Awaken Online (Book 3): Evolution

by Bagwell, Travis

  “Okay, are we ready?” Frank asked, pulling one of his axes from a loop at his waist and his free hand hovering over the door handle.

  Jason summoned his dark mana, the chill energy numbing the edge of his anxiety. This fight was going to be a complete shot in the dark. If they failed here, he doubted that the Hippie would give them a free pass back through his so-called puzzle. However, there was nowhere to go but forward.

  “Let’s do it,” Jason finally said.

  The group moved all at once. Frank yanked on the handle, the double doors whipping open in a rush and slamming against the stone walls. The group rushed forward, entering the dark room on the other side in formation. As soon as the last of Jason’s Drones passed through the doorway, the portal abruptly vanished, leaving them trapped inside.

  Jason discovered that they were now standing in a large rectangular room, about one hundred feet long and thirty feet wide. The walls and floor were comprised of the same heavy blocks of stone, but Jason couldn’t make out much else. Darkness hung in the room like a dense cloud and he was having trouble penetrating the gloom, even with his Night Vision.

  Before Jason could ask Frank to light up his axes, torches along the walls sputtered to life, casting a pale blue light across the room. The flickering flames cast shadows against the heaping piles of random objects that littered the floor of the room. Some of the piles towered nearly fifteen feet into the air – a panoply of gear, weapons, and trinkets creating precarious pillars of junk.

  Yet there were no obvious enemies in sight.

  At Jason’s gesture, the group edged forward slowly, maintaining their silence. After dealing with the skeletons in each of the previous rooms, they were now cautious about triggering an enemy. As they approached the piles on the other end of the room, Jason could see that there was no rhyme or reason to the motley assembly of items. The mountains were a collection of rusted metal weapons and what might have once been valuable objects: chipped plates, reams of fabric, and the odd jar and urn.

  “What is this?” Frank whispered.

  “Fluffy’s tribute, I guess,” Jason answered quietly, recalling the Hippie’s rather unhelpful explanation.

  As they wound through the mountains of junk, the surface of one pile trembled. The group froze and eyed the mound suspiciously. “What was…” Frank began and immediately stopped as goblets and old coins tumbled down the surface of the mound, clattering against the stone floor.

  Then the pile abruptly heaved, junk erupting into the air and scattering across the floor. The other mounds of trash followed suit, a whirlwind of items hurtling through the air as though an explosive had been set off beneath each of the piles. A wild assortment of junk soon spun and danced through the air as the group dove to the floor to avoid the objects hurtling above them. Yet the objects all seemed to be heading for the opposite end of the room, a truly massive creature beginning to take shape from the maelstrom of scrap.

  The thing vaguely resembled a rat – albeit nearly twenty feet long. Its face and body were composed of a roiling mass of equipment, rusted weapons forming jagged fangs and jutting from its back at haphazard angles. As the whirlwind began to peter out, the creature shook itself, junk cascading from its body and crashing against the floor. It took an experimental step forward, each footstep causing the ground to tremble, and it sniffed at the air experimentally as its makeshift whiskers twitched.

  Two dark orbs of energy suddenly flickered into existence where its eyes should have been, rotating to focus on the group. Jason’s dark mana floundered for a moment as he took in the creature, a heavy weight settling in his stomach. It looked like they had found the temple’s first-floor guardian.

  Chapter 21 - Cluttered

  “This is strange,” Robert murmured, his eyes fixed on the translucent blue screen flickering in front of him.

  “What is?” Claire asked, swiveling to face the engineer and sparing a glance at the other employees around the lab. The control room was alive with movement, technicians working at their stations and typing animatedly.

  “I just checked on Jason’s video feed,” Robert replied, glancing up at Claire with a guilty expression. “Don’t look at me like that! It has been a few days since he’s destroyed something or started a war. I was getting nervous,” he added with a chuckle.

  “Okay,” Claire replied, sighing softly in resignation. “Besides the lack of death and destruction, what’s so strange?”

  “It looks like Jason is on an island near Falcon’s Hook – an island that was only recently added to the game world. However, that isn’t the unusual part. His video feed is intermittent. Like here is a segment with him walking through a jungle and then just… nothing. There are large gaps of time with no footage at all.” Robert shook his head, his brow furrowed in confusion as his hands darted across his keyboard.

  Claire could feel the ever-present knot in her stomach clench forcefully at this news. She could only imagine what their budding villain was up to – or why the video footage was missing. She couldn’t help but glance once more at the ominous black towers that stood adjacent to the control room. This seemed like Alfred’s work.

  She hesitated. With her recent conversation with Gloria still fresh in her mind, perhaps this might be an opportunity to gain more information from Robert.

  “I’ve also noticed some odd gaps in the player data,” Claire began tentatively. “I thought maybe it was some sort of glitch or maybe the files had been corrupted, but even the backup servers were missing the data.”

  That got Robert’s full attention, a frown now firmly plastered across his face as he swiveled in his chair to look at Claire. “Hmm. That is odd. What were you looking for specifically?”

  “Crap,” Claire thought, struggling to come up with an answer that wouldn’t make Robert suspicious. “Oh… just some routine player data. I was trying to pull together the report for the CPSC. You know, because of that recent incident with the game master.”

  “Ahh, that makes sense,” Robert said, waving dismissively and turning back to his terminal. “We had to code some hotfixes to power level the gamemasters. Alfred was fighting us on it. That might have corrupted some of the user data – especially after Alfred integrated the player profiles for the game masters into the main game world from the test environment.”

  “Well, are there other places where that information is backed up?” Claire asked hopefully, heaving an internal sigh of relief as Robert seemed to accept her story.

  Robert tapped his lips with his fingers and leaned back in his chair. “We store user data in a bunch of locations. Obviously, there are the primary servers and the backups. Then there are development servers for work in progress and testing. Hell, even the headsets store some information.”

  “Really? The headsets?” Claire asked, trying to tamp down on her excitement. “What do you mean?”

  Robert scratched his head as he pondered how to answer her question. “Well, the regular headsets don’t store much information – which is a function of their limited local memory and hard drive capacity. They might hold a day or two of player and gameplay information – at most. That’s what you get with first-gen hardware.

  “However, I added some additional storage to the prototypes. It makes them a bit more unwieldy, but I needed to keep better track of user data for purposes of troubleshooting the new equipment. They can hold a couple of weeks of information. I also occasionally back up all of the data to my personal lab.”

  Robert spared her a quick glance before turning back to his terminal. “Not that this will probably help you much for a regular user. We’ve only handed out a few of the new prototypes.”

  “It’s still helpful,” Claire replied slowly. “At least this answers some of my questions and nothing nefarious is going on.” She could feel the knot in her stomach writhe and coil at this last sentence.

  Claire’s thoughts were racing. She knew that when Robert referred to his lab, he was really talking about his apartment –
which was off limits to the cleaning staff and any other employees. It took a great deal of effort, but Claire managed to tamp down on her growing excitement. If Robert was telling the truth, then the data she needed might be on the terminal in his lab.

  That thought gave her pause, though. She wasn’t sure what she dreaded more, that she might discover that the data she was looking for was missing on Robert’s private server or that she might actually have to visit his apartment.

  ***

  The monstrous metallic rat towered over the group. The black vortexes that were its eyes glinted harshly in the pale blue light that illuminated the room. The creature took a lumbering step forward, causing junk to cascade down the length of its back. Its makeshift tail swished back and forth, occasionally scraping against the stone floor and creating a shower of sparks.

  “Oh shit,” Frank muttered, clutching at his axes and taking a short step backward.

  “Stay in position,” Jason ordered. “Riley will back you up.”

  The creature didn’t wait for the group to make the first move. It abruptly lashed out with its tail, slashing at Frank. The barbarian managed to raise one of his axes at the last moment, barely blocking the blow with a howling screech of metal grinding against metal. The muscles in Frank’s arms bulged, and the power of the monster’s attack forced him back several feet, throwing him off balance.

  Capitalizing on its advantage, the creature surged forward. Its metallic fangs clamped down on Frank’s arm, crimson blood immediately welling from the injury and running down his skin. The barbarian let out a howl of pain, slamming the creature’s head over and over with the axe in his free hand in a futile attempt to force the monster off him. Showers of scrap metal fragments sprayed from each impact, but the blows seemed to have little effect on the creature.

  Meanwhile, Riley began channeling her Health Transfer, a line of blood-red mist forming between her and Frank and casting the already gruesome scene in a macabre light. If nothing else, she could at least keep him alive. As the crimson droplets touched Frank’s skin, his flesh began to slowly knit back together – even while the creature’s fangs were still embedded in his skin.

  Jason commanded his remaining skeletons to enter the fray, hoping to distract the creature for a moment and give Frank a chance to escape. The undead raced forward at a sprint, their rusted weapons screeching against the monster’s metallic body. At this new onslaught, the creature thrashed its head, finally releasing Frank and throwing the burly barbarian across the room. His body slammed against a wall, fragments of stone spraying from the impact site. Frank lay unmoving on the floor.

  The creature then turned to the skeletons and began making short work of Jason’s flimsy, poorly-armed minions. Each monstrous blow reduced an undead soldier to a pile of broken bones and ivory dust. It was clear that his minions wouldn’t be able to distract the rat creature for long, which meant that Jason couldn’t afford to waste time watching the creature massacre his skeletons.

  He turned to Eliza, noting that the mage was watching the scene with wide eyes. He grabbed her shoulder and shook her roughly. “Snap out of it. Inspect the damn thing!” he demanded urgently.

  “It’s called the Packrat. The creature is level 200 and its… its health is blank?” Eliza reported in confusion.

  Then she hesitated, her brow furrowed as she inspected a screen only she could see. “I’m not sure I understand the rest of this. The prompt indicates that it has resistances. However, there is a category for “Critical Weaknesses” that I’ve never seen before – except it’s not much use, it’s blank.”

  “Damn it,” Jason muttered, shaking his head. How the hell were they going to kill something without health and some unknown weakness? “Assist Frank and try to keep him up. If he dies, we’re screwed,” he said to Eliza.

  Without waiting to see if the water mage would follow through with his order, Jason glanced over at Riley. He shouted above the crash of metal that filled the room. “Riley, switch to damage. Let’s see if we can hurt the damn thing!” He received a curt nod from the Fury in reply, and she promptly nocked an arrow, taking aim at the Packrat.

  Meanwhile, Eliza moved quickly, digging in her pack to find a wand. As she grabbed it, her free hand was already moving through the gestures of Obscuring Mist. Tendrils of gray vapor began to form in front of her, thickening into a rough sphere as she continued casting the spell. As the mist began to form, Eliza pressed down on the crystal embedded in the hilt of her wand and a spray of blood-red fluid was ejected from the crystal at the top of the instrument. The crimson liquid quickly spread through the ball of moisture before exploding outward in a billowing blanket of mist.

  At a gesture from Eliza, the mist turned toward Frank, rolling and tumbling across the room to his prone body before engulfing his form. Jason spared a quick glance at his party menu, which confirmed that Frank’s health bar was swiftly refilling.

  A roar forced Jason’s attention back to the battle raging on the other end of the room. A bolt of dark energy raced from Riley’s bow and sped across the room before slamming into the Packrat’s head. The force of the explosion promptly blasted apart its jaw and sprayed fragments of debris across the room. The creature stumbled for a moment, caught off balance by the blow.

  It seems we can hurt it, Jason thought darkly.

  However, before Jason could start celebrating, additional metallic objects began to tumble across the creature’s back toward its head before swiftly reforming into a new jaw. Then it leveled its eyes at Riley, the dark miasmas flaring forcefully in what Jason could only assume was anger. The Packrat spun to the side, giving its tail better access to the room.

  “Riley, dodge!” Jason screamed in warning.

  The Fury must have been thinking the same thing, because she immediately dived into a roll. The monster’s tail swept across the room, the metal whistling as it sped through the air. Its tail promptly smashed into the floor where Riley had been standing only a moment before. The blow left a massive gouge in the stone and threw up a thick cloud of dust.

  Frank regained his feet, and he promptly charged out of Eliza’s mist toward the Packrat with his axes raised and a furious roar erupting from his lips. His legs rippled and contorted – his knees inverting with a sickening crunch and thick black fur springing up along his skin. Frank used his enhanced speed to deftly dodge the creature’s attacks, his axes slamming over and over against its jumbled, metallic body.

  As Jason looked on, he could see that the barbarian’s attacks were having little effect on the creature. It continued to use the junk that made up its body to repair any damage that Frank managed to inflict. “How the hell are we going to kill this thing?” he murmured to himself, chewing anxiously on his lip.

  “I think I might have an idea,” Riley said from beside Jason. She had used Frank’s distraction to make her way to Jason and Eliza near the back of the room. Her armor was torn, and her right arm hung limply against her side. Maybe she hadn’t completely dodged the creature’s attack after all.

  “First, drain my health and heal yourself. Eliza needs to focus on Frank,” Jason replied. He spared a glance at Eliza and saw that her brow was furrowed in concentration as she tried to keep her healing mist centered on the fast-moving barbarian. It was all she could do to keep him alive.

  Riley nodded, grimacing in pain even has her hands danced through gestures of the Health Drain spell. A moment later, Jason could feel the effects of the spell settle over him. It felt like his blood was pressing uncomfortably against his skin – as though it were trying to break out of his body. Yet he pushed the feeling aside and forcefully summoned his dark mana. He couldn’t afford to be distracted right now.

  As Riley’s skin began to knit back together and her shoulder popped back into the socket, Jason spoke up again, “Okay, what’s your plan?”

  “I fought something similar to this creature in Vaerwald. I bet it’s some sort of golem – held together by mana. If I’m right, there’s probab
ly a mana crystal embedded in its body that’s powering it and allowing it to heal itself.”

  Riley’s theory was consistent with the creature’s lack of health and the “critical weakness” that Eliza had mentioned. Jason grimaced. “But where is the crystal…?” he murmured. His gaze shifted back to the Packrat, Frank’s form dancing around the giant, makeshift monster. Each time Frank tried to flank the creature, it would quickly lash out with its tail. It was almost like it was protecting its body…

  Jason’s thoughts raced. Even if he was right and the crystal was in the Packrat’s torso, how the hell were they going to make a hole amid the teeming piles of junk that made up the creature’s body? Riley might be able to use her Void Arrow, but then how would they destroy the crystal? Frank needed to keep the creature occupied, and Eliza was focused entirely on healing Frank.

  Which just left Jason.

  His eyes darted to the drones that lingered behind him, their tiny skeletal bodies skittering anxiously back and forth across the stone floor. These were his last minions. Could he use them somehow? If he could create an explosion, then Riley could take out the crystal. But what did he have that would blast a hole in the damn rat?

  Of course, the fire crystals! Jason felt like smacking himself for forgetting the tiny gems that Cecil had given him back in the Twilight Throne.

  “Riley,” Jason said to get the Fury’s attention. “I need to alter my drones. Then I’m going to blast a hole in the side of the Packrat’s torso. When I do, you’ll have one shot.”

  He gazed at the archer, a grin curling his lips. “Try not to miss.”

  “Now that’s just insulting. You know I don’t miss,” Riley replied, placing a hand to her chest in mock offense. “Assuming you don’t drop the ball, I’ll take the damn thing down.”

  Jason chuckled, even as his hands began twining through the gestures of Custom Skeleton and tendrils of dark mana cascaded down his arms. Time immediately began to lengthen and stretch, Frank and the Packrat’s movements become exaggerated and slow like they were moving through molasses. Yet they were still moving, even under the time compression effects of his spell. Which meant he needed to work quickly.