The Duty (Play to Live: Book # 3) (28 page)

In other words, not only would it give me an additional 3000 hits: any potential 50% drop in health would also halve any incoming damage, further halving it again whenever my life dropped dangerously close to zero.

That's the true meaning of gear for you! I wondered if ancient legends would soon become a reality—when one hero would be able to stop an entire army or single-handedly slay dragons. The secret to it was simple: a couple dozen artifacts. They were not easy to come by: each uncategorized boss normally only dropped one or two—that's considering the waiting list was hundreds of takers per item!

The raiders seemed to have calmed down a bit and were now indulging in comparative phallometry competing for prizes, as each praised his own bravery, modestly overlooking any mistakes. In the meantime, I turned my attention back to the remaining eggs. There were three of them, about 450 pounds each. I could always use them, no doubt about that. This was a cross between a retractable treasury vault complete with a built-in watchman and a sabotage device of unbelievable destructive force.

I summoned the chief dwarf mule. "Burly, I want you to keep these for me. Just be careful how you handle them!"

"Absolutely, Sir! We understand these things, don't we? Actually, eh-"

"Actually what?" I encouraged him.

The dwarf looked rather embarrassed, scratching the end of his nose as if hinting at some sensitive financial matter. "We don't lay claim to any loot. That's what the rules say. Our job is just in and out, load and unload-"

"And? Just spit it out!"

"All I want to say, Sir, is that if these three eggs are all you need..."

Aha. The dwarves must have stumbled across another hatch. They would never dare to just pocket it—that would mean a total loss of reputation for hundreds of years. But parting with it was too much for them.

"How much do you want?"

"A ten grand bonus."

I winced. On one hand, I was supposed to be the loot's sole owner. On the other, if I didn't motivate the dwarves properly, the bulk of the eggs would remain buried in the sand. "Deal."

He offered me the scoop he called a hand. Gingerly I laid my fingers in it, and Burly clenched them, trapping me hard. "Each!"

I knew it! I looked him over, taking in this caricature of a rugby player. I made a show of lip-smacking and smiled. "Deal."

The dwarf grinned. "You won't regret it, Sir. We'll go through every dune with a toothbrush. Paleontologists will weep in envy!"

Three hours later the mercs, hoarse from bargaining, were already fast asleep by the campfires. Widowmaker was checking the sentry posts, lovingly stroking an artifact sword he'd won in a heated discussion. I was catching a few Zs inside the behemoth skeleton when a tired Burly came looking for me.

"Whew! We've sieved every grain of sand through a tea strainer. No more nests within fifteen hundred feet, that I can guarantee."

I yawned, stretched, then covered an enormous boulder half-buried in the sand with my cloak and sat on it. "What's the outcome?"

"Seven eggs of an Ancient Basilisk and two of the Wild one. No idea what those are but they are half as big again. That merits a pay hike."

"Tell that to the judge. A certificate of merit is all it merits."

I nearly wept parting with seventy grand, even though the loot was well worth it. I fully intended to do a bit of haggling over the amount of their reward when the dwarf's face froze, his eyes wide open, glinting with greed. "You can keep it. I have something totally off the scale to offer."

"Come on, then, spill it!"

He grinned victoriously in anticipation of delivering this incredible news. "The Egg of the Basilisk King! The size of, er," he tilted his head sideways, squinting, "about ten feet in diameter. Must weigh in at about two tons. Are you interested?"

My jaw dropped in amazement.
Basilisk
means
king
in Greek. That was the pun to end all puns! So the dwarves had unearthed the King of Kings. Ten feet in diameter! What the hell was gonna hatch from it? "How much?" my voice broke.

In his face I could see the parable of conscience battling with greed.

"We're not in a Turkish brothel to go haggling," I reminded him just in case. "It's a bonus we're talking here, not a sale."

He cringed but nodded. "A hundred."

"You don't want much, do you? Twenty."

The head of the mules stood up, resentful. "Ninety!"

"That's over 200 pounds of gold, are you nuts? Thirty."

With an indignant wave of his hand, the dwarf swung round and headed for the exit. Not hearing me try to stop him, he stopped himself. "Fifty!"

In the end, we shook on forty grand. I rubbed my hands in anticipation. "So where is it, show me!"

I noticed a spiteful albeit slightly guilty glint in his eyes. He pointed his finger between my legs. "There!"

And, taking in my grave stare, hurried to add, "I mean it! You're sitting on it!"

I sprung to my feet and swung round, pointing the cursor at the boulder.

The Basilisk's Royal Clutch.

The number of eggs may not exceed 1

Special condition: there can only be one King in the World.

My inner greedy pig turned green, rapidly mutating into a toad. I gulped. This was
Kuzka's mother
[iii]
incarnate, as large as life and twice as ugly. "Will it fit into your inventory?"

"With a bit of a push and a shove, why not," Burly nodded. "I'll empty my bag now, grab a couple of strength buffs and polish it off with some elixirs from our emergency supply. They're on you, Sir, no offence. And don't forget to transfer us the hundred and thirty grand bonus: my boys are getting a bit impatient. They want to be sure it wasn't for nothing they'd slogged through every dune in the area with a fine-toothed comb."

I nodded absent-mindedly, still dumbfounded by the immensity of our discovery. How was I supposed to estimate the size of this future monster?

Should I go by its dimensions? In which case, the Royal egg was three times the size of the Ancient one. Or should I judge it by its weight? It would make it ten times bigger! Or should I measure its volume? Here I faltered: instead of looking for a suitable formula, my mind was playing with all the possible uses of this mega weapon. Could the King of Kings destroy an entire city? What if I let him loose in the middle of the City of Light?

These days NPC guards' levels were already lagging behind those of the top players. The Admins kept coming up with lame excuses, apparently not in a hurry to install the eagerly-awaited new patch that was supposed to address the problem by increasing the guards' muscle. If it continued like this, the biggest of the more militant clans might soon start taking over entire cities whose dwellers would be forced to stand guard on their own city walls. We seemed to be re-entering the Middle Ages...

The following night was rather restless. All real-life players had gone offline, back to their warm softly-lit kitchens while permas stood guard, protecting both themselves and the real-life players' login point.

On one hand, nothing prevented us from setting up another portal and spending the night behind the thick walls of the Guild Hall. But admittedly it would look weird. Imagine a group of prospectors on a hike across the Ural Mountains who take a chopper every evening back to their comfortable hotel beds, then fly back to the field in the morning. The costs and the sheer "logic" of it are on a par with our situation.

I did suggest it to Widowmaker, though. He shook his head. "All it'll do it'll derail the entire raid. The players will wander off in every which way and it'll be our job to drag them out of taverns and cathouses in the early hours. To say nothing of the complete confidentiality breach. You don't need to cater to their every whim. Their discipline is questionable at the best of times. Most of them are long-term permas who insist on playing the tough forgetting they left the comfort of their FIVR capsules quite a while ago."

Surprisingly, the night didn't offer any surprises. Okay, so Shui Fong could have had enough on their plate to keep them at home licking their wounds, and as for the Maoists, they were probably too busy celebrating their good fortune, trying hard to behave all cute and cuddly. But what about the remaining ten million Chinese players? Granted, most of them couldn't give a damn about us and still we'd stepped on quite a few toes in this crowded Asian shop, potentially affecting the interests of dozens of unknown parties so even the Fallen One wouldn't be able to tell where and when it might all backfire.

Predictably, breaking up camp took us quite a while. By the time we'd drunk our morning coffees, waited for the late players and chosen new ones to replace them with, a group of five brutal orcs came over to the fire. Their leader, gray-haired and covered in scars, was playing with an enormous pole axe that must have weighed a good hundred pounds easy. Under his other arm he was clutching something that looked like a solidified psychedelically colored bubble.

He stopped in front of me and, acting like a circus magician, rolled the object into his calloused hand. "Here," he said by way of explanation.

I peered at the item.

A Petrified Egg of a Rainbow Familiar

I nodded. "Cool. So what?"

The warrior cast a helpless glance back at his buddies, then turned back to me. "Could you hatch it for us, Sir?"

I chuckled. The cat was out of the bag.

With a sigh, I pushed down on my knees and rose. "This is unique priestly magic!" I announced just in case, raising a meaningful finger.

The merc shrugged. "Whatever. This critter isn't in the Wiki which means it's unique too, which also means we get double rare loot."

He must have read the hesitation on my face as he upped the ante, "It's not as if we don't understand, Sir! You have the
droit de seigneur
, it's sacred! You do the choosing and you take what you want! It won't take long, anyway. Look how small it is! We'll just go like this," the sun glistened on his axe as he swung it through the air in an opalescent semicircle, "and that'll be the end of our little chick!"

"Very well, then. Just step aside, will you? Ready? Off we go."

Dong!
The egg shell rent apart into seven petals as the air rippled with the tolling of bells. Distorting everything around, the sound ripple slowed down, freezing time and submerging us into a thick jelly. A tiny Rainbow Dragon was sitting on the orc's wide palm; the mercs' swords were slowly landing on it.

Smoothly the Dragon turned its spiky head, locking the frozen warrior's stare with its own. Rainbow filled the orc's pupils, matching the colors of the newborn creature's baby scales.

Time sped up again.

"No!" the orc cried out, covering the tiny creature with his other hand in an attempt to protect it from the swords slicing through the air.

Whack!
The sharp steel cut through the orc's chainmail gauntlets with ease, biting through both his hand and forearm. Hot blood spurted everywhere, adorning the baby dragon with shiny crimson beads. The rainbow creature spread its wings, shielding the orc with a healing green wave. Then it turned on its attackers. Its glare glinted with the promise of nothing good, its snarl revealing needle-sharp light-blue teeth.

Sssssh...
A jet of sticky flames engulfed the warriors, ruining our morning with the screams of people being roasted alive amid fat clouds of reeking smoke and the stench of scorched meat.

"A dragon familiar!" Widowmaker whispered in awe, ignoring the perplexed raiders and the common chat rife with f-words.

Covering the baby dragon's head with his severed hand, the orc whispered pleadingly, "Listen, guys... I'm gonna pay you all off, I promise. Please don't hurt my little Scaly. Please. He's very sweet. He got scared, that's all..."

The mercs around us lowered their weapons, marveling at the little beast. "Lucky bastard orc," they spoke to each other, shaking their heads with envy. "Now any clan will be happy to have him. They might actually pay
him
to join!"

"I wonder if you can fly this thing—I mean once it grows up, of course?" another one added. "Imagine the possibilities that would open up for air recon!"

"Guys, it's too cute for words! I want one too, don't you, Igor? You'd better go and do some digging!"

"We all want one, Daera, so you'd better keep your pretty mouth shut. All your kisses together couldn't buy you a unique familiar."

Oh-kay. Looked like the incident was over. One man with a super goodie, a dozen more hungrily bookmarking its location. Next thing to expect would be groups of potential prospectors complete with spades and sand sieves. Never mind. In any case, not a single egg they would ever find could escape me. I couldn't think of another player lucky enough to mix with dragons and land the Broody Hen skill.

"Everybody fall in! Portal activation in five minutes. Those who are late will have to walk back. It's not very far, twenty miles or so through the desert. Come on now, quick, quick!"