Apostle of the Sleeping Gods Read online

  He crawled in deeper and, the farther he got, the more he cursed himself, because the hole was getting narrower. Before long, Ed could only go further and had no way of crawling back. And eventually, it led him into a lifeless cave lit by a dead white light that emanated from the ceiling. There he found a black little lake. The surface was smooth as glass and when he threw stones in, they sunk without so much as a splash or ripple. In Ed’s words it wasn’t even water, but some cold viscous liquid, sticky and thick as tar. As he walked closer, the level of the lake started to sharply rise, so tried to head back, reasonably concluding there was nothing good to be found down there.

  But he couldn’t make it back to the hole, so he grasped a stone sticking out from the ceiling, climbed up the wall and just hung there. The water rose up then flooded out just as fast. But it left something behind that wasn’t there before.

  There was crumbling skeleton on the water’s edge and, when Nagvalle searched it, he found a flask containing a strange elixir transfused with all shades of purple. When Ed reached that point in the story, he froze and a dreamy expression appeared on his face. He sighed:

  “I was a fool! I should have set it aside until the open world, reached the frontier and drank it there. Then I really would have leveled up! But why shed tears now, what’s done is done!”

  The Mephistroth’s Salt, and that was the name of the elixir, Nagvalle drank down immediately, figuring he wouldn’t get out of the cave alive, so the flask would be lost in any case. Even if he did get out, he figured he might run into some gankers. At first, nothing happened. But eventually he started to feel a fire burning inside. He was wrested, broken, his appendages bowing out and bending the wrong way...

  And a levelless demon made its home inside the boy, giving him a single-use ability to domesticate any mob of any level by letting the demon possess it. The demonic pet, as explained in the skill description, leveled in time with its master but twice as fast, i.e. it would always be two times higher level than Nagvalle himself. And if it died, it would respawn eventually. That made the pet basically a free power-leveler for the ins’s of Disgardium, because it didn’t take any of the experience points.

  As soon as Nagvalle realized that, a global notification went out about a new threat with U potential. Ed didn’t remember how he got out of the cave and left Dis, not knowing what to do. After that it was just about like me: a notification, a message from the corporation, frantically reading information online, panicked planning and not being able to share it with anyone. And his situation was complicated by the fact that he had a debuff as well. Or a buff, depending on perspective. But he was possessed. He gained experience points twice as fast while the demon was inside him, but that same spirit made Nagvalle look deeply inhuman. The whites of his eyes filled with an inky blackness, his skin turned crimson, and he sprouted huge claws that stuck through his boots and gloves. He couldn’t let anyone see him like that.

  Ed started thinking of what mob to tame to get rid of his possession.

  “After lots of consideration I chose Mosquito,” he told us. “I was on the edge of the Mire at that time, and it was a local boss. Basically, a monster mosquito the size of a truck. Level eighteen, the highest I could find in the sandbox. The taming went smoothly. The demon just left my body and bam! He was in Mosquito. And the bug changed shape, becoming even more nightmarish!”

  “So what went wrong?” I asked, understanding perfectly how Ed must have felt.

  “I couldn’t get rid of him. There was no way. He was always with me and was clearly labeled ‘Demonic Mosquito...’ And my reputation with all Commonwealth factions just plummeted. To hate.”

  For days on end, Ed wandered deserted areas and dungeons, farming gold, items and experience. But he couldn’t do anything with the loot because he had no way of getting into town. He didn’t even have a way to send it to friends through game mail. After all, he was now an enemy to all people, elves, gnomes, dwarves and other races of the Commonwealth.

  He was in a dead end, but it was not the end just yet. He had to draw out time until he could enter the open world, and from there head for the frontier or go join the dark races. But he was eventually found out. Someone noticed him and he just about got away before it was too late. And when he entered Dis the next day, the area was scoured. It was all leading to him getting eliminated before too long.

  Nagvalle tried to hide in the mountains in a cave where nobody ever went. He entered Dis, spent his required time there, didn’t come out and went back the next day to do the same thing, or to be more accurate, do nothing.

  Then one day, he went after a group of adventurers. The Demonic Mosquito attacked with no command. The group didn’t stand a single chance, but Nagvalle’s hiding spot was revealed. A hunt for the threat began.

  By that time, Hung and Malik had already registered in Dis, and Tissa was just about to start. So Ed decided to give up. But he wanted to give himself up to his friends and share the reward for elimination. He sent the guys a link to some info about eliminating threats, adding that they should read it and learn it well, then said where to be in Dis and when.

  After the tangential warning about Ed’s status, they went to the agreed-upon point. Mosquito would aggro anyone who appeared in his visual radius, and he had to be taken down first. That was a massive effort. Ed had to go to a high-level dungeon in the early morning, and rush him forward to the first boss. The combined efforts of the hostile dungeon fauna killed the high-level Mosquito and his half-hour respawn cooldown opened a window for face-to-face conversation.

  When the guys saw Nagvalle, they got straight to work. It took them a long time, even though he wasn’t resisting, but the elimination procedure went off without a hitch. “I expel you from Disgardium forever!” Hung exclaimed melodramatically, driving the dagger into the heart of the dying Nagvalle several seconds before the corpse fully disintegrated.

  Crawler, Ed’s new character, got a bit of money from the developers, an epic cloak and a permanent bonus of ten percent experience gain rate. And the reluctant preventers Infect and Bomber got more serious bonuses: a fire magic folio, a light magic folio, ten thousand gold, a scalable epic sword and a similar dagger.

  In the end, that made up the starting capital for the Dementors, which Tissa soon joined. Crawler became a fire mage, Tissa a light mage, and the epic blades went to Infect and Bomber, impacting their own class choices.

  “Great story!” I looked at Ed with different eyes.

  “Yeah but that wasn’t the only reason I told you. As soon as it was all over, I went crazy on threats. It was like we all lost our minds, in fact! But unlike preventers, we were not trying to search and destroy, we wanted one of us to become one again. We combed the whole sandbox, stuck our noses into every hole, hoping to find at least something worth our while... We spent more than ten thousand on information and here’s what we found out: nine out of ten threats were part of a clan when they earned their status. And you can’t hide something like that from clanmates. They can see the threat marker on your arm. You understand?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Keep listening,” Crawler said. “Once you get threat status, you can only go it alone. If a threat is not leader of their clan, the system gives them the option to leave the clan or refuse the status before a global notification goes out. But if you turn it down, you also lose all the abilities and plusses. There are no other options. That same crap happens if a threat tries to join someone else’s clan: either they can renounce their status and potential rewards along with their imba skills or... no clan. There’s no option to join otherwise.”

  “But if the threat is clan leader...” I guessed.

  “Then any clanmate who sees the mark will also become a threat!” Bomber couldn’t hold back. “It’s the only way that makes sense!”

  “And there’s something else,” Crawler added. “A clan leader who is a threat can invite other threats into their clan. But that’s just a rumor...”

&nbs
p; “Oh come on! So you are all threats now too?”

  “Not exactly,” Ed rasped, slaking his thirst with a flask of iced tea and explaining: “We are now ‘subthreats.’ And that changes the whole equation! First of all, we cannot kill you now. Second, if you get eliminated, all we get is a penalty for failing to protect you. Third, if we tell anyone about you, the corporation will find out and hit us with a permaban and all associated punishments right up to lowering our category or even stripping us of our citizenship. Now do you understand how strongly we’re bonded? Helping you reach maximum potential is our shared mission. Because we will only get rewarded if you reach maximum. I bet we can do it before we leave the sandbox. After all, your potential is probably no higher than P, right? I think that’s the highest anyone ever got in a sandbox. What’s your threat class right now?”

  “Before I tell you anything... Edward Rodriguez, can you show me anything to back this up? About the subthreats and whatnot...”

  “Easy. Look in the restricted user section of the game encyclopedia. As a threat, you easily could have looked before. But I guess you didn’t, otherwise you wouldn’t be asking,” Crawler chuckled.

  “No, I guess I never thought of it...” My face flooded red. “But what...”

  “Well yeah. Your status is just part of the game. And given that, the developers have to provide a description, but they only have to show it to people it applies to directly. Don’t be too hard on yourself, I used to be just like you. I could have saved the clan a bunch of money if I read through everything before I wasted my status. We had to pay for it.”

  My game encyclopedia did now have a “Subthreats” article, which completely backed up everything Rodriguez was saying. The former Dementors now were more motivated to keep me safe than I was! I would get some reward at least no matter what status I hit, the higher the better. But they would get penalized unless I reached maximum. Bingo! My lips spread into a smile.

  “My current threat status is...” I said, making a video recording of their reactions. I’d save it for posterity and to watch if I ever felt sad. “Q.”

  “Oh, wow!” they all exclaimed in admiration. “Cool! That means we can’t have far to go before maximum! We can split the reward, level up your next char and tear Axiom to pieces!”

  “Just a sec...” Tissa said, displaying the most common sense. “Alex, what is your potential?”

  “My potential? A.”

  They all froze. I could see impatience and excitement on their faces.

  “Well? Come on, spit it out!”

  “A! I have A potential!”

  “Yeah, we know you have some potential! What is your class? Don’t leave us hanging...” Bomber moved his lips silently, batting his eyes.

  “His threat class is letter A...” Crawler whispered. “God damn!”

  The mad celebratory roar that echoed through the landscape after that scared the ravens off the trees.

  Chapter 16. In the Crossfire

  THERE WAS NO GAP between the abandoned wood hut where we were sitting and the forest. The leaves of young trees and odd juniper bushes were intertwined with the poison ivy that grew all over the hut. It seemed to me that there, outside, something had appeared.

  Meanwhile, the former Dementors had stopped celebrating and were now despondent. They hadn’t in their wildest dreams imagined my threat status could be that high. But soon their unrestrained joy was back, this time at the fact that, with an imba like me, they had an objectively real chance of upstaging Axiom.

  I felt a tickle on my cheek, something crawling and sticking. I couldn’t see anything, but the feeling was unmistakable. It was sticky and slimy. I abruptly slapped at my face, but my fingers found nothing but thin air

  The guys went quiet and turned their heads in discomfort. I had the feeling we were not alone, and I wasn’t the only one. The dead silence was broken by a barely audible unnatural sound from outside the hut, something rustling faintly like a flag in the wind.

  Then a distinct scent of offal spread in the air. It was pungent and sweet, nauseating.

  Crawler touched his pointer finger to his lips, calling for silence and nodded at Bomber. He reached behind his back. The sword, slowly crawling out of a matte anthracite scabbard covered in silver elven cursive, shimmered over his head.

  “Stand up slowly, so we don’t aggro it. Bomb, you whomp it as soon as we leave. Infect, be ready to break its casts. Tissa, you... Basically, stick to the script,” Crawler whispered quickly. “Scyth, stay close to Infect if you wanna melee or next to me if you’re gonna shoot.”

  “I lost my bow yesterday,” I shook my head. “Crag ganked me. So I’ll fight with my fists. But who’s out there?”

  They all turned their heads in surprise, not understanding how a Class-A threat could lose to a ganker who was now down to level ten. But they didn’t say anything.

  “The Lich Hermit respawned. Timer must have tripped,” Crawler explained. “Level sixteen or seventeen, no more. He hasn’t had time to get any bigger yet. But he can really damage. He has deadly DoTs and crazy debuffs, so we’ll basically all be like a few levels lower. There shouldn’t be any adds, so let’s just go straight for the boss. Alright, let’s go.”

  We froze outside the hut, studying our foe. I could have taken it down on my own and without much effort, but I knew I had to practice teamwork for the upcoming Arena battles.

  Although the local rare mob was called a lich, it bore no resemblance to Dargo the Lich, played by the late Clayton. The hermit hovered in midair, its lower limbs looking more like ghostly octopus tentacles, curling measuredly three feet off the ground. I looked closer and saw the creature’s gray face, sunken yellow eyes with vertical pupils, narrow slits in place of a nose. The Lich had no ears or mouth.

  Lich Hermit, level-18

  Magical creature

  Local boss

  This apparition was a quick one. It attacked as soon as Bomber took a step in its direction. Its tentacles all shot out together, went taut, vibrated and shot streams of jet-black filth. The volley hit us very hard: all our attributes plummeted by thirty percent, and our tank was caught mid-charge, slowing his superspeed to an unhurried pace.

  The lich’s maw flew open. As it turned out, it did have a mouth, a lipless cleft. And it started speaking indistinctly. A spell trickled out of the decayed opening, it spread its arms and wisps of black smoke came up from the ground in a twenty-yard radius. We started to choke and cough, the earth started bubbling. Our movement speed was reduced even further, our feet bogged down. And the lich, still twenty or thirty feet away, was in no mood to stop based on the bar over its head, emptying to indicate casting progress.

  I gave a Ghastly Howl, but it didn’t get it. Crawler just asked, recognizing:

  “Crusher? Did you become a threat after him?”

  I shook my head, but didn’t delve into an explanation. This was the perfect opportunity to build up some plague energy.

  “Don’t be surprised at what you’re about to see!” I warned them, activating curse of the undead.

  I hadn’t had time to tell them why exactly I had reached such a high threat class. First they all got way too caught up in the storm of happiness, then the lich appeared.

  They all stared over at me, not yet seeing anything out of the ordinary. Neither did I. I wasn’t taking much damage from the rare mob’s AoE magic, and curse of the undead quickly expired when my health went back up to maximum.

  And that was all because Tissa had kept calm and not stopped healing. Flashes of light emanated from her body and spread in rings, healing the whole group. The only one actually doing damage was Crawler, dumping fire spells of all kinds on the boss. But his level was much lower, so the lich’s health bar didn’t seem to be moving. And the debuff had weakened his magic even further. It was a shame I didn’t have that bow.

  Infect, realizing we’d never reach the Lich Hermit like this, shouted something abruptly in Arabic and ran at him with the dagger. The thief must
have been using some kind of ability, because his fast-paced jump broke the cast.

  Turning soil underfoot, Bomber, Infect and I dashed toward the monster. But we weren’t able to sink our teeth in. The Lich surrounded itself with an impenetrable film of orange haze and gave an extended howl. The sound echoed through the surroundings, chilling the blood in my veins. And response came almost at once: corpses and skeletons crawled up out of the ground, and a soul-piercing banshee screech came from the woods. Ed was wrong, the boss did have adds.

  “Bomb, get him! Tissa, focus on the boss for now!” Crawler shouted. “You have increased damage against undead! Scyth, what can you do?”

  “Keep Bomber on the boss, I’ll take the adds! Tissa, don’t heal me!”

  As I spoke, I activated curse of the undead again and ran in a spiral, drawing the risen dead to myself. Level fourteen or fifteen, normal mobs, but there were lots of them. I smashed their bones and made glaring holes in their bodies, Hammering the skulls off the skeletons and smacking rotting flesh off the zombies. When I got off a crit, it only took one. Normal blows took a few more, but that didn’t stop me. A minute later, not one add remained, but new ones had arrived. The banshee that was summoned from the forest had reached the battlefield and, after her, a huge wolf jumped out of the bushes.