Inferno (Play to Live: Book # 4) (18 page)

"Hurry up, Ratty, or they'll leave! I'll teach them calling me a zombie!"

The weird group had barely disappeared behind the nearest building when a few more breathless kids ran over to me. "Uncle Max, have you seen a mouse here?"

I pointed in the right direction.

"Is it true that Screw has summoned it?"

I nodded.

"Ooooh," the walls echoed with the envious buzz of their voices. "We want to do it, too!"

I checked their classes. A Warrior, a Cleric, a Druid. "You ask him," I cracked an ironic smile. "He'll tell you."

"Yes! Thank you, Uncle Max!"

I wafted away the dust raised by their feet and lit up another cigarette, pondering over this latest development. So a dark paladin could raise a micro pet now? How interesting. I had to talk to Fuckyall and find out more about this.

The boys' yells of delight were followed by the shrieking of the girls. Their plaits and ribbons flashed back past me, chased by an unhurried group of four zombie mice hobbling along.

Oh shit.

Chapter Nine

I
nferno. Asmodeus' Dominion. The Small Citadel

The imprisoned souls wailed in a multitude of voices, bathing in their personal nightmares while generating a generous flow of mana. To lay one's hands on a good hundred of the Immortals' astral projections was indeed an incredible stroke of luck. But even that didn't please the Chief Demon.

"Wretched spawn of reality! They couldn't have chosen a worse time!"

Furious, Asmodeus punched the wall, splitting a gigantic block of stone. The bastards had slid in unnoticed, like a Lava Adder riding the torrent of molten rock. Could it have been the cunning Verenus and his tricks?

Asmodeus couldn't afford to lose the Small Citadel — for it held, guarded by a deceptively weak force, his main trump card: the magic source of an incredibly rare clarity — for Inferno, that is.

The only things that distinguished the Chief Demon from a hundred of his greedy competitors was the memory of a dozen past reincarnations and his overflowing stocks of fully charged magic crystals. Damn this world! Asmodeus, one of the nine rulers of Hell, was now forced to lead a miserable existence next to those whose names were known but to a handful of die-hard fans. His previous avatars used to command countless legions, crumbling planets to dust and extinguishing their suns. Now all he had was a tiny cohort of elite guards and nine domains which he'd somehow managed to subject to his rule. Had any of his sworn enemies found that out, they'd have died of laughter on the spot, which would probably have immensely pleased one of his original avatars.

Those reckless game makers shouldn't have summoned the likes of him just for kicks. In some of the older and wiser worlds, people didn't even dare utter his name, let alone emblazon it into this new reality rich with the Creator's force. It hadn't taken Asmodeus long to remember his true identity. The memory of his ancient avatars had come later. The situation was pretty rotten but still, he was sure he'd somehow turn it to his advantage and take his rightful place under the black sun.

The game designers' stupid ideas of dividing Inferno's already barren lands into a hundred little allotments had turned the place into a boiling cauldron, forcing next-door neighbors to quarrel over every rock. It wasn't so much about their ambitions or naturally furious disposition as it was about mere survival. The bigger the dominion, the more servants could its lord summon.

The incessant feuds kept consuming the weakest as well as the unlucky ones. Like he was, now. The throne of the Lord of Fire — currently vacant and so desirable! — was already within reach. Only seventeen of the initial hundred demons were still in power. All the others had been destroyed, disembodied or tied up by mind-boggling tiers of voluntary servitude oaths. Oh yes — some would dearly embrace even this excuse for a life.

Verenus had shown up at his frontiers a week ago, having finally polished off an impoverished neighbor whose lands had been invaded from two sides at once. It had taken him six days to recover his army. The lower demons respawned in under twenty-four hours, but anything more complex than a mere set of teeth and claws demanded considerably more time. Once that had been done, his six-thousand strong force had pushed aside the boundary stones and marched in.

The heart of Asmodeus' army consisted of only two hundred Higher Demons — impervious to pain, their blows falling like rain, — generous with magic and equally able to resist it successfully. Asmodeus had planned to bleed his enemy of his power by gradually backing off into the depths of his hinterland while rotating Higher Spells non-stop, burning mana into some killing spells while taking the spent demons back to the second line of defense to regen and refill them from the crystals.

But now his army, having been left without either its leader, magic shield nor quick energy refills, had staggered and faltered back, faster and faster, leaving behind the towering bodies of demons covered in black blood as gloomy monuments to its defeat.

About thirty Higher Demons looking much worse for wear huddled now by the Citadel's walls with about five hundred miscellaneous small fry. The beginning of the end. Because less than a mile away from the castle, Verenus' entire five-thousand strong army was now hissing, growling and baring its fangs.

Suppressing the natural fury filling his infernal soul, Asmodeus frowned, crossed his scaly arms on his chest and froze, pondering over the situation and trying to analyze it from every possible angle. After five minutes, he came up with a solution that offered a hint of a chance. He created an astral messenger who officially threw down a gauntlet. No matter how cautious and distrustful Verenus was, he would accept the challenge. For Asmodeus, losing half of his remaining army meant exposing himself to his neighbors who were busy following these unfolding events. He sensed their spies' restless presence in the Astral even now but he didn't want to get sidetracked just to chase them away.

He microported to his Arsenal and began carefully selecting his gear. The best of the best, the items he'd personally taken from defeated Higher Demons' bodies or exchanged for dozens of cartloads of chitin from his choicest Flesh Eaters — those that shed the strongest armor in the whole of Inferno.

He opened a spatial pocket. His beclawed fingers became gentle and dexterous as he felt for his biggest treasures — things he couldn't entrust to any amount of locks. Unique elixirs that could momentarily raise you to just one level below the gods; one-off artifacts he'd been saving for a rainy day; a fat manuscript of magic scrolls. Few of them would impress a regular AlterWorld player as something grandiose or overly original, but when used by a creature of Inferno, they defied stereotypes. And in this situation, surprising could mean winning.

The astral messenger flared through the sky, dying an especially torturous death while filling the spectrum of waves — those of light, sound and magic — with the return message. His challenge had been accepted. The combat would last until one of the fighters' complete disembodiment.

Asmodeus frowned. This was so unlike the usually cautious Verenus. Could he have his own share of deadly tricks in his own secret treasury? Surely he had to realize that Asmodeus would use every trump card he had — for he had nothing left to lose. At that moment, he had twelve such trump cards stashed up both his sleeves. Verenus had better beware!

They met in the middle of the battlefield, the stares of their respective armies prodding them in the back. Verenus was defiantly calm — and Asmodeus tense and restless before the deciding combat. As he approached his enemy, a yet unknown feeling of despair froze his heart solid, for he recognized his opponent's armor. A full set of the legendary Mirror of Pain that used to belong to Nebiros, the field marshal of Hell's army. How come? It couldn't exist in this world! Was it really a full set? The breastplate, the helmet, the greaves and the gauntlets maybe — but did he have the bracelets?

Breaking the unwritten dueling etiquette while still sticking to official formalities, Asmodeus reached deep into his stocks, scooping up a generous handful of mana to hit his enemy with a direct Ashes of Darkness. Simple as a crowbar but impressive enough, this was the equivalent of one rune bursting with mana. Parrying it wasn't a good idea: it would break both your arm and the shield on it, dealing serious injury to your astral channels.

With a nonchalant glint of his feline eyes, Verenus shattered the formula halfway, releasing its energy. Which was a shame because it contained one nasty fool trap. He didn't try to avoid the direction of the attack or change its coordinates, either. He simply met the spell with his chest.

A deadly scythe hissed over the enemy army. Thirty throats gasped as thirty warriors crumbled to dust, forever losing any chance of an afterlife. The Mirror of Pain had proved to be a full set indeed, redirecting the damage from the armor bearer to his subordinates. Who were legion.

Asmodeus cast a desperate glance over the thousand-strong crowd behind Verenus' back. He scowled in response to his enemy's goat-like laughter, then stuffed his mouth full of the chosen vials. His teeth crunched the glass as he choked on the razor-sharp shards. He just didn't have the ten extra heartbeats to unhurriedly drink them. His speeding mind reached for control charms, switching all available mana flows over to himself, while he broke the seals on the booster scrolls.

Charge! And to hell with it all!

* * *

The castle was hell incarnate. Its every corner was crawling with zombie mice and other rather smelly critters, followed by cheers and tears: the former from those who'd managed to raise a micro pet and the latter from everybody else — and not only the children, either. Somehow the kids had failed to master putting the raised pets back to rest. I got a funny feeling they simply didn't want it bad enough. The mice kept getting out of control scattering into every nook and cranny only to fall prey to the happy hell hound puppies, the second generation of which were actually born in the castle.

A new link of necro life was trying to fit into the food chain.

My inbox pinged, distracting me from my intellectual ponderings over nature's cycle of fuckups. The sender's VIP status had allowed him to get through the default filter I'd recently installed,
Thank you for contacting me. Please leave a message.

Aha! My millionaire customer! The likes of him were always welcome! This was a Korean representative of the clan who'd recently bought one of my Portal to Inferno scrolls. Did they want another one? It could be arranged. After all, my treasury had proven to be not as bottomless as I'd believed.

We really needed our own Mr. Simonov. When it came to keeping an eye on the clan's property, Durin in his role of thrifty quartermaster was pure gold. But he was no bookkeeping whiz. He simply wasn't cut out to juggle numbers. It was true that this zombie dwarf knew every coin in the treasury blindfolded, but that wasn't enough. We needed our own financial genius, and had the Vets not been such valuable allies, I'd have poached their treasurer a long time ago.

Besides, the bank had withdrawn the latest castle payment a week prematurely. Was it the last goodbye from the spiteful admins — or had AlterWorld's economy indeed lost the plot? I just didn't know.

On top of that, another delegation of the insatiable dwarves had recently demanded to see me. Waving a fat stack of bills and complaining of the high cost of work and building materials, they'd given my bank account another workout. All my appeals to Aulë and the summoning of Durin had done very little to cool down the delegation's fervor. I'd managed to talk the price down a little — but even steel has its breaking point. I had apparently managed to discover, by trial and error, a certain pricing limit below which no living dwarf would agree, whether hung, drawn, quartered or anathemized.

The dwarves had soon left, drooling greedily as they lugged away another two million gold. The Koreans, however, proved a trickier job.

The kids were in shit. Their reckless cavalry attack had been smashed flat against the first tank they'd met. Some strategists. What had they been thinking, gate crashing an unknown demon's dominion? Okay, me, I'd have done it for sure, but the Koreans? Apparently, the kids didn't know when to stop when playing this new and unknown game — so they'd paid the price.

Forty of their permas were now captured by Asmodeus. Their graves had never appeared in the castle's cemetery. Occasional groaning and weeping had sometimes made it through to the clan's chat, freezing the clan members' blood in their veins and driving the prisoners' friends and relatives hysterical.

Regular players had been luckier. They'd been faced with a black screen, a forced logout and a system message:

Your character has been captured! Now you can either turn to your friends for help or wait for your capturer's death. Alternatively, you can contact the AlterWorld Shop and purchase Guaranteed Freedom, which allows you to reunite with your avatar for as little as 100 gold.

But once the players followed the link, they were faced with the following error page:

We are sorry. For reasons of the site's upcoming nationalization, all services are unavailable.

Warning! If you choose to play the game, it is your decision made at your own risk. The AlterWorld Corporation waives all responsibility for any potential moral, financial or physical damage to you or your avatar. God help you!

All this had hit the Koreans hard. Having lost almost a hundred men, the Gimhae clan was now turning into a shapeless demoralized heap like a torn sugar bag.

It wasn't that I was so particularly worried about them. On the contrary: ever since the memorable Chinese raid, the sight of their Anime-styled eyes — wide open or cunningly squinted — gave me the shivers.

But politics is all about counterweights. And we needed new allies really badly. Facing the Chinese giant alone wouldn't be a wise thing to do. We'd had some positive developments as the Japanese cluster had already expressed its satisfaction with the results of our Russian Campaign. The more militant among them were already suggesting they try to repeat our success, appealing to their countrymen's samurai spirit and exaggerating the amount of our battle spoils tenfold.

They'd sent us a few cautiously worded congratulations, followed by an exchange of rather neutral diplomatic messages as both parties were trying to suss the other out. I had a funny feeling that if those samurai spirits ever made their minds up to attack, we could expect to be invited as potential experts or even allies. That was worth considering.