Fine. My communicator lit up, showing a message from an unknown contact: “ARCH, 8 PM, L.” For a few minutes, I stared at it dumbly, until I finally realized that L. meant Mr. Leo. Did he have news about Goggy?
Half an hour later, I drove along the avenue, passing by neon signboards and trying not to miss the Arch, a trendy restaurant of British cuisine that had recently come in vogue. It was a place beloved by middle-aged businessmen, rich sports fans, and young ladies who wished to meet the first two types.
The hall was pretty empty, and it didn’t take long for me to notice Mr. Leo’s gray curls. With a faraway look on his face, he sat stirring his tea, while a few raisin cakes rested on a plate next to his cup.
“You’re late, young man,” he said instead of a greeting.
“The parking lot’s filled up, I had to find space,” I replied, sitting down, a question written on my face.
“Your problem’s solved.” With the tips of his fingers, Mr. Leo pushed his communicator, shaped like an old-school rectangular phone, toward me.
“The photos are on the first page.”
I quickly scrolled through the images. A dented trunk of a Hurricane on a roadside. Goggy’s henchman and the blond guy on their knees, their hands behind their back. A close-up on Goggy’s smashed face, demonstrating his bruises, his split eyebrow and cheekbone, blood, and fear in his eyes.
“That’s pretty rough,” I said, returning the comm, my throat suddenly dry. The photos of the work done on Goggy’s gang sobered me up. I wondered if they were still alive. Whom had I gotten involved with?
“Don’t worry, they’re fine. Right now, they’re driving to Moscow at full speed,” Mr. Leo said and smirked as if he had just read my thoughts. With a few taps, he deleted the photos, then looked at me, his eyes sharp and probing. Almost physically, I sensed that despite his college professor looks, Mr. Leo was a very dangerous man.
“They didn’t want to listen. Those guys are pretty cheeky, one of them has a father working for the authorities... I had to be persuasive. They won’t be back. If you wish, I could arrange for them to call you and apologize.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary. I believe you,” I chuckled.
“All right. Now to the bad news. Remember the Sphere employees who visited you to sign the advertising contract?”
“Yes, of course. What’s wrong?”
“One of them, the Japanese, is from security. They bugged your apartment, probably just in case, it’s standard procedure for them. There’s no outdoor surveillance, however, and that means they don’t make much of it.”
“Bugs? Are they eavesdropping on me?”
“Exactly. We didn’t jam the signal, so as not to arouse suspicion. But be careful, don’t say too much out loud. Make all calls only via Courier, its protocol cannot be decrypted, got it? And save my number. If anything happens, call me any time.”
“If anything happens? What can happen?”
“Don’t worry. We’re looking out for you.”
* * *
I decided to log into Sphere after 2 AM. I couldn’t sleep without Alena anyway. Pandorum, of course, was an international alliance that could cover any and all time zones, but still. Very little had changed inside Atrocity’s respawn room, other than the team that guarded the cage. Jerkhan and Roa had vanished.
While being incorporeal, I carefully studied the room. If they weren’t tracing my login, they probably hadn’t noticed me appear. Ghosts could be seen at the resp point, but there were so many that hiding among them was easy enough.
All right, then. Five Pandas were lazing around the cage, casually talking to each other in German and Swedish — the premium linguistics pack I had received together with the Diamond account could instantly translate any known language.
Three of them were melee fighters, and two were mages. There was one more — the assassin got thrown out of stealth mode after stepping inside the range of Star Metal Wrath, a passive ability of my sword that disabled invisibility and restored true form to all masked creatures. I hastily turned it off — I didn’t want to give myself away in such a foolish manner.
The unmasked Panda was greeted with a burst of laughter. He turned his head around, confused, and returned to stealth. All jailors were wearing black predator-styled armor of different types, yet with a subtly similar design.
So, where had they hidden the stonejammer? I had spent a whole evening reading about them on the forums. It was a magotechnical artifact, a pretty expensive one, that couldn’t be farther than a hundred feet from the resp point. It didn’t have a long range and was pretty fragile to boot. I had seen one of them back at the Tomb of the Necromancer when we had been attacked by Snow and her gang; that stonejammer had looked like a big, shining, spiky globe. There wasn’t anything like that here. Where could they have put it? Did they disguise it with a spell? Bury it in the floor?
The situation seemed pretty dire. Without destroying the stonejammer, I couldn’t leave the resp point. In theory, if I caught the Pandas unaware, I could kill them with my flaming sword, but that would raise an alarm, and I could never leave the fortress alive.
While wandering around the room, my eyes stumbled onto a murky object above the respawn cage. I looked up, studied the item...that’s right, a dull metallic ball was hanging right below the ceiling. It was barely visible in the dim light, making it hard to notice. A smart idea. Was it the stonejammer? Its size matched.
Well, no harm in trying. The Pandas, of course, were ready for everything and would focus on me in a few seconds — I still remembered my deaths at the resp point in Eyre. Still, a few seconds were a lot. I had to find out.
I manifested. In the split seconds while they were turning their crossbows toward me, and magic fire lit on the tips of their battle wands, I threw my blade at the dark sphere.
Fiery Lightning! A flash of blue-red flame shot from the sword, connecting me and my target via a bright thread. The metallic ball disappeared in an explosion, and at the same time, I was hit with a cloud of green smoke, a barrage of spells, and a sticky web that wrapped around me, restricting any movement. I couldn’t see anything, my vision blinded because of the bright flash, and my body writhed in pain. In a second, my hit points reached zero.
All in all, it took me only three seconds to die, and once again, I was a fleck of mist. The resurrecting stone didn’t trigger — after all, the chance was only thirty percent, and there wasn’t any point in activating it, anyway. Still, I had accomplished my purpose, and the stonejammer was destroyed! Time to get out.
Return failed! Transportation via Soul Stones is forbidden in this area!
Chapter 4
WHAT THE... I took a look into the log and ground my teeth inside my mind. The Fiery Lightning had destroyed an empty metallic ball; there had been no stonejammer inside. It was a decoy, a fake. Scumbags!
The cage door creaked as it was opened. Two mercenaries went in: one in the front, the other covering his back. The first quickly snatched everything I had dropped — almost a hundred gold, boots, a flask, and two vials, a Healing Potion and an Antidote. Two more deaths, and I would be essentially naked, and that’s despite my blue karma. Red- and yellow-colored guys dropped everything that wasn’t bound to them.
My options? The best one seemed to be to petition the admins like the forums recommended. I could just contact my personal manager, Akiru Sokolovskaya, directly. Maybe it would help me get out of here sooner.
Yet damned if I wanted to give up so easily. I really wanted to teach those ruffians a lesson. Time and again, I looked around the dark hall, trying to guess where the bastards had hidden the blocker.
A private message chimed. I was contacted by a complete stranger called Captain Panther.
Captain Panther: Hi, buddy. What’s this magic you just used?
Captain Panther: I’m your cellmate, I’m next to you at the resp point.
I couldn’t make him out in the crowd of specters around me — the NPCs still had a
while to resurrect. Who was he? I opened his kill rating. Whoa!
Captain Panther: Say something.
HotCat: I’m trying to figure out what your deal is.
Panther’s biography, going by the statistics, was pretty remarkable. The kingdoms, some world called Taerland, tons of red lines — character deaths. There were a lot of them. Nobody had spared the young Captain. Afterward, green started appearing: his first kills. Then a clan, an alliance, entire pages of kill lists in some grandiose battles in which my new associate had actively participated. I saw mentions of odd auras and unusual weapon types. He was clearly not a frontline fighter, more of a support buffer. A banner? Ah, now it was clear: he was a Bannerman or a Captain, maybe a Stalwart Leader. That’s why he had relatively few kills, only two thousand. We had been taught to identify such archetypes, as they were to be killed first, together with healers. Some of their abilities made squads under their command invulnerable.
Panther was in a weird clan called Gentlemen Bastards. Apparently, he was the only active player there. But two months ago, he had been in Pandorum, and not in Jerkhan’s Russian-speaking branch, but in Euthanasia, a clan consisting of former residents of drowned British Isles. Was he English-speaking? Interesting. Were Pandas settling a score with their former member? Or was he a stool pigeon sent after me? I couldn’t leave out that possibility, either.
Captain Panther: Ha-ha! Don’t bother yourself, I’m in the Pandas’ KOS list.
HotCat: Something didn’t work out between you?
Captain Panther: Yep. It’s a long and pretty daft story. So I get it, you want to leave?
HotCat: Thank you, Captain Obvious! Can you believe it? Do you have any idea? If you’re local, you must know how to get out.
Captain Panther: Don’t fret, write the admins, and go to sleep. They’ll pull you out in a day. There’s no way out; everything’s thought out to the last detail. Sometimes, after huge battles in the Astral Plane, hundreds of guys respawned here — and couldn’t get out.
HotCat: Do you know where the stonejammer is?
Captain Panther: It won’t help you. I tell you, forget about it, go to sleep.
HotCat: Why aren’t you going?
Captain Panther: I’ve had enough sleep. I logged in to check if they pulled me out yet. I’ve been here for sixteen hours already, but my petition hasn’t been answered yet.
HotCat: Just tell me where the blocker is, and we’ll leave together.
Captain Panther: Hahaha! Amusing. Well, if you really want to know, I could tell you. But this information won’t be free, so pay up a thousand, all according to the price list. Still, I’m honest, so I’m warning you — it won’t help you at all.
HotCat: I’ll pay you as soon as I check that you told me the truth. You know us Russians, we don’t cheat each other.
Captain Panther: You’re funny. All right, do you want a contract? I’m going to write it up.
HotCat: Wait. Listen to me. How about that: you tell me where the stonejammer is, and I’ll try to destroy it. If I’m successful, we’ll leave via Soul Stones. If not, I’ll contact the admins via my channels, and they’ll pull both of us out in an hour.
Captain Panther: And I’m supposed to believe you’re able to contact the admins directly?
HotCat: Look at my kill rating, the latest kills.
Panther grew silent. I knew that he was typing my nickname into the search field of the global Sphere kill rating that was synchronized with the game. But when he opened the kill lists, instead of my nickname, my clan, and my equipment, he would only see question marks. Anonymity was a really nice feature of my new subscription.
Captain Panther: Are you a Diamond?
HotCat: So, do you agree? You won’t lose anything!
In a minute, I knew everything. First, the cell was an artifact created by Artificers. It emanated an aura of antimagic that blocked all spells. Basically, you couldn’t use magic inside, only outside. Pandas weren’t stupid and had done their utmost to keep themselves safe. Second, the stonejammer. According to Panther, it was encased in an adamantine sphere that was enchanted with something called Thousand Patterns.
Adamantine ignored all physical damage, it was the strongest material in all of Sphere, while the Patterns bestowed almost maximum resistance to all types of magic damage.
Captain Panther: You see the gargoyles at the entrance? No? But they are there, only invisible. It’s inside the left one.
So, it was also buried inside an invisible statue. A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.
I paused to think. Fiery Lightning could destroy the blocker — adamantine and Patterns wouldn’t help, as true fire couldn’t be resisted. However, the entrance was far away, and the statues were invisible. I could easily miss my aim. I had only 6/12 lightning charges left, so I had to be sure. I needed to get as close as thirty feet away from the entrance, so the statues would be affected by Star Metal Wrath, dispelling their invisibility, and for that, I had to leave the cage.
I already had a solution for that. On top of that, I was itching to try out my sword’s new affix in battle. All right, here we go! Activate Blazing Warrior!
I felt heat, strong enough to make the air I was breathing burning hot and immensely dry. Taking a look at my body, I noticed that it transformed into star metal, glowing bright blue and semi-transparent, silver sparks shining in its depths. An aura of true fire surrounded this metal.
The ability only lasted for sixty seconds. I had to make the most of them.
Upon coming into contact with me, the thick steel bars around the resp point vanished without a trace. I passed that obstacle with hardly any resistance and left a human-shaped hole with smelted edges in the cage. The Pandas tried to stop me, or at least I thought they did: a cloud of green smoke wreathed around me, a lightning bolt flashed, and I saw arrows fired at me point-blank. It was useless; all they achieved was to create zero damage messages in the log. As Blazing Warrior, I was invincible.
And I loved that. I leaped at the enemies circling me, my sword burning blue. A hit reached its target, then another one. I pressed on, paying no attention to the damage that Pandorum heaped upon me.
And then, I realized that I was stuck. I couldn’t do anything. The odd black weapons and armor worn by Pandas could withstand the blows of my flaming blade, and a Fiery Lightning feebly dissipated against the breastplate of one of the jailers. They had known my powers and were ready for them. It was nonsense to think that Pandorum, the richest alliance of Sphere, didn’t have a few sets of Black Weapons. I didn’t know whether it was a whim of fate, a design oversight, or a joke played by the Law of Balance, but items without durability couldn’t be broken by the sword. My only hope was to strike the spot unprotected by demonic armor — but the Pandas, the strongest warriors, the cream of the crop, never gave me the chance.
The seconds were unforgiving, and my invulnerability was inevitably running out. I was zipping around among the enemies, trying to reach at least some of them. It was pointless. They couldn’t kill me — but I couldn’t do anything to them, either. After realizing the futility of my attempts, I rushed to the exit, trying to get closer to the invisible statue and destroy it with a Fiery Lightning. Pandorum warriors parted, recognizing that coming into contact with my blazing blue body was extremely dangerous. Then they closed their ranks back up, and three of them produced tower shields, black and spiky. Jerkhan had used one of them back in Eyre.
10…9…
A blue wave passed through the blade. Wrath finally worked, and I was thirty feet away from the entrance. The empty space on its sides took form, outlining the shapes of two statues depicting fanged gargoyles, their stone wings unfolded.
3…2…
I raised my sword, aiming at the left one. A Fiery Lightning hit its target, and the stone beast exploded in a heap of dust, fire, and smoke that grazed us. At last!
In an instant, I got knocked down with a shield bash, a few sharp items pierced my body in various
places, and a rain of fire blasted me all over — just in case. My invulnerability had run out.
The finishing blow came, and once again, I was dead. The Soulbinding Stone hadn’t worked. I lost five thousand XP, half a hundred gold, my breastplate, and a few other items. Whatever. I had succeeded in destroying the gargoyle, which meant that the stonejammer should be broken. Time to leave before the Pandas brought in another one.
The Gene of the Ancients (Rogue Merchant Book #2): LitRPG Series Page 8
