I started to feel depressed, hopeless. I had Behemoth and his quests to deal with too. I could put a second temple on Terrastera, but first I had to wait for Isis’ Blessing to cool down, otherwise not only would the builders not survive there, but even I would melt in the acid rain. As for “Death to the Destroying Plague!”, that…
I realized my thoughts were going in circles. Well, sometimes it was worth just changing focus. Where could I get Concentrated Essence of Life? The Demonic Games? I might as well just destroy Behemoth’s temple myself; the Games would go on for some days, and I’d have no way to leave — it would be as if Scyth had fallen into a cursed dimension. Anything could happen on Kharinza in that time.
According to Crawler, not all the winners of the Games used their essence. Some sold it to rich clans, and those kept it as an asset. I remember threatening to punish everyone that tried to destroy Tiamat’s temple with a counterstrike against their castles. Looked like it was time to make good on the threat. To make things more fun, I could bring in Taipan and Yoruba. Yemi would agree for sure, but I had my doubts about Pecheneg. On the other hand, he’d dreamed of vengeance against Otto Hinterleaf for years, hadn’t he? Why wouldn’t he take the chance?
So that was one thing decided. I’d talk to Grokuszuid and find out who might have the essence, and if that didn’t work… We could shake out the clan storehouses of the Alliance, and if that too failed, Infect and I would apply for the Demonic Games. We needed Crawler for administration and Bomber was best off taming the kraken to release it when we needed it.
Then, apart from the open question of the Destroying Plague’s legates, there was only the issue of surviving on Holdest. Hold on… Apophis! I knew exactly where the Nucleus was, which meant all I had to do was persuade the White Snake! Or ‘persuade’ it like I had the Montosaurus.
I contacted Yemi using a Farsight Mirror. The orc’s broad fanged face didn’t fit into the little mirror and I could only see one blood-filled eye:
“It’s all going to shit, Scyth!” the ju-ju shaman roared as soon as he saw me. “I’m not a priest of the Sleepers anymore, all my stats are cut down! Why in Shaitan’s name did we leave the temple? I thought you’d come up with something, but no! You just lost your nerve!”
“We’ll fix all this. For now, listen to me and don’t interrupt. I need to talk to Apophis again…”
“Not a chance!” Yemi interrupted. “You failed to keep your promise, you didn’t dedicate a single victim to him in the battle for the temple! And you know why? Because there was no damn battle! My reputation with the snake is at mistrust! The Broken Axe clan has lowered my reputation to affection! All because of you, Scyth! Because I vouched for you! What do you plan to do?”
Stunned by this onslaught from the furious spellcaster, I moved my hand with the mirror further away and found nothing smarter to say than:
“You’re spitting all over the mirror, Yemi. Stop panicking. The second temple is a matter of time. You know where we’ll put it, you’ve been there.”
“I don’t give a damn about all that, my castle is under siege!”
“From who? Do you need help?”
“We’ll handle it,” Yemi waved his hand as if he hadn’t just been complaining about a siege. “A few jackal clans from those that got hit by the explosions at the Nergal temples have united. They’re like our neighbors, they’ve had an eye on our riches for a long time! If it was someone more serious, I would have called you already. We’ll deal with these hyena pups ourselves!”
“What about a counterattack? We can destroy their castles…”
“Like I said, we’ll deal with it. Babangida, Francesca and I can tear down any castle together — we still have the levels we gained on Terrastera, thank the Sleepers.”
“Good. But if you need help, call. Once you’re done with those ‘hyena pups,’ contact me. We have things to do.”
“We off to capture Shak or Darant?” Yemi chuckled. Now that he’d let off steam, he relaxed a little. “We have nothing to lose, so tell me your plan.”
“It’s simple — we capture the main castles of the Alliance. Starting with Modus. I’m going to sort out the logistics; I need to figure out which castle to take first so I can head there and lay a teleportation route. And I have a couple of things to wind down before the operation.”
“Whatever you say, kid. May they never wake!”
“Uh-huh. May their sleep be eternal.”
Once done talking to Yemi, I called Crawler. He wasn’t far from me, but I couldn’t be bothered to get up.
“Yeah, Scyth?”
“We didn’t finish talking about Holdest. What do you need to invent the cold-resistance potion?
“Rank seven. Seems Snowstorm decided to let the new faction grow; they set a level 700 minimum for the potions.”
“What about the ones for resistance to heat and noxious jungle vapors?”
“It won’t be easy, although I already have rank four of the craft. It’s called ‘invention,’ Scyth, because there’s no universal recipe. I really need to shut myself away in the lab to concentrate and start working on Alchemy.”
Nether. I’d really hoped that we could at least move through the desert without issue…
“Terrastera?”
“Needs rank ten.”
“Got it. End transmission.”
All my hopes were crashing down around me. Putting my comm artifact away, I tossed my head back, pressed the back of my scalp into the hard bark, closed my eyes and kept going through the options.
Cooking? Maybe I could try to invent a dish with cold protection? We had plenty of ingredients from Holdest to experiment with. My urge to act bubbled up again, but I forced it down and didn’t even try to stand. Just made a note of it. Cooking was probably the same as Alchemy — rank seven would be the minimum level requirement. But all the same, it was worth a try… Oh, there’s an idea! What if I contacted the Cooking Club, the secret society of top-rank chefs? What were their names..? That’s right: the hobbit Jenkins and a human by the name of Oliver. I had something to offer them in exchange even if it wasn’t for the recipe, but just for the dish. Anything that could lower damage from cold..!
“Why the long face, Alex?”
Irita’s voice made me jump. I hadn’t seen her approach. I turned to look at her and realized: she stood blotting out the sun, casting a long shadow across me, and she hadn’t crept up on me, I was just so deep in thought that I didn’t notice her.
Irita sat down beside me cross-legged and spoke again without waiting for an answer:
“I decided to switch to distance learning. I’ll pass the citizenship tests, but I don’t need anything else from school. There’s so much to do here! I don’t know where to begin.”
“That’s why,” I blurted out.
“Why what?” She looked into my eyes.
“That’s why the long face: I don’t know where to begin either.”
“Two heads are better than one. What are you thinking about?”
“Holdest. How do we survive there?”
“Oh, I’ve already thought about this one! Back in the tavern. I just kept quiet because I wanted to test something first.”
“Huh?” I turned in interest and shifted to sit facing the girl. “What did you come up with?”
“Well… The climate debuff hits in a geometric progression with relative values, right? Meaning that even if you have a billion health points, you die just as fast as a level 1 noob.”
“Exactly.”
“Link me the description of that Sleeping God ability that absorbs some damage.”
I sent her the link. Irita studied the most interesting parts and then said just one word:
“Giants.”
Something clicked in my head. The picture came together. I remembered the hauler giants that had towed the Great Portable Altar in the desert — they’d survived there without Nergal’s blessing! Clapping a hand to my forehead, I shouted:
“That’s
it! Giants are an unplayable race with incredible endurance! And they’re immune to climate debuffs!”
“That’s right. And your Sleeping Invulnerability, I quote: ‘Absorbs 20% of any incoming damage. The remaining damage is split between all group members in proportion to their health.’ The giants have the highest racial health multiplier for endurance. For humans, for example, not counting character level, it’s two point seven. The giants’ multiplier is twelve, and the racial bonus triples their health total.”
“Assemble a raid of giants, and… Nether, I have Path of Sacrifice unlocked in Resilience. Even if I had that billion health, I’d still die quick because all the damage would go to me. But it’s still worth testing. Who knows, maybe Path of Sacrifice doesn’t proc from climate debuffs.” I took Irita’s head in my hand, touched my forehead to hers and smiled: “Smart girl!”
I don’t know who made the first move. Probably both of us. The last thing I saw was the glint in Irita’s laughing green eyes.
In short, we kissed. Time stopped and my problems flew away — I lived only in the moment…
“Ahem…” I heard from a yard away. “Top o’ the evenin’, younguns! Enough canoodlin’, lovebirds, time is money! The fun’s over, let’s get down to business!”
Begrudgingly tearing myself away from Irita’s full lips, I turned my glassy eyes in the direction of the hoarse voice and saw Kusalarix’s face in a portal. Having shattered all the romance, the goblin woman smiled placidly, baring her fangs.
“I know you’re young, kid, so please accept my sincerest apologies, but…” she said, then shouted: “Scyth, I get it! You’ve come back to life, stopped smelling like rotting meat, your blood rises, the necessary organs leap into action, but please tell me, on Maglubiyet’s greed, why are you here playing tonsil hockey and not handling the Sleepers’ affairs? This is an outrage! Where is my priest status?”
“Uhm, it’s…” I muttered, rising and helping Irita up. “On Terrastera.”
“What?”
“It’s not a problem, we can get a second temple up in six days if you give us some builders. I have another question — can you get me ninety-nine giant haulers? The fatter the better.”
“Now that’s what I call business!” Kusalarix turned more serious and told Irita: “Go on, girl, take a stroll. Me and your young buck have some serious matters to talk about! Dive through the portal, Scyth. Some things are best discussed face to face!”
Chapter 7. Cruel Snow
I COULDN’T WAIT to try out Irita’s idea, and at the same time ask the goblin woman about Concentrated Life Essence, but as soon as I dove into the portal leading directly to Kusalarix’s office, the conversation shifted to something else entirely. Kusalarix flounced down into her chair, put her legs up on the table, lit a cigarette and half closed her eyes. I sat down opposite and then she stood suddenly, loomed over me, both hands down on the table:
“That was a total disaster! A screwjob! I set my sights high and got influential people involved, including goblins from the very height of the Green League! And then — boom!” She slapped a fist into a palm. “Not a damn thing left.” Kusalarix smoked away her cigarette in one drag, tossed it at an overfull ashtray and narrowed her eyes. “I’m no longer a priestess, and they’ve lost all their bonuses… The bosses are asking questions! What am I supposed to tell them? Is it even it, or am I just gettin’ taken for a ride again?”
Now I needed to calm her down somehow. But while I chose my words and arguments — of which there were few, and all debatable — she continued:
“I brought in thousands of goblins! Thou-sands! And you gave up the temple without a fight. I’m in deep shit now! I’m so angry my ears are twitching!”
The goblin woman’s ears truly were rotating constantly like two radar dishes. But I had to get closer to see it — if you waved an axe through the air, it would have gotten stuck in the sticky cigarette smoke. Unlike real life, smoking didn’t harm your health in Dis; on the contrary, it gave various buffs lasting up to quarter of an hour. Although not without side effects.
The conversation with the endlessly smoking goblin woman, after beginning with her complaints, now descended into a heated argument. Reason told me that although Mogwai’s escape had made my life harder, it hadn’t worsened the situation all that much. After all, not only he had Immortality, but all the legates did. But the battle I’d gone through with Mogwai and Eileen was the nail in the coffin. My emotions had long since reached bursting point, and now needed an outlet. Kusalarix just happened to be there.
I don’t remember getting that upset ever before — maybe only the night when my parents told me they wanted a divorce. I was so furious that I didn’t pick my words carefully. ‘Long-eared midgets’ was the gentlest phrase I used.
After calmly hearing out my rant — and I reminded her both of my capture at the auction house and of Eileen’s castle, which the goblins had let slip away, — she nodded and, pulling on her cigarette with a grimace, she spoke without her usual slang:
“I’ll just make like I didn’t hear all that, young Scyth. We’ll put it down to the hormones raging through your blood. On behalf of the Green League and the Goblin League, I accept that we made a mistake. Apologies.”
Her calm passed to me. My ears reddened — what could the goblins do? Even I couldn’t stop a legate of the Destroying Plague with active Immortality now. Nodding and shaking her narrow hand, I accepted her apology. The goblin woman seemed to read my thoughts:
“You must understand, partner, almost no sentient can stand up against the legates of the Destroying Plague right now. The Green League lost fifty troops defending the castle. Some of the best, as it happens!” She fell silent, her gaze darting to the office wall. On the wall was a painting of a crowd of smiling goblins of all ages: from a young babe in the arms of an unfamiliar goblin girl to a hunchbacked and gray old man with a cane, so ancient that even the green was gone from his skin. “That is my family. That little goblin I hold in my arms is my nephew. He is one of those who did not survive. I still don’t know why he didn’t leave through the portal…”
I bowed my head.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Now is not the time to mourn,” Kusalarix answered. “What do you have planned for them? For those undead bastards?”
“Revenge.”
I told her about the new quest from the Sleepers and the looming war with the Destroying Plague, then raised the issue that concerned me:
“The Sleeping God is certain that the Nucleus can’t be destroyed without Concentrated Life Essence. On top of that, to make sure, we have to have three temples to the Sleepers, and you can’t put them up just anywhere. Only in places of power. One of them is on Terrastera. The builders and I will be able to survive there thanks to this…”
I showed her the Isis’ Blessing artifact. For the clever leader of the Green League — not the big boss, but one of them, masquerading as an ordinary assessor, — it was enough.
"Funny gizmo," she said. "Will you let our explorers crash on Terrastera while the temple is built, which, if I have it right, you need built within a day?”
“Sure thing, Madame Kusalarix.”
“Alright. But that’s only the second one. What about the third? Nergal’s priests are already putting up their own temple in the desert, and the high priest has assigned the Aspects of Light to defend it. Even if you defeat them and build a temple to the Sleepers there instead, it won’t be easy to keep it.”
“I’m not sure where to put the third temple yet, but I’m more worried about how to get to the Nucleus. I have an idea related to my divine abilities, but to try it out, I need giants. If it works out, we’ll be able to put the third temple on Holdest.”
“Right under the noses of the undead? Risky business!”
“If we get three temples up, there won’t be any undead there. But we need that essence.”
“I don’t know if anyone has any of it left,” the goblin woman sho
ok her head. “The Goblin League has only gotten Concentrated Life Essence once in the last hundred years, and that was from a winner who decided to trade in their strength for a life of luxury. He sold it through our auction house. The money didn’t bring him long life, by the way, but that’s another story. As for the giants… They’re at the brink of extinction. Many of them died in the desert after that treacherous attack from the backstabbing gnome Hinterleaf. The giants will not survive the loss of another hundred sons. Promise that you will return them as soon as you know their life is under threat!” the goblin demanded.
Path of Spirit (Disgardium Book #6): LitRPG Series Page 9
