by Arthur Stone
Ros stopped his fishing and started to search through the forum. It was absolutely pointless. He didn't find anything there, or in any other sources.
No one's ever mentioned that rabbits and other small fry can behave in such a complex and organized manner. On the contrary, they were described as perfectly individualistic and unlikely to act socially. You could kill bunnies with their kin watching—they wouldn't so much as pay attention, let alone try to protect their kin.
Ros stopped sifting through all the data, but the Three-River Valley kept surprising him. Another living arrow appeared on the hill that had formerly been pointed out to him. This one consisted of no one else but foxes. Their red color could be seen from a long distance against the background of green grass.
As Ros got up, he stood on the spot where he had noticed the first arrow, looked into the game map, drew a line between himself and the foxes, which were already scattering, and then onwards.
He wasn't much surprised to see it leading to the capital of the Western Empire. The very city he had intended to visit.
Some unknown party capable of making the animals do abnormal things was telling Ros that it would be really happy if Ros managed to get there shortly. It must have been the same entity that's been trying to help Ros all the while, saddling him with high-level companions. This entity could protect him and find him wherever he was.
Those were all pieces of the same puzzle.
Who could this entity be? Ros had no answer. Nor did he have any idea of this entity's intentions. They could have been good or malicious.
However, so far, he hasn't seen any harm. There hasn't been that much help, either.
On the other hand, if he recalled his gaming history…
How did the whole thing begin? He had no intention of playing in the first place—he wasn't even aware of the Second World's existence. He was working on a top secret project, where all the specialists were placed in a top-security environment with no outside access. They worked on the finer parts of auxiliary elements used for state-of-the-art AI systems. AI peripherals, as it were—what amounted to their "arms," "legs," and "eyes." The contract specified a certain period, and they could not leave the compound until it would expire.
Then the accident happened; his body became crippled so thoroughly that the game became his only chance for survival.
But was it really his only chance? That's what they told him. Who was "they?" Someone he knew intimately and trusted completely. He may indeed have considered it the best option for Ros, but that still didn't rule out the possibility he hadn't been telling him everything and had ulterior motives Ros knew nothing about. His mission may have been to nudge Ros toward a certain decision.
What would happen next? Next Ros would end up in a game that would completely baffle him initially. He wasn't just a beginner—he was a total noob, none too bright, and successfully running into every trap for noobs there had been at the beginning.
But that was just the beginning. Ros was trapped in a character whose abilities were so limited that he didn't even have access to any useful information or the ability to level up, yet he started bettering himself at top speed, gathering a lot of valuable knowledge and skills, and managing to get weapons that were the equivalent of thermonuclear warheads for a noob like him. This was unprecedented and made no sense.
Yet this noob did manage to get hold of an incredibly cool thing—namely, a battle pet of the highest level, and he didn't invest any effort into it. It was a pretty random occurrence—he was just experimenting and trying to see if he could squeeze something out of his seemingly useless character.
There was more later. Ros's character was no longer bound by any restrictions and started doing unthinkable things. He had so many achievements to his name that a real manhunt started, with him being the quarry. Everybody wanted Ros now. Even the strongest clans wished to get their hands on such a weird and valuable noob. One of them almost manages to get away with it, but their plot is thwarted by a momentous event that no one could have foreseen. And so Ros was free once again, even though there were some restrictions, and in a place where he couldn't be reached. He was doing the same thing he always did there—the impossible. In the meantime, he was raising his awareness of everything that concerned the gaming process. Now he had knowledgeable friends as well as access to the goldmine of information available online.
He was also performing a high-level quest, and some unknown party was repeatedly offering him high-level protection, no matter how strange it looked, and drawing arrows made out of mobs so that Ros wouldn't lose direction.
If that someone was trying to mock him, the mockery was on a level he could not perceive.
Someone whose abilities could only be guessed at was really eager for Ros to reach the capital. And this someone thought nothing of wasting the poor animals' time to give him another reminder.
As well as an idea of what they were capable of…
Who was it? What was the point of all this? What the hell was going on around Ros, anyway?
He had no answer.
* * *
"What would happen if you took some rat poison and logged on? Would you stay in the game forever when you died?
Oh, and there's another question—what about paying your account fees? Or would you be able to play for free in such a case?"
"The Red Name Clan announces a new game event: Total Butthurt. Its exact nature is a secret smeared in blood from noob butts ripped apart. The event starts right now. The location is the Iron Hills. Noobs, you might as well hang yourselves!"
Two forum messages from the Flood and Spam category.
Chapter 9
Thyri shook her head.
"Sorry, but I have to disagree. I cannot leave you here. It's going to be dangerous, and I'm strong enough to protect you."
"You'll just keep attracting unnecessary attention."
"And you're so weak they could kill you before you so much as noticed an attack. And I'll notice it; I notice everything.
"Yeah, like someone with a name as red as yours should set off in search of adventure. And once you run into problems, they'll be my problems, too. If the PK hunters decide we're a team, they can snuff me just as easily. Just to send me a message about the kind of company I should and should not keep."
"They'll never find out. And they'd have to spot me first."
"So we'll have to drag our asses for 24 hours? You'll go offline sooner or later, anyway, and I'll have to stay."
"Why so long? You can walk faster. I won't be completely invisible in that case, but that doesn't matter—low-level players won't be able to see me, anyway. Just avoid open spaces, and that's that."
"There's a much easier way of doing this."
"What exactly would it be?"
"Right now, I can send you to a place abundant with all sorts of high-level monsters. Just around your level. There aren't any players there, either. So you'll get a chance to level up, whiten your name, and waste no time. Then I'll get back to you in a jiffy. The only thing we need to do is make an appointment—or, alternatively, arrange an appointment at the game forum. Chat functions don't work properly there.
"You mean you're not going to come along right now?"
"Nope."
Thyri shook her head again.
"I have to accompany you to the capital."
"Well, aren't you a hard-headed woman?"
"You don't get it… I have to…"
"If they kill you, you're going to respawn right next to those oaks, and I won't have any time to get back there for sure; we're too far away. So we may never see each other again. As for the voice in the dream, it wasn't referring to the capital explicitly, was it? It just asked you to help me get to where I needed to be. Once I'm done with my business at the capital, I'm going right where I suggest sending you. So everything seems legit, and I don't see a reason why you would refuse."
"Then we'll head to the capital first, and wherever you intend to go later."
"How about the fact that you won't be able to enter the capital with a red name?"
"I'll wait somewhere near the gates."
"There are thousands of players going back and forth."
"I know a thing or two about staying unnoticed."
"Why don't you get it? I've already thought it through. There's no point for you to stick around. It can only make things worse."
"I know everything about dangerous locations. I've seen enough, trust me. I won't be a burden. On the other hand…"
"On the other hand, what?"
"Duh, nothing much."
"Might as well tell me."
"If you can make a portal to wherever you're headed, I could go there and make a bind point. If I had a teleport scroll, I could return right away. But I don't, so forget it."
"In that case, why don't you make a bind point somewhere in the Iron Hills? You'd respawn right near if something happened."
"Well, there are lots of people around. You cannot stay unnoticed while you choose your bind point. Those are the rules."
"I wasn't aware."
"Well, there's nothing much to it. The worst thing is that I have absolutely no mana after I respawn. Regeneration takes a while, and I can't go invisible while it regenerates. Should someone catch me during one of such moments, they'd be able to kill me over and over again—I'm completely useless immediately after respawning.
"Yeah, I've heard about players with red names losing all their stuff and a bunch of XP this way."
"Well, that's exactly what I'm talking about."
Ros didn't plan on parting ways with Thyri permanently. She could be trouble, but there was no guarantee some unidentified party wouldn't instantly replace her by someone like Macho Strongman or Nail-in-the-Head.
He'd have a lot more trouble with someone like those two permanently grinning lummoxes for sure…
He thought he should really hold on to Thyri. At least, they had managed to establish a connection of some sort. Who could tell what would happen otherwise? So he'd have to splurge a little, nolens volens. He felt grateful for his tendency to hoard stuff, and also to Agythric's gang—they returned all his stuff without stealing anything.
"All right, Thyri. You've talked me into it. Open your trading interface."
"Why should I?"
"I'll give you a scroll. For teleportation. We'll do exactly as you have suggested."
"Well, the scroll is expensive, and…"
"I know you don't have that kind of money. Just take it already. I'm sick and tired of arguing."
"OK, I will."
Ros stepped aside from the girl and activated a portal leading to a spot near the mine in the Locked Lands where he had recently spent some time as a slave. He couldn't head back himself, or his mission would fail, but Thyri wasn't involved in any way, so it shouldn't be a problem.
He could do this most useful trick once daily—and completely free of charge, too. Ros wasn't planning on using this transportation method anytime soon, so he didn't lose anything.
Thyri entered the portal without saying a word. The portal did not initially react to her disappearance in any way. It kept glowing steadily for another ten seconds, and then started flickering. Finally, it flashed and disappeared without a trace.
Then Thyri reappeared. She looked around to check whether anything had changed over the minute or so that she'd been away, turned to Ros, and nodded.
"I've made a bind point."
"In the very first place you could find?"
"It was pretty cool. Lots of thorny bushes around—players usually try to stay away from those."
"There are no players there. So far. The place is in the locked lands—near the barrier that had broken down. Even a large party of Imperial Guards would find it hard to force their way there. I got through because they gave me a quest. And I didn't get all the way through—there were problems with mobs and the wild hordes. But that was already on the other side—in our lands, where the invasion's still going on. So, shall we get going?"
"All right, let's go."
* * *
This was the first time Ros had company, but it felt like he was moving on his own. Thyri may have been accompanying him, unseen, but her presence was not felt in any way. He would occasionally hurry up to make her move faster and betray her position in this way, but to no avail. Whether they were walking through the middle of a forest or sparse bushes where even a cat would be hard-pressed to find shelter, the girl stayed invisible.
It would probably have been hard for her on open ground, but she was adamant about asking him to stay close to possible shelter, and Ros couldn't say no.
Oddly enough, the terrain started out as empty as the sleepy Three-River Valley he had just left behind. There were steep and low-sloped hills, with rocks of all sizes scattered below, picturesque buttes, clear creeks that had made shallow beds through the steeply-sloped ravines, numerous creeks in orderly-looking valleys, sunny pine forests and darker thickets of deciduous trees. There were raspberry bushes growing around the abundant clearings, and animal tracks good for walking. The place was the next best thing to paradise.
One would often encounter herds of sheep-like creatures in the hills—they had horns, as well as bony plates protecting their head, and a thick hide covered in felted wool. As Ros approached a picturesque-looking rock, he managed to spot a striped tiger from a distance and made a careful detour around it. There were strange tracks aplenty all along the banks of the lakes and the creeks, and he managed to see those who had left them a couple of times—gigantic newts with their backs covered in soft spikes. There were moose and deer running through the pine copses; as for the small groves of deciduous trees, there was also the constant crackle of deadwood under someone’s paws or hooves. You could find a bear in every raspberry bush, fat and gorging itself on its favorite berry treat. And someone must have made all these tracks and kept on using them, after all.
There were lots of animals of every sort, but no hunters, for some reason. Either the location was too far away from the capital, and no one wanted to trek it all the way to this area, or game worth hunting wasn’t abundant enough, despite one’s hopes. The Iron Hills used to be a front line in the past—there were the ruins of a wall that resembled the Great Wall of China and a large rampart parallel to it. They were connected by a myriad auxiliary fortifications, and the complex included dozens of fortresses and fortified settlements. Everything was old, abandoned, and in a bad condition. Obviously, those constructions weren't abandoned without a reason—their condition was a result of some highly dramatic event described in one of the epic legends that the Second World was so famous for.
The legend was naturally rife with fallen heroes, dark powers, and hideous curses no one had ever managed to lift. Now all these ruins suffered from the ill effects of that which had happened before. All kinds of the undead haunted them, while the approaches were abundant with scavengers eager to polish off the remains of all players fancying themselves strong enough to venture into areas as dangerous as this.
In other words, there were lots of unpleasant creatures around the ruins. And what does an average player need when they wish to level up seriously? That's right. Enough mobs that can be used for the purpose. Ideally, they need to be dispatched non-stop, one after another—or, better still, in packs, by a group of players capable of using abilities targeting several opponents at once.
That was where the players would normally gather. There were many representatives of the specialized "Light" classes among them. That is, healers, buffers, and combinations of the two. Their own attacking abilities were pitiful—the ones they had were usually weak, and primary aimed at the undead. So their options were either to level up in a balanced group, or hunt the creatures of darkness while avoiding every other kind of mob.
Support characters usually had next to nothing in the way of Defense, and such stats as Perception were barely above zero. They did not have the capacity to give grief to any
other players. In other words, they were the perfect quarry for even lower-level killers, and that exacerbated the "crime rate" in the Iron Hills' ruins, which was already high enough.
Having studied the forum, Ros picked a few places where the ancient fortification line was narrower than usual, but without any convenient passages that could be regularly used by players. The chance of running into something unpleasant was lower there, but it still wasn't completely safe. He'd have to trust his luck. Not the stat, which was beefed up beyond belief, but actual luck, which depended on anything but the sum of the character's stats.
Player killers wouldn't care about his stats if they saw you couldn't defend yourself properly.
* * *
Another Sleep spell; then he ran away to increase the gap between himself and his enemy so as to avoid an attack immediately after the spell would wear off. This was followed by a standard combination—a Chaos Arrow followed by a good old Fireball.
Hah! He didn't have to run away, after all. It seemed like the critter was done for, anyway.
"You kill the Scavenger Grapoid. XP received: 17. Points left until the next level: 898014."
The battle wasn't all that hard. The mob may have looked scary, but it was of a much lower level than Ros, not to mention its stats. So it died quickly, and Ros only managed to receive a few measly XP points. Well, what else could one expect with this kind of a level gap? Especially since Ros wasn't alone here—he had Thyri with him. The strange archer was a great deal stronger, and that counted, even when she did not participate in the actual battle.
The party's average level was the value that the game mechanics were based on in every calculation involving an encounter between the party members and the monster they destroyed.
Seventeen points was the lowest Ros had ever gotten. And he was no regular noob. Given his impressive achievements, the progress bonus was very significant. Others might need months of leveling-up where Ros would manage in a week without breaking a sweat.
