The Destroying Plague Page 6

  In Gloomwood, he ran into the giant zombie wolf Punisher. By then, the level seventeen local boss wasn’t a problem for him. Wesley got a First Kill and a strange ability, Mark of the Destroying Plague.

  The skill seemed impractical at first glance, just a one-percent invulnerability procc. Along with an undead transformation. But a little later, he realized that it was enough to just wait for the ability to activate, then just not let it run out. A sudden notification that he’d received a Threat status with potential L confirmed it. Wesley laughed like a madman then. He’d been hunting Threats, then turned into one himself.

  The hysterics passed and his calculating mind kicked in. He didn’t sleep a wink that night. He tossed and turned, thinking up his plan of action, options for leveling up his new ability, and of course, for keeping his status secret. He gathered his officers the next day, accepted his mistakes and declared that he was leaving the clan. They tried to convince him to stay, but he’d already made his decision. His future would be built elsewhere. Anyway, he didn’t want to risk his Threat status.

  Wesley chose a small island a couple of miles from the continent to farm on. He got the idea to use Exhaustion right away. With that debuff, the undead curse wouldn’t disappear even out of battle. The island was full of nagas and tritons, teeming with Giant Crags and Flesh-Eating Turtles at level twenty-five and above. But the main thing was that there were no people. He could level up to his heart’s content. Once he reached the shore, he set a respawn point by the murlock instance so he wouldn’t have to run far to recover his Mark activation, then he started implementing his plan.

  Day by day, spending all his time there apart from when he slept and went to school, he boosted his level, his abilities and his Mark. However, the growth of the first and second soon stunted — the mobs got too weak. Still he didn’t stop. He kept leveling up the chance of the undead curse activating. That meant dying repeatedly, which was tedious, but he believed it was worth it.

  It turned out it was. A little time later, a messenger of the Destroying Plague appeared and gave him his first quest: infect a critical mass of citizens and open a portal. Apart from that, the messenger declared Wesley a Herald and told him the story of his predecessor, who had failed to live up to the Nucleus’s hopes and had been deprived of his status. Wesley wasn’t surprised when he learned it was Scyth.

  Alex freaking Sheppard. The one that shot him down in his moment of triumph. Wesley had opened the portal, almost captured Tristad and prepared to become a legate of the Destroying Plague. And exactly then, that damned Sheppard had appeared with his flaxen-haired girlfriend, crowd-controlled him and eliminated him as a Threat.

  And he’d been so close to victory! He’d raised his Threat level and was preparing to hand in the Nucleus’s quest, certain that his potential would grow with his new talents. He was so upset that even the Snowstorm rewards were scant solace. He’d almost won millions, then got only a consolation prize. Wesley was crushed.

  He fell into a depression for weeks and didn’t use his capsule. Why hide it? He even thought of suicide, understanding perfectly that chances like that were one in a million, especially with such a high potential. The fact that four Threats had appeared within a year in their sandbox, counting that fool class Z necromancer, was a digression from the norm. It was even more offensive to realize that he’d lost his status too, after that idiot Scyth and the necromancer. And only that pathetic ganker Crag through some miracle, at first not even hiding it, managed to stay afloat.

  Today they called him to the school principle.

  “Cho,” the man said, drumming his fingers on the table. “Ignoring the recommendations of the Department of Education, who have now sent you three letters, is not the best idea on the eve of your citizenship tests. It is my duty to convince you not to miss the required hours in Disgardium. It may negatively affect your citizenship!”

  “Alright, Mr. Fultz,” Wesley answered. “I won’t skip it anymore.”

  As he sat in the flier, his decisiveness grew. He had no intention to return to Dis and live a drawn-out life as an ordinary player. Even if he did have the legendary Bone Horse, given as if in mockery by Snowstorm along with money and a little gear. That wouldn’t make him unique. There were hundreds of millions of players like him, if not billions. No, he’d take another path.

  It seemed he was the only one to put two and two together. There were many people in the multitude of videos of what happened in Alma’arasan Gorge, and later in the Modus castle. One of them was Crag, as prisoner of the preventers. Wesley also noticed Scyth, although Sheppard only took part in the events in the gorge… The fake Horvac in the Modus castle courtyard and Crag’s escape — these were familiar tricks. Very similar to the time when certain ‘heroes wishing to remain nameless,’ took the First Kill in the Sarantapod Hive.

  Sheppard was definitely hiding something. He hadn’t stopped being a Threat after losing the Mark of the Destroying Plague. The more Wesley thought about it, the more convinced he was.

  There was no question of whether to give up to the preventers. That was the least that Wesley could do to knock that arrogant bastard down a peg or two. But what would that give to Wesley himself? The financial reward and legendaries interested him, sure, but he wanted to try something else. After all, he could contact Modus any time he wanted. It was worth starting with something else.

  With something Wesley considered himself a professional at. Good old blackmail.

  Chapter 4. Home Sweet Home

  LOOKS LIKE SOMEONE from the top clans decided to use Crag against Modus, Crawler wrote in the clan chat while I examined the fort. Hinterleaf accused the Alliance of betrayal, but the fact that Horvac’s twin disappeared with Crag is the news of the day! All Modus’s castles are under siege, and even the preventers have gotten involved!

  That was to the good. While the strong fought amongst themselves, we’d have time to catch our breath. I decided to start with a quick look at the Awoken lands and a meeting with Behemoth.

  The builders had finished the level one clan fort a few days before. There were no problems with the budget, or with the legality of payment — we made contracts with each of the workers. Crawler solved the problem with the miners in the same way.

  The mine was part of Awoken’s territory as soon as the fort was built. Considering the zone’s high level, the resources in it were rarer, which meant more valuable. Gold, mithril and thorium ore, for example, weren’t sold in hundreds of bars like copper and iron, but in stacks of ten because of their cost. And they were worth more than a hundred gold a stack.

  The problem was something else. Manny’s miners didn’t have enough skill to mine rare ores, which practically forced us to make short-term hire operations for minerals based on their craftsmanship grade. All the adepts of the Sleeping Gods were mining the available metals and working three shifts at Klondike — which was what we called the clan mine.

  Crawler, as my right-hand man, paid a contribution and applied to register the mine. It happened to be yesterday, after three days without other pretenders appearing (there actually were some, but none could declare their rights — the coordinates weren’t given to such shady companies), the guild of miners gave us an exploitation license.

  That allowed us to employ miners, at the same time giving them separate bonuses. That obvious trick allowed non-citizens among the adepts of the Sleeping Gods to increase their income severalfold, and now rumors spreading through all Cali Bottom, and that drew more volunteers to us. Unity also increased their stats, which sped up the process and got us more resources.

  Our main limit was on the number of adepts. There were now sixty-nine of us followers of the Sleeping Gods. We’d need to build a second temple to raise the limit. The sewer troggs won over by Patrick O’Grady in Darant were also waiting for this. I just had to get through to there to meet the first priest and his new friends.

  So, I didn’t delay my meeting with the god, after which I planned to get to
grips with the Snowstorm rewards. To tell the truth, I was burning inside with anticipation and excitement to dig through the loot!

  There was some more great news; a small tavern had sprung up there, where I had a private room with a chest just like at the Bubbling Flagon. I’d left the crystal that dropped from Big Po in storage there.

  Courtesy of Bomber, the tavern was dubbed the Pig and Whistle. The adepts of the Sleeping Gods got free service there on the clan’s dime. Would that policy change? I didn’t know. We had no plans to take on new members due to certain, ahem, circumstances, and the clan treasury was healthy enough to feed and water the current membership.

  I had plans to walk around the fort in daylight to examine it and think about upgrades.

  But my first task was to deal with Behemoth’s quest. Without the usual invulnerability of the undead curse and Plague Energy, I felt extremely uncomfortable. Especially considering what was happening in the wider world. Also, there was still a Montosaurus of unknown level wandering Kharinza.

  The guys were waiting for me in the tavern, which was run by Steph, the younger sister of Gyula. We knew her from the Bubbling Flagon. Back there, the woman had been an ordinary washgirl, but she’d picked up some things from the chef, Arno: she’d learned Cooking and even leveled it up to expert. She’d heard plenty of good things about me, but this was the first time we’d met.

  “How should I address you, Stephanie?” I asked.

  “Oh, however you like,” she said shyly. “Kids your age call me Aunt Steph.”

  And it was settled. She got really upset when I didn’t try her freshly baked Sea Devil Soup, a scorchingly spicy shellfish soup. Bomber wolfed his down and eagerly took my portion.

  Leaving our tavern, I walked down the fort’s only street and in a couple of minutes reached the temple. I stopped there and stared a while, impressed by the structure’s magnificence. I appreciated the work of our chief builder Gyula with fresh eyes.

  The temple looked imposing in spite of its small size. A few slabs laid in a pyramid had stood here since ancient times and served as the building’s foundation. The builders cleaned them up, pulled out all the grass and underwood. They added a few other smaller slabs, bringing the total to thirty. The result was a kind of triangle with the peak cut off. Carved cobblestones were laid on its surface, each with the symbol of the Sleeping Gods, a closed eye in a triangle. Looked like that appeared after the temple was opened and consecrated to Behemoth.

  The temple itself was on the very top slab — with a sloping roof on six columns. The divinity’s face grinned on its front; just like on the altar within, only far larger.

  Hurry, Herald! a voice boomed in my head, drowning out my thoughts. Hurry!

  I jumped up all the steps to the top and found myself face to face with Behemoth. His avatar hadn’t changed since our last meeting — still the same three-dimensional human body with a hippopotamus head.

  He hadn’t spoken to anyone in my absence, not even with the only priest of the Sleeping Gods in Kharinza, Manny, and materialized only a second before I arrived. It seemed he’d somehow tracked my movements with Depths Teleportation, although that wouldn’t be hard. After all, we got that talent from the final boss of Evil from the Depths, Murkiss, a scorpion mutated by the breath of the Sleeping Gods, whatever that meant.

  “Mission to prevent the Destroying Plague from overwhelming Tristad successful, Sleeping God!” I reported, jokingly standing at attention.

  I finally felt at ease and was in a playful mood.

  “At ease, Herald,” Behemoth played along with me, to my great surprise. However, the tension emanating from him in waves quickly brought me back to reality. “You have proven yourself worthy…”

  Suddenly, the god drew me to himself, embraced me and slapped me on the back. That was something new. His blackened plate armor gave off intolerable heat, and I tore away, jumping out of his monstrous grasp. The god reacted with understanding.

  “Forgive me. You humans are extremely gentle creatures. Fragile. You can exist only in one narrow range of temperature!

  Hmm… First ‘at ease,’ then a reference to humans (humans, not ‘intelligent life of Disgardium!’) in this context… The farther into the forest, the thicker the trees, as my uncle Nick used to say. I never did understand what that meant, but he always brought it out when events developed unexpectedly, and new information didn’t explain anything, just made things more confusing.

  In the meantime, Behemoth pointed his piercing gaze at me and spoke.

  “I received vile emanations from the parasitic creature that calls itself the Destroying Plague, from Tristad, then they suddenly stopped. You closed the portal and destroyed the creature, but many days have passed since then. What delayed you?”

  I thought for a moment. How could I explain all the twists and turns of our exit from the sandbox, and the preventers, to a virtual entity, even if he was a god? But I had to, otherwise I wouldn’t even get a quest completion message, let alone rewards.

  “Are you aware, Sleeping God, that the strongest people of this world hunt those such as myself and my teammate Crag? They are of the opinion that we represent a threat to all intelligent life, and headhunters get very valuable rewards for hunting us…”

  “Crag? You mean that little dwarf that appeared here with you? The nature of his power reeks of the droppings of the Radiant,” Behemoth almost spat the name. “I had to hide my presence in his eyes as soon as I saw you two in the deep paths. We cannot allow the false god to learn of us too soon.”

  “Is everything really so bad? Nergal is the one that gave Crag his power, after all. And it helps make us stronger…”

  “It is borrowed power, Herald!” the Sleeping God grumbled. “Nergal is not a god who demands nothing in return. Every request made to him and every ability he grants will multiply Crag’s debt, and the false god will surely demand repayment.”

  “When?”

  “When you least expect it! I have seen plenty of Nergal’s deeds in my dreams. On his path to power, he shrank back not from sacrificial offerings, nor from connections with the elder demons and the rulers of the Nether.”

  “Are you sure? He’s a god of Light!”

  “Light is blinding. There is light that kills all life. Any element can be dangerous. We will return to this conversation. As for Nergal’s gift, I must speak with your friend and study the pattern of the weave. I will see what can be done, but do not hope for too much too soon — my powers are still too weak.”

  The Sleeping God turned his head to the side, listening to something. Mentally figuring out the direction, I realized he was looking toward the clan tavern. Having clarified something for himself, the god nodded and snapped his jaw in front of me.

  “Continue your tale, Herald.”

  “We call those headhunters Preventers. They’re heroes, the strongest warriors in the world. They started checking everyone who arrived in Darant, and we barely managed to get away.”

  “You were on the edge, Herald. The backlash of the Aversion was so strong that even my sister and brothers felt it.”

  Suddenly, I understand that he was talking about Divine Revelation. It seemed the effect of this passive skill, placed into the game’s core many years ago, worked differently for every Herald depending on which divinity was their patron. So, my Divine Revelation was courtesy of Behemoth? That was worth thinking about.

  “Then you should understand why I was delayed. First, I was waiting for Crag, because he could only leave Tristad today according to Commonwealth law. He can’t travel through the Depths himself…”

  “You are so sure of him that you risked yourself?”

  “That no longer matters, Sleeping God. He asked for help when we were fighting off the Destroying Plague together. I agreed.”

  “You acted correctly,” Behemoth said softly. “And have earned a reward!”

  Placing both hands on my shoulders, he gazed into my eyes. I froze, unable even to breathe. My shoul
ders burned and streams of energy flowed through me, the power, will and wisdom of the Sleeping Gods, but little of it stayed: two divine talents.

  Sleeping God Behemoth mission complete.

  You successfully prevented the capture of Tristad by the Nucleus of the Destroying Plague, slowing the influence of the Nether in Disgardium.

  Rewards: