The Renegades

by Vasily Mahanenko

  “Placekickers? Penalty kills? Penalty kickers?” Chip ventured.

  “‘PKer’ means ‘player killer,’” the necromancer explained. “They’re humans who like to hunt other humans but in VR.”

  “Well just let them try,” Chip shifted his halberd in his hands like he was expecting a PKer to pop out at any moment.

  “They don’t like to take risks,” Sloe hurried to disappoint him. “Typically they choose the rogue class, but since biota have natural stealth and gain combat bonuses in the forest, there should be several magic classes that would fit the role too. They’ll follow you around while camouflaged until you don’t have much health left and that’s when they’ll gank you. With their bonuses to agility and intellect, they’ll finish you in one hit or spell. Or maybe they’ll team up and fall on you in a mob. That’s pretty common too. Our best option is to reach the Arras tomorrow and meet my friends there so we can gear up and get some funds too. We’ll need to figure out the local bureaucracy to allow them to cross the border. How much reputation do we need to gain permission? Or is there some quest chain we have to do?”

  “We’ll try to figure it out,” I agreed. The plan sounded reasonable to me.

  “In that case, let’s finish up with our quests and meet up again tomorrow at the same time. Whoever plans on exiting for a while, send me a letter. We’ll arrange for some bounty money when you get back. And, just in case, let’s exchange comm numbers. Who knows what might happen?”

  Once we’d exchanged contacts, Sloe and Reed went about their business and Chip reminded me with the implacability of a cliff face that it was time to finish our mapping of the Tree. Sighing, I said adieu to my desire to burrow into the Tenth’s scroll and plodded after the furry sadist. At least, half an hour later, we were the proud owners of a complete and extremely detailed map of the Tree.

  “There you have it! And you were worried…” Chip muttered with satisfaction, smoothening the final product.

  “There’s one last ‘i’ to dot,” I reminded him. “We need to figure out who our jewelry outlet will be.”

  “That’s right! Let’s go see Orchidea!”

  Persuading the merchant to offer a wider range of goods turned out to be a fairly simple matter. What merchant would refuse extra profits, especially when they simply come knocking?

  “Of course. Tell Master Hibiscus that I would deem it an honor to sell his wares. There’s only one problem. I won’t have the floor space to show the new goods.”

  “You are mistaken, my dear. This is no problem at all,” Chip immediately objected. “Maybe I’m a novice carpenter but I’d be happy to whip up a new and elegant display case for you.”

  “Oh, I simply cannot imagine how I can thank you!” Orchidea grew emotional. “You have already earned a discount on my wares…”

  “Why don’t you simply say a kind word about us to your fellow entrepreneurs,” Chip offered graciously. “Then if they need something, they can come and speak with us.”

  “Indubitably!” Orchidea was pleased to hear this response. “And of course I shall pay for your work.”

  We triumphantly handed Orchidea the first edition of our map. She lovingly read the advertisement of her store and bestowed on us a lifelong 30% discount on her wares.

  “We should hit the others up for a discount too,” Chip offered, rubbing his paws.

  “Uh-huh,” I nodded. “When’d you become a carpenter?”

  “Well you see, I went to the local blacksmith and it turns out instead of forging armor out of steel he uses locally sourced wood. It’s pretty malleable when you work with it, but after you soak it in some special resin, it turns tougher than steel and yet is pretty light too. However, to learn how to craft this armor, I have to learn both smithing and carpentry.”

  “Cool. What class is the armor for?”

  “Erm…I don’t understand the question…”

  “For instance, mages can’t wear armor at all. They incur some kind of penalties on their spells from wearing armor. That’s why they go around in capes and cloaks. Rogues wear light armor, typically of leather. Hunters wear chainmail, warriors wear plate. If you look at the recipe, it should say what type of armor it is.”

  “Hang on…Uh-huh. There’s heavy, which I have to hammer for a good while, there’s medium and then there’s light which I can ornament and adorn with wood.”

  “Theoretically, you should be able to use the wood to reinforce armor of any kind.”

  “By the way, what do bards wear?” Chip livened up. “Maybe I can forge you an armored bra or something?”

  “You better check your privilege, pirc,” I brandished a fist at the shaggy joker. “Although, it’s not a bad idea. If a bard can become a hybrid of any class, then I should be able to wear whatever armor I like. I’ll ask my instructor.”

  “First let’s hand out our map and discharge our contractual obligations.”

  This took about an hour, during which the cunning pirc managed to get a discount from every merchant we visited. The final ‘t’ to cross was completing the jeweler’s quest, thanks to which we earned four chains and seven rings granting +2 to Constitution each. While we were at it, we submitted an order for a further fifteen. If we’re going to band together into a party we need to increase our survivability.

  “Goodbye, my svelte figure,” I muttered happily as I put on the chain and eight rings one after the other.

  “What’s your svelte figure have to do with it?” Chip asked surprised.

  “In gaming slang, the more HP you have, the ‘fatter’ you are. You are a fat tank. And I’m about to become a fat biota.”

  And yet, the notification that appeared shattered my dreams:

  Due to the racial penalty to the Constitution stat, the maximum bonus to this stat derived from items can only be (Character Level) + (base Constitution).

  Your current maximum Constitution with item bonuses is 10.

  “Damn it…What a flop! I can only buff my Constitution to ten with items. Racial penalty.”

  “And there’s no workaround?” Chip asked surprised.

  “Either I increase the level or I increase my base Constitution. And the latter option costs four stat points or a ton of time and energy spent on leveling up.”

  “It’s too bad,” the pirc sympathized. “As soon as you increase your level, you can slip on more rings.”

  “All right. At least we’ll have some jewelry for Sloe and Reed. They have racial penalties too. They won’t be able to wear too much of it.”

  “Still, it’s better than it was,” Chip consoled me. “All right, I need to start working on those display cases. Until tomorrow then.”

  “Aight. I’m going to spend another hour or two on the scroll and then head to bed…”

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was morning in name only—the sun had long since risen over the horizon and was already nearing its zenith—when I decided to get out of bed. Never a fan of starting my day with discipline, I had completely let myself go with all these daily gaming sessions. Pretty soon I’ll start waking up in the evening and staying up all night like the aristocrats of the past.

  A cold shower didn’t do much to wake me up and I trudged over to my kitchen to seek succor from my autocook. While the imitator made coffee, I assembled a sandwich and sat down to read the gaming news. Someone was waging war against someone else, someone was building a guild castle, Anastaria had accomplished some great feat…All the names and titles were foreign to me and didn’t stir my interest. Thus, when I came across a mention of the Day of Wrath guild, I was as happy as if I’d encountered some old friend. Sloe’s guildmates had completed some kind of complicated dungeon, raising their rating by several points. I bet the necromancer will be pleased.

  I sighed and closed the forum. Boring, boring, boring…

  A fine drizzle began coming down outside my window, joining with the sunlight to form a quick rainbow. I wanted to take a walk, but my capsule glowed reproachfully in its
corner. I bet Chip’s already waiting for me. And that scroll’s waiting too. And Toad, may he croak, is expecting his in-game hit.

  I stepped out on my balcony, leaned against the railing and took my time drinking my coffee, savoring the view. I should take a break and go to the forest with the guys for some barbecue.

  I entered the capsule in a good mood. I had managed to meditate with the rainbow.

  “Right then, let’s go submit our work to the cartographer,” Chip proposed as soon as we met. “Last night, in our excitement we stopped by everyone but him.”

  “Hang on,” I muttered. “Let me copy the last part from your version. He may check to see that we both did the work.”

  “I’m starting to feel like the class geek who has his homework copied by the cool girl,” the pirc giggled, unfolding his completed map of the tree before me. “A girl who is both cool and a future dropout,” he added in a grumble looking at my map.

  “Why a future dropout?” I was even slightly offended.

  “Because you have as little sense of scale and accuracy as I have rhythm and pitch!” he grumbled, tapping both maps with his claw. “This branch is much too high over here—and over there it looks like it has come apart from the trunk and is hanging in midair on its own! Unattached! And that’s not mentioning how you’ve proportioned the elevations! This is pure chaos!”

  “What are you getting on my case for?” I bristled. “The built-in cartography mechanic drew them this way! Who needs these details anyway? Every branch is drawn in detail.”

  “Right, and the tree in 3D looks more like a Rorschach test than a tree,” Chip continued to critique me mercilessly. “Adjust this right here, shift this over, rearrange the levels one over the other and check to make sure that they fit the trunk regularly. To do that, you’ll need to select all the levels and drag them over to be around the trunk. Like so…”

  “Like so…” I echoed in shock, staring at the result. The different levels of the Tree had evened out along the trunk and the sigils of the Tenth, which had earlier been scattered chaotically around the entire map now arranged themselves into seven straight lines of various lengths, forming in their totality a simple and utterly proportional hexagon.

  “Like I said: A future dropout!” The pirc reached into his bag for his own map. “And I’m a dummy too—I should’ve figured out earlier that you are a hardened and unrepentant abstractionist. A real Salvador Dali when it comes to botany…We should have used my map as a reference instead of yours…”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, copying his map and connecting the dots I had missed. The hexagon that emerged did not tell me anything new. “Something’s not right…This is something else…Something familiar…”

  Scratching the back of my head and then my nose magically stimulated my thinking process. I made a new copy and having no compass on hand, began to draw the surroundings to scale.

  “Look,” I demonstrated the result. The familiar drawing of the flower of life emerged at the intersections of the lines. “All that’s missing is the central point. There was no sigil there.”

  “Thus we may conclude that there is something there,” Chip completed my thought. “I can sense it in my tail: If we go there, we’ll make off like villains. So…well, let’s go and see what we can dig up.”

  “Should we tell Sloe and Reed?”

  Chip thought for a little and then shook his head negatively.

  “Let’s go take a look first to see what’s going on. It’d be dumb to call the guys if there’s nothing there. So let’s swing by there quietly, look around and if there’s something of value—then we can assemble the brigade. No—we simply mark them on the map and the autochthons will scatter of their own volition.”

  He straightened out to his full height and began to twirl his halberd happily.

  “Autochthons?”

  “Aborigines,” the pirc explained. “Natives, indigenes…The original inhabitants of this place basically. Damn it all. When I level up a bit, I’ll buy myself a helmet of cork and a red uniform like a colonial sahib.” Chip glanced me over, stepped behind me for some reason and then summarized sadly: “It’s a shame you won’t make much of an elephant.”

  “That’s okay. I can fan you with palm fronds.”

  “Why you’re already your own fan! Or a prize banner from some colonial foray.” Straightening his shoulders, the pirc placed his halberd on one shoulder, picked me up underarm and set off bellowing with all his might: “We have tarried here overlong, oh brothers!”

  The chant that followed was rhythmic and not so bad on the whole, but the pirc hollered like he wanted the very moon to hear him.

  “Put me down where I grew!” I demanded from the manic Chip. “I’m not your hand baggage!”

  “You are a recon drone!” The hairy bastard replied and tossed me up in the air. “A multi-functional drone with an advanced Imitative Intelligence!”

  “You should make up your mind whether I’m a future dropout, a palm frond fan, a colonial trophy or a highly advanced Imitative Intelligence. This kind of talk is enough to give a girl a mean case of DID.”

  “When it comes to cartography, you’re a dropout. When it comes to being a drone, you’re highly advanced,” Chip clarified without, however, placing me down on the ground (or rather branch).

  I wonder whether he is like this in real life too…I suspect so. And the boot up his ass that he carries back from boot camp is his main piston on his life’s journey, metaphorically speaking. My gran told me about his kind—one like him won’t die his own death, but break his neck in some remote place.

  The point on the map we sought turned out to be a notable part of the trunk near where the Branch of Oblivion began. I walked around it several times but didn’t find any additional markers, explanations or hints.

  “Are you sure we’re where we’re supposed to be?” I asked Chip. “Check your map. Maybe I’ve messed up something with the scale again?”

  The furball unfurled his scroll and after careful scrutiny nodded.

  “Here.”

  Putting away his map, the helicopter pilot also looked around but failed to find anything—except for a large turquoise bug who had settled on the pirc’s pink nose.

  “Scram,” Chip snorted, chasing away the upstart insect. “Found yourself a landing pad.

  The bug flew off to another airport, while we settled down next to each other and got down to a difficult task: Thinking.

  “Maybe you have to play or sing something here too?” Chip proposed uncertainly.

  “Makes sense in theory,” I agreed, picking up my lute. “This is a bard quest after all. Any requests?”

  “Something laid back. Otherwise, we might wake someone and then get embroiled in some new quest.”

  “Laid back…” I repeated pensively and after a few moments the strings began to sing beneath my fingers.

  Well we know where we’re going

  But we don’t know where we’ve been…

  The classic poured forth like a warm spring rain, washing away the weariness of mind and soul. For some reason, it seemed to me that the song about the wanderers would please the Tenth. Why him? I don’t know, but I wasn’t singing for the pirc as much as for the ancient bard who had brought us to this place.

  I’m not sure whether the pirc heard me either: While I played, he turned his ears here and there like a cat and carefully looked around himself, waiting for something to happen. And so he was the first to see the fruits of my efforts.

  “There,” he said quietly, pointing at the trunk of the Tree beside us.

  The outline of a passage began to shimmer in the bark, and in its center, I could make out the flower of life glowing dimly. Beneath it, some notes glimmered.

  “Looks like we need to enter a musical password,” I concluded, playing the musical phrase.

  The outline of the passage flared up and faded, while the passage itself turned into the shimmering ring of a portal.

  Quest completed:
Mysterious Sigil.

  Reward: +200 Reputation with the Biota. Quest chain available: Road to Nowhere.

  Quest available: Road to Nowhere.

  Description: Following the sigils of the Tenth, you have opened a portal leading to an unknown destination. Do you dare discover what lies on the other side and solve the riddle of the Tenth?

  Quest type: Rare chain. Reward: Variable. Penalty for failing/refusing the quest: None.

  Do you wish to accept this mission?

  “Speak, friend, and enter,” muttered Chip, adjusting his grip on his halberd. “A quest’s been offered. Shall we take it?”

  “Of course we take it!”

  “Done.”

  Stepping up to the opened portal, he sniffed it, twitched his ears, listened and then stepped decisively into the portal.

  “Bad idea,” I said too late and stepped in after him.

  On the other side of the portal, I immediately slammed into my partner’s furry side. He was standing stock-still staring at the fairly odd location we had been transported to. We were standing…on a white marble floor, in the middle of an enormous hall, with a vaulted ceiling that had been painted to look like the night sky.

  “Where are we?”

  The question was a rhetorical one—we were nowhere on the world map. Neither in the Hidden Forest, nor in the areas we had explored. It was like we had stepped out of Barliona altogether.

  Chip approached a window pane that bore the emblem of the flower of life and began to study its sash. Locating the latch, the pirc carefully opened the window and stuck out his curious nose.

  “Nowhere,” he voiced his observations right away with resignation. Squirming under the pirc’s paw, I caught sight of clouds of gray fog. And that’s it.

  “Up and down, it’s all the same,” the pirc stepped away from the window. “It’s like we’re suspended in a cloud. Like we took a wrong turn in a hot air balloon.”