Inferno (Play to Live: Book # 4) (17 page)

Sniffing again — sarcastically this time — Lizzie turned her back on me and, not even doubting I was watching her, walked over to one of the soft chairs to pick up her gear with all the lazy grace of a panther. Where on earth had she learned this from? On seeing her, the top thousand so-called podium models would be soaping a rope to hang themselves, ashamed of their jumpy and presumably sexy gait.

I sighed helplessly. How was one supposed to resist this? My voice gave as I added hoarsely, "See you tonight."

She shrugged nonchalantly. Oh really? That was how she now acknowledged her orders? "Corporal Mona Lisa, you're on guard duty inside the personal quarters of the clan leader."

Lizzie turned her head and flashed a satisfied smile, her purring voice touching my spine lightly with the very tips of her claws, "Yes, Sir."

A shuffling noise came from behind the door. It opened slightly a couple of times, then swung open, pushed by a butt clad in burned-through pants darned every which way with a piece of steel wire. It's a shame but that's exactly what the Pants of a Mad Master looked like, granting their wearer a whopping +20 to Golem Building. There were only two pairs of them in the entire cluster! Our Gimmick couldn't complain about his gear.

His hands were full of something which was why he entered the room the same way as he'd opened it, by backing his way in.

"Max, Lurch told me you were up already. And I just finished this thing-"

With these words he swung round, his stare alighting on the sight of Mona Lisa unhurriedly buttoning up the many tiny buttons of her under-armor shirt embroidered with the intricate heraldry of her House.

"Which thing?"

"Your staff. Sorry, I'd no idea..."

I smiled. "Try knocking next time."

"I did knock!"

"With your backside, you mean?"

The girl sniffed again and picked up her harness that was hung with sheaths and scabbards, vials and battle artifacts. Sticking out a defiant chin, she strode toward the exit, nearly knocking over the poor golem master.

Gimmick shrank aside, balancing the black cushion he was holding in his outstretched arms. My old staff was lounging on its soft velvet bed. The adamant upgrade had definitely done it good. If before the staff used to hide timidly under a veil of darkness, scaring off everyone around it with targeted waves of fear, now the magnificence of deep space gleamed within its cold stare — that of a predator choosing its victim.

"Why does it look so," I snapped my fingers searching for the right word, "so well-fed?"

Gimmick cringed. "Because you owe me a new assistant now! The old one had the stupidity to grab it with his bare hands. I know he was an NPC and still I feel sorry for him! I'd spent a week humanizing him! I even made a pair of wire-rimmed glasses for him. So funny he was."

"I see. Is this why you're handling it so...delicately?"

"What do you think? Don't you remember I gave the wretched thing a piece of my mind? Better safe than sorry. You know, before it used to remind me of this tiny bug-eyed Chihuahua, all shaky, fifty percent fear and fifty percent hatred. But now it's more like a well-fed lion. So what's gonna happen when it's hungry again?"

Oh. What on earth have we created? I tried to read the staff's stats. The world around me flickered momentarily. The debug console flashed.

Database error! Bug report generated: 99999ZZZ.

Warning: stack overflow.

Index overflow. The old ticket has been overwritten.

Sending a message to the technical support team.

While I furrowed my brow trying to figure it all out, the console snapped at me again.

Mail delivery failed. Recipient's mailbox full.

Resending message using alternative routes. Testing Mirror 1. Overflow. Testing Mirror 2...

Scared, I shook my head, trying to close the console. Spending an eternity staring at flickering system messages was the last thing I needed. Whew. It worked. Welcome back, world.

"Sending bug reports?" Gimmick asked. "Me too, I nearly pissed my pants when I saw them first. No one's clearing our messages. The pipe is well and truly bunged-up. Now, Max. Here's your staff — provided you're not too scared of it. I've got lots of work to do still. And don't forget to hire me an assistant — make it three. We've got a lot of drilling, sawing and turning to do. I have tons of ideas on how to improve standard items."

I missed his last words, too busy thinking about his unlucky assistant. I really didn't feel like touching this staff. On the other hand, if not me, who then? Very well. Somehow I doubted that the staff was able to wrench the souls out of people the way Lloth's dagger could. And any one-off damage I could live with, as long as the Fallen One's gift — the one capable of absorbing 50,000 hits — was safely buried inside the palm of my hand.

I concentrated, psyching myself up, consigning my own identity to the corner and allowing my Overlord character to take center stage. I was the Prince, the First Priest, I was First after the Fallen One!

It felt as if an invisible tornado opened over my head, pumping me with power. The enormous phantom wings rose behind my shoulders, obscuring the horizon. Somewhere in the courtyard the hell hounds howled. The dragons anxiously flapped their wings. I reached out and closed my hand over the staff. It was mine by right!

Indeed, the ancient artifact proved to be something like a sleepy lazy lion. Having sensed his master's grip on the scruff of his neck, he raged in fury, straining his multi-kiloton magic. The castle quaked underfoot. I was showered with crumbling plaster; the many-colored stained glass windows shattered, tinkling down onto the courtyard flagstones. Lurch's scream drilled into my brain.

I froze as if petrified, too busy to breathe, my overstrained heart unable to keep pace. I stood there like a blood-shot rock statue, its every muscle bulging. Bloody sweat seeped through my skin but I was too preoccupied to wipe it off. The main battle was unfolding somewhere on the Astral planes: the combat of pure power, control and the right to rule.

Gradually, the artifact's struggle subsided. The beast had accepted its new leader and curled up, growling, on the new rung of the hierarchical ladder.

A portal burst open, the Fallen One's heavy foot nailing the long-suffering silver tray to the floor. An Astral storm — and one in the vicinity of the Altar, too — couldn't have passed unnoticed.

"What's going on here?" the sheer power of the divine voice smashed the rest of the window panes.

With a weary sigh, I picked up a bedsheet and wiped my bloodied face. "Nothing. The taming of the shrew."

Checking the artifact's functions, I pressed the button that lay comfortably under my thumb. The spring-assisted purple blade clicked open viciously at the staff's base.

The Fallen One recoiled. "What is
this
?"

I returned the blade to travel mode, then stashed the staff away in my inventory. "This is my argument," I thought a little and added, "a weighty one, too."

His eyes locked into mine, studying the very essence of my heart and weighing it on his celestial scale. Then he nodded. "I trust you, you know. I could fight back-to-back with you if need be. But don't you ever — ever! — let this weapon fall into the wrong hands."

"Only if they have a spare pair of hands," I grumbled.

The Fallen One didn't appreciate the joke. "Another thing. Don't forget that you and I are indispensable to each other now. The kind of enemies we've made, they'll wipe you off the chess board within twenty-four hours."

"I do know, don't I?"

The Fallen One swung round, about to dive into the portal's dark mirrored void, but stopped halfway. He nodded at the sheets strewn over the bed. "Is she all right?"

"Why?"

The Fallen One cast a neurotic glance up at the skies, "Just curious."

The portal popped shut, leaving me puzzled in the company of Gimmick who cowered in a dark corner, near-comatose as he always was at the sight of the Fallen One in the flesh.

After an hour, the commotion caused by the taming of the staff had more or less abated. Outside, goblins scraped their brooms and clinked the bits of broken glass. A tearful Lurch complained bitterly into my ear.

Having distributed the jobs among the clan, I walked out onto the porch to make myself seen and motivate any truants. The NPCs didn't try to shirk. The two hundred freshly-hired Ear Cutters were busy foraging in the clothes depot, pulling on colorful vests, bright bandanas and other bits and pieces.

If everything went well, one of them might end up earning a silly nickname today and join our ranks of the top warriors. Once this "rebranding" process was completed, I was going to spread them thinly over my entire clan. Some would become guards on a par with real players, others would do some farming while yet others would be sent to assist our security services.

I'd issued a confidential memo that entrusted all clan members with the task of singling out the Ear Cutters from all other NPCs, spending time and fraternizing with them, to the point of engaging them in their drunken brawls if necessary. We were Russians, after all, and we had our own ways of opening up to a fellow confidant.

As if the orders to drink and fight hadn't excited everyone enough, it was the second part of the memo that had created a furor by its not-too-subtle recommendations to "befriend" elite female Ear Cutters, followed by about a hundred photos of the latter. Yes, I'd had to untie my purse strings once more, paying top buck for the girls' appearance and character as well as their combat characteristics.

I only wished I could have had this kind of calculator in real life. All the gold in Fort Knox wouldn't be enough to pay for the kind of wife I'd have made for myself.

The next logical step was succumbing to the community's pleas to build a house of certain repute. Most clans made the construction of such places their top priority, finishing them even before the completion of the city walls. The Admins too seemed to be exploiting the same in order to boost their virtual real estate sales by offering unique custom-made girls with rare professional skills and tempting discounts.

Before, my men used to take their gold to the nearest town, driving Durin the treasurer to quiet desperation. Their drunken tongues untied easily which made them easy prey to a potential honey trap. The indignant Cryl who'd begun to enjoy his "cloak and dagger" role demanded that we start providing the bulk of such services in-house.

As a result, this pressure from clan members combined with some primary logic and the glint of heavy yellow metal finally won over my moral preferences and had forced me to publish a preferences poll on the clan's message board. We needed to decide on the number of girls, as well as their racial and temperamental properties.

What followed was a comedy circus. Just when I thought I'd got over the arrival of trolls on the resulting list, I had to handle a very serious-minded delegation of goblin NPCs who demanded their rights to paid love. I couldn't help it, sorry. I doubled up laughing — but I soon stopped when the Dwarven elders sent their own representatives to see me with their own detailed list of preferences. Their apparent perfect mate was a ginger-headed lady of rather mysterious proportions and some very peculiar skills.

Without waiting for any delegations from dragons and hell hounds, I quickly folded the poll, explaining it away by the sufficiency of the statistics provided, before some overeager Kamasutra scholar could augment any kinkier entries to the list. All those connoisseurs of the jade phallic orchestra!

Compared to other castle classes, the Super Nova hire catalog provided for the owner's every need, bursting with bonus characters, rare character traits and unique profiles. It didn't take me long to locate our own Madame Jou Jou, a potential madame of our House of a Thousand Pleasures. Still a relatively good-looking woman, she boasted a titanic intuition and a willpower of steel. I absolutely had to hire her. Plus a couple of Troll bouncers — more for the atmosphere than for any real need.

After that, we went meticulously through the list using the recommended psychological profiles, adding a touch of friendliness and empathy to the girls' future identities, as well as pride in their work and a desire to be helpful.

This had been a job worthy of a brain surgeon: putting together the souls of my future priestesses of love. It left me absolutely drained, as if I were some ancient Demiurge who'd just single-handedly created a new world. One thing I knew for sure: I wouldn't be seen dead there in the foreseeable future. I already knew too much about the intricacies of their profession.

I was enjoying a well-deserved break, drawing on one of Amara's experimental tonic cigarettes and sipping coffee from my blue home mug when a thin stifled cry made me jump, my mind immediately switching to combat mode. Two little girls from group A darted toward me. "Uncle Max! Screwyall is bugging us with a mouse!"

"Which mouse?"

"A zombie one! He's summoned it and now he's telling it to attack us! Aw! There it is!"

The two little mites darted off. I stared at a rather large greenish mouse that was awkwardly hobbling past. Screwyall skipped impatiently next to it, trying to motivate his pet,