Tree of Fear (Loner Book #5): LitRPG Series, page 29
“I’ve been thinking about that. That girl’s invisibility must have some kind of limitation on it, like my illusions do. Otherwise, why would they have signed up for the tour and shown their faces?”
“Or maybe it’s only the Gremlin who has the ability to catch the Gremlins?” I suggested.
“In any case, we’ve got better chances here,” my comrade concluded confidently. “We’ll get it done.”
After chatting with Mark for a bit, I belatedly remembered that I’d promised to call Artyom. But unfortunately, he didn’t answer; apparently was in the game.
To be honest, for the first time in a long time I really didn’t feel like going back to Arktania, and I opted to just lay down and sleep. It seemed that unless Hotei could get me some information, my chances of making it out of the Tree of Fear were headed rapidly toward zero. I’d just be heading back to the Phantasmal Demon to die in agony, and maybe catch some real-life trauma while I was at it. Thanks, but no thanks.
This time, I fell asleep almost instantly, and slept soundly until morning. Still, though, I didn’t really manage to catch up on sleep because of a whole bunch of new nightmares that seemed to have followed me out of the Tree of Fear: dinosaurs, clowns, and Demons. But somehow, they provoked quite a bit more negative emotion in me in my dreams than they had in the game. More than anything, of course, it was the Demoness and her fiery whip that scared me.
I woke up before my alarm, feeling like my head was full of thick fog, and immediately reached for my phone. Boris had reported that he hadn’t found any more info on the Tree of Fear; Naumov had confirmed our plans; and Artyom had sent an unexpected message telling me that he was really going to need my help tomorrow evening at some extremely important meeting. It somehow sounded suspicious — who’d be threatening him? The “Steel Rats?” As far as I knew, Artyom didn’t have any other problems besides them. Unless it was something related to his new girlfriend, with her huge suburban mansion? I was so intrigued that I just called him, despite the fact that it was still early morning.
“Yeah, yeah,” my friend’s sleepy voice answered after about ten rings. “Decided to show up, huh, stranger?”
“Morning. I’m not being a stranger — I’ve been keeping you in the loop as best I can,” I objected. “I just didn’t want to give Mark any idea that somebody besides us knows about what we’re up to.”
“I get it, I get it,” said Artyom a little bit sadly. “I’m useless in real life. At least tell me, though — what happened at the power plant?”
I didn’t have a lot of time, so I went over everything in about twenty minutes. Every time I found myself discussing recent events out loud, I was struck by just how much had happened in such a short amount of time.
“Ho-ly shii-iit,” said Artyom, a mixture of excitement and fear audible in his voice. “So there are several factions of Emissaries from these virtual Gods, all fighting to complete the quest?”
“Maybe something even bigger, in the grand scheme of things.”
“Dammit, why didn’t I get that advanced block in my capsule?!” He asked indignantly. “If I had one of those, I could help you.”
“The odds of getting one were always really slim,” I reminded him. “How many hundreds of thousands of capsules are already out there? And Hotei told me there are no more than forty Emissaries, at most. And it’s definitely not a certainty that everybody gets their game abilities when they have one anyway. Naumov’s son is still lying there in the capsule, even though he’s almost certainly got the block we stole installed in there by now. Although maybe it’ll just take a while, in his case?”
Artyom fell silent for a little while.
“Actually, that’s what I need your help with. I think I found one of these blocks, and I want to get my hands on it.”
“Where?! And more importantly, why?!” I was horrified. “It’s really dangerous, showing interest in something like that! Somebody might be on the lookout for topics like that on the internet, and the virtual Gods might want to keep it a secret anyway. There’s some logic to the way they choose the people who get these abilities — Hotei mentioned something about that right at the very start.”
“Well, Hotei’s the one who helped us steal that block in the first place,” Artyom reminded me. “So they can’t be all that worried about who exactly ends up in a capsule with that block in it. Plus, I did everything incognito, on a burner phone. People sell parts of ruined or stolen capsules at flea markets, including these ESGUMI chips. I found the biggest seller out there, he’s got more than forty of the things. Obviously I didn’t ask about the specific versions he had, but he told me he’s got different ones, and promised I could choose the one I wanted for myself.”
“The chances aren’t that great,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, but I still want to try.”
I really would’ve loved to talk him out of it, but to be fair, I could definitely understand where he was coming from. If I’d been in his shoes, and there was even the slightest chance of getting my game abilities in real life, I definitely would’ve jumped at it.
“Well, okay. If you’re dead set on it, there’s an easier option: come to my apartment and take the block out of my capsule,” I offered.
“I think that’s too risky. I mean, they tried to kill you already, and they’re definitely going to be monitoring your apartment. That’s why I tried to find a block somewhere else.”
I couldn’t even decide which idea was riskier. On the other hand, if I could convince Mark to help us out, either option would become quite realistic.
“Alright,” I agreed reluctantly. “For starters, let’s try to get into my apartment. Maybe I could convince Mark to help us out with some illusions. I don’t know whether he’s heard about the ESGUMI blocks, but I’ll ask him today.”
“You trust him that much already?”
“No-oo, I don’t trust anybody in real life,” I assured my friend. “Besides you. And maybe Boris, although he still doesn’t know anything about Emissaries. But Mark seems like a solid guy overall, even if his sense of humor is a bit stupid. Plus, we’re both members of the neutral faction, as the dark side sees it. And the main thing — if somebody’s trying to trap us or even just trick us, it’d be best if our real faces weren’t recorded anywhere. And if we really can’t do it, we can always meet up with your junk dealer.”
“Perfect!” Artyom sounded overjoyed. “By the way, how are your burns? Still haven’t faded?”
I touched my chest and winced in pain.
“No, of course not. Burns don’t tend to heal quite that fast, do they?”
“Well, you never know. I thought it might be psychosomatic or something. Something like stigmata, maybe?”
“They’re not mutually exclusive, I guess, but I think this is probably connected with the pain setting in my capsule,” I said, giving voice to my worst fears. “I’m afraid to even imagine what’s gonna happen when it hits 100%. Maybe if I die in the game, I’ll die in the real world too? Or if I lose an arm in Arktania, maybe the same thing will happen here?!”
“Or maybe the opposite — maybe once you hit 100%, you’ll get a respawn tattoo in the real world and become immortal?” Artyom was taking a more positive view of things. “In any case, it’s all a total mystery.”
We mused on the possible course that events might follow for a little while longer, but time was short, so I promised him I’d call him back in the evening. If I’d had a little bit more time, I’d have loved to run some experiments with lightning or Magnetism, to try to create at least some sort of protection for myself. The concept of learning new abilities in real life and then having them transfer into the game was one I really liked. And it seemed to be the perfect solution at a time when I couldn’t exactly go look for new teachers or Electromage scrolls inside Arktania. But when was I going to find the time to do it?!
As planned, Mark came to pick me up at 9:30 AM, and we headed off to Naumov’s mansion. The kid was maintaining the appearance of the stern military man again, obviously not planning to show our new partner his real face.
“I’d cover you, too, but you revealed yourself a long time ago,” he said, a little big mockingly. “One of your many bad decisions.”
“As if I had a choice.”
“Listen, as long as we’re working together, let’s try to minimize the number of times where we don’t have any choice in the matter and end up having to do all sorts of crazy shit.”
“Fair enough,” I nodded.
Two cars were already waiting for us at the mansion, along with several guards and Naumov himself. The gray-haired man was dressed in a pin-striped suit and looked like a full-blooded aristocrat.
“This is my colleague, Mark,” I introduced the Illusionist. “He’s also an Emissary.”
“Vladimir,” Naumov nodded sternly, holding out his hand for a shake. Mark’s illusory hand was obviously much stronger and thicker than his real hand, and I couldn’t help but watch for the moment when their hands touched. Judging by Naumov’s face, though, he hadn’t detected any difference between a real hand and an illusory one.
“Which target are we headed to first?” He got straight to business. “The Ruza plant, the Dubna plant, or the airport? I’m thinking we should leave the factory for last?”
“One target’s off the list — Dubna,” I informed him. “The dark side beat us to it. There are three, including of course the most distant one, which is the factory.”
“Then I propose we start with the power plant in Gorbovskaya. That’ll be the easiest one,” Naumov nodded. “It’s a restored, privately-operated plant. All I had to do was say I was interested in investing, and they invited me on a tour immediately. They’ll let us into whatever part we want, show us every nook and cranny, and answer any question we might have.”
Yeah, I thought... It must be pretty sweet being rich and having a name that got things done, even in obscure places. It opened so many doors immediately.
“Then let’s roll,” said Mark decisively. “We’ll follow you in our own car.”
“Alright,” Naumov agreed nonchalantly, then shot an inquiring glance at Mark: “I didn’t get a chance to ask — what are your abilities?”
“Such questions aren’t asked among Emissaries,” the Illusionist frowned. “We’re off to our car.”
“Since when?” I couldn’t resist asking with a little bit of sarcasm, once we’d walked far enough back to our car.
“Since now,” said Mark, totally nonplussed by my tone. “I think it’s an excellent rule. We should try to popularize it. Have you thought about the fact that we’re creating a new culture right now, maybe even a new world?”
“Personally, I don’t want to create anything,” I frowned. “It’s enough for me just to survive. But you’re gonna have to demonstrate your skills sooner or later when we get there.”
“But I’m not going to explain anything,” the kid objected. “I think I’ll just throw some invisibility on the spot where you’re catching the Gremlin. The illusion that nothing’s happening.”
“Awesome, except for the fact that Naumov asked for a demonstration,” I suddenly remembered.
“Well, you take the old guy with you, and I’ll create an illusory version of him, then. Not a problem. But I’m not going to create any more complex illusions. Otherwise we’ll be screwed if we run into the dark side again.”
We didn’t talk much more on the way to the power plant. Maybe Mark was thinking about the “new world” he wanted to create. For my part, I was thinking about how I was going to get out of that goddamned closed location. I really didn’t want to rely on Hotei for that, especially since he might well refuse to give me the info I needed. After all, we failed his first quest, and there was no reward at all for the new one. Naturally, he’d end up helping me eventually — the Goddess of Fate needed me to complete her quest, after all. But bowing and scraping, being humiliated, and listening to his “ba-ba-ba-BAA” crap was most certainly not something that appealed to me. Plus. somewhere on the edge of my consciousness there was a vague train of thought about how I might be able to find a way out of the closed location on my own. It was all pure improvisation, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked my idea. Maybe it was a good thing that I’d ended up investing so many points in my Intelligence. I mean, there should be SOME effect, right?! All I’d need to do to bring my plan to fruition would be to get one of the phones, take its sim card out, and then snap out its Wifi module. This wasn’t too difficult, thanks to instructional videos on the internet. In the end, I got a working phone that didn’t have any way to connect to the internet at all.
After an hour and a half of driving, we pulled up to the power plant.
“So what’s our plan?” Naumov asked. “How are you going to find these Gremlins?”
Mark and I looked at each other.
“Don’t say things like that out loud. Other Emissaries could be nearby, including ones who are invisible, and you might attract their attention.”
Naumov nodded understandingly.
“Got it.”
I took out my phone and showed him my app.
“We’ll find them easily. Won’t even have to worry that much about it.”
“Is it that easy?” He seemed really surprised.
“Don’t forget who’s helping us here,” I reminded him. “But the radar’s radius is only sixty feet, so we’re gonna have to walk around a bit. We’ll probably have to inspect the main control points and the turbines. These guys love complex technology.”
With that, Mark, Naumov, two guards, and I headed toward the main entrance. I turned on my Magnetic Sensitivity and took a close look at the space above the heads of everybody we passed; I didn’t want to miss an Emissary from the dark side. But I quickly realized that this was a hopeless endeavor — there were just too many people who played Arktania. I saw five people with nicknames and levels (between 10 and 40) in the parking lot alone. But all the Emissaries we’d met so far had been around level 60-70, so in theory at least, we could probably rule out the people we’d seen here so far. It might be that the Gremlin-killing quest was something that only the two Emissaries we’d met had received, and my searching was destined to be in vain. That said, it was interesting to compare people’s nicknames with their physical appearances: there was a pretty heavy set girl, for example, who had the name “Baby69,” and a gaunt-looking man in glasses who’d chosen no less imposing a nickname than “AlphaDad.”
Mark watched me looking around and smirked.
“Yeah, pretty telling nicknames. You keep your eyes peeled for the invisible girl, I’ll watch the rest.”
Of course, I could only see the invisible girl if she was close enough, or standing in the middle of an open space. And even that would only work if she’d brought her knives, and hadn’t left them at home for some reason. But Mark was right: he could certainly keep an eye on the rest of the goings-on without my help.
We didn’t even make it to the stairs before a man jumped out to meet us and introduced himself as the Assistant Director. Without any extra questions, he led our whole group inside; no passes or registration at all.
“What would you like to see? Or should we go straight to the books?” The Assistant Director asked courteously. The short, beer-bellied, energetic man was running around Naumov excitedly, not forgetting to shower praise upon his enterprise as he did so.
“I’d like to examine the condition of your main turbines and control modules,” said Naumov.
“No problem,” the man agreed affably.
And so we proceeded to examine the building. Naumov feigned keen interest as best he could, while I kept looking down at the screen of my phone; I was spending even more time, however, on looking around for the invisible girl. It felt like I was already becoming something of a specialist on electrical energy supply. I was already starting to spot some mechanisms that I recognized from the last hydroelectric plant. So it was a little bit of a surprise for me to find that here, instead of six gigantic turbines, they had twelve smaller ones, which were also shaped completely differently. These ones kind of looked like little stylized “suns” to me, and they had steel hoods covering small chambers in their centers.
And almost immediately, my radar showed a purple light blinking inside one of them. I gave Mark a signal, and grabbed Naumov gently by the arm. I’d promised that he could watch the whole process of catching the Gremlin, and I wasn’t about to break my promise. We stayed there, standing next to the turbine; meanwhile, copies of us that Mark had created continued walking down the hall, together with the Assistant Director of the plant.
“How...?” Naumov whispered, sounding a little bit dazed.
“Illusion,” I answered. “The Gremlin’s in this thing.”
