Inferno (Play to Live: Book # 4) (30 page)

It was a good job I hadn't left it till later and had already farmed about fifteen Soul Stones. I summoned a pet: a Zombie Rogue Mutant, level 155. Will do. Now —
Splitting
!

The tiles shattered underfoot. Never mind we were on the second floor. Everybody shrank back as thirteen rather stinky zombies bared their razor-sharp teeth, squinting with their hungry eyes.

Bleeeep
, that's all you'd be able to hear had we activated parental control.

"More special priestly magic?" Widowmaker asked matter-of-factly.

Any other day I'd have played along with his joke but now time was of the essence. I had only a couple of minutes left till the deadline. How on earth did this scumbag keep up with such a tight schedule? He too had to prepare, even if only to take screenshots and write letters.

"Come on, cast whatever buffs you have left over the zombies! Only don't bless them, blessings actually debuff the undead."

"As if we don't know," one of the enchanters grumbled, choking on an elixir which spread the powerful odor of cinnamon around him. "Don't teach your granny to suck eggs, Sir. Concentrate on your own job."

That was right. I had yet to learn a leader's skill, to give orders and control their execution without looking into the actual process of doing it or, God forbid, trying to do everything yourself.

Skidding around the corners, Gimmick rushed in. Trying to catch his breath, he reached into his bag, producing a couple of hefty cylinders the size of a howitzer round. Their fat steel sides were covered in runic writings. I could see dark access holes and the shimmer of power crystals.

"Whew! Thought I wouldn't make it. Take 'em, Sir. These are experimental prototypes. You can test them at the same time. Just make sure you take plenty of screenshots."

"How about a video? What the hell is this?"

"This is my latest project. A stationary turret. Has the same stats as a level-200 crossbowman and the same life as a good tank."

"Excellent. Where's the catch?"

Gimmick took offense. "What catch are you talking about? This is a revolution in nanotechnology!"

"You have ten seconds, so quit blabbing."

He deflated. "It's the price. Only millionaires can afford a one-off artifact worth nine grand. Once it's loaded, it can't be deactivated. You can reload it, though."

"Got it! Skip the details for now. How d'you turn it on?"

"Easy. You drop it to the ground and focus on it, then click Activate in the drop-down menu. It'll go off automatically in two and a half seconds. I loaded the clips with alternating armor-piercing and poisoned bolts. The last five are tracers."

"Crossbow tracers, oh great! Never mind."

I grabbed the cylinders, swearing through clenched teeth. Another three hundred pounds.

The armament platoon commander butted in, "Are you taking the golem, Sir? You can port it through a personal portal as a mount."

I shook my head. "I don't have enough golem driving skills to drive a heavy one. Or even a medium one. I'd rather summon Hummungus to serve as a ranger. Talking about which!"

I fumbled through all the numerous strings around my neck, found the one I needed and blew the whistle, summoning the bear. He'd been missing me, trying to lick my face with his warm wet tongue but this wasn't the right time for any show of affection. I gently nudged his heavy head out of the way. "Enough, enough! I'm happy to see you too!"

"Forty seconds," Dennis the Analyst kept the situation under control.

One of the alchemists shoved me a trayful of colorful vials. I grabbed them one by one, pulling the stoppers out with my teeth, and choked on their contents in such a hurry that I couldn't even taste them. Magic buffs started flashing around me: regeneration, resistance to magic, boosts to basic characteristics, more hits and armor.

It looked eerily like something from the Middle Ages when several villages had to work their butts off to equip one knight. Here, too, the cost of my gear and all the boosts amounted to an indecent sum of money.

I diverted the Altar mana flow to myself. My body began to shake as if with an adrenaline rush.

"Five seconds!"

At the last moment, the Fallen One stepped out of a portal next to me, giving me an appraising look and a nod of approval. His hard hand momentarily touched my forehead, enveloping my entire body in a gray aura.

I squinted my eyes in contentment: the Fallen One had immediately detected my weakest spot and generously added 300 points to Strength and Agility each. Now we were cooking!

I pulled the scroll out of the inventory and broke the seal. "Step aside, everyone!"

Magic swirled around, forming a vortex around the scroll's owner and any of his property, in this case Hummungus and the pets. The Fallen One peered intently at the formula, trying to work out the portal's exit point.

My friends raised their hands in the air, wishing me luck. I could hear Durin's anxious voice, "Bring our gold back, Sir! The treasury is empty!"

The advanced custom-coordinates spell worked much slower than a standard portal, so I had time to produce the Staff of Hatred from behind my back. Still, I wisely kept its adamant point out of sight.

Jump!

My mind habitually accelerated. Slowly I looked about the confined space around me, grinding my teeth with hatred and fury. The adamant dagger clicked open; I heard the excited mumbling of the soul imprisoned in the staff and the ominous sound of dozens of unsheathing swords.

My thirteen pets sprang up next to me, crowding the place out.

"Rovers, attack!" I croaked as I shattered the crystal wall using the Fallen One's seal as a knuckle duster.

Chapter Sixteen

T
avor, his face transfigured by hatred, kept prizing at a narrow crack in the sarcophagus with his dagger that oozed green venom. The predatorial blade struggled to enter the divine flesh. But its owner's patience and malevolence had already allowed him to shred the giant's knee, baring the god's hacked-about joint and the taut mithril muscles.

Chronos was apparently discomforted by it. He groaned softly, his heart shuddering, accelerating time a hundredfold within the vault. Which was exactly what Tavor needed. He'd noticed this useful effect a long time ago as he was experimenting with the helpless god. Now he could make the time flow at whatever speed he wanted — and have fun in the process!

Tavor grinned, growling just like an animal. His concubines gulped, shrinking back. They knew their master's nature well enough.

An especially fortunate poke of the dagger chipped the divine bone. Chronos' eyelids quivered, noticeably accelerating the flow of time — possibly outrunning actual real-world time. Tavor pulled the dagger out of the crack.

"That's not good. This way we'll miss our guest. Have some rest now. Give yourself a heal. I can see the holes from my last experiments are still there. How was I supposed to know that pouring molten mithril into your old wounds would make you so sickly? Some god you are!"

The First Temple kidnapper was sitting behind his back, groping thoughtfully one of the concubines while waiting for his employer to close his contract. Snatching the old lady hadn't been his objective, oh no. She was only a means of luring the First Priest into the trap in order to hand him over to this demented customer of his. Having said that, he had no doubt of Tavor's perfect sanity, as well as of a complete absence of his social and moral boundaries.

The girl's tits felt great. He shouldn't have avoided all those little virtual pleasures. Once he was back home, he really needed to finally take his friends at their word and visit one of the Padishah's best harems. They kept telling him stuff about those three miniature concubines — something totally out of this world, they'd assured him. What was it they said? "A Ukrainian, a Jap and a Thai is the best combination there is!" He might try and see for himself.

Tavor turned just in time to notice the growing glow of a portal within an enormous crystal cube as solid as tank armor.

"Gotcha!" he guffawed, delirious.

He'd paid the dwarves some crazy money for five hundred square feet of multilayered reinforced crystal. But now this transparent cage was capable of containing a rabid dragon, provided someone managed to pack him in there. Normally, all of AlterWorld's zoos and bestiaries used regular power fields to restrain their menageries: a considerably cheaper solution even if it did distort the picture a little.

Besides, Tavor's sophisticated tastes didn't allow him to be content with a blurred soap-bubble quality view. The likes of him buy vintage vinyls for three hundred dollars apiece, assured that they provide a better sound experience. He was too spoiled to deny himself anything, too used to having the best of it all, no matter what price.

The wretched priest must have enjoyed the deafening pop of the opening portal inside the sealed cube. The glow of magic died away. A grin froze on Tavor's face. Had they really managed to squeeze a dragon into a personal portal?

The shatterproof crystal groaned, quivering under the pressure of all the bodies forcing it apart. A mithril-gauntleted fist flashed through the air. The transparent cage exploded into a shower of shards.

Immediately the vault grew crowded. On top of his twenty guards, the annoying harem and the golems busy switching to assault mode, the room now held a dozen zombies, an enormous angry bear and his own arch enemy. How had he done it? How? How on earth had he managed to bring along all these NPCs?

Habitually Tavor reached into his heart, picking up a tiny fragment of Chaos. Time obeyed, compacting, giving him the chance to find the optimal response to this change in his original plan.

Nothing disastrous, but it did give his enemy an infinitesimal chance. And Tavor wasn't going to offer him even a shadow of hope. His eyes fluttered, scanning the castle interface menus. His still-alive daddy had done a great job building this exceptional hideout on top of a powerful ancient temple.

He pushed the emergency slider from the orange sector deep into the red. The portcullis screeched close; numerous doors slammed shut; the hard-working crafters left their workshops, taking their places on the castle walls; tar bubbled in cauldrons as hundreds of hands hurried to pass over extra supplies of arrows and crossbow bolts up to the towers. The corridors echoed with the stomping of thousands of feet: the few of his own perma followers, the NPCs and the hired staff. The castle seethed with activity, building up its defenses over mere minutes.

Tavor entered the hire interface, exhausting it of whatever points he had left. An extra hundred fighters wouldn't hurt; and with any luck some of them would go perma provided he still had enough energy to bestow on them. He'd only recently learned to use this part of his spark of Chaos, rightfully proud of his talent. This sacred rite was beyond the capabilities of for all these losers inhabiting AlterWorld.

Everything seemed to be under control. He sent an order to two companies of his personal guards to come down to the tomb ASAP. Glory be to Chaos, the disturbed god hadn't yet retired to his usual slumber. Encapsulated in space, the tomb's time flow was still only about double or triple that of real time. The reinforcements would only take a few minutes to arrive.

Tavor blinked, closing the service interface and raising his eyes to his adversary. He didn't like how it had started. Apparently, the hateful Laith too was capable of accelerating time so now he was forging his way through the solidified air toward his mother still hanging on the wall. Strangely enough, three level-200 guards in his way didn't seem to bother him. The First Priest had redirected his zombies' objectives to cover his back and assault the bulk of the guards.

Slowly Tavor rose to his feet and cricked his neck a couple of times, stretching it. His joints cracked, his face relaxing into a promising grin. Time for war!

* * *

Within the first few beats of the confrontation my mind habitually went into acceleration mode. Only this time this traditionally combat skill would serve a different purpose. I needed this precious headstart to collect and process all the information I still could.

With all the grace of a virtual piano player I ran my hands over the pre-prepared macros taking screenshots, scanning coordinates, PMing and sending chat messages, waving hands at the Fallen One and configuring the perimeter of zombie guards while pulling the heavy turrets out of my bag. Losing precious microseconds on the lagging DIY interface, I activated Gimmick's creations. Now I would for sure find out whether he was our mole — if these cylinders exploded at my feet, resetting me back to zero, or if they covered me with some kind of stasis field where I'd hang immobilized like a fly in a cobweb.

They didn't. Gimmick's machines worked as clockwork, the turrets opening and letting out twin crossbows glittering with Crystals of Power.

Unwilling to waste my precious Holy points, I removed acceleration and exposed my back to the enemy, rushing toward my chained-up mom, the #1 objective of this opportunistic foray.

I established the enemy forces at about twenty level-200 NPCs, two golems of a rather unusual guild — medium rather than heavy ones — plus Tavor himself. God knows when and how he'd managed to make level 300. Then again, with all his money and slaves he might be nearing level 700 like that Chinese Emperor whatever his name was.

The raid calculator dumbly summed up both sides' levels and gear and blinked its panicky red light, promising to set us back to zero within 98 seconds. I shouldn't have listened to Dennis who'd insisted I install this panic monger. This dumb piece of software had no idea of the power of true fury multiplied by unadulterated hatred.

The first of the guards had tactfully stepped back and lowered his shield invitingly, exposing his vulnerable throat for a potential crit. His partners, armed with nets and short swords, stepped aside, flanking me. They did it by the book! Weren't they supposed to be just some dumb-ass NPCs? How come they worked better in a team than even the Gladiators clan who'd won this year's Arena prize?

Using the advantage of the length of my weapon, I lunged toward the one to my left, ripping him open from groin to chin with the tip of my adamant blade. A crit! Paralyzation! Bleeding! Awe-inspiring damage numbers flashed above his head, devouring his hits at a frightening speed. This one wasn't fighting anyone anymore.

Formally, my level was lower than those of the guards. But I was so pumped up with all the buffs, elixirs and gods' blessings, armed with an artifact weapon that made deities themselves recoil in fear, that in individual combat I stood a head above most opponents.

I ducked, avoiding a net thrown over my head. It glowed a sickly green. It probably wouldn't have immobilized me completely, but it would have surely worked as a powerful debuff, considerably decreasing my agility and attack rate.

I swung to my right in a wide scything gesture, slicing through my opponent's support leg. A crit! A prone target! Double crit! The second one's finished.

The expression in my mother's eyes, scared and wide open, hindered my sanity by shooting extra adrenaline into my brain. I hit the last guard with an artless jab, punching through his raised shield and smashing his face into his skull. Something crunched in my hand, and it definitely wasn't the guard's head. Pain shot up my arm, reminding me that everything had its price. My heart missed a beat. God forbid that I ended up with only one working hand at a moment like this! But no, my arm was still working, even though every hand movement made my face twitch.

The zombies growled behind my back. It sounded like a group of butchers working hard at the slaughterhouse, chopping up the dead flesh with dozens of swords. No idea how the enemy was faring but my zombies kept popping the clogs one after another, their life bars expiring at a frightening speed.

I hacked through the rather symbolic fetters that pinned my mom to the wall, preventing her use of magic. I had no idea of her mana levels, so I just shoved a basic portal scroll into her hands, yelling into her face to suppress any potential questions or disobedience,

"Port out,
now
!"

I swung round, prepared to defend this tiny corner with tooth and nail, holding it for the six seconds necessary to cast the portal.

Actually, things weren't that bad. The turrets kept firing, discouraging the more brazen enemies, ejecting the empty clips while helpfully reporting the ammo supplies down 15%.

Hummungus was still alive thanks to all his fat buffs, busy dishing out the dirt but losing hits rapidly. I called the overzealous teddy off. He needed a break and a chance for rapid regen to work.

By then, there were only five zombies left and it didn't look as if they had more than a few heartbeats left in them. I took a few steps forward, gaining some extra space for a maneuver and leaving behind the turrets chattering like sewing machines. Dammit! I'd spoken too soon. The smoking bowstring snapped in one of the turrets; then a bolt became jammed in the other. Now both were firing at half power.

Shit, where was the Fallen One? Why were communications down?

My practiced eye singled out a non-combatant motion as a human figure elbowed its way through the enemy line into a far corner, receiving angry shoves from the annoyed fighters. This was our kidnapper! Long time no see!

Hatred surged through me. "Where do you think you're going, dirtbag? You're not getting there, wherever it is! You're ours now — you're not leaving,
ever
!"

I poured all my ire into the last word, emptying my reserve of Holy points and breaking a jar of liquid nitrogen in my chest. I hoped I wouldn't faint, my concern mixed with the glee of someone who'd just done the dirty on his enemy. The kidnapper-gone-perma must have sensed something too as he kept opening and closing his mouth, his hands slapping the virtual keyboard hitting the emergency logout button. Finally he raised his head and stared at me, his eyes popping with fear, then squealed like a fishwife.

Tavor went for me. Hearing the desperate screams, he cast a quick glance behind his back, grasped the situation and laughed heartily, giving me the thumbs-up. He was laughing! This was the kind of laugh that Nazi firing squads laughed while throwing babies in the air and impaling them on their bayonets — an ancient form of entertainment first introduced by the Vikings.

Finally the portal popped open behind my back, signaling that my rescue mission was over and it was time to think how to get my own ass outta here.

Again I tried to contact the Fallen One. The line was dead. How about Asmodeus? The ring he'd given me was inactive, apparently not sensing the presence of the summoned creature. Shit, there's no coverage here.

"Get him!" Tavor snapped. A wave of attackers flooded over me.

I growled, buried under their bodies, surprised that their swords weren't yet making mincemeat out of me, the pain stripping my mind of any critical ability.

Then I shuddered, realizing that he wanted me alive. My photographic memory offered a number of details I hadn't noticed earlier: the butcher's hook in the ceiling, the chains and shackles heaped in a corner, torture tools laid out on a rusty medical cart that some idiot had carefully covered with a washed-out cloth. Someone had done a fine job of the torture chamber's interior design. Could Ivan the Terrible be here too?