Inferno (Play to Live: Book # 4) (20 page)

Finally I made up my mind. I closed my eyes and sent three private chat channel requests. Soon the Vets' top brass sat up in their saddles and froze, trying to digest the information. An officer arrived with a report, rapped it out twice and faltered in confusion as an answer never came.

What kind of walking anachronism was that? This inflexibility of the army was its biggest weakness. They just didn't seem to possess the mental flexibility necessary to think out of the box. No wonder that once the Wall of China Battle had been over, they'd immediately dispatched a group of staff officers to me to learn from our experience of the newly invented "portal battle".

It had taken the Vets a minute to digest and synchronize the information received, coming up with a new strategy. Dan turned to me and said in a slightly slurred voice,

"Max, we owe you — again. The value of the information you've provided can't be underestimated. Would you mind if we add our NPCs to the raid, too?"

I smiled unwittingly. Freakin' plagiarists. "Not at all," I nodded my agreement. "How many?"

Dan's stare clouded over as his mind worked overtime, talking to me, sending messages to an avalanche of chat rooms and analyzing incoming information. "We're not a Super Nova, of course, so we need to cut our cloth accordingly. We can offer about a hundred level-200 warriors per perimeter. That's the best we can do. Four hundred men with a delay of half an hour. Will that be enough?"

"It will."

"And another thing. Seventy-five percent of your NPCs are female. Did you do that on purpose?"

I glanced at the Vets' soldiers squinting laboriously at the uniform ranks of my Ear Cutter girls. Their slim figures clad in leather whetted their soldiers' imagination, triggering a non-stop exchange of smiles and jokes between the two groups.

I nodded again. "Absolutely. I'm not going to tell you about AlterWorld's demographic situation."

Dan gritted his teeth, shaking his head in disbelief. There it was — the ideal solution to one of the gaming world's biggest pains in the back. Because, as the merciless statistics would confirm, male players made up 72% of the virtual world's population.

There they were, the fourth generation of Russian boys raised predominantly by females who broke their mentality to fit their own mother-hen mold, castrating the minds of the future soldiers and statesmen. The school, the state, society, mass media all strived to cut their characters down to size, forming obedient and controllable consumers and office rats. All alphas and non-conformists were rejected by default and fell by the wayside, dying or being channeled into the world of crime. Only a small percentage of those somehow wriggled their way into government, business or special services.

Unable to fulfill themselves in this new society model and sensing their own inferiority and the wrongness of the values enforced upon them, these hen-pecked men either reached for the bottle or reverted to childhood, cloistering themselves in a world of online toys. There he was finally a warrior, a protector who knew that somewhere in a cozy old castle his sweet and docile Miss Right was waiting for him.

The Vets especially had gender problems, due to the clan's specifics. One girl to every ten boys. This ratio resulted in daily fights and duels, the constant arguments over girls undermining the clan's unity. The unveiling of free Houses of Pleasure had lessened the pressure somewhat but the problem was still there. And here it was, an ideal solution capable of improving both the Vets' morale and their combat value!

While Dan was busy emptying their treasury, I got in some quality time talking to Eric. His new position had added a tad of seriousness to his character, making him look even more like some legendary Russian knight. He watched in disbelief as a fifty-strong pack of hell hounds poured out of the portal, followed by the unhurried and formidable Draky and Craky.

"How do you do it?" he shook his head. "What do you buy them with?"

I cracked a smile, adding benevolently, "I treat them well."

Eric sniffed. "You might not know it but you and your menagerie are being watched by a thousand envious wannabes. You can't even imagine how many would have loved to have a pet dragon. You could build an Egyptian pyramid with all the tomb stones of your followers — and there'll be enough left to erect a wall around the whole of Cairo."

That sounded interesting. "Did they make any progress?" I asked.

He shrugged. "One doesn't speak of such things. What I do know for a fact — do you remember the handicapped girl I brought to the Three Little Pigs on the day we met? Well, she apparently found common ground with our legendary unicorn, the City of Light's mascot. The one which loves sugar and apparently can grant prowess in bed. Level 230, nothing to sniff at. The two are inseparable now. Evil tongues say that they even sleep in one bed. They coined a name for the girl, Catherine the Great. Glory be to Macaria, the girl is absolutely clueless in historical trivia," he spat at the thought of the vile rumors.

The Koreans still hadn't arrived, busy collecting their demoralized clan and clocking up their debt points. Their beautiful pearl green portal opened almost simultaneously with the arrival of the Vets' group of NPCs.

At the sight of our 1500-strong army, the heavy golems, the dragons and the hell hounds, the Koreans' faces betrayed surprise that was quickly replaced with hope. Apparently, those mysterious Russians had taken their request seriously and were now flexing their incredible power. Now you could indeed believe the rumors of their defeating the Chinese twice on their own soil.

I didn't want to drag it out much longer. The buffs weren't going to last forever and neither were the players who still had a lot of marching to do. I checked the availability of the portal spell. The twenty-four hour cooldown had already expired. Excellent. I could cast it directly without wasting any precious scrolls as I was running out of the Sparks of Divine Presence. At some point, I would have to spread a few sheets on the floor and ask the Fallen One to open the window to the astral planes.

"Fall in!" a multi-language command echoed over the ranks.

"Portal!"

Bang!
An almighty blast whirled tons of sand up into the air. A hot haze floated over the burgundy arch.

The shuffle of thousands of feet. The barely audible clicks of screenshots taken. One of them, taken by an unknown soldier, would centuries later end up as one of the National Arts Gallery's most prized possessions,

A Portal Jump to Eva 4 by an unknown artist.

Circa 3rd century of the rule of Laith the Two-Faced, the Era of the Fallen One.

Chapter Ten

K
arelia, Russia. A dense tract of intact forest along the White Sea coast.

Yr the Hobbler scrambled over the vast expanse of crusted snow. From time to time he dropped down on all fours, leaping in long strides. A straight trail of prints betrayed his wake, generously spotted with dark-red Gnoll blood. Not even Gray-Haired Arrkh whose spiteful eyes had long clouded over wouldn't be able to lose such an easy trail. And nothing could heal Yr the Hobbler, either. There was no antidote to the deathbed curse of a Drow Wizard being sacrificed to the Beast God.

He didn't even try to put his pursuers off his trail. Instead, he bolted straight ahead like a frightened rabbit, luring the chase away from the Home Hill. Performing this last duty to his clan.

Yr was growing weaker, his leaps shorter, scarlet froth foaming between his black lips. His Camo pursuers had been good. They'd sniffed out their lair with incredible precision. Twenty enormous Steel Bees dropped from behind the clouds at a respectful distance from the hill, their armored bellies disgorging the hateful humans.

Their respect was understandable. Three charred skeletons powdered with snow had clearly showed them the power of the tribe's shamans. Baked within the soft metal of their shells, their bodies had smelled tartly of the bees' unusual acrid blood. They had tasted good. Their fresh skulls dangling with black scraps of leftover flesh had added to the traditional stockade the Gnolls had erected around their new settlement. Mornings, happy birds would tap their beaks on the bones, trying to get to the frozen meat and disturbing the enemies' dead souls. The Gnolls' life was looking up, falling into its habitual course.

By the will of the Beast God, two pawfuls of moons ago the clan members began regaining their identities and their eternal memory. At the time, the clan's caves had been located within direct sight of the pointy-eared ones' city. In those days even the Gnoll King couldn't count on a long life; and as for the junior clan members, their deaths had become so frequent that their conscience had left their frames, turning the Gnolls into the legendary Rabid Dogs who habitually ripped warm flesh apart, receiving negligible experience and respawning over and over again, every time slightly stronger, every resurrection gifting the entire clan a few extra minutes of life.

But their two-legged enemies were just too numerous. Their hatred and laziness forced them to train their young by killing Yr's four-legged kinsmen. Wave after wave of death swept through their lair, sometimes flooding even the Throne Hall, momentarily deleting the Gnolls from the list of AlterWorld races.

Leaving their hill had been impossible: too many watchful eyes around, too many ill-wishers eager to call in reinforcements whenever the Gnolls' attempted to resist, break out or ambush their killers. Which was when the clan's shamans had decided to cast the Random Jump.

They had set up the Portal of Chaos with only two requirements: a life-sustaining environment and the absence of the two-legged ones in the vicinity of the jump. They just couldn't have added anything else to the already tongue-twisting ritual: the error margin would have been too large.

You should have heard the Chief Shaman swear when he stood buried up to his chest in snow, showering the stupid humans with all sorts of taboo words for having drilled thousands of wormholes in the reality's fragile structure. Its once well-organized fabric had rotted into a mire, turning the tried-and-tested method of a rebound jump into a trap. Instead of a soft relocation of the portal exit point, the overworked membrane had snapped, catapulting the refugees into another reality.

The world with a negative magic balance. The shamans had wailed; the King had gnashed his teeth as the planet's warped energy field began syphoning the new mana source. The wizards' stocks had dwindled into insignificance as all their artifacts and accumulators drained, leaving the clan with nothing but their personal skills and combat abilities.

Soon, however, the shamans had learned to cope with it by finding the right herbs and spell combinations in order to reach the strangely empty astral planes. They pressed their ethereal bodies to reality's many gaping holes, soaking up the whiffs of magic and gradually restoring their mana stocks, regaining their past power for a few brief hours.

The clan's rangers had found an excellent hill. The Gnoll workers got busy digging and trying to fell trees while the warriors started mopping up the area's meager population. A bear risen from his lair was enveloped in a glittering white aura, suggesting he must have been of a similar level. And still he couldn't have done a lot against a well-coordinated team of five hunters. The bear graced the clan with his tasty fresh meat and a teeth-baring skull mounted on one of the stockade poles.

Then the first humans had come. Two fugitives wearing identical robes with strange runes emblazoned on their backs,
Penitentiary 151A
. They pressed on blindly, ignoring the clan's boundary posts, until they trespassed — and faced trouble. The sight of three warriors coming out of the wood was enough to paralyze the hairless cowards. Only one of them pulled a piece of blackened metal from a chest sheath and tried to point it at the Gnolls. His greenish aura flashed an alarming yellow, prompting the warriors to preempt him.

A crossbow slapped. A throwing knife whizzed through the air. The human's tender backbone crunched between sharp teeth. The warriors growled happily as they gulped the fresh blood, their jaws tearing at the still-quivering warm meat. Easy hunt. Easier than killing a chicken.

Then one of them pricked up his fluffy ears and turned in the direction from where the fugitives had arrived, listening intently. His predator's hearing didn't deceive him: he could hear the half-forgotten sounds of the Ancient Tongue! The happy barking of a pack chasing their quarry!

Instinctively the group's leader raised his head and howled a command to end the hunt and return to the leader. The cheerful barking ceased, replaced by a confused yapping. After repeating the signal, the strange pack replied with a happy shrieking of creatures who had discovered the joy of True Servitude.

The legendary Younger Brothers ran into the blood-covered opening, long leashes dragging on the snow behind their slave collars. The awakened ancestral memory threw the dogs and the dog-heads into each other's embrace. The forest echoed with the excited screaming of puppies. The bloodied snow flew everywhere as these cousins many-times-removed growled in the Ancient Tongue, celebrating their get-together and sharing the news.

Which was exactly what six Camo humans saw a few minutes later. Breathless from the chase, they had forced their way through the thick fir trees and burst into the opening. No idea what they thought at the sight that greeted them, but their rapid bullet throwers rattled almost at once. Angry steel struggled in their hands, spitting fire and red-hot pieces of metal. Everyone had gotten his share.

The Younger Brothers fell silent, torn to pieces by lead and steel. The stupid Arrch span on the snow, having received a double dose of red-hot death due to his outrageous size. The young Grrych collapsed, sprawled, having swapped his brains for an equal dose of lead. The group's leader was the only one left standing.

This level-40 warrior with his decent Drow-made trophy armor whose shaman grandfather had cast a whole bunch of buffs on him every morning, rolled aside and headed for the enemy in a wide arc. After a split second of incessant rattling followed by the sparking of ricochets and the slurping sound of impacted flesh, the humans' orange auras gleamed blue. They hurriedly clattered their steel weapons, yanking at some handles as they tried to put their disintegrating weapons back together again.

A sword wafted through the air. The first enemy clutched at his severed face, screaming. The air groaned — then the steel sang as it snapped, hitting a Camo belly. Who would have thought that their dirty robes concealed expensive armor? The leader growled his indignation as he used his meticulously sharpened claws and snow-white fangs. A few heartbeats and five mauled bodies later, the gnoll froze, facing the last human. The man was so scared he didn't even try to die as a warrior, staring at the gnoll with hatred and whispering a hasty prayer to his god into a ritual black box he held to his mouth.

The coward didn't have an easy death. The Rotten Flesh spell is very painful, especially in a deformed world devoid of regeneration. Miraculously, even the smallest scratch on the prisoner's body hadn't even healed after sunset. The gnolls had suffered, too. The dead ones never respawned. And it took their leader two days and nights to heal his many wounds, restoring the chunks of flesh torn from his body.

Which was when the first Steel Bee had come. The shaman squinted at it for a long time before shaking his head in concern. The creature was in possession of the Eye of Heat. The shaman cast a succession of Blindness, the Heavy Eyelids and the Tired Hands — with no apparent damage to the flying snoop. But then, something as trivial as a freezing spell had immediately brought it down, putting the roaring monster to rest.

The next day, two more Steel Bees had arrived. Their death was much more ingenious this time. Even now you could still see bald patches in the forest spotted with molten metal.

But half a moon later, death had come from the sky. A whole Swarm of Bees had arrived, bearing hundreds of warriors in their wombs, and began to tighten their circle around the Hill. Once again the clan had to flee. They didn't have enough mana to cast a portal. They had to battle their way through.

That wasn't an honest battle. Dozens of all-seeing eyes watched them from up high, both in the sky and in the eternal void above it. They detected the Gnoll warriors at hundreds of paces, unmistakingly guiding the incompetent humans toward the clan's combat pack. Then came fire, and a loud rattle, and hot steel that left agonizing bodies squirming in the dirty snow.

And once even the dumbest amongst them had realized that no one was going to escape this mutilated forest alive, the clan's preservation instincts kicked in. The thinned-out ranks of the clan warriors descended upon the enemy and charged a high price for every foot of their advance. Barely a dozen pawfuls had made it to the first enemy lines. But there in close combat the clan defenders sang their triumphant Fang Song.

They broke the siege, decorating the white trees with the Camos' guts. The remaining warriors divided into two groups, attacking the enemy's flanks and widening the bottleneck for the clan's escape. Death and fire descended from the sky; the earth itself reared up as angry metal tore their perfect bodies apart. Yr had fought with the best of them; he hadn't shrunk behind his comrades' backs. But he was the one privileged to become the last survivor.

And now he himself had turned into the quarry, luring the furious pursuit away from where the Shield of Cold and the Living Mist concealed a hasty retreat, into the forest's safe depths, of the clan's reproductive nucleus: the guards, the shamans, the King and a couple of dozen elite females.

* * *

The raid gradually filtered through the portal, lining up in an alert defense circle. The air reeked of sulfur. Flakes of soot fell densely from the mulberry sky. A dozen volcanoes highlighted the horizon.

"Matches are not toys," one of the Vets commented thoughtfully.

Deep inside I agreed with him. Not the most cheerful of places.

I looked around, searching for my Hell Hound. There she was — as large as life, her nostrils flaring, her eyes glittering wetly. Never seen that before. Was she happy to be back home?

"Spark?" I called her softly. "Do you recognize it here?"

She shook her head. "No. Too close to the Highers' domains. Our caves are far from here. Only the strongest are able to live here. But still I think I can smell our big brothers..."

She was right there. According to the Koreans, they'd managed to mop up, together with the so-called cows, also quite a few Cerberuses... or is it Cerberi? It was true though that their levels were way above 300. My level-190 Hell Pooch had quite a bit of catching up to do. Even though she'd managed to put on quite an impressive bit of weight from all the generous loot our world had to offer, she wasn't quite a match for the local mobs yet. Never mind. Give them another year and three square meals of fresh flesh a day as opposed to one stale bone a week — and I might have my own hunting pack capable of running down Nagafen!

Although the Koreans had already forwarded us the logs of their infamous journey, my map was blurred gray, clouded with the "mist of war". The only marked area was the tiny spot taken by our raid. Judging by the confusion on the faces of the Korean staff officers, they didn't recognize the terrain, either. Problem. Apparently, the portal had a floating exit point.

While the raid officers were trying to make some sense out of the only map by overlaying it with transparent tracing-paper charts of previously explored areas, the Koreans' chief ranger pointed a confident finger to the east. "There!"

I looked at our own scout. Furrowing his brow, he nodded not so confidently.

I glanced at Spark. "You think you know where this Asmodeus lives?"

She sneezed in affirmation and pointed her nose at the horizon, outlining an area about 30 degrees wide. "There."

Oh well. All three seemed to agree on the direction. Excellent.

"Raid, fall in the ranks in marching order! Code orange! Set the course for eighty degrees west!"