The Destroying Plague Page 10

  All its abilities were duplicated in my interface, but it wasn’t just decorative. The developers had added the crystal to allow forts to be captured. In big clans with castles, the crystal was deep within the labyrinth of the clan vault, protected by the strongest defensive artifacts, traps, golems and its own guards, but our level of carelessness apparently broke all the records. Just walk in and capture us…

  I placed a hand on the crystal. It was barely warm — a sign of very low mana. The more mana, the longer the crystal would resist capture.

  Welcome to the Kharinza fort control panel, Scyth!

  Owner: clan Awoken.

  Level: 1.

  Population: 0/100.

  Structures: Headquarters, Vault, Tavern, Stables, Barracks, Houses, Cemetery, Merchant Stalls…

  Bonuses (only for members of ruling clan):

  +2% damage and defense within fort.

  +1% damage and defense outside of fort.

  +10% recovery speed of health, mana, vigor and class resource within fort.

  +5% recovery speed of health, mana, vigor and class resource outside of fort.

  Being within the fort for at least 3 hours adds the Rested buff:

  +50% experience gained for 1 hour.

  I’d heard stories of raiding groups missing literally half a percent of damage to finish off a boss. Considering that, an extra percent of damage was a nice bonus. Maybe we should bring the workers into the clan. Increased vigor could come in handy to them, I thought. But that would be a big step. I put the thought aside for later.

  Leaving the headquarters, I went toward the tavern. It was time to deal with the Snowstorm rewards.

  I got caught in the rain halfway there. One moment the sun was shining down from a cloudless blue sky, the next — boom! It covered over with clouds, rumbled with thunder and began to pour. I closed my eyes and stopped, spread my hands and raised my face to the sky, feeling the heavy drops land on it. My lips spread into a smile on their own. My parents couldn’t wait for the citizenship tests, which were scheduled less than two months from now, so they could divorce. My entire life would be in the past, and I’d have to move to a new home. Preventers of all stripes were hunting me, not to mention the Destroying Plague. Even with a million gold in my in-game balance, I still wasn’t sure I could get even a small portion of that money — Snowstorm had changed their own rules too often for me to trust them. Oh yes, and Scyth had only a few days to live, a week at the most, after which Infection would finish him off.

  And I still just stood and smiled…

  In my private room, drenched to the bone, I opened my chest and took out the large, pear-sized Rainbow Crystal. It constantly changed color depending on the lighting and angle. My hand barely held it — it was heavy for its size.

  Tissa and Infect got similar ones, but they’d used theirs and gotten entirely unexpected results. They already had experience of eliminating Threats: the unfortunate class-Z necromancer from Tristad, and Crawler himself, previously Nagvalle, eliminated by Infect and Bomber. In both cases, the crystals were smaller than a cherry and opened a portal to the Bandit Treasury, a small cave ten by thirteen feet in size, with rewards lying on the floor.

  Big Po’s crystal was different.

  Tissa used it first. It was destroyed after activation, which was to be expected. But it opened a portal not to the little bandit cave, but to the Treasury of the Forgotten Emperor, full of gold, precious gems, artifacts, weaponry and equipment.

  Once inside, Tissa jumped for joy. Knowing her, I expect the cave shook from her excited shrieks. At first the girl decided that it was all for her, but then common sense struck, and she figured there was some kind of catch. She wasn’t wrong.

  Snowstorm hadn’t changed and had even found a way to turn rewards into a game within a game, a battle between greed and restraint.

  The rules were simple: the item stats showed up only when you held the item. If you held an item for longer than ten seconds, then it was considered that you chose it and could no longer refuse it; to refuse meant to be banished forever. At the same time, Tissa had no visible timer, nor indicator to show that an item she took could be her last. An attempt to pick up several items at once led to them all collapsing into dust.

  In the end, Tissa managed to get out with two pieces of gear: a legendary set ring for a healer, and a Bottomless Mana Potion — after which she was ejected from the treasury. She’d spent twenty minutes inside, fastidiously inspecting each item. While reading the description on the ring, the timer ran out and the legendary became her choice, whether she wanted it or not. The girl learned of this rule only after the fact. Thinking that she’d probably get more than a couple of items anyway, she couldn’t refuse the flask of infinite mana.

  And that’s when it all ended.

  Infect opened the portal later and then couldn’t go in, seeing only a message that the location was temporarily unavailable.

  After waiting for his girlfriend and cogitating on her instructions, he entered the treasury, intending to be exceedingly careful. Everything went well at first. Infect didn’t take too long reading the descriptions, mercilessly suppressing his urges and throwing away items he liked, rushing to go through as many as possible in the hope of finding something truly outstanding. He dreamed of a scalable legendary or even divine item, or ideally — a legendary flying mount.

  So, he crawled among the gold and jewels, which he didn’t risk picking up, for a whole forty minutes. He soon got lucky — some top-range scalable legendary boots fell into his grasp, amazing ones! When equipped, they left a frozen trail behind Infect, slowing enemies by 30%! Perfect for kiting bosses and mobs! Back then, he hadn’t the slightest inkling that the clan would ask him to switch from Thief to Bard.

  But disappointment immediately displaced his joy. As soon as he took it, the treasury closed, ejecting the thief back to where he came from. In essence: forty minutes and change for one piece of gear. According to Infect, it was totally unjust!

  It was tough to judge from his friends’ experience exactly how the treasury determined you’d had enough. Did time spent there play a role? The number of items taken? Their value in the eyes of the system? Or something else?

  I had no idea. I took solace in the fact that at least I hadn’t used the Rainbow Crystal yet. Considering our new circumstances, I hoped I could find something useful there.

  I also realized why the preventers were willing to unite into an alliance to catch higher-class Threats — I suspected that as the potential increased, the treasury level grew exponentially. The Righteous Shield artifact that protected the Modus castle was no doubt from the same treasury, if not a better one.

  Big Po’s potential was probably L, like me before I met Behemoth. And I couldn’t even imagine what could be gotten for me or for Crag, with his D potential.

  Attention! Do you want to activate the one-time-use artifact Rainbow Crystal?

  The item will be destroyed permanently after use!

  “Yes, activate,” I said.

  The crystal collapsed into fading multicolored dust, and right before me, growing from a tiny gleaming point and tearing space as it went, a golden portal emerged to lead me to the Treasury. I took a deep breath, trying to calm my rampaging heart.

  I hoped I’d be in luck.

  Chapter 6. The Treasury of the First Mage

  TRAVELING BY PORTAL was far more comfortable than by the depths. There were no side effects or unpleasant sensations: you enter, the light shimmers, and a new location appears beyond the veil.

  I stood and waited for a while until my sight adjusted to the dim gloom of the treasury. But, glancing at the floor, I began to realize that something was different than how it was with Tissa and Infect. There was no pile of gold, no gleaming jewels — just a worn black and white tiled floor reminiscent of a chessboard.

  Walls stood at either side an arm’s breadth away, with another at my back. The ceiling was a meter above my head, reflecting the floor in black
and white cells. The narrow corridor before me stretched twenty or thirty paces ahead and ended in a stone slab with large symbols carved in it.

  I summoned my pet as I walked, just in case. He’d done well in the undead invasion of Tristad, leveled up and got the ability to inject Binding Toxin from a distance. I commanded Iggy to check the corridor and he chittered in response and went off to do my bidding. Nothing happened while he flew to the end and back — the corridor was clear.

  Remembering the time limitation in the treasury, I quickly inspected the corridor’s walls and didn’t find any traps or caches in them. I headed to the end of the corridor.

  Only when I got closer did I make out a lever set into the wall. My hand automatically reached for it, then froze halfway there — there was a purple glow around the handle. Hmm… I paused for a couple of seconds, then pulled on it anyway, but it wouldn’t budge.

  Then I took a step back and started studying the symbols on the slab. It looked almost like cuneiform: sticks, arrows, triangles and circles. Without knowing the language, it seemed impossible to understand. My internal timer began to count down the second minute of being in the treasury, which contained neither treasure nor anything else. My light stroll for rewards had turned into some idiotic puzzle quest.

  I suddenly noticed movement in my peripheral vision and my gaze shifted. I saw that some of the symbols before me had turned into familiar letters:

  Nobody is perfect!

  Who are you?

  The phrase sounded familiar but shed no light on the matter. Did it mean this place would give me what I needed? I’d like to believe that. Who was I?

  “Scyth,” I loudly stated my game name.

  No reaction.

  “Alex.”

  Nothing again.

  I felt each symbol with my fingers, found no hints. I stopped and thought. I’d heard of instances and raid dungeons with puzzles like this in. These were often the very things that got raids stuck on a first playthrough, not the boss difficulty…

  Alright, so who was I? Born Alexander Kieran Sheppard. I’d officially shortened it to Alex at age twelve. My parents got pretty upset.

  In Dis I was Scyth, the initial of the Sleeping Gods, a Herald. Chief of the Awoken clan.

  None of the above worked. I’d spent almost a quarter of an hour there but hadn’t even gotten to so much as a crappy green item. I imagined how Ed and Hung would laugh after thinking me such a smartass all these years. To tell the truth, I hadn’t felt so stupid for a long time.

  I paced the corridor, tried to use force and unloaded a combo at the stone slab — it was useless. Use your head, Alex! I thought. Nobody is perfect! Who are you? I mean, who am I?

  Who is perfect? Nobody. Nobody is perfect.

  “Nobody…” I didn’t notice myself starting to think aloud. “I’m nobody!”

  It worked! I heard the screeching sound of stone against stone, and three square blocks shifted a few inches out from the slab. Flashes of flame danced along them, and then shining words appeared: “Path of Glory,” “Path of Strength” and “Path of Courage.”

  “Choose wisely, hero,” the walls echoed. The voice that spoke the words sounded hoarse and unnatural, as if the language was foreign to it. Alright…

  Why was all this different for me? I started puzzling over it feverishly, wryly thinking that I should level up my Intellect. Why was this happening? Was it because I was the one who took the final blow and performed the banishment ritual? Or was some other factor at play? What did I have that the others didn’t? Sure, my Threat status. Maybe it was having an effect? Well… Maybe. Some trick of Behemoth? No, not likely. Some stats? My charisma and luck were through the roof thanks to my class. Luck? But I hadn’t yet seen that my version of the treasury was better than that of my clanmates.

  Right now, I had to pick a certain ‘path,’ which, logically, would determine what kind of rewards I’d get.

  My needler chittered something and cantered back to the start of the corridor. Turning around, I realized that I was being rushed: the rear wall had started moving toward me. Slowly for the time being, but Iggy’s chittering was getting louder. I needed to decide before I was squashed in this giant Scyth-squeezer.

  Well, I had no thirst for glory, good or bad. Strength could come in handy, but I wasn’t doing too badly on that front as it was…

  Iggy whined at the edge of ultrasound, casting about in between me and the moving wall, which was speeding up, moving at maybe three feet a second now.

  My time was running out. I interrupted my thoughts and pressed firmly on the block reading Path of Courage. A narrow strip of light soundlessly ran down the slab from top to bottom, leaving an entirely different surface with a fading glow behind it.

  The slab changed, transformed into a gate made of a dull blueish metal. It seemed semi-transparent, but I couldn’t make out what was behind it, and that was the least of my concerns.

  I quickly returned to the lever in the wall, pulled on it and it gave way. The wall moved toward me from behind with an ever-louder roar, threatening to crush us, but the gate opened soundlessly. The approaching wall sped me through and crashed into the spot where the gates had just been, closing off my way back.

  When the dust had settled, I saw a spacious hall with a high ceiling and snow-white, sparkling marble walls. It was absolutely empty. It was a hundred paces across and as many again long. The floor was checkered just like in the corridor. The high sky-blue dome of the ceiling evenly suffused the hall with soft light. When I looked closer, I saw a vertical line in each floor tile, flawed as if scratched on by a claw.

  What now...?

  The answer came quickly. Giant letters appeared in the air before me, seemingly made of stone, and they weren’t a part of my interface.

  The Treasury of the First Mage

  Path of Courage

  I barely finished reading it before the letters exploded and sent stone shards flying, but not even one reached me. A moment later the shards hung in the air, and then, gaining more and more speed, returned to their places, again forming text, this time something new:

  To the brave will be given!

  May the walker take 99 steps!

  The letters trembled, shook and exploded again, this time turning into a disappearing dust. Whatever happened next, this was a far cry from the ordinary procedure of rewarding players.

  “Walker on the Path of Courage! First step!” a severe male voice declared triumphantly.

  It seemed to be coming from everywhere. There was little human in it — vowels were swallowed as if the speaker’s vocal equipment was incapable of making such sounds.

  “Get ready just in case, Iggy,” I slapped the needler on his spiny back and started moving forward.

  The pet happily rumbled in approval. He was a good fighter and always ready to go.

  In the meantime, a gleaming vertical line about ten feet tall appeared in the air in the center of the hall. Expanding, it took on the shape of a portal and spat out something shriveled and wrinkled that looked like a hedgehog. Having done its job, the portal folded up into a point and winked out.

  Momentum rolled the ‘hedgehog’ a few feet in a ball, then it stopped. Extending long needles, it turned around and straightened, letting me get a good look at it: a three-foot humanoid with a long, sharp face, a plated cuirass strapped to it to protect its chest and stomach, a buckler[4] in its hands and a twisted blade outstretched.

  Hedgehog Warrior, level 27

  Elite

  Blearily narrowing its little red eyes, the hedgehog, no doubt the result of interspecies relations between a desperate goblin and a hedgehog, saw me and growled angrily. A few seconds later, he was rushing to attack me, his round shield and blade held forth, his little legs beating. Iggy rushed ahead to protect his owner, his needles bristling.

  The needler’s Binding Toxin caught the hedgehog ten feet from me just as I was stringing my bow. I didn’t want to fight a hedgehog barehanded. Infected by the t
oxin, the mob stumbled and fell to the floor, immediately taking an arrow to the neck.

  You have damaged Hedgehog Warrior: 2893.

  Health points: 36107/39000.

  “Hey! How do you like my Enhanced Quickshot, Warrior?” My habit of talking to mobs hadn’t gone anywhere.

  As I approached it, I lost a few more arrows into it, including an Explosive Shot, then finally hit it with a Crushing Hammerfist, taking off the shell that I’d taken for a cuirass. Amazed that this wasn’t enough to finish off an apparently ordinary elite, I gave it a Combo. The mob’s defense was crazy. It cut my normal damage in half.

  Hedgehog Warrior killed.