Project Daily Grind (Mirror World Book #1) (30 page)

Would such a clan profit from my offer? You bet. How about me? Unlikely, regardless of whatever terms I managed to negotiate for myself. That’s provided I’d be allowed to negotiate at all. Who was I in their eyes, after all? I was exactly nothing: someone without a face nor clout or protection.

Now: Andrew “Pierrot” Petrov. He wasn’t as simple as everyone believed him to be, was he? Definitely not the nutty type, that’s for sure. Why, oh why had he started all this? He must have known how I’d feel once I opened the apps. I just refused to believe he’d done all this simply to piss off the game developers. And even so, how could I possibly hurt them? They don’t even seem to notice me. They had their hands full with other things.

What did Pierrot gain from my selling myself into slavery? This scenario would have brought all his efforts back to zero. And Pierrot sought profit first and foremost, didn’t he? There. I’d figured him out. Only how was he going to pull it off?

Difficult concept. The four NPCs he’d so helpfully planted in my way—this had to be the clue. Why not just say so? Was he wary of the logs? What was his plan? Judging by the maps he’d provided me with, I had only one place to go. No-Man’s Lands.

Chapter Thirty

T
he morning of my seventh day met me with the already habitually sunny weather, the chirping of birds and the buzz of an awakening city. My day off. However desperate I was to work daily, Dmitry had banned me from it. Otherwise, he’d said, there was no chance of me lasting the whole month. I’d have to log out before completing my contract.

Only a moment ago, the system had showered me with thirty more Reputation points. That made 680 pt. in total. A few more days, and I’d get access to the Loans page. And then we’d see what the bank had to offer me.

I had a few things on my agenda for the day. Last night I had finally completed the fifth and last part of this Replicator thing. So this evening I could finally put the beast together. I’d spend the morning doing my usual quest runs, after which I hoped to check out the Woods of Lirtia.

I made myself presentable and walked downstairs into the lounge. Oh. It was packed solid. I carefully threaded my way through the crowd into the inn’s lounge. It was even worse. The variety of players was astounding: knights in shining armor, wizards in their navy attire, archers, swordsmen and quite a few high-level Grinders. Commotion and happy guffawing filled the room. Serving girls in canary dresses fluttered amid the tables that groaned with food and liquor. Was that what they called breakfast here? I had a funny feeling I must have missed something.

Ronald was beaming by the counter. No wonder, considering he was going to make a month’s profit in one morning.

Noticing me, he flashed me a smile. “Sir Olgerd! What would you like? Your usual?”

I smiled back. “Yes, please. And if you don’t mind telling me... What’s going on here?”

He seemed sincerely surprised. “You don’t know?”

I shrugged. “Too much work.”

Ronald nodded his understanding as he handed two frothy beer mugs to a couple of bearded dwarves. “Today the portal to the Barren Plateau finally opens.”

I looked around me. “Do you want to say that all these people are heading there?”

Ronald laughed heartily. “In your dreams!
These people
had better keep out of there. The Barren Plateau is a location for real warriors.”

A dwarf sitting next to me sniggered. “You don’t mean you’ve never heard of mass PvPs?”

I shook my head.

“I see,” the dwarf said. “You’re one of those who’re too busy to peek out of their mines and see what’s going on in the world.”

“Exactly,” I chuckled. “I can see you’re nearly finished with your beer. Mind if I call it my round?”

“No, I don’t!” he happily slammed his hand on the table. A beer mug overflowing with golden liquid materialized in front of him.

I focused on his name tag. The dwarf went by name of Smith.

“The portal to the Barren Plateau opens once every six months,” he began explaining. “This is the ancient battlefield of Light and Dark clans. The two strongest armies in Mirror World. This is some PvP, man, I tell you. Only top level fighters. Players below level 200 don’t need to bother. The stakes are too high.”

“So it’s sort of a show,” I mumbled.

“Exactly,” Smith agreed. “We may not have football or the Olympics but we do have our share of good shows. The Barren Plateau PvP is one of them. You see now why it’s so busy? The live stream will start in two hours. You can watch it here in Mellenville. The recording will be available in a few hours.”

“Where can you watch it?” I asked.

“You can either watch it on the big screen in the city center. Or you can download the Glasshouses app and watch it anywhere. Personally, I’m staying here. Ronald will switch on the screens in a minute. This time there’s only three of our clans participating, as opposed to four Dark ones. Last time it was the other way round.”

‘Why?”

“It’s randomized. Ten clans had submitted applications but the system only chose three of them. Still, the total number of players is the same on both sides. So technically, it’s fair.”

“How many participants?”

“Five hundred from each side. If you haven’t yet seen a mass PvP—man, you ain’t seen nothing yet! Hollywood, eat your heart out. But our guys won’t have it easy this time. The Steel Shirts are out. The Gold Guild and the Untouchables are both strong and experienced, but the Dead Clan has never been engaged in anything of this caliber before. And all the four Dark clans are top ones, just to please. There’s no way our guys can win.”

“Don’t speak too soon!” a ginger-bearded dwarf next to him butted in. According to his tag, his name was Pete. “I’m sure they’ll put up a good fight. The Dead Clan has grown a lot. They’ve got lots of excellent warriors now.”

Smith grunted. “I wish! Had the Steel Shirts been with them, they might have prolonged the agony. But they’re not there...”

The room hummed its approval. I looked around. The whole inn was listening in on our conversation. I wasn’t surprised. Smith the dwarf had this soap-box kind of voice.

“You wanna bet?” the ginger-bearded Pete squeaked.

Smith guffawed. “Right! You offered it, not me! What’s your bet?”

The room exploded in an uproar,

“Me too!”

“And me!”

“I’m betting!”

“Put me down too!”

The noise was such you’d think you were in a Chinese market. Ronald didn’t miss a trick, either. “Gentlemen, please! As the landlord, let me remind you that my duty is to guarantee everything that carries on is within the law! For the paltry one percent of the winnings!”

“Okay! Take our bets!” the crowd shouted.

I suppressed a smile. Trust the admins to get their pound of flesh.

Ronald stood up tall, arms akimbo. “So what are we betting on?”

A burly Horrud answered for everyone, “Victory!”

“I bet a hundred gold that our guys will make a quick job of the Darkies!” the ginger-bearded Pete offered.

The room hummed its disagreement. Someone called him a crazy; another voice sneered, suggesting he gave the money to the poor instead.

“I bet a hundred that this time the Darkies will give us a good drubbing,” Smith said firmly.

The room cheered its agreement. Bets started pouring in.

They offered me to join in, so I bet twenty gold on the Lighties. I’d always done my best to avoid such situations so this was the first bet in my entire life. I might have said no but then I wasn’t really losing anything. I bet on the Lighties simply because they were “our guys”. The support-the-good-guys mentality must have kicked in too. Besides, the Dead Clan was in it as well—and my Ennan was almost one of them.

Strangely enough, many of those present bet on the Lighties too, so there wasn’t much disparity.

They brought me my breakfast which I took to a far corner of the room. The two hours that followed were worth it. You should never underestimate the informational value of large gatherings. Mainly such information was worth jack shit but it was still worth digging through for an occasional glitter of gold.

As an example, a snippet of conversation between two Alves at a nearby table explained to me the mystery behind the players’ eagerness to do Reputation quests. They didn’t say it expressly, of course, apparently for fear of disclosing the secret, but I got the general idea. Mellenville’s treasury. That was every player’s wet dream. The more Reputation points you had, the more items you could buy there. I didn’t have access to it yet but once I raised my Reputation to 2000, I fully intended to check it out.

I’d also found out that apparently Dmitry had been mistaken about in-game blogs and forums. There were quite a few around but you had to look for them. They also probably charged for access. Once I logged out, I might look into that too.

The two hours had gone quickly. I was finishing my second cup of coffee when Ronald activated a wide screen hanging over the bar. For a split second, it felt as if I was back in the real world, sitting in some British pub about to watch a local game.

The audience cheered. The setting up of the screen was accompanied by their cheeky banter about the fate of ginger Pete’s savings.

The portal would open in ten minutes. I was toying with the idea of going back upstairs to watch the battle in the quiet of my room but reconsidered. I didn’t want to strip myself of the pleasure of feeling the intense nature of the crowd’s emotions.

“It’s starting!”

“Shut up, everybody! It’s starting!”

“The portal’s opening!”

The room calmed down somewhat. A picture of the Barren Plateau filled the screen. I immediately thought of Dasht-e-Kavir, the great salt desert in central Iran. It felt as if the game designers had borrowed some of its grandiose landscapes.

Almost simultaneously, the Dark and Light players poured out of the portals. The room dissolved in cheers.

“They’re all mixed up!” someone shouted.

“Why did they do that?” others voiced their disappointment.

No one could understand anything. As far as I could make out, the forces of Light had decided to march out as one army. The uniform ranks of heavy footmen paraded first, closely followed by swordsmen. The wizards and archers kept slightly behind.

The Dark clans, however, had chosen to march out separately each under their own colors. They looked the same, actually: humans, Rhogghs, gnomes and Alves. The only difference was that they supported the so-called Powers of the Dark.

“The Lighties are finished!” Smith guffawed. “They shouldn’t have done it! The Darks will make quick work of them!”

I glanced at Pete. He bit his lip in disappointment. His eyes betrayed his dismay. Personally, I couldn’t understand what Smith was so happy about. Never mind. Let’s see how it was all going to end.

The battle began without warning. The Dark ones charged. Almost immediately it became clear that the Light ones were going to deploy defensively. The first arrows and spells zapped through the air. Wow. I wouldn’t want to be the one stuck in that mess. Even though admittedly the show was top rate.

The Darks split up. The Lords of Chaos and the Dark Legionnaires left their positions and moved out to the flanks. The Independent Clan and the Caste kept advancing toward the center of the Light ranks. The Darks’ strategy was rather clear: first to knock their wizards and archers out of action and then close in on the heavy footmen.

A sigh of surprise ran across the inn. Instead of trying to stop the enemy’s flanking them, the Light ones formed a square and ensconced all their wizards and archers in the middle. Had the terrain of the Plateau been more restrictive—had it had some natural obstacles like hills, groves, or little rivers—the generals of Light might have chosen a different tactic. But seeing as it was lifeless and flat as a pancake, such a step was in my eyes probably the best one.

No one seemed to share my view. The audience raged, calling the Light generals all sorts of unflattering names. If you listened to the room, one had to be an idiot to allow the enemy to surround you so stupidly.

Couldn’t they see that this breakthrough had cost both the Lords of Chaos and the Dark Legionnaires an incredible amount of energy? They’d performed their stunt while being showered with arrows and spells while the main forces of Light just stood there behind the safety of their magic shields.

Finally, the Darks closed in. This signaled the start of the melee. The heavy footmen joined in the battle. The ranks of Light quivered under the pressure from the Caste and the Independent Clan. It looked as if they were going to break any minute now.

Some of the more faint-hearted supporters were already leaving the room, spitting in disgust and waving disappointed hands at the screen. As in,
there’s nothing left to do here, we might just as well kiss our money goodbye
. Those who’d bet on the Darks were rubbing their hands.

I shrugged. Strange people. Couldn’t they see that this breakthrough was the beginning of the Dark ones’ agony? Even I, a humble interpreter-turned-mine digger, could see that the Darks had had it.

A few minutes later, the inevitable happened. The Lights counterattacked.

The swordsmen who’d been hovering behind the heavy footmen’s backs now infiltrated the formations of the Caste and the Independent Clan. Dying, they made sure they took a few archers and especially wizards along. The giant red-skinned Narkh assassins brandished their curved sabers in their four arms, eyes furious, froth dripping from their fangs. This kamikaze strike on the part of the Light swordsmen had stripped the enemy’s heavy footmen of their magic backup. That was basically it. The colors of the Independent Clan turned gray, followed by those of the Caste.

I heaved a sigh of relief and eased back in my chair. Now the defeat of the Lords of Chaos and the Dark Legionnaires was only a question of time. My heart was pounding as if I too were in the thick of the fight.

The top-level Dark players lasted the longest. They huddled together, clumsily trying to deflect the blows. But after some time they fell too.

Smith was a sorry sight. He stared at the screen in disbelief, watching the winners celebrate their triumph.