Crystal Shards Online Omnibus 1

by Rick Scott

  Maxis shrugs. “We haven’t really had a chance to talk since we got here. Figured now was a pretty good time.”

  “Talk about what?”

  “Stuff,” he says. “What happened back home. Here.”

  “Did Val Helena put you up to this?”

  Maxis rolls his eyes and mutters a cuss. “No . . .” And then, after a few seconds, “Well . . . yeah, but I was gonna do it anyway.”

  I snicker, and for once, my brother actually cracks a smile and laughs with me. “That Val.”

  “Yeah, she’s quite the lady,” Maxis says. “So anyway, how are you?”

  I shrug slowly, still not knowing quite what to say or how to take this new side of my brother. “Fine, I guess.”

  “Anything you want to ask me?”

  The whole thing was sprung so quickly that I feel completely unprepared. I probably have a hundred questions I want to ask my brother, but right now, I can think of only one. “How bad is Mom, really? I remember you two talked before, when we were down at the clinic. What happened to her that day?”

  Maxis pauses for a moment, and then breathes out a sigh. “The reason she went down there was to make arrangements to put herself into stasis. In case she took a turn for the worse.”

  Eeesh. “I didn’t know she was getting so bad.”

  “She just likes to plan ahead.” He sighs again. “I just hope she’s okay on her own. That’s another reason I wish you were there, and not here, man. I was counting on you to take care of her.”

  My chest tightens a little. “Come on, Mike. We’re not going back there again, are we?”

  “Look, I’ve accepted it, okay? You’re here, you’re here. I just wish you would have said something.”

  I roll my eyes at him. “You could have, too. Or were you afraid Mom would find out about your little secret life as well?”

  He snorts. “Yeah, I guess so . . . and you, too. I didn’t want you guys worrying about me. Better you thought I was a deadbeat, wasting my time down in the hub, than out here risking my life on the surface. Worrying like that would have only made Mom’s cancer worse.”

  “I guess I can understand that,” I say. But there’s something else I can’t understand at all. “Hey man, why the heck were you letting us live like paupers? I understand you couldn’t get Mom’s treatment and all, but dang, couldn’t you have at least sprung for a decent meal every now and then? Or a better place to live?”

  “What? And blow my cover?” he says. “How the heck was I supposed to explain having that kind of money? I’m telling you, if Mom had had even a clue about what I was doing, she’d probably have had a heart attack. I just hope she’s not having two of them right now, because of us. The way she worried about Dad was bad enough.”

  Dad . . . I never knew him. But Mike did. I still envy him for that.

  “Plus, it’d be totally unethical to spend all that money. The way we were living was the right way. Bare minimum. Everyone should be living like that.”

  “What?”

  “Once you know the truth about how little nano the city has left, how could you think to live any other way? It’s not real money, Ryan. Not until we return home with it. And even then, that’s not what we should be spending it on. We should be trying to take this place back, not living it up in that tin can.”

  I think back to Gilly’s family. They certainly didn’t seem like they were on a budget. “Yeah, but do you know what Mom was doing for credits?”

  “She’s not doing what you think, man.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I had the bills covered, okay? Mom doesn’t have to work. She spends her days worrying about you. That’s why I kept pushing you to get out of those mines and get a real job. To meet people.”

  “But I did meet people in the mines.” I waggle my eyebrows at him. “The chairman’s daughter, no less.”

  He huffs out a laugh. “Don’t remind me. Still don’t know how you pulled that one off.”

  I look back at Gilly. She sleeps soundly, looking as cute as ever. “Yeah . . . me either.”

  He jabs me in the shoulder. “Hey, you be respectable with her out here. Understand?”

  What the heck? Was he peeping in on my dreams now too? “Yeah, yeah.”

  “I’m serious.” He jabs me again.

  “Okay, geez.”

  Maxis lets out a chuckle. “I guess, looking back, if we could have talked like this before, we probably could have saved Mom a whole bunch of grief.”

  I nod. “No doubt.”

  “So, no more secrets,” he says with a smile. “Yeah?”

  My skin goes numb when he says it. I’m already hiding a big secret from him! Crap, how do I get myself into these things? I nearly open my mouth to say something about the mine, but then he gets up from the table and slaps me on the back.

  “Stay safe out there,” he says. “And . . . you surprised me, Ryan. In a good way. Val Helena told me what you did to get where you are. I’m proud of you, man. I think Dad would be, too.”

  My thoughts turn to my father as my brother walks away, and a tightness catches in my throat. I hope my dad is proud of me, looking down on me from wherever he is now. As I watch my brother leave the Common Hall, I give him a smile he can’t see.

  “Thanks, bro . . .”

  * * *

  Gilly aims her short bow at the lone buffalo, pulling the string taut. “You sure you’re not going to let it hit me, right?”

  I chuckle as I admire how great Gilly looks with the new weapon in hand. It’s a Level 1 item she picked up from one of the villagers who had some weapon-crafting skill. If she’s going to be any good with that Goblin Queen’s Spell Bow, she has a lot of skill levels to make up.

  As I gaze around the meadow, I notice that it looks nothing like how it did in my dream. For one, the sky is overcast, not blue, but that’s a good thing, since it blocks out the sun and made for a cooler trek along the river. The meadow looks more like a hay field, with grass at least a couple feet tall. The buffalo are ten-foot-tall behemoths, and look more like wooly mammoths than the creatures in our history vids.

  As Gilly prepares her shot, I check our target.

  Mountain Buffalo

  Level: 60

  These hardy beasts are the gentle giants of the plains, but can be unforgiving when provoked.

  Affinity: Earth

  I double-check my HUD to make sure my buffs are still up: Shadow Copy, check. Shadow Haste, check. Shadow Tendrils, check. “Go for it, Gilly.”

  “Okay!” she says, and lets her arrow fly.

  Gilly misses the Mountain Buffalo.

  Her arrow falls painfully short of the mark, getting lost in the tall grass.

  “Aw, shoot!” she says.

  “No worries. Try again.”

  As she materializes another arrow from her inventory, I think back to both my conversation with Val Helena and the one with my brother an hour ago, not to mention my dream earlier. I wonder if I should tell Gilly about it. Not the dream, of course; at least, not the first part of it. Things have moved so fast that we haven’t really discussed what spending more physical time together might mean, or lead to—or if we’re even ready for that. But besides my brother, we’re basically unsupervised out here. And that has my teenaged hormones working overtime when I think about the opportunities. Bah, get your mind out of the gutter, man! I shake the thoughts away and focus on what I’m really supposed to be agonizing over: should I tell Gilly about the mine, or not?

  I’ve already blown my chances to tell Maxis and Val, so maybe I should just keep it to myself altogether. Maybe I can just pretend I never knew about it, and then act surprised when it’s “discovered” down in the mines.

  “You okay?” Gilly asks as she nocks her arrow.

  “Yeah, I’m good,” I lie. “Go for it.”

  She lets the arrow go, and this time, she lands the shot.

  Gilly hits the Mountain Buffalo for 1 damage.

  “You did it!”
I shout, and the beast turns and snorts in her direction.

  “Save me, Reece!” she cries with a laugh as the huge animal begins to charge.

  I launch myself into the buffalo’s flank with Charge Strike, sinking my kunai into its wooly hide for 10% of its health. The beast bleats and bucks, and then lunges at me with a headbutt, but I avoid it easily. I slash into it with my blazing katanas and drop it down to 30% health before I have to sidestep another attack. Gilly then shoots another arrow into it.

  “I got a skill up!” she says triumphantly.

  I laugh with her as I take the rest of the buffalo’s health down to zero.

  You defeated the Mountain Buffalo!

  You gain 13000 experience points.

  “Wow, nice!” Gilly says. “That 30% XP bonus from the village really helps. Let’s do some more of these!”

  I press my palm against the huge corpse of the buffalo and convert it.

  You find 3 Nano-Fragments.

  You find a portion of Buffalo Meat.

  You find a portion of Buffalo Meat.

  You find a portion of Buffalo Meat.

  “It dropped a lot of meat, too,” I say. “Maybe I can add it to the village stores later.”

  “Or we can barbeque it tonight!”

  I chuckle. “Good idea! Let’s take on some more.”

  We go about the process of leveling and pick off lone buffalo to hunt. Maxis was right, they’re the perfect mobs for us to duo. They’re big and powerful, but they attack slowly and don’t team up. I tank them easily, while Gilly continues to use her bow for practice. After a few, she alternates between her bow and her Holy Fire spell to burn the mobs down faster.

  Gilly gains a level every three or four kills, but that eventually slows to one every five or six when she hits Level 50. We chat idly between the mobs, but my attention starts to drift as the conundrum in the back of my mind grows louder. I push on, though, and try to enjoy the fun of simple combat again. I level up once, and by midmorning, I get my second level for the day, compared to Gilly’s ten.

  Congratulations! You have gained a Level!

  You are now Level 80!

  You have learned a new ability: Assassinate

  Assassinate

  Base 25% chance to instantly kill an enemy in a weakened state or has 15% health or less.

  Activation: 1 second

  Cool-down: 30 seconds

  Cost: 15 TP

  “Congrats!” Gilly says with smile, waving her bow in the air.

  “Thanks,” I say and check out my new ability. It seems kind of weird to me. If something is already at 15% health, it would probably just be faster to just kill it outright, rather than rolling the dice on a one in four chance of insta-killing it.

  “What’s wrong?” Gilly asks as she nocks another arrow, ready to take on the next buffalo.

  “Nothing,” I say. “Just checking out this new ability I got.”

  “Is it good?”

  I shrug. “Not too sure.”

  I read the description again. Maybe it’d be useful on a boss or something.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Gilly says. “You don’t seem like yourself today. Did something happen this morning?”

  “Huh?”

  “If something’s wrong, you can tell me, you know?”

  I look into Gilly’s deep green eyes, feel the concern and compassion within them. She’s such a special girl; someone who cares about me no matter what. I think about the mine again. Should I tell her about it? I’d feel a bit bad for spreading the burden, but if I can’t share this with Gilly, then who can I? I let out a sigh. “Actually . . . I do need to tell you something.”

  She lowers her bow as her brow furrows with even more concern. “What is it?”

  “Maybe you should take a seat.”

  We sit down together in the tall grass, and I tell her the whole story, starting from when I fell down the hole. I tell her about the crystal forest, the giant shadow monsters I saw, and the huge thing in the distance I couldn’t quite make out. And then I tell her how the giant chased me, how I just barely made it out before the ceiling closed back up.

  When I’m finished, Gilly is pale as a ghost.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “You’re the only one I’ve told. I didn’t want to mention it in front of Rembrandt at the time, because then he’d tell my brother. And I didn’t want this to detract from our mission to save Val’s friend. I figured he might bail on her if he knew that Citadel could be down there.”

  “You really think it could be?”

  I shrug. “I dunno, but it’s underground, and that’s where Citadel is supposed to be. And it looked to go on forever down there.”

  “Hmmm,” Gilly says, pondering it. “And you haven’t told Val, either?”

  I shake my head. “I thought about it, but . . . I didn’t want her feeling torn about it, either. Especially after dropping the bomb about Aiko. She has too much on her mind.”

  Gilly nods. “That’s crazy what you saw, though. What do you think they were?”

  I shrug. “I couldn’t scan them, so I’m not sure. Maybe they’re those Omega things Blacktop mentioned.”

  “Maybe . . .” Gilly says.

  “So, what do you think?” I ask. “Should I just tell everybody?”

  Gilly focuses her eyes on the ground, lost in thought. They go back and forth a few times before she looks back at me. “Well, when you do eventually tell your brother, you know he’s going to be super pissed, right?”

  I sigh. “I know . . . we just had this big heart-to-heart this morning, too. I couldn’t even tell him then.”

  “On the other hand,” Gilly says, “he always gets pissed at you, so who cares? And Val would probably appreciate that you spared her the added stress. At the end of the day, we already made the decision to help Val first. That hole isn’t going anywhere. We’ll tell everyone when the time is right. I agree that it would be too much of a temptation to pursue if we mentioned it now. Plus, we can’t do anything until we level up, right?”

  Gilly smiles, and I feel a wave of relief wash over me. “Thanks, Gilly. It feels good to hear someone else say that. I hate having to keep secrets. But I seem to be doing it more and more these days.”

  She shrugs. “Sometimes they’re necessary. Just like with my dad, I guess.”

  I pause to think about Bruce Peters and the massive secrets he’s had to keep in order to preserve the greater good. I pray that I’m doing the same.

  Gilly chuckles and ruffles my hair. “You really overthink things, you know? But your heart’s always in the right place, Reece. That’s why I like you so much.”

  I find myself blushing, and then surprised when her lips touch mine.

  I return her kiss, and we fall back into the grass.

  It’s just like in my dream. But better. This time, it’s for real. My brother’s warning to remain respectable comes vaguely to my mind, but I could give two hoots about that now. This feels way too good to stop. We’re alone in a new world, just the two of us. And the possibilities are endless. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier.

  Then the ground shakes.

  What the heck?

  Again, it’s just like in my dream . . .

  Gilly and I sit up, startled.

  “What was that?” she says, looking about.

  I do the same and spot an enormous buffalo in the center of the meadow, twice as tall as the others and completely white. Its massive horns are curved downward, reaching toward the ground, almost like tusks, and through its nose is a massive black iron ring.

  Lakota

  Legendary Monster

  Level: ???

  This ancient mountain spirit is the protector of the great herd. Folklore tells of its bellow. It is said that one cry can cause an avalanche, and its hooves are strong enough to break solid rock.

  Affinity: Ice

  A new Quest is available: Taming of the Herd

  Defeat Lakota to gain access to the Buffalo herd resou
rce.

  Rewards: +100 Favor Brookrun Village, Herd Resource

  “Holy cow, they have LMs here, too?” Gill says.

  “Holy cow is right,” I say, looking at the giant beast. I check the quest again and begin salivating. An advancement like that would be awesome for the village. Plus, the lure of being able to defeat that thing is just too much. “Imagine if we could duo that, Gilly. You’d probably hit 85 right away!”

  Gilly laughs nervously. “You aren’t really thinking that, are you?”

  If this was still Crystal Shards maybe, but here is a different story. “Have you tried sending a PM here yet?”

  “Yeah, when you fell down the hole. It said you were out of range, though.”

  I try to contact Val Helena with a PM and get a similar error message.

  [That person is not within communication range.]

  I sigh. “I guess it’s for short distances only out here in the real world.”

  “What are we going to do?” Gilly asks.

  “Wait here,” I say as I activate Sprint. “I’m going for backup!”

  Chapter 14: Lakota

  I’m exhausted by the time I reach the village. It’s not a far distance away—just a couple of miles—but I’ve been sprinting and jogging the entire time. I run and check the Common Hall first, only to find it empty. Darn. Where are they?

  I check the village square next and find Wilbur seated on his favorite bench. He waves at me in greeting. “Master Reece. How are you? You look flustered.”

  “Hi, Wilbur,” I say between pants. “Have you seen Maxis, Rembrandt, or Val Helena?”

  “Yes,” Wilbur says. “But they left some time ago. They’ve set off for the quarry to bring back stone for the forge you ordered. I think they may have gone to visit that trader fellow Blacktop, as well.”

  Darn. Blacktop’s place is a good half hour’s hike from here.

  “Is something the matter?”

  “Sort of. A large monster appeared when we were in the meadow. I was trying to find them to help fight it.”