The Final Trial, page 45
part #3 of Level Up Series
“You’re Russian, aren’t you?” he asked confidently. “Back IRL, I’m sharing a jail cell with a Russian guy. His name is Roman. He taught me how to say it.”
“What life are you on, worm?”
“It’s my last one,” he shrugged. “Bullshit. The quicker I get myself killed, the sooner I’ll get back to jail. They’re probably missing me already.”
“Relax. Back on Earth, nothing much has changed.”
“I don’t think so. I’ve been stuck here for a week already. More, even. They’re probably thinking I escaped,” a dark shadow crossed his face. He really seemed to feel out of place here.
“You have any idea how you got here and what you’re doing?”
“Sort of. Frankly, at first I thought I was dreaming. I’d just had a good thrashing in the ring before it happened.”
“In the ring? Where, in jail?”
“Yeah,” he nodded. “Our director holds illegal fights at nighttime in the furniture workshop. We call it the ‘wooden ring’. The director promises to release the champion before his time is up.”
“And?”
“And I just got my lights punched out. When I came around, I wasn’t even surprised to find myself in a really weird place. There were some strange people hanging round.”
As he went on to describe them, I recognized Khphor, Ilindi and Valiadis complete in shining armor.
He went on to tell me how he’d passed the pre-Trial and ended up here. It took him a long time to work out what was required of him. He kept re-reading the messages, trying to make sense of them. The guy wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, that’s for sure.
“Then another guy came on a black rhino’s back. He was very tall, seven foot at least, and he just chopped my head off without saying a word.”
“You mean Tafari?”
“Safari? I suppose so… judging by the rhino…” he chuckled. “Then I found myself in a different place. It took me almost an hour to work out what was required of me. I didn’t know that I could have died again if I hadn’t farmed some existence resources. Luckily, there was this creature that looked a bit like a doughboy with tentacles and I managed to kill it in the end. It dropped an existence crystal. After that, I got the hang of it and began farming resources. I finally had enough to make level 3 and activate the command center. And just as I walked over to the stone, I saw there was already another guy hanging around there. His name was Zack.”
“No way!” I said, remembering that Zack had indeed told me about meeting a guy called Mike. “What about him?”
“He saw me and tried to pull the wool over my eyes, asking me who I was and what I was doing there. And once I’d lowered my guard, he attacked me from behind.”
“Zack attacked you? That useless piece of shit? That’s novel!”
Mike frowned. “Ah, so you know him?”
“I do. You’re a nice pair of losers, you two!”
“Listen, you think I don’t understand?” he exclaimed. “Sure, your level is three times mine, you’ve got some cool blades and an awesome suit — you’re just like goddamn Darth Vader, only your helmet’s different — but! I’m not a loser! Nor a worm! Back on Earth, I used to knock out guys whose levels were several times mine! Don’t you call me that again!”
“If you say so… worm.”
“Heh! Okay, you’re tough. I don’t give a shit anymore. How do you know that scumbag Zack? What can you tell me about him?”
“Nothing good, I’m afraid,” I said, gnashing my teeth at the thought of the treacherous bastard. The fact that this useless guy had already crossed swords with my enemy gave him a couple of good points in my book. “When I see him, I”ll cut him to shreds.”
“I see. He wasn’t much of a fighter though. When he got the shit kicked out of him, he just ran off on whatever little health he had left. I didn’t chase after him. I just captured the hexagon, and then I discovered I’d been awarded an achievement.”
“What kind of achievement?”
“Heh!” he chuckled, cleared his throat, then went on, “Apparently, I was last in the pre-Trials, so they gave me -30% to development rate. To compensate for it, they also gave me an extra life and a temporary talent called Hermit. It was triggered automatically the moment I’d captured the hexagon, denying all the other trial participants access to my base.”
As it turned out, Mike had spent most of the Trial in his little hole, not daring to leave the hexagon because doing so would have disabled Hermit.
“So basically, last night I got really bored. This was all turning into some sort of Groundhog Day. I spent all my nights under the dome and during the day, I just smoked mobs. I was so bored I built a couple of modules and got myself a few dogs,” he smiled. “They were so nice.”
“What happened to them?”
“They were the first ones to die. I decided to go for a bit of a walk, just to see what was going on, and I just walked into somebody else’s hexagon.”
“Whose was it, Juma’s? Or Tafari’s?”
“Juma’s. I got to his base without any hassle, and that’s where they pounced on me. I tried to reason with them but they didn’t want to know. In the blink of an eye, they’d killed all the dogs and sent me back to my resurrection point. I came round by the white stone. I had no resources left to activate it. I spent almost an hour hiding from mobs and then I decided to take on a doughboy which didn’t appear to be too dangerous. Big mistake. I’d never hurt so much in my life! When I died, I spent a long time in a pitch-black void. The pain was mind-blowing. Then I turned up here. I only opened my eyes, and there you were, standing next to me.”
This could have been the observers’ doing. They must have decided against having Mike resurrect at night, giving him the opportunity to save his last life. That also explained his initial reaction to me: you had to have a very strong spirit to preserve your sanity after several hours in the great void.
“You might be useful to me, Björn,” I said. “I’m sending you the invitation to join my clan.”
* * *
There was no point in wasting resources on that nonentity, especially considering his penalties, so I just gave him a set of gear from my extradimensional stocks, plus the Power Fist seeing as he was a boxer anyway, and the Lightning Rod to deal some long-range damage without having to approach the hexagon’s high-level mobs.
Meanwhile, I kept a constant eye on the rankings, watching for any developments in Juma and Tafari’s standoff. It looked like Juma hadn’t yet plucked up enough courage to deal a decisive blow — either that, or Tafari had been trying to avoid throwing all his forces into a direct confrontation. A few participants from both sides had died the final death and been disincarnated and knocked out.
This played right into my hands. My plan seemed to be taking shape. I had to keep on leveling until one of the leaders eliminated the other, then try to steal up on the survivor and kill him, whoever it was. My chances were negligible but I was going to take them even if the odds were one in a thousand.
During light hours, Mike and I kept smoking packs of daytime mobs, then spent the night farming the elite ones trying to proceed very cautiously.
By morning, I had enough resources to buy level 25 and with it, a new class talent.
Liquidator
Class level: 4
Level 4 talent
Liquidator’s Marker: allows you to place a marker on any active test subject in order to track their position on the map.
Cooldown: 24 hrs.
I then invested all my characteristic points into Luck. There wasn’t much point in building up damage, seeing as I put all my faith into Fang Two’s ability to kill instantly. Leveling up Stamina was equally pointless. As for Agility, I didn’t need it at all anymore because I wasn’t using any long-range weapons. Should I invest in Charisma? Also pointless, as I already had plenty. Neither Intellect nor Perception gave me any advantage in combat. But Luck… my entire strategy was based on that particular stat.
I decided to check my new talent out on Zack. I had a very big bone to pick with him.
As I activated the new ability, I saw a full list of all the current Trial participants. I scrolled it down, then focused on the name I’d been looking for:
Target selected:
Zack, human.
Level 20
Liquidator’s Marker has been set.
Put more fire under your enemies’ feet, Liquidator!
The message was replaced by a 3D arrow pointing in the right direction. The number underneath it read,
19 miles
“Hey Mikey, how about we pay our friend Zack a visit?”
Mike grinned. “Why not?”
In the time that he’d been with me, I’d learned a lot about him. And the more he’d told me about himself — about his miserable childhood in a slum district and about all the bullying he’d suffered due to his small stature, even about his ability to cry from the slightest of insults, up to the day he’d received his interface — the more respect his life story commanded. I didn’t regard him as a useless loser anymore.
In his case, his version of the interface was some take on video fighting games. Predictably, it had no social status levels: Mike received his XP for victories in the ring. But unlike Nagash, he was no scumbag.
The social-status version of the interface didn’t automatically turn people into starry-eyed wimps — one look at Zack or Leti was proof enough. However, that meant that the opposite was also true: the standard version of the interface developed by the Senior Races didn’t automatically turn men into sociopathic monsters. A lot depended on the person’s identity — the very essence of their existence, if you wish.
“How are we gonna find him?” Mike asked, all businesslike, then added a Russian swear word for a good measure.
“My new talent will help us,” I said. “Mount up! Rex, you stay and guard the base!”
The new Rex breathed heavily just like the old one as he watched us leave the base on the Utahraptors’ backs. It had taken Mike a long time to overcome his fear of Rex; he often said that his Uncle Peter had taught him a lot of things, one of which was never to needlessly hang around big galoots. In Mike’s eyes, Rex was bigger and more galooty than all the big galoots he’d known in the past, so it had taken him a whole day of hunting as a team to get used to my Tyrannosaurus.
The chasm which restricted access to our hexagon was no barrier for our Raptors who could easily accelerate to 25 miles per hour and leap up to 30 feet, so our only problem was to hold on to them as tight as we could.
It took us several hours to get to Zack’s hexagon, ignoring all the mobs on our way and leaving behind a trail of activated alarms for Juma and Tafari to worry about. We used Inconspicuousness to skirt around all the bases and disabled my talent every time we approached any hexagons’ boundaries.
As we approached Zack, I began to realize that strangely enough, he was still cloistered in the same hexagon where he’d spent the last few days according to our agreement. Could Juma really have permitted him to stay unchallenged on his base? What, with his ability to permeate the entire field with his teleports?
Having said that…
I had no doubt that Zack felt perfectly safe. Tafari couldn’t get to him without having to cross a good dozen hexagons — and even if an alarm went off, he could either run off or sit it out and wait for help to arrive.
Which meant I had to watch out and activate Shroud of Shadow before moving any further.
Warning! You’re about to enter a hexagon captured by another test subject.
Owner: Juma. Level 30
Base level: 3
Special effects:
-10% to all characteristics
“This is our guy,” I told Mike. “He’s less than half a mile away. Which means he’s not at the base but out farming. We’re gonna steal up on him now, so please don’t rush into anything. First we need to find out whether he’s alone and what other forces he might have at hand. Ideally, we shouldn’t let him escape. The base is level 3 which means he has at least a few plasma turrets and also the ability to teleport out.”
“Got it,” Mike said. “Is that all? Let’s go already! Time to kick some butt!”
“I’ll do all the kicking. You’re only level 7, so don’t you even think about it. Keep on firing from a distance.”
“Why did I have to come with you at all?” he moaned.
“To provide some entertainment on the way. That’s your main objective. Let’s do it!”
When Zack was less than three hundred feet away from us, we left our Raptors to graze by a big tree and continued on foot.
I was the first to see him. I raised my hand, motioning Mike to stop.
I watched Zack stalk toward us, looking for mobs to hunt. He was now level 20 courtesy of Juma. Judging by his ranking, his class was really rare: Master of the Elements. He didn’t seem to have his spiders with him though — so Juma must have taken his Charisma points for himself.
That’s when Mike screwed up big time.
“Hi, Zack!” he left the Inconspicuousness zone and headed for our enemy. “It looks like we haven’t resolved our differences last time.”
I growled in fury. What an asshole! I slapped the top of my helmet without leaving Inconspicuousness.
Because of this dimwit, I’d have to play it by ear. I could always miniport behind Zack’s back in order to stun him.
“You?” Zack sounded surprised. Still, he promptly recovered from the initial shock, taking in Mike’s low level. “With great pleasure!”
He raised his hands in the air and clapped them once.
A trail of frost reached out for Mike, freezing his feet, then climbing up, immobilizing his entire body. Although his health remained intact, the Freeze debuff timer began ticking, beginning a 10-second countdown. Impressive.
With a nasty little laugh, Zack waved his hands, then clapped them again, shouting something about fire.
At that moment, I materialized behind his back and stunned him. Thinking about my fallen comrades, I performed a record-quick combo.
Had this been on Earth, he would have already been dead. But here, the game mechanics had played right into his hands.
Mike’s body went up in flames. His face distorted with pain.
That was his own fault!
Zack was still immobilized when yet another blow from a combo performed by Fang Two had finished him off.
The player who’d failed to live up to Ilindi’s expectations was disincarnated and kicked out of the Trial. His name on the rankings list went inactive, stripping Juma’s clan of an important strategic advantage by denying them the ability to teleport to any hexagon they wanted. If they wanted to get to my base, they had their work cut out for them now.
“Come on, level up!” I shouted to Mike. “You have enough resources to heal yourself!”
“I don’t think so,” he wheezed with a smile on his face. “I’ve had enough of this shit.”
I watched as the Burning DoT stripped him of the last few percent of his life.
His charred face made me shudder. The flesh and bones of his skull had been lain bare, black eye sockets gaping in the bloodied mess.
“Good luck, Phil… See you around…”
“Why, Mikey? Why did you have to do this? That was irrational.”
“Dunno… Two against one… without warning…. I didn’t wanna stab him in the back…”
I second-guessed his last words because his body had already disappeared, leaving his weapons behind.
No, I wasn’t sorry for that weird loser with his old-fashioned ideas of honor. I was even happy I hadn’t wasted my resources on him. Still, I knew that once I’d removed the dagger which demanded me to be rational on my way to victory, I’d mourn yet another loss of a fellow fighter.
I swiped away a golden message balloon that had appeared in the air. I’d have to look at it later. I picked up the loot dropped by Zack and Mike and decided to return to the base. The next morning, I would select Juma as Liquidator’s next target.
When I finally got to the base, the suns were already setting.
Time to give it your all, test subject!
The global boss Deel’Agha is about to be released into the Trial field!
Kill him in order to receive a well-deserved award:
300,000 existence points;
the legendary Suppressor artifact;
a summoning whistle;
and an extra life for each of your clan members!
