But the orange Miyelonian just shook her big-eared head and took a step back, hiding behind the other team members.
“No, captain. My life is just getting back on track. I learned to take advantage of that unique fact. I’ve been making friends. I bought a mansion. By the way, thanks for the money. No, I’m content with my fate and do not want to change it!”
I was somewhat surprised and even a bit upset. To be honest, I was hoping Gerd Ayni would want to become a human woman. That would be... anyway, not important. No means no. I didn’t try to insist. I turned my gaze to our Bard Vasily Filippov. I remembered hearing he was very bothered by the game classes he was offered initially, which kept him from strategizing for the Human-3 Faction army.
“Vasily Andreyevich! Here’s your chance to correct the game’s error and make yourself a Strategist. Or whatever else you like!”
“N-no, Gnat. I pass! I spent half a life waging war. I’ve been to every big hotspot on our planet. Enough. That’s behind me now. I have a new life and I’m enjoying every minute of it. So many songs left to write! So many plans! And I’ll be more useful on the ship as a Bard.”
Gerd Minn-O La-Fin? She refused before I even finished asking. Valeri-Urla? I looked at the girl, now fully back to health after her operation. But I also knew she would say no before I even asked. The Tailaxian beauty had already found a way to get free of her bonds, and I saw no other obvious reason for her to change her life. And yes, I was not wrong. The Beastmaster shook her head “no.”
“Captain, maybe you should use it.” Eduard Boyko shouted.
I shuddered in fear. No way I was changing race. I’m a human! And to lose the unique Listener class, and along with it my Energy Armor, three Relict guard drones and everything I’d achieved in the game? No! Not in a million years! The only class change option I would accept was progressing further down my chosen path and becoming one of the Relict Hierarchs. And the Pyramid had already told me how I could achieve what I wanted – by entering the besieged starship and rescuing the ancient Hierarch. I intended to follow that path to a “T.” Should I try this trick to get around all the challenges and straight to what I wanted? That was basically cheating. I always had nothing but scorn for cheaters and would kill them in computer games whenever I got the chance. And most likely the class I was aiming for wouldn’t be on the list. Otherwise there would have been other Listeners, Devourers and Thinkers before me, and the game system wouldn’t have given me a message saying I was unique.
“Forty seconds!” Gerd Uline Tar warned me. “Make up your mind quick!”
I led an inquisitive gaze from one team member to the next but always found a negative response. And then, pushing the people in front out of his way, Kisly the Machinegunner stepped toward the metal box:
“Captain, can I have it? Well, not for me, but this thing could make my wife Nefertiti a living player!”
Okay then, a very noble goal. I pulled it out of the slot and extended the violet ball to Kisly:
“Here! But hurry up, time is ticking!”
The level-93 Machinegunner, not too tall but so beefy that he was nearly rectangular, took the violet pill from me and handed it to the NPC Dryad. Nefertiti accepted the unexpected gift, gave her husband a grateful kiss on the cheek and started staring at the strange glowing ball.
“Fifteen seconds!” Uline Tar warned, her voice starting to quaver.
“Down the hatch, you stupid bitch!!!” Eduard Boyko shouted, unable to resist.
Kisly said something to the Dryad, but she had no reaction at all. Then he gestured to her to say she had to eat it. Nefertiti was clearly surprised and couldn’t believe him. It looked like she had her mind made up and thought we were playing a trick on her. But then Kisly grabbed the gift, forced the NPC Dryad’s mouth open and stuck the glowing stone as deep in as he could. Nefertiti swallowed.
Everyone around breathed a sigh of relief. The frigate was not going to blow up now. And with only four seconds remaining.
“I actually doubt that the NPC Dryad will know what to change in her character settings,” Princess Minn-O La-Fin commented skeptically.
To be honest, I also had my doubts. I didn’t even have a clue where in the character settings you could find the hidden parameter that defined if someone was an NPC or living player. Or how an illiterate NPC Dryad ever would. I started to regret giving the stone to Kisly.
Around a minute passed, but nothing happened. The Dryad just remained a Dryad. But the automated “hunter” wasn’t coming for our souls either. Oh well, to be frank, it wasn’t exactly the worst possible outcome.
And then... the Dryad changed into a huge pure-white Centaur mare! When her husband Kisly saw it, his jaw dropped in shock. A moment later, there was a silver rhinoceros in the middle of the state room. Then a dolphin. A female troll. A large hairless gorilla with floppy breasts. Then she started changing a few times a second. Some were truly very freakish. I was not fast enough to even see what form Nefertiti was trying every time.
“Looks like this could go on a while,” Destroying Angel commented. “A woman can spend hours trying on outfits in a clothing store. But this isn’t just a dress. Here she can change her whole appearance.”
“I bet she won’t stop messing around until she starts to get hungry!” Dmitry Zheltov guessed.
“We might as well have just handed an unlocked smartphone to a baby,” Svetlana Vereshchagina chuckled glumly. “And the baby is pressing all the little red buttons, opening a bunch of apps at the same time and visiting god knows what sites by clicking the flashiest hyperlinks. We’ll be lucky if she doesn’t buy her parents an excavator on credit.”
Chapter Thirty. Blast from the Past
BECAUSE THE DRYAD was clearly going to be taking her time, the crew members gradually dispersed to get back to their business. But I asked the Meleyephatian Gunner to wait for me in the state room a couple minutes. Then I hurried to the bridge to talk with the pilots and rejuvenated Navigator. The main question now was: where to fly? Going to the Trillian Taikhirhh-O-Tsykh system didn’t make sense anymore. We didn’t have the Meleyephatian Spies to shelter in neutral territory anymore. We could take a break at any other midpoint on our way to the H9045/WE star system, where my two ancient combat drones awaited. Unfortunately, it was not possible to make it there in just one jump – the distance was too great and we would need a stopover point.
“How about the H5540/A system?” the Navigator opened the star map and pointed at a dim light-gray dot. “It’s halfway to our destination and in a belt of weakened hyperspace, which is very convenient. It will bring down our flight time considerably. Furthermore, the system is uninhabitable. If I understand correctly, that is a plus right now.”
Yes, having no one see us at our midpoint was a big fat plus. First of all, we had no reason to demonstrate our flight vector (and it was possible to approximately determine someone’s destination from their midway point). Second, I needed to keep in mind that I was now an official enemy of the Meleyephatian Horde. And there would always be someone willing to sell me out to the Meleyephatians if they saw my starship.
The pilots started preparing the frigate for a hyperspace jump. I meanwhile returned to the state room. Kisly alone was next to the empty chest and his wife, endlessly repeating barely audibly: “Please just don’t change into some ugly crocodile.” Also in the room were Ayni the Translator and the Meleyephatian Gunner.
I asked the Translator to stay because I wanted to start studying the language of the Meleyephatian Horde. And so Eeeezzz 777 spoke his native language, while Gerd Ayni translated it into Miyelonian for her captain. First of all, I wanted to know how the Gunner came to know about the rare Precursor artifacts. I mean, I understood that my new crew member had spent a long time serving as a mercenary under the legendary Planet Devouress of Betelgeuse, but was he really close enough with Kung Eesssa for her to entrust him with her personal secrets?
Gerd Ayni then translated the Meleyephatian’s chirri
ng:
“No, of course not. I was a normal soldier back then at a modest level one hundred or one-oh-five. But I just so happened to be present for a trade deal involving just such an artifact. Our shuttle flew to the client with me in the Gunner’s seat. Kung Eesssa told us all to keep an eye on her and keep our weapons drawn. It was a top secret meeting and took place in the cryochamber of a factory, which I found very strange and suspicious. The individual she was meeting was a Cleopian aristocrat, who was giving her the payment for capturing him a star system and brutally murdering all pretenders to his throne until they couldn’t respawn. And he paid our commander with a chest just like this one. But it was full and had sixteen of the unprepossessing little stones. First I thought Eesssa would be outraged – we spilled blood and lost six cruisers in those battles. But our reward was basically somebody’s garbage. However, the commander knew perfectly well what it was, and had seemingly requested it specifically.”
Astrolinguistics skill increased to level ninety-eight!
The Meleyephatian walked over to the open chest and pointed a claw at the empty row:
“There are supposed to be four white stones here. When unfrozen, they start to shine gold. They each give +8 statistic points just like when a character is promoted to Gerd. Kung Eesssa immediately had all four of them brought to a warm room nearby and gulped them down.”
Wow! Plus thirty-two statistic points! And she probably ended up with much more, considering the extra bonus point for every two invested after a statistic hit twenty. That was... it just knocked the wind right out of me. Even the slowest-witted being in the Universe could eat a couple of those and bring their Intelligence up high enough to go toe-to-toe with the brightest scientist. The weak could gain super strength. The clumsy could become fantastically graceful. You could take a combat character and pump up their Constitution so much that their hitpoints would be off the charts, their regeneration would instantly heal wounds, and their defense against physical damage would allow them to take a massive number of blows and hits without any armor necessary.
And meanwhile, the Meleyephatian continued his story:
“The next row contained four dark-gray stones. They lit up red when activated, and gave two level-ups a piece.”
“That’s all???” I couldn’t hold back the surprised exclamation.
After how imba the other Precursor artifacts were – instantaneous rejuvenation, the ability to change appearance, or an extra eight statistic points – two levels seemed like a very modest reward.
“Oh, Captain Gnat! Don’t be offended, but you’re still too low-level to appreciate the value. You’re at ninety-eight, so you’re still levelling-up once every ten days. Maybe even more. But just imagine how hard it will be for me to get from 163 to 164! It will take a quarter tong at the very least! And you have to make sure not to die that whole time, otherwise your progress bar will zero out! And some players are level two hundred, or even higher! Just imagine how hard it is for them! Many players would give an arm and a leg for a double level-up without hesitation!”
Uhh... To my eye, the Meleyephatian’s example was not convincing. To a space spider like him, the difference between seven and eight arms wasn’t be all that much. But a human, with half as many appendages, would be much more sensitive to losing arms or legs. But I understood what he was driving at overall and was even prepared to concede that Eeeezzz 777 may have been right. There is a certain category of high-level player that would pay generously to make quick progress.
“And for the record, the Planet Devouress of Betelgeuse was able to recoup all her lost starships and pay all her many mercenaries with the proceeds from just two of the stones.”
“So where did the Cleopian aristocrat even get these uncanny artifacts?” Gerd Ayni asked, not merely translating for me, herself also interested in the topic.
“How should I know?” The Gunner asked in surprise. “Found it somewhere. Bought it. Inherited it. At any rate, the Cleopian kept calling the stones ‘forbidden,’ and said ‘the game that bends reality despises them and strives to delete them.’“
Astrolinguistics skill increased to level ninety-nine!
These Meleyephatians had a very strange language. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to speak it. The human throat just wasn’t made for such trills, whistles and clicks. But sure, I could understand when they spoke. I had already figured out a couple simple words of Meleyephatian in fact, like “I,” “you,” “Gnat,” “stone,” and another odd few.
“I also seem to recall one mysterious sentence from the conversation with the Cleopian. And what made it stick in my memory was that it was bizarre and hard to parse. That the stones were created before the war of ancient races by the Prime Precursor as a counterweight to the ‘Relict Hierarchs, who had crossed all bounds and altered the rules of the game, bending all realities to their will.’“
I asked the Gunner the name of this Cleopian aristocrat, who seemed to know a surprising amount about the affairs of ancient races. As it turned out, his name was “Prince Edeyya-U, ruler of Serpea-III and its inhabited rings.” I’d have to make a note of that. And sure, many years had passed (somewhere around thirty tongs, as the Meleyephatian told me). But who could say how long Cleopians lived? Maybe the savvy Prince was still alive and perhaps even well. Eeeezzz 777 for example had been kicking for three hundred years already, and would now live to see three hundred more.
“So, what ever became of the Planet Devouress of Betelgeuse?” came another question from my orange Miyelonian friend.
“It isn’t clear, the story gets all muddled... Kung Eesssa always concealed the location of her virt pod from everyone. And it’s no surprise. The Planet Devouress of Betelgeuse had made more enemies than anyone alive at that point, so the commander’s caution was easy to understand. But one of her Meleyephatian officers noticed that Kung Eesssa left the game and spent quite a long time in the real world. And people were keeping very close track of that sort of thing back then. Memories of the attempt to decapitate the Meleyephatian Horde were still too fresh. Rumors started flying. There were attempts to locate her virt pod. And after that, Kung Eesssa just disappeared.”
“Was she perhaps afraid for her life in the real world and, in order to throw them off the scent, used one of the stones to change appearance?” the Miyelonian suggested.
I started tittering, surprised at Ayni’s slow-wit. Anyone could have guessed what he was hinting at. Someone who’d suffered from the actions of a Morphian should have been first to realize where the Planet Devouress of Betelgeuse went!
“Perhaps the widely despised war leader was found and killed IRL. Or maybe Kung Eesssa didn’t need the ancient Precursor artifact to change her appearance and avoid pursuit,” the Meleyephatian cautiously guessed. “But that’s just speculation. And no one can check now.”
By the way... that was actually a very intriguing line of thought. Two hundred years ago, the wise Vaa was put into anabiosis. And she said none of her Morphian friends or clones had such crazy combat characteristics as the one who killed the incarnation of the Miyelonian Great First Female. But now I was hearing from the old Gunner that there was an old “Meleyephatian” war leader who invested a huge number of statistic points into her character one hundred ten years ago. That could not have been a coincidence. Especially given that there were not many Morphians left, potentially just two: Vaa and Fox.
THE TONE OF THE THRUSTERS changed – Tamara the Paladin had entered hyperspace. It was going to take eight ummi to reach Taikhirhh -o-Tsykh, forty-four hours in earth time. So there was plenty of time to get some relaxation. Nevertheless, I was in no rush to let my crew take leave.
“Mandatory practice for the whole crew! Two hours of Endurance and Strength training. We had athletic training devices installed in the frigate for that very purpose. Then start training shooting and reaction time! Not with real combat weapons, of course. We got pistols and rifles that shoot light and a set of targets to go with them. There’s a �
��firing range’ in the empty cargo hold. And finally, we’ll all be sparring both with and without melee weapons!”
I was afraid my team might grumble, but there was not even a hint of it. Either my authority was already high enough for them not to dispute captain’s orders, or my team was thinking back to the results of our recent battles, which could not be called anything other than shameless, and they were trying to remedy the situation.
Wow! I finally saw Vasha and Basha Tushihh’s true strength. Both of the giant twin Geckho brothers could bench press a half-ton barbell! It impressed everyone. Vasha then even broke the strength meter. But as for Endurance, Kisly knew no equal. Our Machinegunner could run at twice his carry weight for longer than anyone else, even outdoing his direct superior Gerd T’yu-Pan. I was not distinguished by my physical prowess, losing out to almost everyone in most exercises, but I still trained honestly, not even thinking of slacking off. And my Authority not only didn’t suffer (which I was slightly afraid of), it in fact went up!
Authority increased to 82!
Shooting. Here first place by a long shot was shared between Gerd Minn-O La-Fin and Destroying Angel. My wayedda’s hit percentage was a bit lower than the two-time Olympic biathlon champion from my world, but the Princess was the only one to also detect all threats and avoid taking any hits from the active targets. In group exercises the same two, reinforced by Grim Reaper dominated all the other teams.
I raised my Sharpshooter to 48, Rifles to 63 and Targeting to 47, but that wasn’t even the most important thing. I finally saw the germ of what I wanted my team to become. They were working together professionally, delegating functions, helping one another and using the strong sides of their classes to their advantage. They were using different tactics for every battle, moving fast, linking shields together, focusing on the same targets, using suppressing fire and shooting blind, using targeting markers and paralyzing enemies. The contours of a more intellectual, cohesive fighting style were starting to reveal themselves. Everyone knew their role and position, and tactics were instantly adapted to any change in situation.
A Jump into the Unknown (Reality Benders Book #5) LitRPG Series Page 32
