The audience jeered Mogwai, laughed at him, hurled insults. Nobody suspected that his Resilience had by then reached the sandbox cap, and alongside Stoneskin, it allowed him not only to survive, but to win: he beat the thug and all the opponents after him.
Some even began to suspect that Mogwai was a Threat, and tried to assassinate him the next day, but couldn’t defeat him. Then the whole sandbox got together to hunt the strange noob, but, after killing him, they couldn’t banish the Threat. They wanted to try again, but didn’t get the chance. In Disgardium, Mogwai brooked no bullying; he began to hunt down all those who hurt him. He caught them one by one and in groups, quickly and methodically killing them.
That victory in the mini-tournament was probably where Mogwai’s rapid rise began. Immediately after it, another finalist, the archer Criterror, invited him to celebrate the success over a drink. For a few days, Criterror ran through the sandbox with him, helping him complete instances, and once he knew him well, he invited him to the clan, which was a subdivision of Azure Dragons.
A year later, the two won the global Junior Arena. The names Fen Xiaoguang and Ignatius Scariolo echoed throughout the world.
* * *
The same wicked thought kept spinning in his head: “That little bastard took us all down three times! Eight legates of the Destroying Plague!” Fen seethed as he realized that Scyth had cut him off from Dis for twelve hours.
A couple of minutes later, everyone was gathered in the hall of the Elites’ clan base. Ignatius-Criterror shouted, swore, all but stamped his feet. Once his anger passed, he declared:
“I said we shouldn’t have attacked him! We should have summoned him right to the castle! We could have taken him out then! No way he would have got away!”
Everyone nodded apart from Liam Driscoll, sitting on the couch next to Mogwai. In Fen’s view, Liam was overly cautious, even cowardly, and only got into conflicts when he was absolutely sure it would work out best for him. Or, like now, when he was sure he was right.
“It’s too dangerous,” he said. “If we’d revealed our castle, we’d have lost it, like the Widowmakers.”
“Bullshit,” Bianca said, walking back and forth across the hall. “We’d have banished the Threat and been done with it.”
“We need to build a new castle either way,” Mogwai said, putting his feet up. “On Holdest. But Crit is right, we’ve lost our chance. And the element of surprise. We should have prepared, brought in some living clanmates, then pulled Scyth out. Right now we’d be celebrating the elimination of a class-A Threat!”
That last he said bitterly. This mistake meant the clan would miss the battle at the temple of the Sleeping Gods. And they could have done well as an unexpected element in the fight, a third side. They would have cleaned out the Alliance, and, if they’d gathered a troop of undead, they might have destroyed the temple and gotten a reward as well as the loot from dead players. Now they’d miss all the fun.
“Let’s think logically,” Liam said, interlacing his fingers and leaning forward. “Last night, while on Accelerator, Tissa let slip that she has the same skill as all the other Awoken, Depths Teleportation. She also admitted that she’d been to the clan fort. It was somewhere on an archipelago to the west of Latteria.”
“Where?” Fen jumped up in surprise. “And why didn’t you say anything before?”
“Because we logged into Dis right after the Amazons returned from the island, Fen! It was two hours ago, remember? You were hurrying us, and for good reason! We became legates!”
“Alright, go on, what about the girl?” Lan Lin asked, who played for the elf girl Laneiran. After a moment’s consideration, she took Fen’s place on the sofa.
“Theoretically, she can take us there.”
“Theoretically indeed,” Criterror snorted. “We can’t get into the sandbox.”
“And even if we could, we’d die from the ‘junior’ debuff in half a minute,” Bianca added.
“Wait a sec…” Fen opened up a map of Latteria, zoomed in and pointed at Tristad. “She’s in this sandbox, right? We keep thinking like we’re still alive. We’re immortal now, we don’t have to worry about debuffs. That changes everything! Look, we can go through the Mire and approach from the south, from Tuaf.”
“There are royal guards there, they won’t let us pass…” Bianca said.
“Idiot!” Fen snapped. “We’re undead now! We don’t care about the guardians of the Commonwealth! We’ll kill them. The sandbox debuff won’t kill me. We can also cross the ocean to get around the Nameless Mountains if we drink Waterwalking Potion.
“Exhaustion…”
“Won’t kill me either!”
“All the same, if a level thousand shark swallows you, you’ll lose time,” Liam noted. “I like the option of taking the Tuaf road. It’s the shortest way. There’s a guard tower there, a small garrison — Fen will handle it alone easily.”
“I’ll handle it, have no fear. But where do I find the girl?”
“I’ll fly to her,” Liam answered. “I’ll give her the works, ask her to go to… Here, let’s say. The Olton Quarries. Not far from the road to Tuaf.”
“Think she’ll give up her friends that easily?” Bianca asked doubtfully. “Mogwai, you’re an authoritative druid, of course, but the girl has too many hangups about friendship and betrayal. Especially since she feels something for Sheppard, right, Liam?”
“What can one expect from a mongrel?” the boy said, shrugging.
Fen drilled his gaze into Bianca and sighed heavily. Then spoke:
“Someone explain to this dumb girl what Subjugate Mind is. I’m going to take a shower in the meantime, I need to get clean… I’m still not used to rotting alive in Dis.”
* * *
“Forgive me, Mr. Mochou!” Fen lowered his head. “I will correct the error, I promise!”
The former top player in the world felt like a child caught being mischievous as he stood before Crooked Tooth. Fen Xiaoguang had become a category-A citizen, a billionaire and a global celebrity, but he still withered before a single dark glance from Du, who had also changed.
In the years that had passed, the small-time gangster from Shenzhen had become a Triad boss, and Fen’s career in Disgardium had been no small help. Du no longer limped, he had new teeth — not a single one crooked — and even a new heart and liver. His lungs were also new, but they would soon need replacing again: Crooked Tooth had eradicated old habits and adopted aristocratic airs, but had never given up smoking.
“Cocky fool!” Du rose, approached and breathed han odious cloud of tobacco smoke in Fen’s face. “To let such a chance slip through your fingers! Have your brains soured? Are you on that shit again?”
“Forgive me, Mr. Mochou, forgive me!” Fen muttered his apologies with his eyes stuck to the floor. Fortunately, the Accelerator was still in the flyer, but Crooked Tooth could check his blood too, that would be just like him. “No way! I’m not using!”
“This is unforgivable, fool,” Du muttered, returning to his seat. Fen could tell from the subtle change in intonation that Mochou was moving past his flash of anger. “Tell me how you plan to correct your missteps. How will you get out of the Threat’s prison?”
Fen cast a glance at the window. The view of San Francisco bay from the skyscraper penthouse suite reminded him of a still not fully formed idea for leveling up his character. But the task required a non-trivial solution, and Fen didn’t want to broach the subject with Du too soon.
“My character is locked in the cellar of the Widowmakers’ former castle. That’s Eileen’s clan. She works for the Gallaghers.”
“I remember her,” Crooked Tooth nodded. “What about it?”
“She knows how to switch off the force field and remove the block. The goblins control the castle right now, but we have a couple of Armageddons, and Eileen will sell us three more.”
“What does she want in exchange?”
“Scyth’s head, her castle, and…” Fen’s mou
th snapped shut.
“Speak, boy! Did you promise something without discussing it with me again? Like with those two elf girls you’re sleeping with?”
“Mr. Mochou, the Nucleus chose them! I had nothing to do with it!”
“Is that so?” Du frowned. The old man was paranoid about everything in his old age, and since there was no way he could verify Fen’s words, he pressured him with authority in the hope that his ward would mix up his words and admit to wrongdoing. “If I didn’t value your brains, I’d send you for a memory scan!”
“Please don’t.” Mogwai shivered. Scanning didn’t just capture memories, it killed neurons. “I swear on my life, Mr. Mochou! The Nucleus chose!”
“We’ll see,” Du said gravely. “What does Eileen want?”
“To become the ninth legate.”
“Acceptable. But you must hurry if you want to claim the prize for the class-A Threat. The United Cartel has found Sheppard. They have a man close to him.”
“What? Have they taken him?”
“They were a mere ten or fifteen minutes late. Sheppard managed to get away, but the Cartel’s source knows where he went.”
“And the Triad…”
“The Triad is searching!” Du interrupted him. “We are searching! I am searching! There is a chance that Sheppard will take our agent in. But if we fail, then your chief task is to capture the Threat. Our eggheads predict that the rewards for eliminating this Threat will be unprecedented.”
Du brought up a number on his tablet with so many zeros that Fen’s head span. To hell with those analysts, Fen thought. We don’t need their help to know there’s a trillion at stake.
“Got it? The First Trio got so carried away that they were ready to send a military fleet to the Moon just to capture Sheppard’s parents.”
“Snowstorm will cancel the rewards,” Fen shook his head.
“I explained that to the bosses. So we’re doing this delicately. Me in real life, you in Dis. Any ideas?”
Thinking, Fen decided not to reveal the ace up his sleeve. Du would take his head off if he found out that Mogwai not only knew the location of the Threat’s base and the sole remaining temple of the Sleepers, but that he had also let Scyth go. In the future, he could always say he only just learned the Awoken fort’s location.
“I had four encounters with Scyth, Mr. Mochou. In the first ones I was above his level, but he was invulnerable and possessed Path of Reflection.” Fen paused, Du nodded, showing he understood. “Now I am invulnerable. Although this time he is higher level than me, far higher. If I don’t take control of him, he’ll escape. I need a few days to level up and overtake him. Then, next time we meet, he won’t have a chance.”
“You think he’s going to stop making progress?” Du frowned and lit a cigarette. “He won’t be sleeping.”
“But he has nowhere to grind! He’s higher level than almost all the mobs of the inhabited lands, and he lost Immortality.”
“And how will you find him?”
“I can’t say, Mr. Mochou. But I will find him! I swear! I’ll find him and destroy him!”
“May it be so,” Du murmured and turned away.
Fen silently walked out the door and quickly headed for the flyer. Ignatius had already reported that he and Eileen were moving on the Widowmakers’ former castle where Mogwai was imprisoned. Fen didn’t even think of saying good-bye to Du. It wasn’t done.
At fourteen years old, he had deified Du Mochou, and seen the day they met as the best day of his life. Now Crooked Tooth was getting in the way. Now unimaginably rich thanks to Fen, he rose to the height of the Triad, but he was still essentially the same thug-minded small-time racketeer from the slums of Shenzhen.
Once Fen had dealt with Sheppard, Mochou’s turn would come. It was high time the old man retired.
Chapter 1. Still Big Po
THERE WAS A MEMORIAL to the victims of the Third World War in enormous Freedom Park, which stretched for a good sixty square miles along the edge of our district.
Yoshi advised us to meet Big Po there for two reasons: there was nobody around and there were plenty of places to land. The name was nicely descriptive: it was quite literally a park of freedom, where the police dared not tread. A lawless zone. Orderly citizens didn’t go there, the criminals slept in the morning, and non-citizens couldn’t access the district at all. All this meant the park was relatively empty until lunchtime.
It was a popular place among the homeless, drug addicts, prostitutes and anyone willing to accept the risks of immersing themselves in an atmosphere of excess and lawlessness. And of course, ‘free ones’ could often be found here — citizens who refused the ‘medical’ chips that allowed the authorities to track everyone.
Studying the police reports, Hairo said:
“The place gets dozens of emergency calls every night. Dangerous spot. And the medics don’t fly into the park, so anyone injured has to get outside it on their own. Hard to even guess how many people have gone missing there.”
“If Wesley’s afraid of the park, there’ll be no meeting,” I said.
By then I’d already calmed down and no longer felt the need to find out how exactly Mogwai had done that trick with Tissa. It was enough to remember how I’d gotten out of the sandbox and reached Kharinza. If that was possible, then why wouldn’t it work in reverse too? Not out of the sandbox, but into it. Especially for a Supreme Legate. It would be easy. The rest was obvious: either Tissa betrayed us, meaning she acted voluntarily, or it was Subjugate Mind. Taking control of someone gave you access to all their skills. I remembered that from my own experience.
But I still wanted to meet with Wesley Cho. Despite all the shit he’d shoveled onto the Dementors and the Awoken, I couldn’t deny that Wesley was a strong player. And, importantly, a good strategist and tactician. Much would, of course, depend on how he behaved at our meeting, but I knew that wars aren’t won alone.
Wesley wasn’t afraid. Sheppard? This is a surprise… Yeah, we can meet. In Freedom Park? I’ll be at the indicated coordinates in an hour, he said, overcoming his initial surprise and making a decision right away. He earned some points for that too. We could talk over the comm or in CrapChat or meet in a private room, but there was a big drawback to all those options: I wouldn’t see his face, his true feelings. The risk was justified, unlike the meeting with Hairo when I offered him work.
“What if someone tails him? Or he gives us up?” Hung asked. His dislike for Wesley was the strongest of all, but the stakes were too high.
“We’re armed and dangerous,” Roj van Garderen grinned. “Let ‘em come.”
“Agreed,” his colleague Maria Saar said. “We’ll leave one alive so we can beat some intel out of him and find out who’s hunting you, Alex.”
“It’s already obvious who’s hunting him,” Hairo objected. “But who exactly broke into the base and how they found out — that I’d really like to know.”
The security officer cast a glance at Roj and Maria, studying their reactions. They didn’t so much as twitch.
“I’m having everyone do a lie detector test after we land,” Hairo said.
“Don’t forget yourself,” Maria snapped back.
“Can I do the test too?” Hung asked. Catching confused looks, he shrugged: “What? I’ve never taken one before.”
“Ask uncle Hairo, he’ll teach you how to fool a detector,” Yoshi laughed.
We were the first to arrive at Freedom Park. Yoshi sent the coordinates to Wesley’s comm, Sergei and Hairo launched a flock of eye drones and gave me a camouflaging baseball cap that changed my face to a holomask. I climbed out of the flyer onto a small asphalt pad next to a dilapidated fountain — a woman of antiquity with her head falling off.
We had to walk through the woods a little. The bodyguards followed behind silently, melding with the trees.
There were tents beneath almost every tree, bare feet sticking out of sleeping bags. The ground was littered with cigarette ends, empty bottles,
spent needles and condoms.
A branch cracked behind me and I flinched. Don’t turn around, I heard Maria say in my ear. There was a rustle, a dull grunt, then silence.
At the assigned point — where two park paths crossed, with another broken fountain at the center of the crossing — a public flyer landed. Wesley looked out, turned his head, saw me and climbed out. It had been less than three weeks since we last met. I remembered the day: it was Malik’s birthday, and that night I went to the frontier, met Zoran and Ehehe, got to the Lakharian Desert for the first time… All that seemed a lifetime ago, but the years in the Nether probably had something to do with that, even if they were virtual.
Path of Spirit (Disgardium Book #6): LitRPG Series Page 4
