Kalmond had no choice but to follow, but he had the good sense to lob his last fire potion high. The bomb splashed down just before the cavern entrance setting twenty or more Gideons on fire, stemming their flow for a few precious seconds.
Whoever was playing Driskroll’s character used a Xirclet. That was obvious by the way he moved. Something about the fighting style looked familiar. Of course, all the weapon moves were pre-programed and nearly identical, but when the Driskroll character kicked or ducked, Kalmond’s memory jogged.
“Martin!” Kalmond shouted. The orc turned his head towards Kalmond and opened his mouth to reply, and four Gideons took him down.
Kalmond chopped down two more Gideons, but several more got between him and Martin as an increasing dogpile obscured the orc. As Kalmond fought against the increasing numbers of duplicate Gideons, it occurred to him incongruously how angry Driskroll would be if someone not only hijacked his character but then got it killed.
Kalmond planted both feet and skidded to a stop within axe reach of the first wave. One power swing of cloudsplitter decapitated one, cut another in half below the shoulders and slashed a third for two kills and a stunning critical complete with crackling electricity. Kalmond finished the stunned Gideon with a backswing that took off the top if his head as four more attackers took his place, nearly surrounding the dwarf.
Kalmond backpedaled, swinging the axe of warding from left to right, bisecting two at the waist and making a huge laceration in the chest of a third. Flash! A burst of light announced level nineteen.
Kalmond the Stone Dwarf
Level 19
XP 26899
STA 40
STR 38
INT 37
AGI 38
CHA 38
MAN 35
MLVL 1081
Hit Points 16226
The dwarf fought his way clear enough to look for Martin but only found a growing mound of clawing, scratching, screaming Gideon clones. “Martin!” Kalmond screamed, swapping out cloudsplitter for the water cannon spell. He blasted back enough of the mob to buy rescue time, but things looked hopeless until another character showed up from nowhere.
Runecaster blasted the entire pile away with a wind spell that knocked Kalmond flat on his rump and made him skid on the seat of his armor. She held the spell much longer than necessary howling at the top of her lungs.
“Take that, monsters,” Runecaster said, then exchanged the dual-wield spell for a flaming chain dart weapon she whirled around her head. She took careful aim and released the dart, scoring a perfect hit on Martin.
“Najeel, you idiot!” Martin exclaimed, bursting into flames.
Kalmond was back on his feet, but the use of that name nearly knocked him back down. He had no time to ask, but too much time to wonder how the two computer scientists ended up in the Realm.
Kalmond drank a mana potion then used the level two water spell again with both hands to blast an offensive line of Gideon’s back against the cave walls. He chopped at them like underbrush, using his power attacks, drinking endurance potions and attacking again. They just kept coming.
A fireball singed Kalmond’s left shoulder and incinerated two Gideons, making cloudsplitter pass through ash. Instinctively, Kalmond jumped in the opposite direction as another fireball passed where he just stood. He decided to run, not from the mob, but from a novice adventurer in possession of a powerful character.
“This is wonderful!” Najeel exclaimed in Runecaster’s deep female voice as he raised his hands again. “On no! It doesn’t work anymore.”
“You’re out of mana!” Kalmond explained. “Use your weapons.”
“Let’s see,” Najeel said, casually stroking his chin as the mob reformed and rushed on. “Ah, I see the bar now. What about a flaming swo—” a wall of Gideons took Najeel down before he could finish his sentence and before Kalmond could reach him.
“Ouch!” came Runecaster’s voice conveying Najee’s dismay. “This really hurts!”
“You get used to it!” Kalmond shouted, using his water cannon spell to blast Najeel free while Martin tangled with what appeared to be the last of the Gideon mob.
To his credit, Najeel recovered quickly, using his wind blast spell, followed by a one-two combination of fireballs. He was more accurate with the single-handed fire, aiming strategically for mob members at the front of the line which caught fire and became obstacles for those rushing behind. “I have mana potions!” Najeel exclaimed.
“Don’t hit me,” Kalmond growled as he pressed forward into the chaotic charge. “And conserve your potions!”
The waves had slowed, allowing him to chop and slash with far less urgency, keeping his power swings in reserve to keep larger groups at bay. It took the dwarf several seconds to understand that the mobs were finished. He’d stopped paying attention to the XP bubbles that formed like foam above the heads of the slaughtered mob, but he guessed he’d earned another 600 points at least.
Martin put away his flaming sabers, but Najeel kept the fireball spells active and stared at his hands as he ambled over.
“OK,” Kalmond said. “What the hell are you two doing here?”
Martin answered first. “Don’t be so eager to thank me. We lost your signal, and your vitals got thready in the fishtank you’re in in the real world.”
Kalmond arched an eyebrow and Najeel finished the narrative. “At the same time, I noticed an increase in autonomous character algorithms bearing Gideon’s dream signature.”
“Wait,” Kalmond said, “there’s a dream signature?”
“Yes,” Martin replied. “We’ve been working hard while you’ve been playing down here.”
“Does this look like I’m playing!” Kalmond shouted, using cloudsplitter to make a sweeping indication of the dead bodies that littered the cabin floor.
“Slow your roll there, wildman,” Martin said. Kalmond was strangely comforted that Martin’s crooked smirk also appeared on Driskroll’s face. “I’m just busting your balls. Do these avatars have balls?” He asked, trying to loosen his breeches.
“Mine certainly does not,” Najeel said haughtily, causing a rift in Kalmond’s reality that staggered him with laughter.
If anyone had told him that Dr. Najeel Boussaid would end up playing a videogame as a female battle mage, he’d have advised them to self-medicate.
“But how the hell did you get here and, well, why are you here?”
“Two things,” Martin said. “One, this avatar does have balls. Two, Virgil told us we had to find you. He’s losing control, so we used our admin privileges to get into the game. We picked these characters because the logs show the most interaction with you of any players.”
“Well,” Kalmond replied. “You lucked out and picked well. These are two excellent characters run by hardcore explorers. Are you prepared for the angry emails and forum rants when they discover their characters are locked by admin?”
Martin gazed dumbfounded at Najeel, then shrugged and said, “Good point. Hadn’t thought of that. As soon as we get your signal back, we’ll tell Holly and Derek to figure something out. Otherwise, we’d have to leave the game. I’m not sure we’d get back in.
“Well,” Kalmond said. “I am nearly level twenty. I have a bit more time than I thought. This mob really helped with the XP. One or two more quests and I should be in the dungeon instances.” The two others remained silent.
Martin opened his mouth to speak, but Najeel spoke first. “Oh, leaving would kill you,” he said casually.
“What!” Kalmond exclaimed, staggering back.
“Really?” Martin asked, putting hands to hips and fixing Najeel with spearing eyes. “That was what you came up with after a pause? I thought we covered this.”
“Not the time to work on social skills, Doctor,” Kalmond said, worrying the head of his gory axe with gripping fingers. The spiven steel gave warm comfort.
“Of course,” Najeel replied like a firm grade school teacher. “You are doing an exc
ellent job. I’m very happy with your work.”
Kalmond slapped his forehead. Ever courteous, even under mortal threat, he gave a strained, “Thank you, Dr. Boussaid.”
“You also lost track of time. You have about twelve hours to get to the sixth circle, not just the instances. You have to be standing in the new circle.”
“But why?” Kalmond asked. “Talk about moving the goalpost…”
“We don’t know why,” Najeel said. “Watching, we know these algorithms are very much like DNA in the way they replicate. We just know that the autonomous algorithms have two signatures. One is from Gideon, the other resembles Virgil’s but is not. It’s like watching the offspring of two tribes multiply and develop societies that—”
“Please,” Martin said, voice straining to remain even. “Just the relevant facts.”
“Of course,” Najeel said, unphased.
“So what do we do?” Kalmond asked, holding his axe across his chest with both hands as if that was the answer. It probably was.
“Well, this portal sphere is the key,” Martin said, removing the blood-red globe from his inventory to hold it up for all to see. “That was the other reason we chose this character. This globe has a character identifier, not an object ID. So does that portal globe in location 65-65.”
“Where the…” Kalmond trailed off before realizing ‘65’ was the hex code for the letter ‘e.’ “Dundree? What about Dundree?”
“These new towns also carry the Virgil signature,” Najeel said.
“I don’t get it,” Kalmond said. “The towns are characters?”
“No, they are town objects,” Martin said. “They just share code with the VIRGIL construct.”
“What the fuck does all that mean?” Kalmond said, growing frustrated.
“It means,” Najeel replied, “that Virgil and Gideon are rewriting the game with their actions and your actions influence the process.”
“Great,” Kalmond said. “Now how do I stay alive.”
Motion caught the corner of his eye and Kalmond turned back to the fleshy red pool that began to ripple. The globe in Martin’s hand glowed brighter, casting a circle of bloody light around him.
“This thing’s getting warm,” Martin said. “And I feel...kinda funny…”
Lumps formed beneath the surface and stretched long. Najeel squared up and readied his fireballs.
“Don’t,” Kalmond urged gently. “Whatever it is, it’s friendly. The Gideon things don’t like the river, and whatever it is, it saved me.”
Five objects stretched out like long fingers in a nitrile glove, then the red membrane loosened and fell away like syrupy liquid. The gray human brains hovered above the pool with branched tentacles dangling as they bobbed slightly in the cool, humid cave air.
“Freaky,” Martin said.
“They are quite literal representations of the disembodied human brain processing units,” Najeel said.
“Right down to the wires,” Kalmond observed.
“That means…” Martin said, trailing off.
“They are the avatars of the brains themselves,” Kalmond finished the thought. “Virgil is playing an avatar, Gideon is playing an avatar, just like we are playing avatars.”
“That’s it!” Najeel exclaimed. “That is the solution the system was seeking all along! We can stop the suffering of the conscious brains by letting them play avatars rather than having them interact with the realm directly!”
“Fantastic,” Kalmond said. “Now, can we please come up with a solution for me not dying?”
Chapter 21
The hovering brains revealed nothing. They simply hovered. Kalmond tried talking to them. Nothing. He tried to contact Virgil. No response. Martin tried activating the portal sphere. Nothing. They considered having Martin or Najeel leave the Pit to work the problem from the outside, but they weren’t sure they’d get back in. Ultimately, they decided that their chances were better working within the Realm.
As Najeel put it, “Because the system is so complex, the objective approach no longer serves us. We must learn to operate within the structure of its abstraction using intuition as our guide. Let’s call it simple man’s approach in honor of young Dante here.”
“Oh, thank you so much, Doctor” Kalmond growled.
“You’re quite welcome,” Najeel replied, oblivious to sarcasm. “Thank you for providing an example of problem-solving without conscious thought or reason.”
Kalmond closed his eyes and took a deep breath to quiet the voice that told him to reach for his axe. Then, the three adventurers, one veteran, the others novice, tried to work out the puzzle of a quest without a quest giver. Their mission was to find their way out of the pit of despair. They had no map, no quest description and the thirty or more dead Gideons held no loot. Kalmond had no more mana or firebomb potions and only one endurance potion remaining.
“You guys picked a tough quest for your first trip to the Realm,” Kalmond said, leaning on cloudsplitter.
“We did,” Martin replied, looking around the cavern. “One way in.” He pointed at the cavern entrance with one flaming saber and scratched his chin with the other. “Maybe we should go back upstream.”
“No,” Kalmond replied. “The river, or whatever it is, brought is here. Also, I think the passage triggers the mob.”
“Well,” Martin replied, turning to the hovering brains. “There’s one thing we haven’t tried, but you’re not going to like it.” He exchanged his saber for a long dagger and moved back over to the pond. The brains remained in place, placidly bobbing up and down.
Kalmond sighed. “Stick it once and see how the brains react. Make sure that’s not a poison dagger.”
Martin nodded. “It’s a regular blade,” he said, then knelt down and carefully drove the blade half-way into the fleshy membrane of the pond. “It won’t cut at all,” Martin said. “It just stretches.”
“Let me try,” Kalmond said. He put away cloudsplitter and brought out the ceremonial dagger he found way back when he was a level one. The blade reflected light from the shimmering veins back onto the pond. “I’m sorry, brain things,” Kalmond said. “We want to travel through this—whatever it is. Can you help us?”
He drew the blade across the surface, and the pond parted with no resistance. He drew the blade down as he plunged it deeper and a horizontal archway appeared, leading to a striated tunnel angling down.
“It looks like an esophagus,” Najeel remarked.
“Into the belly of the beast,” Martin said, shrugging his shoulders and stepping forward.
‘Wait!” Kalmond said, but it was too late.
Martin paused in the entrance and turned back. “It’s OK. Nothing happened.”
Kalmond groaned. “Why did you have to say that.” The words left his mouth as if announcing the pounding feet and the cacophonous jabbering of the Gideon mob. “Words are triggers in the realms sometimes.”
Kalmond followed Martin while Najeel lingered for a moment, allowing them to pass. He fired a dual-cast wind spell into the leading face of the mob, then followed through with several fireballs to buy escape time.
“You’re a natural at this,” Kalmond observed as the archway behind them closed, leaving them in sudden silence.
“Well, I did design the immersion system, after all,” Najeel replied.
“By yourself?” Martin asked, putting an edge on the question.
“Martin was instrumental, of course,” Najeel replied.
“I’m going to stop you both right there,” Kalmond said, pushing his way past Martin to take the lead. “I know how you to get started. This is not the time.”
The tunnel striations formed awkward steps that brought them downward until the passage leveled out and branched into three perfectly round stone passages. Though the tunnel shape changed, the rock was still the bright blood red color.
“Which way?” Martin asked.
Kalmond answered with the detection spell that revealed a dimly-lit path t
hat resembled a shadow against the red stone. The path led straight ahead through the central passage. They followed it until it faded and the tunnel turned sharply right, then left, then right again before heading straight for a distance that made them question its end.
“Maybe we should turn back,” Martin said.
“I suspect these tunnels are dynamic, reacting to us somehow. Turning back might lead us to a completely different path.”
“Then what’s the difference?” Martin asked impatiently.
Kalmond cast the detection spell again to find that the shadowy trail split off ahead into two branches that ended in two circles mid-way up the wall, staggered just a few paces apart.
“Odd,” Najeel said.
Kalmond raised his axe and hunkered down, and both Martin and Najeel followed his lead. They crept forward warily watching for signs of attack. Just before Kalmond reached the first glowing circle, a column of stone to his right extruded itself from the wall and slammed against the opposite side. Scrape, boom, sounded behind them, and Martin jumped just in time to keep from being crushed.
“Run!” Najeel said and bolted forward, but Kalmond yanked him back from the pistoning pillar ahead.
“No!” the dwarf bellowed. “Wait for the timing.
Scrape-boom, scrape-boom, scrape boom! The sound turned the tunnel into the percussion section of a deadly symphony rehearsing a death march. The staggering of the stone hammers made it so they could move forward only one at a time.
“Follow me!” Kalmond shouted above the hammering. He waited, cocking an ear for the pause, then jumped forward. Looking back, he found an empty space with Martin and Najeel hanging back.
“What!” Kalmond bellowed, and the hammering pace increased slightly.
“The frequency is increasing,” Najeel shouted back.
“Then hurry! The longer we stand here, the faster it will go,” Kalmond replied. His animated hand gestures nearly cost him an arm. “Move when I move. Hurry!”
Realm of the Nine Circles: The Grind: A LitRPG Novel Page 26
