we raided the Mire. I hit twenty. Crawler, because of his levelling bonus, hit nineteen, while the rest got to eighteen. And then we hatched our battle pet eggs into level-one Swamp Needlers. And we leveled them fantastically. They couldn’t do much yet, just fly around and sting. There was no sign of the larvae. We also gave them names. I called mine Iggy. The guys were pretty imaginative: Alien, Thorn, Whatchamacallit and Little Trunk. It wasn’t hard to guess who gave what name.

  They also looked small, no larger than flies when they hatched. By level ten, they were just the size of a child’s fist. We brought them up to twenty, siphoning one hundred percent experience their way, then dropped it to ten because we had hit our goal. Iggy, Alien, Thorn, Whatchamacallit and Little Trunk had learned to produce larvae. And sure they could only inject one per minute, but we had five of them!

  Initial testing in the Evil from the Depths dungeon showed that the five needlers could take down a boss’s health by a quarter in five minutes. We were intentionally drawing out fights for testing purposes. We especially relished the fact that our pets didn’t draw aggro and were only ever hurt by AoE. Because of that, they almost all died on Murkiss. Only Little Trunk survived. Infect called him away with only one percent remaining. However, we did get a crazy amount of blues and two epics! This time, Tissa wasn’t the only one to get lucky. She got the crown, the third item in the Evil from the Depths set, but I got something too: a great pair of purple chainmail boots. The Twilight Chitin Boots made the reward from Garr Alt, monster hunter, look like cheap junk. Honestly, my strength was high enough to wear plate-mail as well, but Bomber had priority on that. Also, Crawler triumphantly gave me a Death-Sworn Hauberk, the epic mail shirt for level twenty, dropped by the boss Locust on our very first run-through of Evil from the Depths while I was sleeping.

  All that time, by the way, my apparent class was warrior, having copied Hung. When my clanmates saw it, they lost their minds in enthusiasm. They were even more astonished when I showed them what my Imitation could do after it upped again, total copying. I turned into a level-eighteen thief in the exact same clothes and equipment as Infect. But most importantly, I looked exactly like him. Malik was really freaked out to see himself in the third person. So much so, that he almost died on one of the bosses. He was always getting distracted, staring at me-slash-him.

  I had spent the night before in Dis again to level Imitation, so I was nodding off in class, which Greg noticed. That same day we registered our clan for the junior Arena. Each clan could only put up one team, but with standbys. We didn’t have any of those, so our application had only us five.

  “Are you sure?” the registrar asked. “You cannot register new participants during the tournament.”

  “What will happen if one of us gets sick?” I asked.

  “You’ll fight four on five,” he snickered in reply. “A team is only required to field two fighters. But generally, in that case, it’s easier just not to fight. The result will be the same – forfeit.”

  We spent another day training in the Battlegrounds and even won a few times. We got much better at working together, especially compared to our first attempts. After that, I opted not to risk returning to town and stayed on Behemoth’s island. I talked with the Sleeping God out of boredom, but not for very long. I asked him about my class abilities and the deity promised to give me more of them as soon as the temple was built. What exactly they would be, he did not say.

  “I will decide based on the situation,” Behemoth foretold as he dissipated.

  That once and for all confirmed my idea that the herald class was half-baked. Most likely, the AI was generating the quests, skills and story of the Sleeping Gods on the fly. However, I wasn’t sure about that.

  By midnight, my Imitation was up to five, and I could also copy the text over my head: nick, real name, race and clan. From that point on, I could turn into whoever I liked and with no cooldown as long as my target was in visual range. As for what would come next, I had my guesses but didn’t have time to check.

  I stopped half-way down the stairs into the main room and started looking for someone from Axiom. I knew exactly who I wanted to copy. And as if by fate, the first person I happened to see was Big Po. There was some emergency happening and Wesley, his face crimson, was shouting at his people. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell what he was screaming due to the Dome of Silence. But I didn’t overthink it, quickly imitated the level-twenty chieftain Polynucleotide and went back to my room. Leaving my character there, I exited Dis, got in touch with my friends and told them how we were going to get past the guards and into the Sarantapod Hive.

  * * *

  Morning in Disgardium was the best time to be alone with nature and watch it wake up. Geala slowly turned pale, then faded into the sky as the crimson sun came up. In our sandbox, it was a rare moment to watch the world living all on its own without almost any player involvement. Well, almost because that day we were all in the game: the guys were on Behemoth’s island awaiting my signal as I walked toward Little Gully.

  I studied the situation for a few minutes. At the bottom of the significantly expanded gully, two Axiomites were talking quietly. Detrovay, a boy, had made a fire and was going to make coffee; Annamassy, a girl, was loudly yawning and stretching.

  “I just want this shift to be over with,” Detrovay complained. “I already have two strikes this semester, Anna!”

  “What about it?” she asked. “Relax, Det, a First Kill will give us a huge head start on our future. Even if we aren’t in the group, it will make the clan stronger! That will make everything easier for us in big Dis... Po?”

  Annamassy’s eyes went wide when she saw their clan leader Polynucleotide walking up.

  “Anna, Det, both of you can go home,” I said.

  “Why? What happened?” objected the boy, who had just been so bothered about missing school. “Is everything alright, Po?”

  “We’ve already got too many strikes, Det,” I answered, giving my voice a concerned tone. “You can leave Dis. You’ll still make it to first period. I have a doctor’s note, so I can stay home.
I’ll stay on watch.”

  They spent a bit more time insisting, assuring me that they were doing just fine in school, but I could see that they were happy. A few minutes later, they both left the world.

  [7:36] [Clan] [Scyth]: All clear. Jump over. I’m going in.

  I entered the ins and finally exhaled. While I waited for my clanmates, I leaned up against the wall and closed my eyes, enjoying the few minutes of peace.

  A few soft splashes of the portal told me the guys had arrived. They were smiling, Bomber and Infect exchanged jokes but I didn’t share their playful mood. I was very tired after the last few days and there was no end in sight.

  I didn’t give a damn about the ins itself or the bosses. All I cared about was getting through it as quickly as possible, getting out and coming back after cooldown for the First Kill. Useful abilities were more important than the fleeting improvement given by epic equipment. It was at least good that we could sell it after we grew out of it.