In02vasion2, page 23
“So, now we may begin.” Even Plinto’s ears glowed with joy.
“You’ve set some marks?” I guessed.
“Naturally. And not just Abyssal. So, where do we go? Where is this Tower of Thunder?”
I checked with the map. “That way. Twenty kilometers.”
“Quite a long way. Never mind, climb aboard.” Reins twinkled in the bandit’s hands before transforming into an incredible creature. A bird. Its coloration opalesced in shades of purple, and the spiky harness hinted not only that it could run fast, but also that it was handy in battle.
“A dark phoenix,” Plinto explained, stroking the animal lovingly and mounting it. “Don’t just stand there. We’re not waiting for anyone. Don’t panic, tail-boy, it doesn’t fly.”
“Why not?” I asked, surprised, as I squeezed my body into the second saddle.
“Because in the new version only a GAS can fly. Everything else uses paw power.”
Plinto was lying — the Phoenix flew. Very low-and nearly scraping its wings on the ground, but it flew, rather than running on its scrawny chicken legs. It also glided. On the way we came across several deep ravines, and the Phoenix spread its wings wide and drifted over them. It took my breath away, and I had to shut my eyes so as not to lose consciousness and fall. How I hated fairground rides!
More and more frequently we came across strange monsters that were not like demons or any animals we knew of, but rather something in between. Vaulting over another gorge, we emerged into an open space, and the Phoenix disappeared. I managed to tuck myself into a ball and roll along the ground when I landed. Plinto was already on his feet and looking into the distance, where on the crest of a hill rose a stone tower surrounded by a wall. The Tower of Thunder recalled the lair of L’Kri, which was no longer.
The hill stood out in the middle of a wide level plateau, on which had once stood the camp of the army of Seth. Why stood? Because now the area looked as if a hurricane had passed through.
“Somebody’s had a fair romp here,” Plinto muttered and walked on. “Stay behind me.”
We found nothing left alive. No corpses or loot either. The few tents that had survived the battle gaped with holes and emptiness.
“So Abyssal doesn’t only work with you,” concluded Plinto. Then it hit me, and I realized who’d had a fair romp here.
“Yes, not only me.” I wasn’t going to betray Whispering. “Can I ask a question? What does T>eing without level’ mean? Abyssal has grave doubts you’ll take the general alone.”
“He’s right to doubt that. I cannot single-handedly take a beast without level. I need to see her, assess her. and then call a full-scale raid. You’re lucky. There’s a task to clear Stivala of the scourge of Seth, which is why I’ll find you a raid. But first we must see the general up close.”
“Will you share the task?”
“IJh-huh, I’m dead on my feet. Although it’s a long way to walk... Okay, listen...”
A “being without level” did in fact have levels, only those levels wrere calculated individually for each player of a group, and were always fifty-nine points higher. I.e. even the most terrible bosses of the new version, the higher demons, could be brought down by a well coordinated and competent group of level-one players. For them, the boss would only be level sixty. Damage to these beings wasn’t given in percentages, so Plinto would be taking his daggers to a level-712 being, and I would be ordering Aniram to launch demon strikes on a level-80 beastie. On Stivala there was a minimum of three locations where the mobs had levels I wasn’t used to. In these places you couldn’t move for beasties running around labelled ‘"being without level +X,” where X was a number from ten to fifty-nine. This was precisely where Plinto had earned his three levels, allowing him to become Barliona’s most leveled-up player. This was the bookkeeping we were dealing with.
Scrambling up the wall presented no problem. Settling down between the merlons, we observed the lone three-meter demon, wrhich looked like a heavily mutated centaur. Instead of the human part, it was half demon, and instead of the horse part, it was dragon, or something else with a long thick tail and sturdy scales. The boss was shuffling about a small square, periodically sticking a pawT out to the side to grab a chained prisoner and chomp its head off with gusto before narrowing his eyes in delight as he chewed. One prisoner would last this beast of Seth ten minutes, after which the procedure repeated. I evaluated the cages — they wrere full to overflowing with humans, demons, and animals.
General Ad’var. A boss without level. Abilities: 5 (changes with every battle).
“And it’s a boss too,” Plinto said sadly and turned to me. “Kvalen, are you aware you’re moonlighting today?”
“Doing what?”
“You’re a kamikaze superhero!” said Plinto, hurling me from the wall with a punch to the chest, directly toward General Ad’var. I twisted and turned and landed on my feet. In my soul I was warmly hopeful the demon hadn’t noticed anything and I could escape.
“Tally Ho, Kvalen!” from above, and a stone, certainly from the hand of the bandit, relieved a certain tiefling of his last chance to get away unnoticed.
“I’ll kill the son of a bitch,” I whispered, looking around in search of shelter. “Enemy!” The bellow was joyful, and my status changed.
The battle with General Ad’var had begun.
Chapter 15
TO PARAPHRASE WINNIE THE POOH, I was an incorrect clan chief, and so I was creating an incorrect clan. In correct clans, the chiefs do not work, they delegate to well trained people, while sitting in armchairs, quaffing expensive and tasty drinks. This was much more DIY back-breaking drudgery-, out in the field, with your bare hands... Fuck, when would I grow a brain? What kind of general would I make if I couldn’t do battle, knew nothing of tactics, and hadn’t thought of putting even the most worm-eaten cane in my inventory-, let alone a weapon?
Rolling to the right, I jumped up and summoned Aniram. At least I wouldn’t die alone. After yelling mightily at my travails, the boss jabbed his lance at the place where my digital body had entered the proceedings just a second before. Fortunately, although Plinto’s prank came as a shock, it had no impact on the speed of my escape.
The demoness was no slouch either, once she’d seen the general. With the loud hiss of an irate cat, she leaped back to the wall. I bent forward to avoid the general’s fat tail, and activated a demon strike.
Damage inflicted!
You have inflicted o.oy% damage.
HP remaining: 99.93%
Shoot! How long would we have to batter him for?!
The stone slab I’d hidden behind was shattered into tiny pieces. The boss didn’t bother walking round it, preferring simply to eliminate the obstacle. Together with the shards, I was blown to the side and imprinted into the wall, which seemed to shudder. My HP bar dropped by a third, and in front of my eyes flew little birds, harbingers of a stun debuff. No movement; no rolls to the side. The wyrmldn snorted its satisfaction and came for me, lumbering unwieldy on its paws. The formidable spear flew up into the air, and then began to descend toward my chest, seemingly in slow motion.
“Randan!” rumbled the general, and the tip of the weapon glowed red. This was evidently the beastie’s first ability, some kind of mega-cool strike. My subconscious warned me to screw up my eyes and
accept my fate, but I told it to shut up. Where, if not here, could one raise a hero in oneself?
Ability used: demon hide. All incoming damage reduced by 30% for 10 seconds.
Elixir used: recovery-: x 2.
Scroll used: weakening.
***
Positive effect of achievement gained: lucky-thing. You were able to avoid a deadly strike. Chance of avoidance increased by 1% (current value: 11%).
Group chat. Plinto: The crowd are delighted. Don’t just stand there! Sting like a bee! He’s fat
and cumbersome!
Group chat. Kvalen: What about some help?!
Group chat. Plinto: Run! I have a ticket to watch, not to participate. The boss is yours. You go get
him.
Group chat. Kvalen: You’re a passive bastard.
The debuff ended, and I leaped to my feet. My HP was stuck at fifteen. A sneeze might dispatch me to be reborn, so I swiftly threw a bloody recover}- under the general’s legs and necked two flasks of potion before fleeing.
“Beranucz!” The general’s nickname was called from behind, and my back burned unbearably, as though a red-hot wire had been jabbed into it. Doubling over, I jumped to the side, rolled, and slid along the rocks trying to relieve the pain. Red lightning flashed above me. An explosion over my head showered my face with dirt and small stone chips. I turned to see what the general was up to. He was making strange passes with his hands, standing on the spot as if he couldn’t be bothered to move. In his paws glowed a ball of lightning, until he hurled it at me with a bellow of “Beranucz!”
I rolled out of the line of fire, but a shower of stones clipped my buttocks and tail. It was time to take stock. The boss didn’t move, wasn’t a great marksman, and couldn’t strike very-frequently. We would live!
Group chat. Plinto: Behind you!
The warning was most timely. In a wink I was on all fours and, paddling like a maniac with my hooves, throwing myself forward. A taloned pawr landed where Pd just been, leaving deep claw marks, and a toothy level-31 beastie emerged from the crater caused by the red lightning. Ten levels higher than me! Acting more on reflex than logic, I attacked it.
Damage inflicted.
You have inflicted Soo damage: [goo (demon strike)-ioo (minion protection)]
HP remaining: 2,300 out 0/3,100
Group chat. Plinto: Draw your weapon, dufus!
Group chat. Kvalen: It's broken!
“Beranucz!”
The next red lightning strike made me skip away and hide among the rocky debris, of which there was heaps. The toothy beasties from this attack crawled slowly out of the ground, their mouths wide agape and gasping for air. This at least afforded me some time. Demon strike. Another. And another. The first beastie began to smoke, then melted into a dirty spot before disappearing completely. Yes! Two left! Have a deceleration each!
The sense of danger weighed heavy on my chest, so, my hooves slipping on the rocks, I jumped further from the general, just as the stone I was hiding behind settled to the ground as dust. Alarm bells rang in my head with the desire to stop all this running around. My entire essence objected to the role of victim. Resignation? No, thank you. It was protest and sober thought that made the fear go away. First I jumped up to avoid a spiked tail, then I bent down to let a spear fly by. The general snorted his anger and repeated the combination. I ducked away with ease and put some distance between us. Ha! I’d undergone harder tests in the training camp. Why were Plinto and Abyssal not touching the general if it was all this simple?
The boss was not only slow, but also clumsy — he crushed the remaining snakes himself. The following few minutes of the attack were predictable and dull, and I got the hang of it easily and even counterattacked. I was inflicting ludicrous amounts of damage, but the drops really did wear away the stone. A hundred long monotonous demon strikes reduced the general’s HP to a record ninety-three percent.
Group chat. Plinto: Stop the cast!
Group chat. Kvalen: Cast?
Group chat. Plinto: Are you a noob or an idiot?
The boss’s change of tactic and my anger at the bandit did not allow me to reply. I lowered my head automatically in expectation of a lance, but the boss oddly stopped and swiped a beclawed pawr at the cages. Beneath his name appeared a spellcast bar, and a logical thought occurred to me. Was this the “cast”? How-could it be stopped? To stop myself being rooted to the spot, I sent the boss of a couple of strikes, which caused him no trouble whatever, and prepared for the worst.
The boss finished reading the spell, one of the cages opened with a squeak, and a prisoner flew into his paws. Chomping away to the accompaniment of terrified screams, he topped his HP back up to 100% by wolfing the unfortunate victim.
My arms dropped to my sides in dismay, and my heart, and particularly my soul, also plummeted. What was that? The whole inner side of the wall consisted of innumerable cages with even more innumerable prisoners in them. Was he going to recover every time by doing that?
Group chat. Plinto: Yes, Kvalen. It's not for nothing that you wear those horns. I told you — stop.
Group chat. Kvalen: Listen, you lover of passive participation—
I didn’t have time to finish. A second’s distraction from the boss cost me 30% HP and a crash landing into the wall of the central tower. The general’s tail had done its job and transformed a certain irate tiefling into a flying missile. WTien I landed, I couldn’t stand.
“Beranuscz!”
Predictably I didn’t manage to duck out of the way. The lightning pierced my body and I felt I was being torn to pieces. If this was ten percent sensation, what was Eredani experiencing at a hundred percent? It was pure water torture. My head buzzed, and a debuff bar flashed in the shape of a bright star and filled up, it seemed, to the very horizon. Amazingly, my HP wasn’t gravitating towards zero. On the contrary, the bar was for some reason restoring itself. Or perhaps I’d died?
From somewhere in the distance, interrupting the quieting jangle, came the dull sound of commands. The voice was female and unfamiliar.
“Dark, the boss is on you. Range: ten. The melees are nothing. Plinto, where are you off to? Ah, screw you! Kvalen to the healers! You’ve seen three abilities. Get to work!”
I was picked up and carried, but two minutes of total blindness prevented me seeing by whom. I counted down the last seconds of the debuff impatiently, and the first thing I saw when my sight returned was a message:
Anastaria invites you to a raid. Accept?
Accept of course! The surrounding space exploded into colored rectangles. I had never been on a professional raid, so it was only my ability to operate with enormous masses of data that enabled me not to lose my head. First thing, having no use for them, I switched off the logs, status bar, and ability deflection frame. The view was freed up by minimizing the frames of forty-two Legends of Barliona warriors and shifting them to the right. Plinto was circling the boss with two tanks and taking some heavy hits. Unlike me, the players weren’t jumping all over the place, managing to remain in one place without any obvious effort. The close-combat fighters were catching the toothy beasties born of the general’s lightning. The hunters, magi, and lord knows who else were not distracted by these attacks, because they were busy hounding the boss with all the abilities available to them, and only the five healers stood doing nothing, occasionally treating one of the tanks or players nipped by the lightning.
“Take this,” said the now familiar female voice. I turned around, and after an eyeful of spotty-teenager (sixteen to fifty) fantasy, I reached out automatically and accepted a marvelous glaive. Anastaria was amazing up close, and I was prepared to take back all my previous thoughts about her. She was truly stunning. “Plinto said you had a problem with weapons. This is a gift for the general.”
“Thank you.” I froze and assessed the present.
The Glaive of Bewitching Song
Description: An epic object. Material: demon oak. Creator: Evil Gnum. Restrictions: object created for player Kvalen; let no one else take it in their hands, otherwise I will take offense and stop working.
• +25 Stamina
• +25 Agility
• +25 Intellect
• Magic attack: 500
• Physical attack: 150
• During battle the glaive produces astonishing song capable of delighting the soul.
Enjoy it, and try every time to create a new melody.
•
The last bonus was of course taking the piss, in view of the fact that I was tone deaf, but the characteristics, and more importantly the magic damage, rendered the glaive useful. Picking out the boss, I couldn’t help myself hurling a demon strike at him.
Damage inflicted
You have inflicted 0.11% damage.
HP remaining: 67.54%
Hey! Not bad!
“Stop the cast!” Anastaria had already immersed herself in the battle.
“Ain’t happening!” said Plinto. “It’s blocked!”
Six seconds is exactly how long the players watched the general casting before a random cage opened and a prisoner flew out of it to completely restore his HP. The players’ joy at the cool quest noticeably faded, which was understandable, as all their progress had gone down the tubes. Anastaria looked intently at all the cages around the entire wall. I figured there were enough to go around the whole of the Legends and Dark Legion clans.
“Plinto!”
“I’m on it!”
The bandit left the boss alone, transformed into a black mist, and drifted over to the cages. Following a metallic screech and a shower of sparks, Anastaria cursed. The player couldn’t get through to the prisoners.
“So we drop the boss again and take the victim with us! Kvalen, give us a hand.”
I didn’t need a second invitation. I was more than happy to hone my demon strikes, and each time I upped my intellect. The general’s HP dropped quickly to sixty-seven percent, and the beastie immediately stuck out a paw toward the cages.
“Everybody get ready! Do not let the victim reach him!”
In tense silence the door of the steel prison opened with a spine-chilling squeak, and hell descended upon the poor unfortunate. It was attacked with everything: arrows, magic, spears, shadows, spirits. Someone lobbed a dark sphere, the mere look of which gave me goose bumps. I didn’t want to imagine what the creature was feeling, but its cries were grim. It shrieked and convulsed, but didn’t die, instead continuing to fly, and eventually its tormented body made it to the general, who bit off its head and restored his HP.
“Fancy a giggle?” Plinto had drifted back to us and now turned to Anastaria. “The cages are regenerative. We’ll be here forever.”
