by Akella, G.
"Property damage, murder of a civilian... You don't think we have the right to ask you a few questions?" He sighed, then gave a slight nod. "Prince Saethdien Roa, Chief Searcher of the Rualt Dominion, at your service, dar."
Hmm, my mother always told me never to judge a book by its cover. If I saw this dude on the streets of San Francisco back in my past life, I would immediately peg him as a tourist from the American heartland—a family man who worked hard, went to church religiously every Sunday, watched football afterwards just as religiously, and barbecued in a "Kiss the Cook!" apron in his backyard, occasionally inviting his neighbors. People like him were usually good-natured and easy-going—some of them even wore a mustache. Well, the demon standing before me also happened to wear a mustache, in addition to being slightly chubby and looking altogether harmless. But with his level 450 and six hundred million HP, he was anything but.
"You don't think that it is I who may have questions for you, prince? Or rather, to your Lord? Do you even realize what just happened here?" I chuckled, gesturing at the devastation behind me. "Or is it a crime in Rualt Dominion to slay the henchman of the Twice Cursed God? Speaking of Vill, were you expecting to take him on with this squad of punishers? I wouldn't mind seeing that fight play out, though I suspect it would be more of a massacre."
I refused to believe that an NPC of his level was oblivious as to the nature of this emergency. And the prince didn't bother refuting my words.
"Nobody is accusing you of anything, dar. At least not yet," he gave a weary sigh. "But understand that you're alive right now for one simple reason: I know what could have happened here five minutes ago. Could have, but didn't. And, frankly, I'm surprised you're still in one piece." He waved for the punishers to put their weapons away, then made an inviting gesture. "Come, the Lord wants to see you. His will be the final judgment, and I suspect he'll be curious to hear your account of what happened here."
Stupid bloody system, I kept thinking as I followed the legionnaires through the city. It stopped being a game long ago, but the rules are still intact. How else would these guys have materialized next to the house so quickly? It was simple: once the system activated the quest, it informed the NPCs playing their role where to look for the quester. And it made sense that a quest of this magnitude could only be handed in to the dominion's Lord, hence his desire to see me. Even though I had absolutely no desire to see him. All I needed was an hour to activate Jaelitte's soul fragment on the ring, and then I'd be glad to pay a visit to the local Lord. Hell, I'd have a tea party with Velial himself... Unfortunately, there was no excuse, no explanation that would get me out of this visit. What could be more important than an audience with the head honcho of the entire dominion? Maybe I could escape and hide out somewhere for an hour? I glanced at the facades of houses lining the street, nodded to a fruit vendor who was staring at me with eyes bulging with fear, and sighed with resignation. No, it wouldn't fly—I had no shot at escaping the punishers in their own city. This wasn't some cheap thriller where the good guy, whether a hero spy or a framed fugitive, could easily run circles around the authorities despite the whole city looking for him. And besides, I had nothing to worry about—if anything, I should be handsomely rewarded for thwarting the plans of a universally detested deity! Sure, Vill was probably unlikely to turn this city into Sodom and Gomorrah, but I sincerely doubted he'd be welcome here. Oh, and I had completed the quest as offered, so the reward—whatever it could be—was rightfully mine to collect. Determined not to sweat the issue unnecessarily, I slipped a pipe between my teeth, and proceeded to examine the loot taken off Vyardiz's corpse.
The shell fragment of Jaelitte's soul—a large crystal resembling a cut ruby—was literally glowinga brilliant red color in its inventory slot. A pretty gem it was, no doubt, but also not at all what I'd imagined a "shell fragment" to look like. Then again, I didn't give a hoot if the thing looked like a gummy bear, the kind of candy Alyona would gobble up by the pound as a kid. The first fragment of the portal scroll, likewise looted off the necromancer's dead body, was a stone as well, or rather a broken piece of black-as-coal cobblestone. I imagined that such decisions on the devs' part might easily result in progressive cognitive dissonance.
"Daughter, dear, won't you fetch some milk for me from the fridge?"
"Mom, there are only frogs here!"
"How many times must I explain—that is milk! And stay away from the game capsule!"
I snorted as the above scene played out in my head, then exhaled the smoke, and proceeded to study the feral cat—taut as a bow-string as it readied itself to strike—emblazoned on the cloak of the captain walking in front of me. I should ask Yllial to send me express to Iskhart—enough rattling around in wooden boxes. Am I a hero or some errand boy, for Hart's sake?! Today was the first day in a while that hadn't started with rain, though the sky over Sarykas was still overcast. Weather forecasting was no more a passion of mine than demolitions, but I suspected mother nature would take a day off from making us all miserable. Even so, I'd had quite enough of rattling around in drafty, hole-ridden wagons.
Back to the haul... Six hundred gold coins, a recipe for a nature resistance elixir, three rare cloaks with spirit and intellect. Twenty eight vials of varying caliber and uses. Nothing special, at least on the face of it. The sole epic item was a shard of the philosopher's stone, looking over which brought up a description stating that collecting nine others like it and fusing them together would boost the strength and duration of elixirs brewed by twenty percent. A valuable item, to be sure, only not for me, and not for now. I personally had no plans to pick up alchemy, and I had no clue where to begin looking for the other nine shards of this alchemical booster. It was only in the olden days of games played by our dads and granddads that every mob had a specific loot table, but that wasn't the case here. In the early days of Arkon, after logically concluding that more items sold at the auction invariably translated to more gold exported out of the game, the devs decided to go with random world drops instead. Now, exporting gold was certainly necessary to maintain its exchange rate, and you needn't be an economics major to realize the truly astronomic scale of money that was in play, seeing as the auction house's commission varied between one and ten percent, depending on the category of the merchandise... This made me wonder who, if anyone, was now collecting the commission for auction house sales following the patch? Logically, the funds should be deposited into the treasury of the owner of the land where the auction house operated, which probably amounted to a substantial income stream. Sadly, it would be awhile before an auction house could be established in Craedia... I decided to store the shard away into the clan's vault when I got the chance. It didn't take up much space, and could certainly prove useful at some point.
Roughly half an hour later we were at the gates of the citadel. Curious—they were able to jump from there via a portal, but had to schlep back the old-fashioned way? I recalled something from Jaelitte's memories about only the Lord and his blood kin being able to build a portal into the citadel, whereas porting out of the citadel was permitted for certain high-level state officials. This indirectly confirmed the high standing of my main escort. When the guards at the gate first sighted our party, they appeared to have forgotten how to breathe. The reaction was somewhat difficult for me to comprehend—I could understand civilians fleeing from our procession as if from a plague, but these were professional soldiers! Or was it the sight of the local KGB chief that had moved them so deeply? When the captain of the guard rushed to report, Saethdien Roa just waved him away wearily, and we continued past the legionnaires standing at attention onto the territory of the local Kremlin. Moving past the thirty-foot-tall statue of a tifling clutching a broken sword to his breast, we rounded an enormous fountain and continued along a rectangular-shaped pond toward the beige five-story palace. Maintenance must take a ton of manual labor, I thought to myself, admiring the perfectly trimmed bushes of the palace garden while trying to count the number of marble statue
s sprinkled amid the trees. Forget maintenance—to erect this architectural wonder you'd need to assemble all of the princedom's demons, peasant and noble alike, supply them with boatloads of top-notch materials, and hope that in a few years' time they might manage something distantly resembling what I was presenting seeing. If memory served me right, it should take a single player with around 200 building skill one day to erect your typical two-story wooden house, assuming they had done it before. The first time around, the construction would last about a week, and you couldn't just start the project and leave it while you went off to smoke bamboo—or something harder than bamboo. Oh no—one week of construction meant one week of active engagement. And after that, the construction time for one house shrunk to one day. Once built, the house could be folded into a scroll, then "rebuilt" in only six hours, at which point the architect or builder—in the game, you were both professions in one—could sit back and smoke all they liked while the house was automatically reassembled as if by magic. What was my point? Only that the enormous palace in front of me couldn't be erected by a thousand builders working around the clock for a solid year. Not even the game's richest players boasted anything even remotely like it—at least not by the time patch seventeen rolled around—for the simple reason that you couldn't hope to assemble such a numerous crew of skilled builders. These days, however, priorities had shifted, and players were more likely to build fortified castles over wonders of architectural design. But there was nobody in the game—not among the NPCs and certainly not among the players—skilled enough to erect a palace of this caliber. That is to say, when coming across this kind of structure, you knew it couldn't have been built, bur rather drawn by the game's art department, which included yours truly. And you couldn't hope to possess one like it other than by capturing it. Except capturing the entire Rualt dominion would be easier, I grunted, climbing the wide marble stairs after my escorts. How many people would come to defend Sarykas and its citadel, I wondered? And it wouldn't be some undead riffraff in the 150-200 level range, but royal legions of level 200+ veterans. The biggest challenge would lie in defending the city on all fronts. In the northeast, for instance, the city abutted a river, and you could theoretically make a landing in the harbor... Or, if I were to summon a certain beautiful demoness, and then liberate her scion from the magic prison she'd been confined to by Vill, the two of them could make such fireworks fly that no royal legion, let alone any regular army, would stand a chance against them. The downside would be that precious little would likely remain standing of the beautiful city, and I wasn't quite sure if my princess bride could fly like her venerable mother. Anyway, this was just me stroking my ego—building up confidence for what portended to be an important conversation. This was a Lord, after all, and not some hobo. On the other hand, compared to the company I'd been keeping lately, this Yllial character looked entirely unremarkable. Heck, I'd flipped an actual deity the bird not half an hour ago, and felt no qualms about it whatsoever. But then, there was no sense in sharing my circle of friends with Yllial, or my true identity, for that matter. The more he knew, the more he would pester me with questions, and that was the last thing I wanted. If he asked about my purpose here, I'd tell him I was traveling through Ashtar and decided to pop into the princedom as an aside. He probably wouldn't believe me, but I didn't care.
We passed through a hallway in which the walls were lined with tapestries depicting various battle scenes, with large flowerpots spaced out every fifteen feet, and came out to a tall door with a blue-and-gold ornamental pattern. As the four level 300 legionnaires guarding the entrance moved aside, the captain leading the way pulled on the handle, and we entered into a huge hall in blue-and-white finish.
As I looked around the space, I experienced genuine culture shock, and it wasn't even the owner of all this magnificence—a tall broad-shouldered level 600 tifling with one and a half billion HP—that was the source of it. This was the Arabesque Hall, the same one as in the Catherine Palace just outside of St Petersburg—I'd seen it on an excursion seven years prior with my then-girlfriend. It is a fact of life that girlfriends enjoyed such excursions, so during our visit to the city I made sure to take a day and drop by Tsarskoye Selo, which contained the former residence of the imperial family. The trip through the palace left me dumbfounded—the beauty that Charles Cameron, Catherine's architect, had incarnated in his creation was otherworldly. Surrounded by the white walls and pilasters, the fireplace of white marble with a gilded white frieze—it made you want forget about the world outside and just relish this wonder of architectural design. I started counting the mirrors... Yep, exactly twelve: eight oval and four rectangular, hanging exactly where they ought to hang—in between the windows coming out to the garden. Suddenly the temptation to capture Rualt reached its apex; hell, I was prepared to capture all of Alcmehn for this hall alone. Just so I could sit on these plush blue armchairs in solitude and admire the canvases lining the walls.
"Well met, Dark One," Lord Yllial's voice was akin to thunder in the silence of the hall.
Hart! How would he know that I'm now a "Dark One?!" the thought flashed through my mind, but I tried to keep my surprise from showing.
"Well met, esteemed Lord of Rualt," I bowed my head just enough—exactly how Gorm had taught me.
"Surprised?" Yllial chuckled. "Did you really think I'd be indifferent to events taking place in a neighboring princedom?"
"Well, no, but—"
"Come in, prince, and have a seat," the Lord made an inviting gesture to me and the chief searcher toward one of the sofas. "We have much to discuss."
Turning to his captain, he ordered:
"Shut the door, activate the amulets, and wait for my word."
What is there to discuss? I thought, taking a seat warily on the sofa upholstered with a velvety fabric. Was he going to offer me vassalage? Bah, after the recent events I needed those offers like a fish needed an umbrella. My bride wasn't some street whore, but the daughter of the most powerful entity on this plane. If he did offer it to me, I'd tell him I needed time to think about it. He wouldn't kill me for not accepting his "generous" offer on the spot, and the politics of it wouldn't matter anymore after visiting my father-in-law.
Yllial had the look of a middle-aged man who had seen a lot in life, and clearly modeled after another Hollywood actor, though I couldn't quite place him. He wore a thin mustache and a goatee, both immaculately groomed, his shoulder-length black hair, streaked with gray, framing a symmetrical face with piercing dark brown eyes. Women probably found his type very attractive. Thankfully, I wasn't a woman.
"How would you like to become the prince of one of Rualt's provinces?" the Lord wasted no time getting down to brass tacks.
"I never considered it," I lied right to his face, chuckling mentally at my own cleverness. Right, I'm that much of an idiot to have never considered it. Then I added out loud:
"The princedom is still cursed, and I'm headed to Iskhart as we speak to seek an audience with Alcmehn's Overlord."
"I'm not interested in your princedom, Dark One," Yllial shook his head slowly. "What I'm offering you is the Jarus Province. As it happens," he shot a glance at the sand glass on the table, then looked back at me, "it's going to be part of Rualt once again in just a few days' time."
I felt a chill—this made it clear that Yllial knew about the ring! But how?! Hart! What if it wasn't an accident that Vyardiz had lived here? But then...
"Exactly right, prince," Yllial smiled, nodding at my hand. "I need the ring that's presently on your finger. And, you must admit, I'm offering a fair price for it."
"You call the province of a neighboring dominion a fair price?" I asked, trying to keep my tone even.
Hart! What was I to do? Some smart ass once said that there is always is a way out of any given situation, and two if you've been devoured. Well, in this particular situation, the pithy proverb was a flat-out lie! If I surrendered the ring, the oath would kill me; if I didn't surrender it, he would. The
re was no point in planning a battle strategy against two raid bosses with their two billion plus combined HP and a retinue of level 300 legionnaires... Jump out of the window? Crummy mage that I was, even I could sense these two radiating powerful magic emanations that would surely stop me.
"In three hours six Rualt legions will be crossing the Ashtar border, and from there they will effect a forced march on Laketa. Lady Janam, whom you've already met, has long been dreaming of taking over the province, and she's managed to persuade Ar-Iraz to move all the troops stationed there to fight the rebel Prince Vallan. As you may be aware, elder succubi have many means of 'persuasion' in their employ. Only a couple of hundred punishers will remain to defend the capital, which won't be quite enough to beat off six legions. Portal teleportation will be blocked off, thereby ensuring the capture of your future land. Once I conduct a few affairs on its territory, I will pass it over into your possession. I have a few questions for its population that had betrayed Rualt once," Yllial's face turned to stone for a second, then reverted to its regular expression.
"But..." I drew a slow sigh as I gathered my thoughts. "When I was in Nittal, someone told me that you and Lord Astarot have concluded a treaty that cannot be broken."
"It wasn't I who have signed the Ryeed Peace Treaty, but my son. Under my guise, admittedly," Yllial chuckled. "The ruse was done in the temple of the God of Deceit, and secured with a generous offering beforehand. That is to say, I am not bound by the terms of the treaty whatsoever."
Damn! I supposed that wasn't the full extent of what could be accomplished with the help of the God of Deceit. Think, Roman, think! Where is the butthole that could serve as a way out of this situation?! It wasn't enough that I could see no way of getting out of this alive, but this jackass was scheming to slaughter a whole lot of innocents in the captured province. Which included Kort, Treis, Alsuil, Mirana and little Krian! Surely, Kort wouldn't stand on the sidelines in the face of danger. Think...
