The War (Play to Live: Book #6) (4 page)

Having recovered from the initial shock, the crowd covered my robots with a dense cloud of destructive magic.

Our droid attack instantly turned into a game only millionaires could afford. True, every droid managed to kill a few dozen Lightsters and win us about thirty extra seconds. But that hardly changed anything; we’d live as long as we paid for it.

Things finally took a turn when the lieutenant droid rose into the air. Wrapping itself up in protective shields, it instantly came up with a tactical plan for the battlefield and took command of the other robots.

The assailant droids began a more organized attack. They covered each other when necessary, fired denser rounds into the more dangerous enemy zones, and asked for help when in trouble.

The two dozens of repairmen droids we launched last turned out to be the icing on the cake and gave our diversion its final polish. At that point, we were all out of somewhat aggressive robots. Sending the fragile navigator droids or the armorless super-cargo ones along with the helpless workers was dumb.

During the next half hour, the Lightsters fought desperately against the platoon of droids that buried themselves into the ground. The robots had nowhere to retreat. They defended their ground like the people’s volunteer corps might defend a hospital whose patients hadn’t had time to evacuate.

The plasma illumination made us think that our droids would last long enough to give us a decent break. But soon, the fire began to die down. Finally, all the droids engaged in their final hand-to-hand combat. There weren’t many of them left by that time. Clearly they had run out of ammunition.

The robots surprised us in their final moments. Edging their way into the enemy ranks, they overloaded their reactors, making everything bloom with blinding flashes as they made themselves explode.

The metal warriors’ swansong was a success. Even though the enemy busted up the line of droids, the Lightsiders were stunned and retreated to their base camp. They needed time to haul back tens of thousands of graves, resurrect the warriors who had lost XP, repair their gear, and achieve even higher levels in order to turn an unintelligible massacre into a grandiose victory.

Stealthers from both sides darted about in the moonlit battlefield, demonstratively ignoring each other and dragging away gravestones. No one had announced an official truce as that would have been bad for the Lightsiders’ public image. Doing everything secretly was the perfect solution.

Of course there were high words, attempts to hype up the enemy, and duel summons. Our walls filled up with more warriors; Flint’s guys, the Golden Eagles, and the other allies who had joined in. Here they finally took off their masks.

The influx of couch generals increased as they woke up and realized that it was a time of war and that their downtown homes were now in the outskirts, surrounded with smoking shell holes where their neighbors’ places used to stand.

The resentful avengers all came: those who had lost a favorite candle factory, an elite hen house, or a virtual cabin with a garden. An infowar was brewing in the real world. The people were stirred up. They logged in, revived their long-forgotten characters, shook the dust off them, then went on to join the game so they could kick the asses of those they didn’t like.

These types of reinforcements, however, were not very valuable and could not be trusted. We gave the new arrivals different sectors beneath Tianlong’s walls. Because of this, a few were offended by our suspicion. Blazing with rage, they left the battlefield with their heads held high.

We were not the only ones going through this phase; a muffled cannonade of portals opening came from the enemy camp. Some clans were leaving, disappointed by the two-day siege which had cost them time, money, and experience. Tons of newbies were eager to take their place, filled with enthusiasm by VirtNet’s growing hysteria. Those wishing to fight against the darksider Russians were plentiful.

The Guards of the First Temple were also gathering their forces. We needed to be ready for the final showdown "twenty vs. one." Surprisingly, the warriors were calm.

Like Suvorov used to say: "We are Russians; what a delight!"

That’s how everyone felt now. The gods were on our side, the First Priest had a deck of trump cards up his sleeve, and behind us were our homes. How could we lose?

A few hours later, under the cover of the morning fog, the enemy tried to play a trump card of their own.

I was busy listening to the report on the actions of a terror-group when all of a sudden, one of the hounds lazily lying around raised its head in alarm. It looked around. Its trimmed ears twitched, readjusting themselves to catch the signal. With a faint growl, the hound caught my attention and looked me straight in the eye.

Instantly my head began to fill with images as I received the message from this living retransmitter. I saw a cozy ravine, wrapped in shadows and a haze. It was illuminated with the glow of an open arch. The army was compressed like a tight spring as the warriors squeezed out of the portal. They looked like toothpaste that squirts out of an open tube when you step on it. At least three hundred new fighters arrived every minute.

Lightster cock up yer ass, where is this place?!
I asked mentally.
Coordinates!

The hound snorted, foaming at the mouth as it struggled to relay the entire perception spectrum of an Inferno creature.

First it sent me a thermal image of the territory. Ha, more like a chaos of yellow and red blotches!
Try something else!

Then, a smellogram: steel, skin, poison, warm flesh in dozens of tasty varieties. A unique spectrum that could be smelled from over five miles away. But it was not what I needed.

An emotions model: stress, fear, evil exhilaration, hatred. Bright strokes of feelings filled the surrounding area. Beautiful, but useless!

A magic imprint of the territory: the pattern of the astral world, ornaments of its threads of power and scattered plants and minerals issuing background noises.
This won’t do! I just can’t make sense of this. Gimme a plain old picture, with a horizon and some dimensions!

New shapes flickered in my mind’s eye: a mountain ridge surrounding the Valley. Very close, a mile away at most. An acacia grove, barely discernible in the early morning light. A hill with random ruins, an ancient spiral road.
Finally, a clear reference point!

I flipped through the pages of the Valley’s cartographic atlas in my head.
I should recognize a conspicuous place like this one when I see it, come on!
A mile from the edge
,
upland, ruins, serpentine road…Not it…not it…keep looking…Found it!

It was a place far from the castle, just over a mile away, straight ahead. Those bastards sure knew how to hide!

My warriors were on the walls. Reserves were mostly NPCs.

"Red alert! Breach in sector N27! Twenty thousand players, increasing by 300 per minute. Demons, dwarves and any remaining heavy golems: prepare to attack!"

But this wasn’t enough. And the closest basilisk egg we had buried was over two miles away, out of reach. One basilisk wouldn’t suffice anyway as we had spotted the enemy too late. We would have to use our backup.

"Get the King and both Wild ones from Arsenal 4! Teleport them right after me, to the point that’s closest to the breach zone. Let’s go, move!"

The wizards froze in a trance, their eyes twitching underneath their closed eyelids. Finally, one of them woke up and said: "Sir, we have a logistics issue. Only one of our portal casters has the beacon marker. We’ll send five of our wizards with him right away. They will make copies of coordinates. Two minutes at most."

I ground my teeth. “Next time, make scrolls! I want every guardroom to have its own sealed volume with a dozen parchments containing the coordinates of each and every point!”

Orcus put a hand on my shoulder, trying to calm me down. "We can’t, Sir, it’s a matter of security. We won’t be able to keep track of them all."

"It’s an open secret now! If one person knows, everybody knows! And after we win, this place will be accessible to anyone. We won’t be able to retain the monopoly of temples. Plus, it’s not profitable, no economical or political gains, dammit all to hell!"

But my rant was pretty much a waste of breath. We still needed a few minutes to wake up our army and to get artifacts out of storage. No matter how loud a command, it still needs time to be executed.

The portal took us to a ravine with a stream passing through it. In theory, such a place would provide good cover from prying eyes and also deafen the clap of a portal.

The guards were nervous. They hurriedly formed the outline of the defense perimeter. The ogre carriers shifted from foot to foot as they stood holding the giant basilisk eggs, reminding me of ants guarding their larvae.

I felt a strong itch between my shoulder blades and looked to the side where I sensed the foreign evil coming from.

I guessed right…Or maybe I smelled it coming. It could be that I had picked up some hell hound skills after having mental contact with one of them.

Wind blew from the mountain ridge. It brought the jingling of steel, the sounds of spells being cast, and muffled cursing in different languages. The fog glistening with neon was like a messenger letting us know with gloating delight that the enemy portals were numerous in that area by now.

I shivered again and turned to Orcus. "They’re watching us…"

He only shrugged indifferently. "Obviously. We’re less than half a mile away from the breach zone. The enemy’s outer screen clearly has this area under surveillance."

As if to affirm his words, a quick fight suddenly broke out about thirty paces from us. A ring of ear-choppers stumbled upon an enemy stealther hiding in a bush.

Adios, pal!
He chose a good hiding place, but the skills of the Drow she-elves were through the roof. The rest was a matter of technology. The game radar treacherously showed a scarlet marker and a certain someone ended up with a black blade in their throat.

Cargo portals opened behind us. The ravine quickly filled with shortish dwarves and short-tempered demons. Both were eager to fight. They had enough drive for three world wars.

"Move to the side, we need a lot of free space for summoning the basilisks!" I ordered Snowie who was heading a sizable group of guards. We couldn’t have brought a smaller division along. You can’t go to the front line with just one ear-chopper wearing nothing but silk sheets.

"A lot of free space?" Snowie clarified.

I pushed my helmet onto my forehead as I pensively scratched the back of my head. "’Bout the size of a steamboat…Let’s move fifty paces away from the portal, that should be enough."

But it wasn’t enough…

I should have probably warned the others. I was just worn out. I was trying to get everything done fast, like filling out a form, on reflex response…

The universe grunted, overstraining its sinews in a harsh labor. Breaking all the laws of physics and biology, a gigantic creature shot out of the tiny space within the egg, rapidly growing to scale. It was like a giant iceberg emerging from the depths of an ocean.

The Basilisk’s armored side smashed right into our group, turning some warriors into a bloody puree and pushing the luckier ones aside, myself included.

Basilisk King spawn alert!

The terror of the ancient times has come back to reality. The world will never be the same again.

AlterWorld respectfully bows its head to the King and grants us new abilities.

Culinary and alchemic recipe lists are being updated…

…12%…Error…Update server not available…Connection failure…Rolling back update v. 12.8.1…Error…Access denied…

It was probably at that moment that AlterWorld saw its first claimant to a chamber pot filled with gold. Seeing the game spewing out system errors was seriously frightening, possibly making some wet their pants or get gray hair. It was even worse for permas, who did not have the opportunity to reinstall the buggy software.

To understand what it was like, look up at the sky. Now picture lines of white code running across it, turning the celestial distance into the Blue Screen of Death.

The game counted our collision with the scabrous monster’s side as a hit. Comparing body masses and multiplying them by the basilisk’s speed, the damage algorithm was shaken up a bit:
Where does the comma go?

Deciding that 300,000 was clearly too much, the algorithm corrected the damage to be 30,000 by using its emergency "verisimilitude" coefficient. Feeling that it had fulfilled its duties, it took away two thirds of my HP.

Shamefully sitting on my ass and spitting blood, my lungs pierced with shards of my busted ribs, I jerked my head up to look at the gigantic King of Kings. What a party this must have been for the Japanese. They love giants like these…

The Basilisk, standing nine stories tall and measuring even more than that from head to tail, was slowly turning its huge head. A gold crown sat atop it like a church dome, a diamond the size of a Jeep’s rear wheel glaring in it.

At the sight of such riches, my greedy pig finally lost it. Grabbing me by the front of my shirt, it squealed, drooling all over me: "I told you! I told you! You must kill it, kill it now!"