Harbinger (Nova Online #3) - A LitRPG Series

by Alex Knight

  “They are akin to the very creators of this universe,” he said. “They are the Pansophists.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “Werner? That’s the guy from Blue Hex Station,” Titus said through comms as he eyed up their surprise visitors. There were three in total, Werner10 in the middle and two level fifty wardens flanking him. They stood blocking the exit from Marty’s theatre.

  “I thought you killed this guy?” Titus asked, staring down Werner10.

  “That was Werner08,” Kaiden said, cursing and checking the man’s info again.

  Werner10

  Warden Captain

  Class: Blast Warden

  Faction: Warden Corps

  Level: 53

  “This is Werner again, but he must be on one of those alternate accounts he mentioned. And a considerably stronger one, no less.”

  “Where’s the rest of the gang?” Werner10 asked. He fired another blast. Titus stepped into its path and caught it on his shield. The attack exploded against him, scorching the floor and setting one of Marty’s loungers alight. Titus’ shield flickered for a moment, then held firm.

  His shield is almost overloaded just from blocking one attack. Not good.

  “We can’t win this fight, Titus,” Kaiden said, then tried to dodge as Werner10’s two companions – both level fifty power wardens – charged. He caught the first hammer strike on his shield and his charge bar spiked rapidly, filling to forty percent. The other power warden’s blow caught him in the side and dropped his health bar to seventy-eight percent.

  Kaiden swung back with a hammer strike, but it was more about buying time than dealing damage. The power warden didn’t even bother to block it and just attacked again.

  “Power wardens gain charge with each attack,” Titus shouted through comms.

  That’s right. I knew that.

  Kaiden backpedaled, trying to keep distance between him and his opponents while searching for an escape route. They were too close on him, though, hammers swinging constantly. He blocked what he could, but there was no stopping the onslaught. His shield overloaded after two more blows and shut off.

  This was bad.

  “Remember, no kills. Shackle them,” Werner10 commanded.

  “Cover me for a minute,” Kaiden shouted, mind reeling as he tried to piece together a plan. He could just activate Lightspeed and escape, but that would mean abandoning Titus, and that wasn’t an option.

  “How?” Titus shouted back from where he was hunkered down beneath an Improved Barrier as Werner10 unloaded on him. Explosions rocked the room and most of the furniture was on fire now.

  “Excuse me for a moment,” Kaiden said to the power wardens in front of him, then activated an ability.

  Ability: Matter Shift

  It took a second to charge, but then swirling energy surrounded him, and the power wardens’ next attacks missed completely because he was no longer there. Kaiden’s vision went dark, then flashed back to life as he reappeared behind Titus. The safety of the barrier protected Kaiden now too, which was helpful because his health already down to forty-eight percent.

  “What’s the plan?” Titus growled, teeth gritted against Werner10’s sustained fire. Worse, the power wardens had spotted Kaiden and launched into the air with Heroic Leap.

  “Just buy me three seconds,” Kaiden shouted.

  Three seconds seemed to be asking a lot, though, as both power wardens landed their Heroic Leaps and a wave of area-of-effect damage lashed out with two hundred percent base damage buff. Titus’ barrier, the ground beneath them, and the walls on both sides all shattered. What was left of poor Marty’s flaming furniture was thrown about the room in the shockwave.

  “Gah,” Titus grunted, turning to face the power wardens, who were already rearing back to strike again. “I can’t hold them back!”

  “No need!” Kaiden’s ability was done charging.

  Ability: Flash Bang

  Blinding light exploded from Kaiden’s shield and the two power wardens cried out, hands going to their eyes.

  “To the shuttle!” Kaiden shouted.

  “You’re not going anywhere, kid,” Werner10 said, then raised his hammer-gun. Instead of firing, though, he paused for a moment.

  He has a high-level account, but someone else leveled it for him. He doesn’t know his abilities well yet, so he’s reading the description, Kaiden realized. Titus capitalized on the hesitation.

  Ability: Energy Grip

  A coil of energy lashed around the blast warden’s leg.

  “Wha—?”

  Titus yanked and Werner was sent flying across the room to Titus’ feet. The man scrambled to stand up while simultaneously trying to aim his hammer-gun.

  Ability: Improved Shield Charge

  Energy surged around Titus’ legs and shield, then he burst forward in an explosion of speed and brute force. Werner10 just had time to yelp before he was driven back into the wall, then through it and into the street.

  Ha! Kaiden darted past the power wardens and out through the newly made hole in the wall.

  Titus’ Improved Shield Charge lasted long enough to crush Werner10 into the wall of the building on the opposite side of the street. Kaiden wasn’t content with that, though. He darted forward and fired off a Hamstring. The attack caught Werner10 before he could recover from the crater Titus had left him in.

  “Now go! Back to the Borrelly!” Kaiden shouted, turning to run. Titus followed, right behind him.

  “You can’t run from this!” Werner10 shouted, then stopped abruptly.

  Just figured out what Hamstring does, Kaiden thought. As it happens, we can run from this just fine. It’s you who can’t chase. Not with any speed, at least.

  “That’ll slow them, but I don’t think we’re going to lose them so easily,” Titus said, turning down a side alley. Even as he did, the sounds of the power wardens in pursuit reached Kaiden’s ears.

  “Get to the shuttle. It’s our best chance.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  A secret organization so powerful it can reshape the reality of the universe? Thorne thought, replaying Elistar’s words. They’d have to be… what? Special NPCs created by the developers? Or maybe developers themselves playing Nova? No, they don’t do that. So… what, then? High-level players? Could any player be powerful enough that the NPC factions create lore about them?

  “You called them the Pan… Pan... what?” Thorne asked, still trying to make sense of it all.

  “The Pansophists,” Elistar repeated. Then, when that failed to clear much up, he blew a jet of air out of his nostrils and turned back toward the archive. “Follow me this way. I will show you.”

  “You ever heard of these guys?” Thorne asked Zelda through comms as they both followed the bookish turen.

  “Bernstein’s database only referred to ‘The Syndicate.’ Beyond that, I’ve never heard another name used, which isn’t surprising considering these guys are – apparently – extremely secretive. And powerful,” Zelda replied. “But we know that NPC factions were coded with their own beliefs as to their creation. Could the turen, the grachnids, and the others be confusing this ‘Syndicate’ with their creation beliefs?”

  “Or maybe they’re just dumping their useless lore on us?” Thorne fired back. “We could be wanting this to be the answer so bad that we’re forcing it to be, when in reality it’s nothing more than lore.”

  “I mean, it’d be a good way to hide your activities, wouldn’t it?” Zelda asked. “If everyone thinks your organization is either useless lore or doesn’t exist, why would anyone come looking for you?”

  Well, she has a point there. But who’s so powerful even the turen look up to them? There were few races, if any, that the turen didn’t consider to be lesser civilizations.

  “The Pansophists are a collection of higher beings. Life forms that have, through the knowledge they have collected, transcended beyond mortal bodies. They are akin to what you humans would call gods. Omnipotent. Ever-en
during. They are what all turen aspire to become. Some postulate they were turen once, and evidence points to this being the most likely conclusion.”

  Ah, there’s the usual superiority complex.

  “If these... gods are so secretive, so almighty, how do you know they exist?” Thorne asked. Still not sure I’m buying this whole thing.

  “Evidence of the Pansophists’ existence is rarely direct or apparent. Instead, it persists and is made certain through various interconnected events which may, to those not educated enough to understand, appear unrelated,” Elistar lectured. He paused as they reached their destination. A light on the front of the building flashed, blinding bright, and when it clicked off, they were inside the archive.

  The room was dark, and somehow seemed larger than it should be considering the exterior dimensions of the building. It was hard to make out anything with certainty in the low light. In front of her, Thorne found several rows of bookshelves stretching off into the darkness. Faintly glowing blue pinpoints of light rested on the shelves where books otherwise would have. There must have been millions of them, row after row, shelf after shelf stretching into eternity.

  Compensating for something? Thorne chuckled to herself. No one needs an infinitely large library to store data. My handheld console has enough memory to hold all of this.

  “Observe,” Elistar said and waved toward an empty spot on the floor. As he did, a hidden hatch slid open and a brilliant light projected into the air above. Pixels swam and spun in the air, a formless swirl of unfocused light.

  “Long have we sought knowledge of the Pansophists. In our unending studies of everything there is to be known, we could not help but to find hints and traces of them. The more we looked, the more we found.” Elistar snapped a finger and the formless pixels resolved into an image. It was a panorama in space; a bunch of ruined stations – why were there so many in one place? – and debris floating slowly through the dark, illuminated only by the faint light of some distant sun. But as Thorne looked closer, she realized they weren’t the wrecks of space stations, just the wrecks of really, really big ships. Dreadnoughts.

  “This is the ‘Fields of Ruin,’ as they have been named,” Elistar said. “Or, more correctly, it is the remains of what is now known as the Titanomachia – the largest battle in the history of the known universe.”

  Largest battle in the history of Nova Online, right, Thorne thought, translating the NPC’s description into human terms. Something like seventy-five dreadnoughts were destroyed that day, along with who knows how many smaller ships.

  “Everyone knows that Titanomachia was a territorial dispute between coalitions of the largest human factions. The battle began long after the war had gone cold and it appeared both sides were ready to negotiate. A maintenance oversight by the faction that controlled sector V-R5RV allowed it to become contested. V-R5RV was a critical sector in the conflict, and losing it would mean losing the war. All at once, the full force that both sides could muster flocked to the sector. In a matter of hours, thousands of ships were destroyed, including seventy-five of the – at the time – two hundred dreadnought-class ships in the universe. In a war that appeared to be ending, suddenly thousands of ships were destroyed and billions of rounds of ammunition were fired.”

  “That’s what happens when the two biggest coalitions of guilds in-game go to war,” Thorne said with a shrug. “What’s your point?”

  “That the maintenance oversight that caused Titanomachia was not a coincidence.” Elistar snapped his fingers again and the view changed to a scrolling list of documents. Receipts for the purchase of various in-game businesses?

  “Shortly before Titanomachia, a suspicious number of real estate transactions occurred in which very rich, very anonymous individuals purchased dozens of ship and weapon manufacturers, as well as ammunition suppliers. The very same companies that were preparing for a steep reduction in profits as the war ended but, as a result of Titanomachia, saw profits rise exorbitantly.”

  “Okay, so some big-time investors got lucky? It happens,” Thorne said, unconvinced.

  Since when do the turen believe in conspiracy theories?

  “Luck had nothing to do with it. We are always scanning and studying various sectors. Shortly before Titanomachia, our scanners picked up an unknown team of private soldiers infiltrating sector V-R5RV. During this infiltration, they caused the maintenance issue which allowed Titanomachia to occur. Our probing revealed this team was hired by a corporation that owed allegiance to neither side of the war. Instead, sources indicate they were owned by one of the very same anonymous individuals who had just before bought up numerous ship and weapon manufacturers.”

  “So, you’re saying the Pansophists orchestrated the whole thing? You’re saying they created the situation in order to profit off of it?”

  “I am not saying it; the facts are,” Elistar said and snapped his fingers. The projection changed again, this time to show a group of non-uniformed soldiers moving through the halls of a space station. The one at the heart of sector V-R5RV, Thorne didn’t doubt. She turned to Zelda and shook her head. “Conspiracy theories aren’t evidence. And why would turen ‘gods’ interfere in something like this? Doesn’t sound very god-like.”

  “It is one of our greatest aims to uncover why the Pansophists do what they do. But they are wise, mysterious. We do our best to identify the signs of their presence and link them together. Titanomachia is but one of the numerous times we’ve seen the Pansophists not only profit off of unique situations, but act such that they seem to know these situations were going to occur before they actually do. Such knowledge, such ability to shape reality to one’s own desires, cannot be the work of mortals.”

  “I can see how an NPC would think that,” Thorne said. Elistar frowned at her words, seeming not to understand.

  “Oops,” Thorne said, switching to private comms. “Didn’t mean to upset Elistar’s world view by hinting his entire existence occurs inside a game.”

  “You know, a thought just hit me,” Zelda said through comms. “The turen call these guys the ‘Pansophists,’ but war profiteering? Anonymously buying companies then manipulating the market to your advantage? That doesn’t sound like the acts of gods. That sounds like the acts of—”

  “Criminals,” Thorne said, hating that the idea made sense to her.

  Zelda nodded.

  “But more than criminals. These Pansophists, or ‘The Syndicate’ – call them what you will – sound a lot like players to me. A lot like a group of high-level players who’ve come together to act in their own best interests. I mean, that’s what guilds are, after all, right? But what if you dream bigger? What happens if you take the strongest, richest, most powerful players in Nova and put them all in one room? Imagine the sort of things a collective like that would have the influence to cause?”

  It... makes sense. But come on, how could something like that stay secret?

  “If something like this existed, surely we’d know about it,” Thorne said through comms. “How does something like this stay quiet?”

  “When everyone in it has more to gain by keeping it that way.” Zelda looked back to Elistar. “If we wanted to find the Pansophists, how would we go about it?”

  “Hah. Heh. Hah.” Elistar made a croaking noise and his head rocked back and forth.

  Is that supposed to be... laughter?

  “One does not ‘locate the Pansophists,’” he said once the croaking stopped. “How would one locate the gods? We are but mortals. They are so much more.”

  I’m really starting to doubt that.

  “It’s a good question, though,” Thorne said through comms. “If we want to locate an organization of all the most powerful people in the game, maybe we should start with...”

  “Start with what?” Zelda asked.

  “Hold on,” Thorne said. A message had just appeared in her vision.

  DM from: Kaiden

  “Ambushed at Marty’s! High level players, can’t win fig
ht. Trying to get to shuttle.”

  “Kaiden and Titus are in trouble,” she said, screenshotting the DM and sending it to Zelda. “We need to leave. Now.”

  “Acton! Get the ship ready! We’re leaving in a hurry!” Zelda said, immediately patching them into a comms channel with the ship. She didn’t hesitate, just turned for the door. Or rather, the teleportation-light thing the turen used instead of doors. She waved a hand, the light flashed, and then she was gone.

  Elistar seemed confused by their sudden urgency.

  “Is some—”

  “No time. Gotta run,” Thorne said. “Thanks for everything. Have a good one!”

  “I do not know what the ‘one’ you are referring to is!” he shouted back, but Thorne waved and the light flashed all around her and then she was outside, a few paces behind Zelda.

  “We’ll never get there in time,” Zelda said. “We’re a full system away from Boyd City.”

  “You’re right,” Thorne fired back. “But I know someone who can.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “It’s going to take a moment to start up the shuttle. We don’t have time for that! Assuming we make it that far,” Titus said as they ran through the trash-strewn streets of Boyd City.

  Ally targeted by ranged attack.

  “Incoming!” Kaiden shouted as Improved Enhanced Senses dinged in his ear and told him Titus was about to be hit.

  The big man cursed and ducked as another Improved Burst Arrow from their pursuers exploded beside him, nipping at his health. He had his shield held behind him as best he could, but it was at an awkward angle and Werner was proving a darn good shot. The fact that the whole fight was happening during the course of their mad dash to escape wasn’t helping anything.