Evolution

by Travis Bagwell

  “Preparing for future encounters,” Jason replied evenly. “We have no idea what we might have to deal with in the other rooms, but there is no sense letting the bones go to waste.”

  “Speaking of which, are you guys ready for the next room?” Frank asked, gesturing to one of the doors.

  “As ready as we can be I guess,” Jason said, noting that his minions had nearly finished gathering the bones.

  With that, Eliza stepped forward and painted another red mark beside the door. At a nod from Jason, the group raised their weapons. Frank ripped the door open and the group barreled through the doorway. He had no idea what they might find in the next room, but one thing was certain. This puzzle was going to take a long time to complete.

  Chapter 19 - Loopy

  “You want me to kill a god?” Alexion asked in an incredulous tone. He just stared at the Lady, trying to determine if she was toying with him.

  “I didn’t stutter,” the woman snapped, shifting her gaze from the city far below the Keep’s balcony and back to Alexion. “Of course, if you aren’t up to the task, then I can certainly find someone more capable. There is no shortage of travelers with ambition.”

  “I’m not saying I won’t try,” Alexion amended quickly, even though it pained him to capitulate to the irritating woman. The insidious voice in the back of his mind railed at his weakness.

  “Good,” the Lady replied. With a wave of her hand, the crystalline panel beside them shifted, slamming shut and obscuring the mana well from view once more. “In that case, we should discuss the details.

  “Your task is to slay the incarnation of dark mana,” the Lady explained. “I imagine at this point that even you realize that Jason is the dark god’s avatar in this world – just as you are mine. Striking a blow against that insipid old fool will place us firmly in the lead.”

  Alexion shook his head in confusion. “In the lead?”

  “Don’t worry your silly little head over such matters. You can leave the heavy lifting to me,” the Lady added, patting Alexion on the shoulder. “You need only concern yourself with the how – not the why.”

  The voice in the back of Alexion’s mind urged him to lash out at the woman for her insolence, but he forcefully pushed it aside. For now, he needed the Lady. If she could grant him access to the mana well, then he would need to suffer through her condescension. “Then how do you suggest I go about killing a god?”

  The woman snorted delicately. “One step at a time, Sir Knight. The question you should be asking is how you would even go about finding a god. We’re not exactly easy to pin down.”

  She held up a finger to ward off his next question. “However, like every other creature, you just need to use the right bait. In our case, we feed off the emotions specific to our affinity. The Dark One revels in desire and death. To create an effective lure, you will need to capitalize on that.”

  “What exactly are you suggesting?” Alexion asked, his mind racing. “If it’s just a matter of killing a few people, we can accomplish that easily.”

  “I am not speaking of slaying a dozen or so humans. I am talking about hundreds of deaths – creating a miasma of destruction in pursuit of your own power that the Dark One simply cannot ignore.”

  Alexion’s gaze moved once more to the city below them. He could see NPCs and players streaming down the streets. He certainly had access to plenty of future corpses, yet his city had barely made it through the transition to the Crystal Reach, and his population was only beginning to recover. If war broke out with the Twilight Throne, he would need able-bodied NPCs to fill his ranks.

  “Using our own people would be foolish,” the Lady commented, following his gaze. “Perhaps there are other avenues available to you…” She trailed off, looking pointedly at the funeral pyres that his confessors had erected near the market.

  “Are you suggesting that I use Gracien again?” Alexion asked, picking up on the subtext of the Lady’s suggestion. “How would that provide the sacrifices we would need to lure in the Dark One?”

  “He is a fire mage, blinded by his own passion and ambition. I am sure you can find a way to use that against him,” the Lady said with a dismissive wave of her hand.

  Alexion gritted his teeth in frustration. It was just like the Lady to offer a ridiculous objective with only a vague hint of how to accomplish it – all while making him feel like a fool for not seeing the solution immediately. Yet the image of the mana well and its power still burned in Alexion’s mind. With that kind of strength, even Jason wouldn’t be able to stand before his armies. He would give anything to see the Twilight Throne burn.

  “Let’s assume I find your sacrifices,” Alexion began, “and that we were able to attract the attention of the Dark One. What then? Is it your plan that I face a god alone?”

  “Are you nervous?” the Lady asked with a smirk.

  “No, though I have seen what he is capable of. The events in the Twilight Throne and Vaerwald are sufficient proof of his strength.”

  The Lady met Alexion’s gaze evenly, her eyes glowing with golden power. “You just leave that to me, Sir Knight. If you are able to draw in the Dark One, I will give you the means to restrain him temporarily. Then you need only do what you do best – eliminate the competition.”

  ***

  Frank’s axe collided with the skeleton’s head with a sickening crunch, resulting in an explosion of bone fragments and ivory dust. The barbarian promptly kicked the now headless corpse, and the creature’s bones broke apart and scattered across the floor.

  “That’s the last of them,” Frank declared, wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.

  “At least for this room,” Riley added in a tired voice. With the conflict over, she took a seat along one of the room’s walls next to Eliza. The water mage automatically handed her a healing potion, and Riley downed the contents.

  Jason could understand their fatigue. The group had searched a few dozen rooms over the last few hours. Each one was exactly the same size, and most were filled with undead that would lazily rise to their feet if their bodies were disturbed. His eyes habitually searched the walls of this particular room, and he hesitated as he saw a small red “x” against one wall.

  Fantastic, he thought sarcastically. We’ve been here before.

  Jason slumped against a wall. The marks indicated whether they had been to a room and which door they had chosen previously, but they didn’t exactly help them solve the puzzle. For example, the two exit doors for this room had appeared along unmarked walls so they would still need to head in an unknown direction. Without knowing how many rooms there were on this floor of the temple or which direction they were heading, it felt like they were wandering randomly.

  Noticing that his teammates were taking a break, Jason decided to pull up his notifications, a string of windows cascading in front of him.

  x6 Level Up!

  You have (35) undistributed stat points.

  x1 Skill Rank Up: Mana Mastery

  Skill Level: Intermediate Level 2

  Effect 1: -6.5% to mana cost.

  Effect 2: +1.5% faster casting rate.

  x1 Spell Rank Up: Custom Skeleton

  Skill Level: Intermediate Level 5

  Effect 1: You may raise a custom skeleton using nearby bones. The skeleton’s level is calculated as the caster’s level + Willpower/67.

  Effect 2: Mana cost reduced by 7.0%.

  x1 Skill Rank: Summoning Mastery

  Skill Level: Intermediate Level 6

  Effect: 24% increased stats for summoned undead and 24% increase to effective Willpower for purposes of determining Control Limit.

  Effect 2: You may now communicate with your minions telepathically. Distance limit unknown.

  At least I’m leveling pretty well, Jason thought. The poorly-armored skeletons weren’t able to put up much resistance, and Frank had taken to dropping a few before they could even stand up. It felt a bit cheap, but it did compensate for the complete lack of
progress they seemed to be making.

  “It feels like we’re going in circles,” Riley said glumly, swiping away her own notifications with one hand as she echoed Jason’s thoughts.

  “Or maybe it’s just because all the rooms look exactly the same,” Frank added.

  Eliza opened her mouth to say something and then hesitated, adjusting her glasses with a finger.

  “What is it?” Jason asked, watching the girl closely.

  “Maybe there is something else going on here. I… I was going to say that the Hippie tends to cheat,” Eliza began, chewing on her lip. “He forced me to do a bunch of quests when I was first starting out.”

  “He forced you to do quests?” Frank asked with a concerned expression.

  “Well, if I tried to leave or give up, I would often find myself back where I started. For example, he once had me go out to this bridge near Falcon’s Hook. Every time I tried to return to town, I would find myself back at the bridge. It was just an endless loop.”

  Jason winced, rubbing at his temple with one hand. That wasn’t good news. If the Hippie was cheating, then there was no way to tell if the rooms were physically adjacent to one another. Technically, the god could have been teleporting the group across the entire length of the floor each time they changed rooms. The same door might not even lead to the same room. On top of that, there wasn’t an easy way to determine if he was cheating since each room was adjoined by a short hallway.

  He pulled up his map again, hoping that it might be some small help. Again, all he saw was a swirling dark vortex with a few small green dots indicating the position of himself, his teammates, and his small group of minions.

  “Damn it,” Jason muttered. He was beginning to think that the humanoid corpses they had found strewn about the rooms were individuals who had simply given up on solving the puzzle, leaning against the walls or lying down and just letting death take them. Honestly, that might be preferable to their current situation.

  “Maybe we should try something different,” Riley offered tentatively. “This doesn’t seem to be working very well.”

  “Like what exactly?” Frank demanded. “Without knowing where we’re going, it feels pointless to wander. The Hippie could just be sending us in a big circle.”

  “We could start numbering the rooms,” Jason suggested. “We could then create our own makeshift map by going through each doorway.” Even as he offered the idea, he grimaced. The thought of having to go back through each room they had already searched made him want to scream.

  Eliza frowned slightly. “That would take a long time. Even assuming a small number of total rooms, we would have to go through each room several times just to begin building a crude map. If the Hippie is cheating, it would be even more difficult. It could take days to map the floor.”

  Jason knew she was right. The possible permutations through the maze of rooms were mind boggling even for a small set of total rooms. They didn’t have time to waste mapping the rooms one by one. They had a finite amount of time before the priestess would begin sacrificing Jason’s sailor zombies. He clenched his fists, feeling his frustration rising as he tried to consider other options. Without warning, he abruptly stood and began pacing the length of the room.

  Eliza watched him walk back and forth, her brow furrowed in thought. “You shouldn’t let him get to you,” she finally said, her voice subdued.

  “What?” Jason asked, turning to look at the girl.

  She immediately glanced down at her hands. “In the beginning, every time the Hippie gave me a quest, I would get upset. It’s unhelpful. Like he said when we started, part of the solution to each of his puzzles is learning to accept it – as irritating as that might be. Anger and frustration just get in the way.”

  Jason stopped pacing, staring at Eliza. She had a point. He was letting the idiot god get to him. He needed to think about this rationally. It also just so happened that he had one tool to help with that. With a thought, Jason forcefully channeled his dark mana, reveling in the numbing chill that washed over him. Immediately, his frustration began to recede.

  He needed to approach the problem logically. His gaze rested on Alfred, who sat sedately beside Eliza, the girl absently stroking his head. As he considered the AI, a thought occurred to Jason. At its heart, this puzzle was a type of search problem. Robert had included a similar problem among Jason’s programming assignments. He had needed to code an algorithm to search for all possible paths through a particular grid. Once he’d figured it out, the solution had been rather simple. He had created a primary search function and then repeated it over and over.

  Jason’s eyes shifted to the map window that was still open in front of him, and the rough outline of an idea began to take shape. “Okay,” Jason began, “what if we change tactics completely?”

  “Sure. Why not? It beats giving up like these skeletons,” Frank replied with a chuckle, kicking at one of the corpses. “What exactly are you thinking?”

  “We have plenty of bones and materials at this point,” Jason said. He had stored most of the extra bones in his minions’ packs instead of raising new creatures since he was a little short on heads at the moment – Frank and Riley destroying them to incapacitate the skeletons. “I also have about fifty free spots left toward my Control Limit – more if I assign my remaining skill points to Willpower.”

  He took a deep breath. “What if I created a large number of minions and then used them to search the maze?”

  “I may be a little slow, but how exactly will that help if your map isn’t working?” Frank asked in a puzzled voice.

  “Because I can still see the positions of my minions on the map – even if I can’t see the layout of the rooms,” Jason said with a sly grin. With a flick of his wrist, he projected his map into the center of the room. He pointed to the small green dots that were his minions. “I could program the minions with a search function, ordering them to move as a pack, pick a random door, and leave one minion behind in the room…”

  “Eventually they would map the whole floor,” Riley said. “Huh. And here I thought we were just going to have to carry you on this quest,” she added with a smile.

  “Thanks,” Jason replied dryly. Despite their banter, he couldn’t help but feel relieved to have even a tentative plan. “Assuming this works, it would be much faster than trying to map the floor on our own. Plus, once we have a rough map, we can check every room on the perimeter of the floor for the exit. If the Hippie is creating a loop by teleporting us to non-adjacent rooms, it will be obvious pretty quickly since my minions will appear on the far side of the maze.”

  “I like it, but what about the skeletons in each room?” Frank asked. “If your minions get taken out, that sort of destroys your map.”

  Jason hesitated, mulling over that question. “What if I created something small? Like the size of my hand? That way the horde could avoid the skeletons in each room. They don’t seem to aggro until you touch them.”

  “I suppose that could work,” Frank replied slowly, running a hand through his hair. Both Riley and Eliza shrugged, indicating that it was worth a shot.

  “Okay, just give me a few minutes to build the new skeletons,” Jason said distractedly as he began considering what he would need to create. “You all might want to back into a corner.”

  “What? Why?” Eliza asked.

  Frank laughed at the confused expression on her face. “So we don’t get stabbed to death by flying bones. You’ll understand in a second.”

  With a thought, Jason ordered his current minions to dump the contents of their packs onto the floor of the room as his teammates moved back into a corner. Bleached white bones spilled from the bags in a torrent, rattling against the stone floor. As the seconds ticked by, the bones kept falling from the bags, creating a veritable mountain in the center of the room.

  When the deluge of bones finally stopped, Jason’s hands began weaving through a series of gestures as he cast Custom Skeleton. The world slowed to a crawl
around him, his teammates’ conversation slowing, and their voices deepening under the time compression effects of the spell. A moment later, they were nearly frozen in the corner, their mouths opening and closing ever-so-slowly.

  A glowing blue panel appeared in the air before Jason, providing a comprehensive list of his available materials and his pre-saved designs. He sighed as he scrolled through the list of his previous creations. It was a shame he couldn’t build something more interesting, but he simply didn’t have the resources.

  Although, that raised an interesting question. What exactly should he build?

  His new creation needed to be small in order to avoid the skeletons lounging on the floor of each room. Ideally, they shouldn’t be much larger than the size of his hand. Luckily, Jason’s Bone Crafting was at Intermediate Level 2, which would allow him to cut down the larger bones into smaller segments. However, before he destroyed his entire stash of materials, he needed to create a working prototype.

  Jason highlighted a skeletal hand, the appendage racing out of the pile and piecing itself together in the air in front of him. He swiftly removed the thumb and shifted the orientation of the bones near the base of the wrist to create a small body. Then he rotated the finger bones so that two limbs were attached to either side of the makeshift torso – shortening the appendages slightly to make them a little less awkward.

  Once that was done, he realized that he needed to create some sort of head. His minions wouldn’t be much use if they couldn’t see where they were going. Jason had always been able to use a humanoid skull as a starting point. Unfortunately, skulls were now in short supply.

  The first step was to merge the wrist bones forming the torso. The result wasn’t pretty, but his skills were just barely advanced enough to accomplish the feat. Next, Jason grabbed a spare kneecap, slicing carefully into the bone to create pockets for the minion’s eyes. This took him a few tries and a lot of cursing before he managed to get the angle right. He ultimately gave up after forming one roughly-circular eye socket.