The Cheater's Return

by Brian McGoldrick

  "However, whether or not the Quantum Control Program is sentient or not is immaterial. We need to focus on this world and its dangers. Right now, these villagers and the tomb they are guarding are more dangerous to us than the Quantum Control Program."

  "What's inside the tomb?" I shake the village head a few times.

  "The walking dead. I don't know what else. No one from the village has ever been inside. Only the Tomb Lord's ghouls are allowed in."

  "How many ghouls does he have?"

  "Five. They are all outside the village." The village head probably volunteers the information in the hope I will not hurt him as much.

  "Where did the Tomb Lord go and when?"

  "Barrow Island. It's been seven winters he's been gone."

  "Last question. Besides you, her father, and your village elders, who ate Sine?"

  "I don't remember. It's been eight or nine years."

  Anger flares up within me.

  "There is not a single living child younger than their late teens in this village. Those who would feed on their own children have no right to live. We can just kill until we complete the quest." Raven Goddess glares at the village head with a contemptuous, hate-filled glare.

  "I like that."

  Drawing both her blades with lightning speed, Raven Goddess buries them in the village head's chest repeatedly, but struggle as he might, he has nowhere near the strength needed to break free from my hold.

  With a grim expression, Raven Goddess touches a loot shackle attached to the village head's corpse and pulls a black tome from his pocket.

  "A Talent tome?"

  "It is yours."

  When I examine the Talent tome, my eyes open wide in shock.

  Danger Sense

  » A passive Talent that allows the possessor to sometimes be aware of unseen danger. Any time the possessor is the subject of hostile intent or at risk from environmental conditions, they have the chance to become aware of it. Depending on how high the possessor rolls, the results can range from complete obliviousness, to a sense of discomfort or imminent danger, to an impression or complete awareness of the source of danger.

  » Perception directly affects the chance to detect dangers.

  » Enhanced senses and extrasensory awarenesses directly affect the change to detect dangers.

  I place my hand on the face of the tome and absorb the Talent. The experience is more unpleasant than almost any Talent or Ability I can ever remember absorbing. It feels like a swarm of insects is gnawing its way to my bones.

  "Aaaaarrrrr!" After holding out for as long as I can, I unleash a scream that echoes from the mountain slopes on either side of the plateau.

  "Damn. That was unpleasant."

  Now that I have absorbed the Talent, I check the description again, but it has not changed.

  "I wonder if there will be a way to improve this Talent."

  Raven Goddess smiles faintly, but the hostility and contempt never leave her eyes. "Improve your Perception. If you do not get lucky and find sensory Abilities, that will be the fastest way to improve Danger Sense ."

  I shake my head. "I'm getting too many things I need to improve, too quickly."

  "Everything will work itself out. Trust in me." Turning her back on me, Raven Goddess moves toward one of the huts and kicks in the door.

  From inside the hut, the sounds of people scrabbling at the walls and a limp body hitting the floor reach my ears.

  "No! Please!" The pleas end with the sound of blades slicing through flesh.

  Taking out my staff, I pick another hut and do not bother with the door. My swing rips apart the wattle and daub wall, exposing the man and woman cowering inside. Without any qualms, I thrust my staff at the man's head, and it shatters like a melon hit with a club.

  "No!" The woman's shriek ends when her head explodes as well.

  I take a quick look at my combat log.

  Human Villager Cannibal (NPC) : -237 Untyped Damage: 122% Skill Expression (+320% Damage): Critical Hit (Head) (+200% Damage): Save Failure-Pulverizing Damage Head (x2 Damage)

  Human Villager Cannibal (NPC) : -236 Untyped Damage: 126% Skill Expression (+360% Damage): Critical Hit (Head) (+200% Damage): Save Failure-Pulverizing Damage Head (x2 Damage)

  Pulverizing damage? Maybe, that is a vorpal-like effect from doing enough damage to a limb with a blunt weapon. If it is not, I have no clue what it would be. That is not something I have ever seen before.

  I did not pay attention to my Skill Expression when we fought the ghouls, and scrolling back through the ghoul fight, I do not see a single value under 115%. I had not realized that I was consistently reaching such levels. I wonder, why is it growing so fast?

  Some of the villagers make a break for the edge of the plateau, and I chase after them. The Enhanced Agility that I acquired has increased my already high running speed by a good bit, and I easily run down the villagers. Not a one of them tries to fight, and I easily shatter all their skulls.

  Just to give any of them second thoughts about trying to get down from the plateau, I throw all the rope ladders over the edge. The drop is not even eight meters, but in the dark, that is more than enough to keep most people from risking it.

  Heading back to the village, I start working on the huts closest to the edge of the plateau, and the villagers die beneath my staff, like animals in a slaughterhouse.

  After killing the rest of the villagers, Raven Goddess and I meet in front of the hut where we left Sine's mother. As she stares at the hut, Raven Goddess' eyes have a burning anger inside of them.

  "I wish to take care of this myself." Without looking at me or waiting for any acknowledgment Raven Goddess enters the hut.

  "No! I didn't hurt my baby! No! Please!" With the sound of a blade slicing apart flesh and bone, the pleas end.

  Ding!

  You have completed: Follow the Dolly .

  Do you wish to accept your reward, now? (Yes/No)

  I check the loot menu. There are no Talent tomes, but there are five Ability tomes. I pick one at random and accept the reward.

  Unlike killing Monsters, quest completions have a set of clear solid threads of experience. For just a fraction of a second, on the completion of a quest, they become visible, floating in midair. The number varies with the quest, and they are much harder to acquire. My personal technique is nothing but a grab and yank. Four is the best I have ever done, and that time the threads were very close together. This time, as four golden strands of experience float upward, I manage to grab two extra shares.

  Ding! Ding!

  Damn! What a load of experience. I Level twice from it. I must have been right on the edge after killing all the villagers.

  Quest: Find the Tomb Lord has been offered.

  Unique Chain Quest: Cannot be refused.

  I take a look in my quest journal.

  Find the Tomb Lord (Unique) (Storyline Quest: 2 of ??) (Difficulty: ??)

  » Explore the Tomb Lord's tomb.

  » Reward: ??

  » Quest cannot be shared.

  Raven Goddess walks out of the hut with a bleak emptiness in her eyes.

  "Are you okay?"

  After staring at me for a time, Raven Goddess sighs. "No. But I will survive. We should search the village before we rest.

  We search all the villagers and their huts and only turn up 53 silver coins and 635 copper coins of varying mintage and some crappy jewelry. Except for the village head, none of them has anything that could pass for loot. From the village head, I take a necklace, with an onyx stone in an odd setting.

  "This is it?" Irritation flares up within me.

  After looking around pensively, Raven Goddess stares at the village head's cabin. "Where is his root cellar? Every other dwelling has one, but I saw no entry for one in there."

  "I don't know."

  With suspicion replacing irritation, I start slamming the tip of my staff into the floor inside the village head's cabin. In the apparently hard packed dirt, underneath his
cot, my staff sinks much deeper than it should.

  Throwing the cot aside, I dig up a hidden door to a root cellar and tear it open. Like all the other huts, this root cellar is not very big, having been painstakingly chopped out of the stone beneath the couple feet of dirt on the plateau, but unlike the other root cellars, this one is filled with armor, weapons, jewelry, and two sealed jars.

  I open one of the jars and foul, acidic odor burns my nose. I hand it to Raven Goddess. "I think this is poison."

  Raven Goddess sniffs at the jar. "It is. They must have poisoned any adventurers that they thought were too dangerous to kill in other ways. If it were not for the Shackles of Domination, we would have ended up suffering the same fate."

  Searching through the loot, Raven Goddess finds armor, boots, a cloak, and a matched pair of short swords that suit her fancy, but nothing is of any use to me. It is all human-sized equipment. A lot of enchanted gear will grow or shrink to perfectly fit the wearer, but there are limits. The usual range is about a 10% change, and the best I ever encountered in Primacy Online V was roughly a 25% change. With exception of some jewelry, equipment made for humans cannot be used by a Half-Giant. If I do not encounter any Half-Giants, just getting any usable equipment will be a problem.

  In Primacy Online V , The Half-Giants were not very common on Avalon, but there were some communities of them. They tended to live deep within the towering mountain ranges that divided the continent. While they were merciless toward anyone entering their territory, they seldom bother to venture outside of it. Beyond some information on their physical capabilities that I found on web pages about Primacy Online V , I know nearly nothing about Half-Giants.

  Once we split the loot, mine is nothing more than vendor junk, for me, we settle down for the night in the village head's cabin.

  Raven Goddess empties her storage onto the ground and separates everything out. With a pensive frown, she begins to rearrange her collection of loot. Should I call it loot or junk?

  "Do women get extra character storage, so that they don't have to be like they're handicapped without a purse?"

  Raven Goddess frowns at me. "You are still obnoxious. I did a unique quest before you spawned that tripled my storage. It was an unexpected reward."

  "I see."

  After staring at her assortment of crap for a few minutes, she arranges it according to some arcane formula that makes no sense to me and starts to put it away.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Organizing my bag."

  "And you really claim you're not obsessive-compulsive?"

  "A place for everything and everything in its place. You should be better organized, yourself. I saw your workroom. It was a pig sty."

  "I need to live up to my Fat Pig moniker." I grin at Raven Goddess, but she just pretends to ignore me.

  Bored, I take out the village head's necklace and examine it. The light from the fire in the hearth glints off the onyx stone. Rather than a precious metal, the necklace and pendant were crafted from a dull grey one. I do not recognize what it is. Metallurgy is far from being one of my fortes.

  "Crom, you should use Item Ancestry on that necklace."

  After the rag doll, I am more a little gun shy, when it comes to Item Ancestry , but she is probably right.

  Item Ancestry! As I focus on activating the Talent, the world goes black around me. The blackness seems to last far longer than when I used Item Ancestry on the rag doll. It feels like hours.

  * * * * *

  A felt-lined box opens, and I am laying within. The box is in the hands of a slender male with beautiful features; he is too androgynous to be called handsome. Behind the man, a huge, perfectly circular, grass-covered mound rises to a height of well over two hundred meters.

  "As we agreed. Where is my payment?" The androgynous male turns the box so that another can see within it.

  Clad in black plate armor, the other towers over the androgynous male. A full helm hides his features, but from his body's proportions, he should be a Half-Giant.

  "How do I know it works as you claim?"

  The androgynous male puts me around his neck. "Try to identify or analyze me with the means of your choosing."

  The Half-Giant speaks words in a language never meant to be spoken by a creature of the material world and draws a smoky, charcoal rune in the air. When he finishes, the Half-Giant pushes his hand forward and sends the rune at the androgynous man. Upon reaching the androgynous man, the rune turns into a cloud of smoke and dissipates.

  "It is acceptable." A chest appears in the Half-Giant's hand, and he throws it on the ground.

  After the androgynous man opens the chest, revealing a fortune in gold coins, gold bars, and gems, he smiles and puts me back in the box, before closing the lid.

  Blackness.

  * * * * *

  The blackness turns into broken flashes of images and sounds that do not seem to fit together. There are plains, forests, villages, castles, cities, men, women, and monsters. So many images bombard my mind that I cannot focus on a single one. After what feels like years, the imagery fades.

  Blackness.

  * * * * *

  I appear from nothingness, with my chain being held by the Half-Giant. He is still clad in black plate, but instead of a helm, a hooded cloak hides his features.

  The Half-Giant negligently tosses me to the village head. "Wear this and none will be able to recognize you as a Warlock. Though, as pathetic as you are, there is no need to hide your powers. Kill all that seek to interfere with my tomb. If you fail, I will rip your soul from your body and torture it for ten thousand ages."

  "Yes, Master!" The village head grovels on the muddy ground.

  Blackness.

  * * * * *

  As the blackness fades, I rub my head. It feels like someone is beating on it with a million-kilogram sledgehammer. Every beat of my heart brings pain like another blow from that sledgehammer.

  "Crom are you well?"

  "How long?"

  "More than two hours."

  "Damn that was unpleasant. There were too many images, too much data for me to deal with. This thing is old."

  I check the pendant.

  Tomb Lord's Pendant of Obfuscation (Unique)

  » The Tomb Lord's Pendant of Obfuscation hides all information about the wearer from detection by divination magic. This effect applies all Talents, Abilities, and spells that are based on the rules of divination.

  » Minimum Level: 1

  When I show Raven Goddess the pendant, she raises her eyebrows. "That is very simple and incredibly powerful."

  "Do you want it?"

  Raven Goddess shakes her head. "You should keep it. I know where to find another item with similar effects. I will acquire that before War Mode is activated by the Quantum Control Program.

  "We have been uploaded for almost four hours. It is time for a break. We should log out."

  I nod my head. "Alright."

  Tomb in the Mountain

  Earth: Yukon City

  May 14, 1337 AA

  Opening his eyes, Patrick Armagh looked at the clock on the display inside his quantum interface capsule. It read, 04:07AM. After opening the lid of the capsule, he sat up and looked around. The capsule next to him was already empty.

  While punching his own arms and legs, Patrick frowned. Just like before he was uploaded to his character sheathe, he had no feeling outside of the upper part of his chest and his head.

  "Crom?" Morgan Danan looked through the open door of the back cabin. Deep in her eyes, worry and relief warred with one another.

  "No, just a Fat Pig that can't feel anything." A mix of anger and frustration showed in the depths of Patrick's eyes.

  "Whether in this body or in a game sheathe, you will always be Crom Cruach."

  Patrick laughed bitterly but did not reply.

  Seeing Patrick's actions, Morgan frowned. "There is hot food out here. You should eat. There are also showers on the second floor in the back of the
hanger."

  "How long have you been out?" Exiting the capsule, he moved to the main cabin of the airplane. He moved with an easy grace that belied his 200kg bulk, and his steps were nearly silent.

  Morgan looked at the clock in the front bulkhead of the cabin. "Just over seven minutes. Did you wait to log out?"

  "No. It seemed like I was trapped in blackness forever."

  Anger flashed in Morgan's eyes. "The Church may be playing more games."

  "Fuck 'em." Patrick shrugged and loaded up a plate with food. Despite the state of forced immobility and low metabolic rate that arose from being in a quantum interface capsule, Patrick was ravenously hungry. For him, it had always been like that when he used a normal capsule. His body burned through food at a prodigious rate, but it seemed everything he ate was turned into fat.

  A faint vibration in his pocket drew Patrick's attention to his pocket assistant. He took it out and checked the activity log. Seeing there was a message from Mi-Cha, Patrick glared at the screen and put his pocket assistant back in his pocket.

  "How much do you know about this force of cheaters the Church is using?"

  Morgan sighed. "Not as much as you might like. I do not know who any of their characters were in Primacy Online V . After you were banned, I had tentatively identified who you were in real life, and when I learned of the Church's plan, I laid claim to you. I was not absolutely certain of your identity before meeting you in that fight club."

  Patrick's frown looked as though it would become a permanent feature. "How did you do that?"

  Morgan looked like she wanted to sigh, but she did not. "There is a long and unpleasant history between the Church and the City of Mann. Due to our acquisition of some of the same alien technology that the Church used to create Primacy Online and the orbital particle cannons, we are the one city that they cannot attack with the particle cannons. They are also unable to attack anywhere within a fifty-mile radius of my person. Needless to say, that enrages the Patriarch to no end and gives us a certain amount of bargaining power."

  "I see. How long do you plan to stay in Yukon City?"