Respawn: The Last Crossing (Respawn LitRPG series Book 6)

by Arthur Stone

  Only when he exited the tunnel did he take a breather. For nearly five minutes, he lay on his back, sucking in air.

  He had never realized how delicious ordinary air truly was. Flavored though it was with the smoke of the tunnel, it was delectable.

  At last recovering its oxygen levels, his brain returned to reasonable thoughts. Cheater realized he had to leave this location, and fast. It was a miracle that no one had shown up, with a huge column of smoke billowing out of the tunnel exit, visible for miles around. Infecteds were very much drawn to such displays.

  And other creatures, as well. Anything could be living here in the borderlands.

  No matter how much his body protested, he forced himself up. Finding the Nold turret and his rifle next to him was surprising. He did not remember dragging them along. In his state, he might reasonably have been expected to discard his heavy load. Thankfully, he had not. His greedy crocodile brain had controlled his limbs, and it hated to part with valuables.

  The railroad track turned sharply north from the tunnel, diving into a pine forest. There was no road south; the cliffs to the west turned that way. Due east, he saw black clusters a mile away. That was where March had planned to go.

  Cheater assessed his condition and realized that a hike through the black lands was not something he was feeling up to. The explosion had stunned him badly, and he had been breathing in nasty plumes of smoke for System knows how long. Sometimes he would stagger, his head spinning, his legs turned to spore jelly. The extra strain of a dead cluster was not something his body needed now. He could see infecteds coming from that direction, too. Weak varieties only, but thirty or forty of them. A stronger one could show up and join the fight.

  He tried to send a chat message, and was not surprised to receive no answer: His companions were far into the black lands by now. Perhaps they were even emerging from them. They had enjoyed a good head start and no serious health problems.

  Cheater decided to move north and climb part of the ridge. It was only a gentle slope in that area, and he could easily ascend a couple of hundred vertical feet. That would give him a great view of the land. He would try to find a way around the black. Or, he could take a break for a couple of hours, recover his strength, and cross.

  March was right about his maps. Cheater had not found anything useful covering these territories. Those he had were full of gray areas, and the places that did show lacked details.

  A survey was essential.

  Once he reached his destination height, he collapsed, making no effort to look around. Five minutes of rest on his back was just what he needed. He was out.

  * * *

  When he woke, Cheater realized it had not been five minutes. He remembered the sun shining brightly, piercing the billowing smoke with its rays. Now, it was hidden, and only illuminated the peaks of the mountains from behind. It had descended the ridge on the other side.

  Cheater opened the interface to be sure that the System had given him a victory message. It had. Good. The beasts had lost the trail. Not that he should have let go like that.

  This was the Continent. It could get you anywhere, at any time.

  He rose and winced in pain. The rubble had shredded both of his palms, and while they were already recovering, they protested at the exercise. Even a wiggle of his fingers brought tears to his eyes.

  Somehow he got his flask open. A couple of sips of ambrosia refilled his brain with thought and life with color.

  He had survived, and he had not even lost his weapons.

  Perhaps they’d give him a medal or two.

  Nothing on the Continent was more fragile than a player’s life. After another sip, he surveyed the area for threats.

  The first place to look was behind him, towards the mountains. He had fought off the vanguard of a massive horde there, beyond the ridge. The horde could not be held for long by one man, but he had figured things out.

  Cheater was not, however, gazing west for nostalgia’s sake. He remembered March’s concerns. The beasts could continue their pursuit not only underground but also by climbing over.

  Now, the underground route was blocked. The powerful explosion Nut had arranged in about five minutes made it easier now to drill a new tunnel than to clear out the old one. Yet nothing was stopping the ghouls from crossing the ridge—nothing, that is, except the ridge itself. From both sides, yes, the ridge looked impressive, but not impassable. The infecteds would have to consume large quantities of their strength to make the climb. In addition, many could become lost among the chaos of the rocky peaks and passes, chasms and creeks.

  He saw no trace of them. Raising his scope to his eyes, he noticed no large clusters of infecteds. A few weaklings were present in two places. These were areas where the ladder wells climbed to the surface, from which smoke continued to pour. It was these plumes that attracted these ghouls. They rushed towards them, then slowly turned in circles or simply stood in place with a lost look on their faces, unable to comprehend what they should do next.

  Cheater was happy he had moved away from the tunnel. Guests had likely come calling. He could not see the smoke from the exit from this vantage point, but it was there.

  Thankfully, no ghouls had come who had an excellent sense of smell. They would have followed his tracks. Perhaps, though, the stench of the smoke covered his trail for him. Cheater vaguely recalled the smell from the tunnel. Pungent. Those tanks may have been carrying industrial chemicals, not just gasoline. They may have been what turned the explosion from significant to stupendous.

  Cheater turned his gaze east. The sun shone with its last strength for the day, but his Darkvision made this plenty to assess the nearby area. It did not help much in the distance—he could only see the largest items at that scale. That was where he was heading, but right now, he cared most about a three-mile radius or so around him.

  He could see now that the blackness did not stretch so far. With his strength regained, he could probably cross in an hour. That was only a last resort, though. Entering the dark lands put the Nold turret at risk. How well would it stand up to such an endeavor? Usually, complex technology broke down into junk in those areas of the world. That was why March had left the weapon behind, with his sacrificial lamb to the horde. He had been sure that it would not survive crossing the black.

  Cheater did not want to lose such a valuable item, either. It was not yet broken for certain. Clown or other specialists might be able to return it to working order.

  The gun made the little party a force to be reckoned with. Either he would hide it in some stable cluster before he crossed, or he would not cross at all.

  The black lands stretched south as far as Cheater could see. To the north, however, they came to an end. A short detour that way would allow him to bypass the dead lands entirely.

  But things in the north did not look good. Nor to the east, for that matter.

  The borderlands Cheater had seen before this day had been less complicated.

  And less dangerous.

  The cluster which cut off the black at the north was a dense city. The next cluster was from a megalopolis. One of the world’s largest and tallest cities. Perhaps there were several clusters in there, brought in from varying cities. He could not really see the borders, but the architecture of the buildings changed significantly from one area to the next. It was a beautiful mosaic from several continents on Earth.

  One was a European “old town.” Narrow streets, paved in some places with cobblestones instead of asphalt, and with a Gothic cathedral at the far end. Beyond that, modern skyscrapers rose, surrounded by buildings of simpler modern construction. He could tell, even without his scope, that this was from an Asian city.

  Another skyscraper cluster was utterly different, probably the business district of a North American city. Along with these, a cluster of favelas. Slums from Brazil. Beyond that still, he saw concrete Soviet architecture: identical nine-story buildings arranged in lines and squares. An incredible jumble of civili
zations.

  This was the borderland. Here, wonders never ceased. Many of the buildings themselves were severed by the border. The clusters had been arranged with little care for consistency. In other places, the System rarely did that.

  The dissonance bothered Cheater deeply. He wished the System had filled the land with deserts, highlands, or woodlands. Instead, it bunched different downtown areas together. He saw no one-story structures, nor any sizable parks. Exclusively areas with a dense population. Reboots would bring in terrifying numbers of digis. Most would be food for the local infecteds, and others would join their ranks.

  According to some materials, this process was governed. Whenever the number of ghouls grew too high, there was a sort of forced resettling. Infecteds would join together and migrate en masse towards the center of their region, encountering players along the way. Perhaps the horde would lose the first few battles, and even retreat, but they never lost in the end.

  How could players fight an enemy that was continually replenished?

  Through his scope, Cheater could see that the horde had not collected all of the local infecteds. Individuals and packs were visible throughout the patchwork city.

  He decided quickly that he would hide his turret in the first stable cluster he encountered. Better to wade through a black cluster for a day than to tackle a city. He had survived such a place before, but the ghouls there had been orders of magnitude fewer in number, and generally less developed. Most had only been runners, and not even the worst runners.

  Only by a miracle did he escape alive back then. Runners were in the minority there, and those he could see were nearly rafflers. Cheater was much stronger now, and today’s experience had shown that the infecteds’ levels had not been overly impressive. He had repulsed and cleared them quite well. Yet he had only survived with great difficulty, and with the preparatory aid of his companions. Without those explosions, the first attack would have ended him. He had also used his strongest skills. They were now in cooldown.

  Ghouls didn’t care about levels, and they could crush anyone careless with their sheer numbers. Or their sheer weight, if they were heavy enough.

  Somehow, though, he had to cross, and he very much did not want to leave the turret behind. There was very little chance he would come back for it, after all.

  Had he dragged it through the tunnel in vain?

  Cheater also noticed something of interest beyond the black. Similar clusters of cities ran along that edge, but there were open spaces between them. Amid skyscraper patches, he saw yellow fields of wheat, wild forests of green, and dried or drying lakes surrounded by farms and quaint little villages. It was but a haphazard agglomeration of disparate clusters. A little to the east of that, he saw a part of the landscape which looked like it should be named the Great Plateau.

  He had no idea how the phenomenon could have happened. The terrain rose vertically into the air, just in front of a massive crevice that went deep into the crust of the world.

  There was indeed considerable tectonic activity on the Continent. After all, huge parts of the landscape were continually being removed and replaced by others. No matter how seamless the swap was performed, it could have strong effects. Surface and underground water formations alike were affected. Landslides, sinkholes, and floods resulted. Earthquakes were common, though not strong ones. Enough to rattle glasses and make dishes clang, and to cause wires and other flexible hanging items to swing for a long time. These did not cause any destruction.

  But this terrain Cheater beheld looked very much like the consequences of a mighty quake. According to his layman’s judgment, it was the clear result of a tectonic calamity. A perfectly straight crack ran from north to south, and the other side was substantially more elevated. Layers of bedrock and ruptured soil were exposed across the chasm. The “cut by a knife” effect was familiar. The crack and the height of the plateau—some 250 feet, by his guess—were not.

  That doesn’t look like an ordinary cluster border. Despite the waning light and the great distance, Cheater could see the same fault line cutting through the city blocks. The phenomenon could hardly be ascribed to ordinary reboots. It crossed many, many clusters.

  Landslides and other destructive effects could be seen affecting the edge of the plateau. They gave some clue as to how long it had been since the dissected cluster last reset. New clusters had a perfectly vertical wall, but others had lost much of their section of the face. Some places were so deformed that they made the fault look more like a slope of a very steep hill than a wall. Even there, climbing up would be problematic.

  It was a significant obstacle on his way.

  He admired the sight, though. One of the skyscrapers, though not near the tallest, gave up its fight against the fault and collapsed. It did not crumble or disappear but ended leaning up against the wall. It was bent, even cracked, and its glass shattered, but it held. He could probably use it to ascend the plateau’s wall.

  Everywhere else, he would likely need climbing equipment. The wall often ran vertical. Where rubble piled up, it consisted of stones that looked like they could slide down at any time. Climbing these ramps would be dangerous. Even standing on them would be dangerous.

  And no matter how much he peered in either direction, the end of the great rise was not visible. Even when he used his telescopic sight. Does this cut across the entire Continent? Perhaps this was why players did not cross the border here. Vehicles would be unable to pass, and players without good climbing skills would also be at a dead end.

  Even those with mountaineering abilities might not make it. Those stones were treacherous.

  March had selected this place, though, and it had seemed that he knew very well what he was up against. Since the beginning of the trip, he had not been overly concerned with preserving their vehicles.

  Cheater had thought this to be idiocy. No potential bonuses were worth tackling a ghoul horde without good armored transportation and powerful weapons. But this was March, the man who tried to squeeze every last drop out of every crossing.

  In this case, that meant an ascent worthy of the Himalayas. While pursued and surrounded by thousands of the world’s deadliest creatures.

  What was beyond the plateau, he could not see. Darkvision did not help at these distances, and his angle was bad. Some large structures were visible atop it, but only their blurry outlines were discernible.

  A memory came to him, and he rustled through his bag containing the sporesac loot from the manmincer.

  39 spores, 8 yellow peas and 2 white, 11 kernels, 3 nuts, 2 black stars and 1 white, 2 smooth amber threads, and 1 knotted thread.

  Interesting. The victory log pegged the infected’s level at exactly 50. The manmincer was middling at best, but this loot was nearly worthy of an elite. The books said that the strongest manmincers yielded 35 spores, and only rarely a few more. White peas only had a 5% chance of dropping, white stars 10%, and knotted amber 20%.

  He had received max loot in each case, probabilities be damned. The only item which showed no benefit from his luck was pearls. There was a 1% chance of a black pearl if the manmincer you killed was on the threshold of elite. Pearls were supposed to be only the domain of the elites, so the System had not awarded him one, despite his overpumped Luck.

  But March and the others had been right, and the Unnamed One had been no exception. Cheater’s Smile of Fortune could make everyone rich.

  He would stash that information for later.

  The towering stretch of the elevated steppe was just too interesting. It was extraordinary. Bewitching.

  He had to will himself to look away from the wonder of it and its effects on the land. What was close to him was more important. Finding the safest way to proceed. If he used Chameleon, he had a good chance of making it through undetected, if he did not slip up. Although he had expended mana on Smile of Fortune and a string of Explosive Rounds, it had replenished somewhat. He had enough to use Chameleon. After all, he had invested a lot in his ma
na scale. Disguising himself for an entire day would not empty it.

  Something flashed into his line of sight. A young runner, most likely. Its clothing was still intact.

  But something was wrong with this one. Few young infecteds survived in this area. They were eaten by larger beasts, fled to other lands, or grew rapidly.

  This one had stayed. It did not move like a runner did. It was sneaking about, moving from one piece of cover to another. Freezing behind a bush and examining the land ahead, it crouched and turned—at last showing its face.

  Cheater realized it was not a runner.

  It wasn’t a ghoul at all.

  It was a player, and one he recognized.

  “How the hell did you get here?” he muttered to himself.

  Chapter 23

  Life Nine. A Familiar Insect