Apostle of the Sleeping Gods

by Dan Sugralinov

  Emerging from the forest, it stopped and gave a bone-chilling roar. Bluish black and a-hundred-feet tall, it had colossal columns for legs and a powerful set of elongated jaws. In the bright light of Geala the moon, it was especially easy to see its monstrous fangs.

  Montosaurus, level ???

  Ancient Reptile

  Global Boss

  This boss was so powerful I couldn’t even tell what level it was! It was hundreds of steps away, but the roar effect hit us nevertheless, leaving us stunned for several seconds. We couldn’t go back to the city yet, because Depths Teleportation hadn’t cooled down. And it wasn’t going to any time soon. After all we had just gotten here.

  As soon as we unfroze, I shot out a plan of action at tongue-twister speed:

  “Gyu, Manny, I’ll distract him and pull him away. You two run to the temple! Then, exit Dis. I’ll see you tomorrow. After school, I’ll fly to your place. We can discuss what to do next.”

  Dashing at the Montosaurus, I attracted its attention and ran away from the workmen. As I ran, I pulled the boss with a Slowing Shot, adding my entire plague pool, a full one hundred thousand points. The shot bounced impotently off the terrible monster’s armored chest. The slowing effect and damage from the arrow itself, naturally, did absolutely nothing.

  You have critically damaged Montosaurus: 100,000!

  Health points: 59,900,000/60,000,000.

  I had met my match! Sixty million health! I briefly considered how long it would take me to hack away at all that health, then sighed in disappointment: this boss had rampant regeneration as well. All one hundred thousand missing health was replenished in the space of about three heartbeats.

  I started recording to save a clip of the huge creature as it gave another Freezing Roar then walked unhurriedly in my direction while I was paralyzed with Horror.

  After I unfroze, I ran away on trembling ground that slipped away beneath my feet. But I didn’t make it far. The Montosaurus easily caught me and, grabbing me in its hand, brought me up into its gargantuan mouth. Terrified, I screamed but quickly choked on its stinking breath. “What is he eating here?” came a flickering thought. “He must have eaten everything alive a long time ago!”

  The Montosaurus’s mouth slammed shut. The pain was grueling. I’d never felt anything like it before! It’s nightmarish jaws slammed shut, ripped, gnashed and tried to turn me into gruel. My body obediently crumpled. My bones broke, turned to dust, but my body never broke apart.

  Not able to chew me up, the boss started trying to swallow me whole, tossing me upward to get a better grip. Not waiting, I slammed a Hammer into one of its titanic fangs. The inertia sent me flying. Slamming to the ground, I didn’t wait for him to crush me and jumped into a dark hole in the nearby cliffside. I stuck myself deep inside like a cockroach and froze, sensing the lizard’s powerful claws scraping away behind me.

  Meanwhile, Manny wrote a PM saying he and Gyu had reached the sanctuary. They asked if I was doing alright and if they could leave Dis. I said they could and, a bit later, when the Montosaurus had given up and stopped gnawing at outcropping of basalt I was jammed inside, combat mode expired and I calmly left the game.

  In the morning, the guys said the island of Kharinza was missing from all known maps because it was in an unexplored area of Disgardium. We unanimously decided that was to our advantage.

  That same day, we realized there was nothing alive in a thousand-foot radius around the sanctuary ruins. Well, there was plant life, but absolutely no mammals, birds, insects or any kind of vermin. Clearly, some aura or breath of the Sleeping Gods was scaring away everything alive.

  That was the best news of the day. We could build the temple without having to fear the dinosaur. Gyula was put in charge of construction.

  “I can tell about what it used to be like,” he said. “The ruins are ancient, but there’s a clear system to the way they’re arranged and I can follow it. We can put the temple on the old foundations.”

  “Can we do it in a week?”

  “Maybe faster,” Gyula answered, scratching the back of his head. “The small temple design is new to me, I got it randomly from my trainer. I didn’t think I’d ever need it. We’ll need more workers. And four thousand six hundred twenty stone blocks. As for wood...”

  We had to get kinky with resource extraction. For the most part, what we needed to build the small temple was stone, wood and sand, which we could make, but it was a lot cheaper and faster to find it in nature. And we found some by a river outside the protection of the sanctuary.

  The prospect of finding new workers, reliable ones even in Manny’s words, made me think of secrecy. As it turned out Dissimulation also leveled beautifully. The longer I used it, the more stuff I could hide and, soon enough, about by the end of the day three, people around me would see me as nothing but a dark smoky silhouette with no information.

  The skill also masked my decaying flesh when I had the curse, which was a boon because, on the island, I had to use curse of the undead constantly to stay alive.

  The Exhaustion debuff reminded me of the way I leveled Resilience once upon a time. That gave me an idea for the guys, which I told them, and it worked. Teleport claps kept coming near the sanctuary with envious regularity all throughout the construction process. They would jump in after cooldown, stay alive as long as they could with a mass heal from Tissa, then go back a second before they died. They didn’t hit the cap or even come close, but they did bring the skill up twenty or so levels, which sharply improved our chance of survival.

  After Manny Almeida ran his next ad campaign, the Awoken ported another twenty people to the island: miners, lumberjacks, masons and builders, all residents of Cali Bottom. Each of them, including Trixie, decided to take a leap of faith after hearing Manny’s stories of an unclaimed rich mine: they quit the company and decided to come help me. I didn’t know exactly what kind of scheme they’d cooked up, but the basic idea was sound. If we could mine ore and cast it into bars ourselves, then sell it through Overweight, the noncitizens stood to make much more money! And that was including the clan’s cut.

  My job was to guard the resource collection brigades. The Montosaurus patrolled the island constantly, passing by the mine several times a day, but it had no fixed route. It seemed impossible to predict its visits.

  I would pull the aggro, run to my hiding hole and the workers would wait under protection of the sanctuary until the boss got back to his own business.

  The overdose of Dis was making me come undone. I only left the game to eat and do a few exercises like squats and push-ups, handle the various calls of nature and bathe. There wasn’t time for anything else. We were in a hurry.

  A few days after Gyula and Manny started working, they called me for a chat.

  “Alex, we’ve been thinking we should settle down here,” said Manny. “Gyu has an idea.”

  “What is it?”

  “When are you guys going to get out of the sandbox?” Gyula asked.

  “In three months. Some earlier, some...”

  “Got it. Look boy, this place is full of unclaimed resources. I can build you a level-one clan fort. Nothing special, but it’ll give me and the guys a place to stay and keep building: residential structures, a tavern, clan storage. And that’s just a start. That will raise our trade, then we can upgrade the fort to level two. There’s plenty of ways we can go from there, believe you me, right up to a clan castle. Stationary teleportation, stores, an auction outpost, workshops...”

  “I like it. What do we need for that?”

  “There’s enough here to build a fort. But the upgrades and new buildings will require massive investment,” Manny answered for his buddy. “We can gather some of the resources here, and that will bring up us miners’ trade level, then we’ll be able to mine new kinds of ore. We can sell off what we don’t need, but it’s better for you and your people to handle that. We suffer big penalties to trade. And...” He stumbled. “Another thing. We cannot form a clan. O
ur level is too low. But if you accept us into yours, that could settle a bunch of issues...”

  “The basic idea is that you’re hiring us for a job...” Gyula said, still laconic and tongue-tied. He was very worried. “Can you pay us? We need to feed our families.”

  “Here,” I took out three thousand gold and handed it to Manny. “This is for the temple, fort and the time you’ll be without work. Will this be enough for three months?”

  Shocked silence followed, then Manny quietly exclaimed:

  “Holy mother of God! This is more than enough money!”

  “This is only the beginning, guys. Just wait until we leave the sandbox... Then we can really start making money! And don’t forget about the bonuses from the Sleeping Gods..!”

  Gyula didn’t say anything but, based on the way his eyes were shimmering, I could tell he was touched. And he told me as much when he embraced me and squeezed me hard. What was it like to hug a smoky formless spirit?

  As for the temple and fort, everything was settled. But the rest... I promised to think it over, but not before I graduated into big Dis. Accepting them into the clan would mean acknowledging that I was a threat. Who could say if they had the gumption not to betray me for a potential one million phoenixes? I may have been a mere teen, but I did understand that kind of thing. I’d heard a few inwinova had even sold their own children: for organs, into prostitution, to independent Mars colonization groups... No, I didn’t want to risk that now. I was shining too bright as it was.

  When I told the guys about the clan fort, they erupted into ferocious delight. Even a level one building usually cost a ton of money. We were very lucky we didn’t have to pay for resources. You do the math – the stone blocks alone were worth almost nine thousand gold, and that was without delivery fees...

  Restoring the sanctuary took four days. By the end of the last day of construction, Gyu sent me a PM: “Done. It’s all yours.”

  * * *

  The ceremony to dedicate the temple was supposed to happen without any outsiders around. Only followers could be present, as a short guide in the altar description told me.

  The Awoken brought the builders back to Tristad over a few trips. I was left alone.

  I sunk my hand into a special slot, activating the altar.

  Level-1 Undedicated Temple

  Dedicating this temple requires a follower of status no lower than priest.

  Identified: apostle.

  Requirement met.

  Scyth, would you like to dedicate this temple to the Sleeping Gods?

  I confirmed. After that, a new window popped up above the altar:

  First Temple of the Sleeping Gods

  Level: 1.

  Apostle (1/ 1): Scyth.

  Priests (1/ 3): Patrick O’Grady.

  Followers: 13/169.

  Faith points to next temple level: 574/28561.

  When I placed my palm upon the altar, a control panel popped up showing the sources of faith points. I contributed about a hundred, Patrick a bit less, and the rest had been prayed into existence by the kobold outlaws under Chief Grog’xyr. A magical diagram also showed the rate at which faith points were being generated by followers, how much was going to support the avatar of Behemoth, and how much to reinforce the other Sleeping Gods, the estimated time before the temple level would increase.... I dismissed the magical diagram and suddenly lost balance.

  It felt like I was hovering in outer space, my mind melded with the temple and all the Sleeping Gods for a few short moments. And I felt the whole spectrum of emotion: pain, wrath, anger, panic, calm, and pure totally unclouded joy. Rapture. Admiration!

  “Brave...” Tiamat admitted.

  “Patient...” Kingu added.

  “Intelligent,” Leviathan whispered.

  “Weak,” Abzu doubted.

  “But willing to become stronger!” said Behemoth, brushing it aside. “He is worthy!”

  I looked around and discovered the temple had transformed. The crude stone blocks of the walls now had a dark gray matte covering that gave off a greenish shimmer. And in the center of the room, there was a gaping circular hole covered by an impenetrable viscous substance, which spun like an eddy of thick liquid, drawing the gaze. Looking away from it with difficulty, I turned back to the altar. It was now the same as the walls, and it was adorned with a bas-relief of the tusked, grinning face of a hippo.

  The hippo winked. I was dumbstruck, and in a heartbeat I was face to face with the god.

  Behemoth the Sleeping God’s mission complete.

  You have successfully completed a new temple for him on the island of Kharinza in the Bottomless Ocean on the foundation of an ancient sanctuary at the place of power closest to the Sleeping Gods.

  Thanks to you, the Sleeping Gods have grown more powerful!

  Reward:

  — skill Liberation;

  — skill Lethargy.

  Experience points received: 5000.

  Experience points at present level (22): 27000/27300.

  Your reputation with Behemoth the Sleeping God has been increased by 1000.

  Current reputation: trust.

  Your reputation with Tiamat the Sleeping God has been increased by 100.

  Current reputation: affection.

  Your reputation with Kingu the Sleeping God has been increased by 100.

  Current reputation: affection.

  Your reputation with Abzu the Sleeping God has been increased by 100.

  Current reputation: affection.

  Your reputation with Leviathan the Sleeping God increased by 100.

  Current reputation: affection.

  I dismissed the notifications to read about the new class skills.

  Liberation

  Passive class skill.

  Current level: 1.

  Removes any crowd control effect and gives a 1% chance of reflecting it.

  Cooldown time: 5 minutes.

  Lethargy

  Active class skill.

  Current level: 1.

  Causes target to fall into a lethargic sleep. Effect cannot be removed.

  This ability works on all enemies however, the higher their level, the higher their chance of ignoring it.

  Duration: 1 hour.

  Active radius: 30 feet.

  Cooldown time: 24 hours.

  Well I’ll be! Coming from some nearby ferns, I distinctly heard a neoclassical composition called River Flows in You by the great Yiruma[7].

  “You have done it,” Behemoth droned gratefully. “My power has grown by many times, but the other aspects of creation are still tormented by nightmares and are too weak. The only thing keeping Tiamat, Kingu, Abzu and Leviathan from being forgotten is your faith.”

  “What is required of me? Another temple? Four more temples?”

  “Not now, apostle. First you need to end your affair with your other patron god. As long as its mark corrupts your body, we cannot hide anything from it. With this temple, we had no choice. But in the future, we must remain out of view of the vengeful and avaricious spirit, which leeches off intelligent creatures.”

  “Could you maybe explain to me what this spirit is?”

  “Maybe. But not today...”

  He gave a sharp booming sniff and... Grabbing me by the arms, Behemoth sharply pulled me in and looked me straight in the eyes. He pressed on my neck. I felt like I was drowning in the nether.

  The god’s tentacles extended and shivered, acid vapor emanated from his pores, his powerful shoulders bristled with curved bony blades and I barely managed to dodge. The transverse spine and many wrinkles on his head expanded and made him look much more nightmarish. He hissed and, staring at me, said:

  “You who call yourself the Destroying Plague! It is I, Behemoth, one of the five Sleeping Gods whose nightmares you leech off! I’m coming for you, worm!”

  Then he threw me away and returned to his previous form.

  “Are you alright, Sleeping one? What an unmotivated outburst of aggression! And som
ething must be wrong with your sweat regulation. You sweat acid vapor; did you know that?” The shock and fear whirled me away. “Anyhow, sorry for speaking out of turn, Behemoth but something must be done about your avatar! You’ll scare away all your followers looking like that!”

  The tiny craters on his body released pillars of steam. He was happy.