The brother will suffer for his complacency in Max’s crimes. Not justice. Only the survival of the superior. This was Rowan’s world to rule. Not Max’s damned family’s.
“Kay.” Gabrielle chanted her ultimate death blast, wand pointing at the ridiculously stupid defense line.
“Melee Mage here.”
“Low Mana.”
Oh well. Still, they had plenty of firepower without Zaine’s chaos attacks.
Imp Mages fired continuous Chaos Orbs, layers of oblong shields dispersing. Some kind of light totem impacted the shield along with more useless arrows. A maelstrom of black ice tore through the front of the city. An enormous beam of fiery energy collided with Gabrielle’s ultimate and detonated in front of their line.
It was over in seconds. Those fools.
Chapter 37
Not His Gabrielle
A woman wearing high-to-mid-level Mage robes in her early twenties stared out of a block of blackish ice, her expression a mix of horror and pain, deep lines marring her smooth skin around her squinting eyes and gaping mouth that couldn’t scream, couldn’t cry, or yell out in pain because her corpse would be in pain judging from a forest of wounds and a spray of frozen blood painting the ice in a mosaic of purple and black.
But corpses couldn’t feel pain in this game, could they?
Rowan's neck craned as he took in every little detail without a single tug at his heartstrings. These were the first victims since his brain implants had been adjusted by the merciful god of destruction's hands, the god who wouldn't stop mocking him with his greatest fear: loss of his beautiful Gabrielle—who was whistling a tune next to him, waiting for him to raise the corpse and join their Impish ranks in their takeover of this city. He Examined.
[Player Corpse] Water Mage: Level 187
Decay: 0%
Buffs: Deep Freeze (reduces decay rate by 99%)
Debuffs: Tainted (reduces armor)
A player. She looked kind of like Gabrielle save for the auburn hair and slightly different jaw and nose and skull. This could have been his Gabrielle, dying a horrible death like when her corpse had melted in Zaine’s hellish fire. But Rowan felt… nothing. This wasn’t his genius, luscious, unique, and quirky Gabrielle and never will. His Gabrielle wasn’t so… weak. So terrified of a little ice and meager wounds that hadn’t bled a gallon.
Pathetic.
His wand hand moved on its own, cutting through the frosty air in a familiar swish and patterns required for the Raise skill. His lips parted, numb and bored as he said the single required word in the dark language and blasted the corpse with his dark mana.
The characteristic swell of endorphins pumped through his blood for a tiny fraction of a second, licking his nerves with the cold, hateful, empty feeling of Ice-Dark mana before a thread connected the corpse to Rowan’s mind. The other end of the thread was empty and lifeless and by intuition, he knew the thing was nothing but a husk of a shell that could only follow basic orders and the simplest strategies. It was no demon. No intelligent follower.
The mosaic melted. The corpse’s eyes turned milky white and her facial structure morphed in the influx of dark mana to something less like Gabrielle’s cute face while the city walls connecting the almost-an-island to the coast crumbled in a blaze of chaos and dark fire behind him.
Rowan tugged on his new minion’s leash. It stood and slurred a rumble up its wounded, unbleeding neck, its jaw slightly hanging. He doubted the thing could even talk but it was a good soldier—according to its entry on his minion interface. It retained all basic and class skill the player knew but the gear had been replaced by mythical-rarity forgeries with generic, standardized stats. The AI controller’s solution to balance Undead minions.
“Good job!” Gabrielle said, “Thought ya were going all emotional on me for a second there.”
"Never." But perhaps he was. Or perhaps the opposite. The corpse looked far too like his Gabrielle and that had a strange effect on the mush between his ears. Not something he could describe but if he had to he'd say it was like his thoughts had been blurred into an unending chain as he had studied the corpse's features and compared them to Gabrielle's. Not unpleasant or pleasant. Just… cold and empty. Like his Gabrielle had been taken from him but not at the same time. He didn't want to know what came after the emptiness. Not even him. This world wouldn't survive that.
Petite fingers waved in front of his face. "Are ya in there?" She giggled. "We're wasting time… There are over a hundred corpses to raise… decent level too!"
He took a deep, cool breath and turned to face her and bathed in her beautiful, unique personality. “Yeah… I was just thinking.”
“About what?”
How would she react if she knew how he felt about her? How his need for her had grown from a boy’s crush to a deep, dirty obsession.
Just tell her, his own inner voice suggested.
“About you,” he breathed, “She looked too much like you.”
In a puff of smoke she appeared in front of him, her nose less than an inch from his. “Are ya calling me an ugly crybaby?”
What? “No,” he said, blinking, then laughed at the miscommunication. “Forget about it. Her facial structure a bit similar to yours. You’re my beautiful Gabrielle, okay? Not a crybaby. Definitely not.”
Her tongue poked into her cheek for a second. “Kay…” Her eyes narrowed by a tiny fraction. “Ya better not be lying.”
“I’m not.” He smiled and leaned up—and placed an icy kiss on her forehead at the risk of taking a curse to the face.
She returned the smile, to his tremendous, happy surprise. “Goodie! Now raise the rest!”
Yes, she was now his. The warmth returned to his chest and mixed with his Ice-Dark mana. “Of course.” He exhaled and began raising the corpses one by one.
The frozen bodies sprayed across the ice-coated street had been gathered and lined by a frozen, granite building. The imps. They were every-so-helpful. No wonder Zaine summoned an army of them over the stronger demons. The Stalkers couldn’t a carry a thing with those sword-arms and Colossus Enforcers would crush them on grasp. Smart—in a way.
Then noticed something was missing: Zaine and Ambiguous and the majority of his army.
He swept his mind, searching for the stringy connections—finding the Imps washing through the city but mostly toward the east. By the harbor and spawn point. They'd taken most of the free owls and Stalkers plus one Colossus Enforcers. Zaine's mana and stamina had recovered to half but the debuff still had a few minutes remaining.
The operator owls and Worker Dolls—Gabrielle had apparently given him shared, mental control over her minions—pushed up the trebuchets and Shield Generators into city ever so slowly.
And she had stayed by his side while he’d been in his trance, loyal and possessive.
“Come on…” she whined, “they could’ve all been raised by now… I wanna join the fight!”
“You don’t have to babysit me,” he said, tone light.
“Hmph.” She puffed away to the east.
He sighed, cutting off a call to wait. She was one unique, unpredictable girl. Better hurry up these the raising.
Rowan called forth the rest of his mana and raised Archers, Rogues, Priests, Paladins, Blademasters, Warriors, and a few Mages till he reached his minion cap. The Priests and Paladins lacked their pure-light skills, understandably, and gained a few dark variants of similar function. Holy Light replaced with Dark Essence, Consecration replaced with Blight, Light Screen replaced with Dark Mana Shell. Other too, but those were the most useful pure-light skills according to the forums. These players hadn’t learned many usefully, rarer skills.
He tugged on their leashes and blinked down the eastern street, the Undead with movement skills keeping pace with Rowan and the Imps and Colossus. The Paladins and Priests lagged behind while the Warriors, Blademasters, and Rogues had some kind of sonic-speed running skill. It looked almost comical, those legs a scratchy blur.
&n
bsp; Along the way, a brilliant phoenix of golden light soared vertically into the sky and hovered for several seconds before emitting a many-mile wide blast of gold light. Every minion took a sizable chunk of damage while Rowan’s shield chunked for 20%.
Gabby LeMort: What was that?
She didn’t know? It seemed like she was becoming less knowledgeable since Zaine had joined the group.
Zaine Everlight: Mass Resurrection. Granted by a legendary Paladin gear set. There are many copies of it.
Damn. Now that was one powerful light-aligned skill.
Rowan considered and allowed them one decent skill. It’d be a boring, one-sided slaughter otherwise. Like what’d happened back there against their idiotic defense line to protect all these—
Empty buildings and streets. No screams or panic whatsoever.
Rowan Black: Where is everyone?
Ambiguous Pain: City’s empty. They’d long evacuated. That march, siege, and battle took close to thirty minutes.
Zaine Everlight: That group at the gate must’ve been buying time for the last group portals.
Gabby LeMort: Yup. Thought so. Cowards just abandoned their city ^_^
Rowan deadpanned and mentally slapped himself. Of course, that was the reason. Those good players would sacrifice their immortal lives to save some NPCs.
And that nobleness and need for justice will be their downfall—easily exploited.
Rowan pumped extra mana granted by the spire’s indiscriminating reserves into his Rime Blink, adding an extra few meters to its range. Decent-looking masonry, parks, and neatly paved streets passed by, some of it in burning rubble waiting to be used as construction resources. Gabrielle had big plans for this place. All these stone buildings were yet another lucky break.
Arriving at the party’s location atop a flat roof, Rowan took in the battlefield and grimaced. He issued orders to his new Undead to join the wide arc of demons’ assault on the golden shield.
A ring of Generators had been erected around the fountain, covering the square plus nearby shops and a library. Twenty-four generators tightly packed.
Imp attacks, Colossus flamethrowers, and Demon-knight chaos attacks splashed against the golden-white torus as players ported in and resurrected and returned fire. More than a handful of Imps had died but none disintegrated. Rowan raised the downed Imps from a distance and Examined a single shield.
Light Mana Shield: Tier 7
Shield Points: 975,000
Dark Resistance: Very High
Other Resistances (Average): Medium-High
Armor: Medium
Tier seven just like their shields.
Not only that, but two diamond-shaped crystals floating atop granite pillars shot golden lasers into nearby generators every ten seconds.
Shield Battery: Tier 2
Health: 95,700
Mana: 6,500,300
Resistances: Low
Armor: Low
Fucking hell.
This was going to be a long, drawn-out fight till the trebuchets entered range. Zaine and Gabrielle’s ultimate burst-damage skills were on cooldown too. Ambiguous was still sustaining the stasis on the Dark Humans. Time for another Blizzard then.
“What are you waiting for?” Zaine asked and fired another Chaotic Dark Slash. Two minutes left on his debuff. And why wasn’t he summoning more powerful demons? He probably had a good reason.
“Blizzard, ya silly!” Gabrielle said, “Ya have infinite mana here for non-shield skills!” Her curses would be useless here. And her bombs dealt mediocre damage compared to the magnitude of shield health, specialized to kill and debuff characters. She was suddenly a real support, rendered to an aura and heal bot.
“I know,” he grunted and pointed with his wand, willing the Blizzard to charge.
Max's brother shouted into the noise of battle again, barely visible under the twenty-four overlapping shields. He pointed with his staff, one-handed, and swept a narrow laser-like fire attack through the Imps. Over twenty disintegrated and a hundred needed healing.
That bastard. Like his dead brother—always at wherever Rowan was. Always waiting and jumping in his way just to make his life difficult.
New hate surged through Rowan’s veins, his heart a strong beat behind the weight of his amulet. His vision pulsated as Ice-Dark mana churned over the square. The Dubois family won’t best Rowan Black.
Not this time. Not again. Rowan roared, his face straining, and poured every drop of mana in his blood into the growing blizzard activating in a storm three seconds after the first trebuchet mortar hit the ring. A symphony of frost and flame and hate rained upon the courtyard.
Chapter 38
Redemption
In a secluded region deep within northern Greenwood Spine, the first Red Dragons lazed in a mountain-off, dilapidated, grayish valley next to a series of bubbling, smoking volcanoes and pools of lava. The skies over the lair was an open oven, cooking Jonathan alive in his thick Paladin armor. And he would've been if it wasn't for his Holy Light Aura and high fire resistance. He was a lucky boy.
A younger, sleeker Red Dragon laying by the magma pool peered up at Jonathan and shrieked as he flew over. Though it didn’t take flight. Neither did the eight or nine others lingering nearby. Two stood, facing each other, dueling in a scuffle. One lunged with a swipe of its claw—and hurled a stream of white-hot fire. The other dodged with speed that its body shouldn't have allowed for.
This was Aeon Chronicles Online, after all. The impossible was possible all thanks to the power of mana and magic and character stats. Jonathan loved it—far more than the real world, living a poor life in a poor town working a poor, part-time job that’d be replaced by AI automatons any month. If only he’d made enough from the real-money market to afford a basic living. If only he’d trained Runecrafting or Cooking, those boring professions. That’d be the dream.
But if Rowan and LeMort turned this world into a dark hellhole, he might as well cancel his subscription now. It’d be his ultimate failure, letting down the millions of too-life-like NPCs and friendly players. They’d treated him far too well, over the decade.
This was Jonathan’s path to atonement. He knew it, felt it in his nerves and bones like a primal instinct. This was a trial granted to him by the dragons, by the AI controller. It had deemed his mind unique enough to grant a special quest. Unfair to all the other players, but that’s how the game was. They dealt with it and enjoyed it to an extent. So did Jonathan.
And special, personalized quests were more common than you’d guess. Many kept them secret—though some made thunderous announcements on the forums, proud of their discovery. There were a few of those every day, some small, others significant and game-changing. Like Dorian’s ascension to a second-tier class.
The entrance to the lair entered view, a sixty-meter-wide mouth in the side of a mountain’s base. It was amazing the thing didn’t collapse. Probably help up with the Red Dragons’ magic.
There, the dragon which had challenged Jonathan perched atop a rock formation. It glanced at him, its yellow eyes meeting his. A split-second connection formed, an arc of pain darting through his skull.
He knew what he needed to do.
Quest Update: Red Dragon’s Challenge
You have found the Red Dragon Lair. Enter and find a way to its heart and face what’s below. Warning: all dragons inside will be aggressive if you enter.
The warning wasn’t necessary. Everyone knew every dragon species broke neutrality if you entered their lair—or tried to kidnap one. Jonathan’s special quest didn’t make him an exception, apparently.
The elder dragon eyed Jonathan without connecting minds, waiting, shooting that dragon-sneer with that scaled, lizard face. And that look said it all: Are you a coward or will you face judgment?
Judgment—in the form of an encounter with a Red Dragon boss. What a plot-twist this was! Jonathan bellowed a hearty laugh into the searing wind, shaking his head, then sighed a hot breath.
No tu
rning back now. Armageddon had come to the Water Mage Spire and he’d wasted close to an hour now searching. He couldn’t turn back. He’d never able to face his guild again.
Jonathan took a breath and checked the Alliance chat one last time. He couldn’t stop himself.
Dorian Ambersworn: Goddamn, I don’t think that blizzard skill has a cooldown or channel limit.
Grant BossMan: Someone invite The Crave into Alliance chat.
Alexa Gray: Battery depleted!
Lance Rider: First group portals hitting in 5 mins. Good job on the evacuation. No lives lost.
Dorian Ambersworn: DESTEALTHED HIM! Zaine’s the human kid in front of Rowan!
The chat exploded at that and a boulder dropped through the bottom of Jonathan’s stomach. A little kid. A Demon-Knight World Boss. This had to be some kind of dark joke cooked up by the AI controller. It must’ve analyzed one too many horror movies, drawing inspiration from all those evil children. One had to show up at some point. It had to be now.
Aeon Chronicles Online_Book 1_Devil's Deal Page 42
