Devil's Waltz

by Dante Sakurai

  One week of subscription time has been added to every player account.

  (Note from Synaptic Entertainment CEO, Darius Roth) Apologies for a day of offline maintenance. FIVR technology is still new and needs further refining. Please accept this as token of our sincere gratitude for your continued support for Aeon Chronicles Online.

  Darius. Roth. “Gabrielle’s Uncle Darius? CEO of this game’s company?” he mumbled into the void.

  Before he could ponder on what that meant for their budding relationship, the counter hit zero. The lobby’s blue void faded out, followed by a quick fade-in to the inside of the spire’s central chamber. A tremendous rush of sheer magical power saturated his flesh and blood. The frigid taint and ambient malevolence of dark-ice mana gripped his mind and body, thrusting him dangerously close toward the edge of madness for a split-second.

  He was a Necromancer again.

  Chapter 7

  A Girl Thing

  Without further pause, Rowan briefly checked the mental strings connecting his consciousness to all his minions, then bounced into action starting with the character details he’d mostly forgotten. The semi-opaque window filled the left portion of his sight next to the party list. Class icons grabbed his attention. His icy skull sat at the top, above Gabrielle’s vibrant compass and square. Ambiguous was offline, her obscurely designed icon faded gray. Two more offliners whom he did not recognize had been added: SoSo Lovely and Edward Farmer. Not Insane, whom’s name Rowan recalled from yesterday’s forum thread, was also offline, near the bottom, on top of the…

  The eagle. Fucking hell. That useless thing. He ejected the rotting bird from the party without hesitation. It didn’t deserve a spot anymore.

  Other than that, those were six players right there. All darkies, a safe bet. Any light-mana character would take insurmountable damage from the ambient dark mana in the air, not mentioning how the personality differences could possibly mesh. That other dark-water player, Ayla, hadn’t joined. She hadn’t sent mail either. Oh well. Couldn’t bag them all.

  Rowan’s eyes skipped to the character sheet.

  Name: Rowan Black

  Title: Powerful One, Bastard Noble Kid

  Race: Draconian-Human (focus to expand)

  Gender: Male

  Level: 146

  Class: Necromancer

  Boss Status: World, Tier 6

  Fame: 29,360 (Top 50)

  Faction: None

  Health: 200

  Mana: 28,500

  Mana Type: Dark-Ice

  Stamina: 1450

  Strength: 21 (2X)

  Dexterity: 29 (2X)

  Vitality: 10 (2X)

  Magical Power: 195 (5X)

  Magical Capacity: 285 (10X)

  Control: 492 (10X)

  Points Available: 26

  Skill Tier Points Available: 1

  Defense attributes hidden (focus to expand)

  And the skill sheet.

  Necromancer Skills

  Tainted Ice Blast: Tier 7, level 112

  Raise: Tier 6, level 65

  Rime Blink: Tier 8, level 72

  Create Bone: Tier 0, level 1

  Consume Minion: Tier 0, level 1

  Classless Skills

  Mana Shield: Tier 7, level 102

  [Others hidden. Focus to expand]

  Special skills

  Blizzard (Granted by Anton’s Bone Wand)

  Mass Raise

  Undead Minion Design Library

  Create Undead Minion Design

  Construct Minion

  Necromancer Crafting Recipe: Aetherial Graveyard Core

  The entries more or less aligned with the bits and pieces he remembered, but he swore his fame had been at least in the low thirty-thousands and top twenty-five. It had decayed, which made sense. Over time, it’d gravitate to either zero or a number indicating no one thought of Rowan Black. Reasonable enough. One couldn’t expect perpetual fame if nothing fame-worthy was done in the public eye for some time.

  The Aetherial Graveyard Core recipe snatched his eye as he closed the interface. He needed to craft a recipe gem and hand it over to Gabrielle He had no Builder profession tome. They were rare, currently sold out on the markets. And the recipe also asked for rare materials. Honestly, on second thought, the T6 boss bonus was exceedingly disappointing. Bordering on joke territory. There were plenty of corpses to be raised in dungeons and such.

  Damn Draesear.

  As for his stats, the 10X multiplier hadn’t been conjured by his imagination. Five thousand minion slots. An army of five thousand fliers swarming the skies winked before his mind’s eye. Dark-ice magic swelled within him. His fingers tingled numbly in anticipation, his ever-trusty amulet feeding chill into his chest.

  But it wasn’t a call to grow overconfident again—no matter how powerful he felt at the moment. According to the game’s exponential scaling, which roughly doubled a player character’s power every thirty levels, he was in the low two-hundreds statwise. And taking into account his lack of skills and gear, he was the equivalent of a level 180 Necromancer or less. Much less. The roots of unfounded arrogance could not be sowed.

  The chatbox at the bottom-left vibrated, ringing two notes.

  Gabby LeMort: Heya! :^)

  Was that really necessary after all the groping in the car? Maybe it was just a girl thing.

  Rowan Black: Hi!

  Gabby LeMort: Did ya get any big patches? I didn’t… just some small ones.

  Hesitation held back his reply, but he pushed it through to the text cursor for there was no option other than disclosing the massive nerf. Damn AI. He thought out the words with pained reluctance. Hopefully, her reaction wasn’t going to be psychotic.

  Rowan Black: I got nerfed pretty hard. Can’t use flying Undead minions as mounts anymore.

  Seconds blinked by at the top right, and he was beginning to prepare for another cutesy yet creepy episode before the box beeped.

  Gabby LeMort: Awww… I was hoping to ride Redwing :( I want a dragon mount!

  Not too bad of a reaction. That sad-face probably wasn’t genuine, though difficult to interpret through text, but just in case he disappointed her, he wracked his brain for a work-around. A line of guessing led him to the amulet and its conversion skill. But why was she so fixated on a dragon mount? Nevermind, he flicked her a temporary placation.

  Rowan Black: Maybe after I convert him into a Dark Dragon you’ll be able to ride him.

  Gabby LeMort: Mmmm… alrighty.

  Potential crises averted… for now. The hitch here was he couldn’t convert crafted minions. He pulled the amulet from under his silky gray robe and examined, then examined the skill itself, reading with extra attentiveness, checking every sentence for double or hidden meaning that might work as a loophole. There weren’t any apparent.

  Active Skill Charge (0 remaining): Ione’s Dark Conversion

  Rebirths Undead minions under your control to an altered, dark version of their previous life.

  Effect: Maximum targets limited to your minion control limit. Returns a minion’s soul to its raised body from the aether, and gives their body new life based on dark mana. Minions raised from players are given new souls exhibiting memory loss. Crafted minions from multiple corpse parts, building or vehicle type minions, and Undead Demonic minions cannot be rebirthed. Rebirthed minions have free will but altered personalities leaning to evil of varying degree. (Warning: Rebirthed NPCs retain all memories of their previous life. Use with caution.)

  Rowan massaged his beardless jawline while mist fell from the silver casing. There had to be an underlying mechanic or lore. It was clear why Undead Demonic minions couldn’t be rebirthed—they were re-summoned with their souls intact. He mumbled, “Why can’t crafted minions be given new souls like with player corpses?” And at what point does a minion count as a vehicle or a building? Anything counted as a vehicle as long as you could hold on. They differed from mounts in that a riding skill did not magically cancel inertial and a
cceleration physics.

  A beep sounded again, ending his train of thought.

  Gabby LeMort: So… are ya crafting a body out of bone and mana now? I wanna see a dragon and an air army by nightfall.

  Followed by another. She’d thought out a paragraph with impressive speed.

  Gabby LeMort: PS. The mayor’s waddling to your position to introduce himself. He doesn’t know you converted him. I convinced them that the dark gods reincarnated them and destined them for greatness in the upcoming war of dark vs light. Greed for power and riches swayed most of the adults. The kids are mostly going with the flow, but some are hoping they’ll get their parents back if they please the gods. Hehehe.

  How smart of her. That lie both concealed his amulet and her ability to construct an Oculus. Gabrielle was definitely worthy to be called his girlfriend. And the children might indeed meet their parents again if their corpses were still intact. Though natural decay put a timer on the quest.

  A quest alert dinged into view.

  New Quest (Shared by Gabby LeMort): Parents

  Some of your converted Dark Humans are still pining for their deceased parents. Will you recover their corpses, then preserve or convert them before too late?

  Difficulty: ?

  Length: ?

  Recommended Level: ?

  Failure conditions: No parents are saved.

  Success conditions: Varying number of parents are raised and converted.

  Reward: Varying number of additional loyal followers. Varying morale boost for the children.

  Nice, precisely what they needed to sway them further down the dark path. His decision to raise the younglings was already bearing bittersweet fruit.

  Rowan Black: Good thinking, and I’ll start crafting after meeting him.

  Gabby LeMort: Kay!

  Rowan whipped back to Dark Conversion’s skill description. This puzzle irked him to no end. There had to be a way to convert Redwing’s soul; however, the skill’s mechanics, the rules of magic in this case, were clearly printed in neat cursive letters. The key sentence argued finality: ‘Returns a minion’s soul to its raised body from the aether.’ Redwing’s soul wasn’t in the aether. His body was gone. No hidden mechanic could override that. This endeavor was beyond Dark Conversion’s scope—far from easy unlike Gabrielle had claimed.

  Did I promised her the impossible?

  Rowan stretched his back, eyes on the chatbox.

  Rowan Black: The only options are a Divine Intervention or sticking with an unconvertible body of bone that you can’t ride.

  Eight seconds walloped by.

  Gabby LeMort: Nope, I want to ride Redwing! And a living Dark Dragon sounds great now that I’ve thought about it…

  Rowan Black: Then prepare a Divine Intervention.

  Gabby LeMort: Only Ambiguous and the twins have the skill, and something tells me you’ll need to craft a dragon skeleton anyway. So get on it!

  The twins meaning SoSo and Edward, Rowan assumed.

  Rowan Black: Fine, it’ll take a while.

  Gabby LeMort: Yippie!

  Resigning, Rowan sketched out a rough image of a fearsome dragon in his mind… only to discard it. No way he was going to copy something he’d seen online. Redwing was going to take pride in—

  A whole dragon skeleton is going to take forever to design!

  Back itchy, Rowan flung the tedious assignment onto the back-burner, dropping the amulet back under his robe, clearing his mind of anything related to dragons. He rolled his neck and took in the spacious chamber’s fine details. Pulsing ebony veins webbed across warped and blackened granite. The corruption originated from the center podium, from its head-sized sapphire fused to a smaller onyx. A new spawnstone sat bolted into the base. The girls had done a superb makeshift job.

  After attuning to this spawnpoint, he threw an Examine at the wall, intending for a pop-up detailing the functional main building. It worked.

  [Functional Building, Main Building] Corrupted Three-Pillar Spire

  Health: 23,500,000

  Armor: Very High

  Resistances: High

  Tier: 3 (Town)

  Augmentations: Settlement Shield (T9), Elemental Spawner Network (T6), Mana Harvester Network (T8)

  Functionalities: Settlement Management, Area Detection

  It was as Gabrielle had described. The light players had generously invested into the Settlement Shield; the massive sapphire floating between the spire’s three peaks boasted wealth and effort. If they’d invested as much into the Spawner Network, they might’ve held off. Fools, nothing but. A shield was useless when you had no offensive power or sufficient backup.

  Rowan stepped to the podium and activated it with an intent. Before him, fading into view, a giant cracked papyrus scroll unrolled. Masterful invisible brushes painted a map in shades of gray: the flat island, its shallow tombolo, and the wetlands beyonds. Neat script labeled landmarks and individual characters.

  The other functional buildings had been captured during his absence: Jail (T2), Storehouse (T1), Library (T2), Vault (T3). Everything else was to be demolished and salvaged. Worker Dolls had started with houses, roads, and fabrications closest to the spire, working their way out. They’d stacked piles of stone, wood, and glass near the storehouse. At tier one, its capacity was pathetically low. Upgrades were needed all around.

  Gabrielle and the Dark Humans congregated on the shore by the Basic Dark Farms’ construction site, well within the shield’s range, so it was fine. True to her message, the mayor was closing in on the spire. He walked at a leisurely pace across the two-mile tied island, a couple of minutes away. As for the Nihils, they lounged in the jail along with the sedated Draco king. Good job there.

  Rowan zoomed out as far as the Area Detection allowed for, which wasn’t far. Gabrielle’s waterfall hideout sat just within the boundary—unlucky. The real issue, however, was the lack of natural resources, as she’d said. Unfit for growing bulky mid or high-level trees, the landscape was smeared with deep flowing rivers, ponds, and swamps. Not a single stone or metal or gem deposits dotted the nearby lands.

  Problems, problems, and more problems assailed from all avenues. Rowan pinched his brow and sighed hot air. A headache was developing, a band of dull pain around his skull. He hadn’t been in the game for even an hour.

  Perhaps he was thinking too much; such a thing was possible. Despite his earlier vow to be less brash, sometimes a head-first charge was better than dawdling around and spending energy on excess deliberation. First, before anything, that fleet of ships had to go.

  Okay! Enough thinking. I will quickly talk to the mayor and start designing minions.

  As he marched out of the building, the shield of liquid-like dark-water mana undulated overhead from the continued siege without a sound. The smart noise cancellation was doing its job nicely. A figure, a Dark Human, promptly walked into the dirt clearing between two buildings undergoing demolition. Worker Dolls glanced with apathy. Rowan greeted the stocky man with an Examine. His suit-like outfit and bald head were unmistakable.

  Derek Goodwill (Dark Human): Level 83

  Faction: None

  Health: 890

  Mana: 1450

  Stamina: 1200

  Pitiful level for an adult. And that first name was the same as the lead game designer’s. Rowan suppressed an eye-roll, for it could be worse. “Hello, Derek.”

  “Greetings, Lord Black.” He bowed from the waist. “I assume you are our dark gods’ chosen World Boss leader along with Lady LeMort?”

  Finally, some respect. “I am. Why have you come here? I am very busy. There is much to do.”

  “Indeed, indeed.” His mouth twisted in either worry or frustration. “As you see, we are in a dire situation, under siege by a great naval force that far outclasses us in range and number. I have continued to suggest for a total evacuation. I believe we should start construction of a settlement elsewhere, but alas, Lady LeMort refuses—”

  “I hear you.” What a
numskull. Rowan did not have time for subjects like these. He had thought Gabrielle had been exaggerating when she’d mentioned the mayor in passing, but as usual, she was right. “There will not be an evacuation, especially when we have a day or more to prepare. Too much is invested here, and that’s not even mentioning that the children need a dark mana source else they perish.” Rowan’s knuckles cracked as he thumbed back at the spire.

  Derek’s neck tendons strained and twitched. “My lord, I’m sure we can find a mana source elsewhere. Please reconsider—”

  “Silence.” What’s wrong with this guy? He wasn’t a sniveling coward, obviously, and he wasn’t brain-damaged either. “Unless you can give me the location of a mana source we can safely capture, I don’t want to hear talk of an evacuation again.”

  Puny wisps of dark mana danced at Derek’s fingertips. “We should explore the north-eastern wilderness. There has been over a year of strange magical activity reported in secret, but the land has been too harsh to explore for decades. We should send your expendable Undead. They don’t need food or water, and they can brave the harsh elements far better than anything alive. We should evacuate and form parties of—”