Patch 17 (Realm of Arkon) (6 page)

"Yes! Now, tell me what's happening! Did you find me?" I yelled into the virtual phone.

"Currently we have six police squads in Mr. Cheney's country estate, as well as twelve ambulances," the officer's voice sounded weary. "In the basement, we have found fifty four dead bodies in game capsules: Cheney himself, his three bodyguards, and fifty more people, out of which so far thirty nine have been identified. One of the identified bodies is one Roman Kozhevnikov, citizen of the Russian Federation, born in 2006."

"Are you saying that I'm dead?" I muttered, dumbstruck. "But I... I'm talking to you right now!"

"I'm not saying anything, but we do have hundreds of similar cases in the Bay area alone, and thousands nationwide. Leave your contact information with the operator, and we'll be in touch. And now you must excuse me, I need to get back to work."

Easy listening music came back on, and I hung up.
What friggin' contact information? Lamorna Village, Eastern Wastes, Jarus Province, Ashtar Dominion that's in Demon Grounds. Look for me by a gravestone at a local cemetery. You can't miss me—there are six stones in all. And, oh, I'm dead. So, you know, no rush. Talk soon!
I took a deep breath. Cheney did mention that people had lost their minds from dying so much, so maybe... I pinched myself. It hurt! The multiplication table popped into my head.

How do you test if you've lost your marbles? If a horse tells you that you're crazy, then surely you are,
I remember the old gag.
There was a horse around not too long ago, but it was eaten by a pack of dog-like beasts. I could always ask the demons repairing that palisade over there.
Recognizing the idiocy of my predicament, I couldn't hold back a smile.
That settles it. A crazy person wouldn't be contemplating his madness.

And then it hit me:
I'm dead! But that's... that's...
I began to shake from the implications. Then I sat still for about five minutes, staring at a crack on a nearby monument, completely oblivious to my surroundings, but eventually reason prevailed.
Stop!
I yelled at myself.
I'm having thoughts, so I must be alive. And I don't give a damn that this is a game, and not real life. I was just speaking to a cop, and, last I checked, corpses are not speech capable. Although, in a video game, some are... Wait, what the hell am I saying! Calm down, breathe! Everything's fine. I'm not a loon and I'm not a corpse. This must all be some kind of misunderstanding. Somehow I've been imported into the game, so let's roll with it.

So, what have we got?
I opened my character's window.
No changes from before... Wait, what about immortality? I'm immortal now!
the realization washed over me, and I froze still, trying to digest it.
I'll figure that part out later. What else? My relations with all of Arkon's factions is hostile; their NPCs would kill me on sight. There are no players here, no quest-givers, and I cannot level on these mobs. Well, I can technically, but not in this zone.
There didn't appear to be a solution. How many miles was it to the closest starting zone? Two hundred? Five? I would need to run from graveyard to graveyard, dying hundreds of times along the way.

The hatred that filled me for Cheney at that moment seemed almost capable of materializing in physical form.

That shithead! Lousy bastard! If not for RP-17, I'd be dying again, or worse. If only you were here, Cheney, you scum! But I'm going to live, you'll see! I will survive! And when I get out of here, I'm going to find you and your cronies and rip out your throats! After all, I know how to find you...

I forced myself to calm down. What did I know about reputation? Some of the game's social and military communities were a faction unto themselves, irrespective of race. Traders' and mages' guilds, knight orders, mercenary squads and various brotherhoods. As a rule, everybody started off neutral with them, unless, of course, your character's race or class was specifically targeted by this particular foundation. A dark mage visiting a Temple of Myrt—a light deity of the human race—would be a fool to expect a warm welcome. Demons looked to have their own social order, so, on the face of it, not all was lost.

There was no use continuing to hang around gravestones—I had to start doing something. Ah! The rider devoured by the dogs earlier—the remains were some seven hundred yards from here. Looking through them, I might avail myself of something useful.

I made it to the remains of the rider and his horse without incident. Lasting at least a quarter mile, the road was narrow but even, and I came across no aggressive animals. Only the familiar gophers were around, casting glances of contemplative loathing at the ragged human plodding down the road.

Still a dozen yards away, I could already smell blood, and when I saw what had remained of the rider and his horse, my stomach nearly turned inside out. Chunks of meat, bones with teeth markings, scraps of fur, entrails and some other matter scattered across a radius of ten or so yards. And all that was punctuated by the most revolting stench of wet fur.
No complains on the realism front
, I thought to myself.

I had never experienced anything like it before. I was far from a hardcore gamer—my level thirty five had been achieved in three days when I and three other coworkers were powerleveled across several noob locations. On my own, I had only reached level ten in Still Creek. In fact, my last quest was about a horse that had wandered off and had ultimately been killed by wolves. I had to locate the dead horse, remove its harness and deliver it to the local groom. The groom then gave the quest to exterminate the wolves. Compared to what I was seeing now, that horse might as well have been borrowed from a G-rated movie: carcass lying neatly next to a pool of blood, the animal's entire front side virtually untouched, and no smell to speak of. But this... Struggling to hold back nausea, I touched what had remained of the demon.

A ringing sound signaled the falling of coins in my bag. Whoa—1 gold, 4 silver and 25 copper. Also, two sealed letters, a chained badge, and a cloak. What did we have here... I focused my eyes on the badge and nearly squealed with joy.

Courier's Chest Badge.

Unusual item.

Raises the negative attitude of all sentient races in Demon Grounds to unfriendly. Any positive reputation held with representatives of sentient races remains unchanged.

Always warring at one another, dominions resort to using special messengers to carry out postal correspondence. These couriers can be recognized by a special badge worn on their chests, and attacking them unprovoked in Demon Grounds is strictly forbidden.

A typical metallic circle three inches in diameter without any special attributes, a glyph inscribed along the side and somebody's strange face at the center, but for me this piece of metal trumped any epic artifact! It must have been the governing AI giving me a way out of a dead-end situation. After all, everything in the Realm of Arkon was done for the players, or at least for their money. I wasted no time putting the chain on my neck. The badge locked into the amulet slot, which had been empty until now (and would probably have remained empty for the foreseeable future).

Spring Whisperer's Cloak of Haste

Cloth

Durability: 163/200

Unusual item.

Minimum level to equip: 190.

Armor: 520.

+80 to agility.

+60 to constitution.

+50 to stamina.

Weight: 5 lbs.

Not a bad cloak for a melee-specced druid, rogue or ranged dps. In truth, it wasn't anything special, and wouldn't fetch more than a few gold at the auction house. Like in many other games, items in Arkon fell into a range of classes: from plain items to artifacts. There were also sets that comprised several items of the same type, all unusual or above, from two to eight pieces per set. Combining several or more pieces resulted in decent set bonuses to their owner. I put the cloak away in my bag and reached for the larger letter.

You've accessed the quest: Special Delivery.

Quest type: normal.

Deliver the letter of Ar-Iraz, the prince of Jarus Province, to Nittal and hand it to Lady Janam the Beautiful, second wife of Astarot, the lord of Ashtar Dominion.

Reward: 5 gold, experience.

I accepted, naturally.

I took the letter in my hands warily. It was a scroll of fine leather, inscribed from top to bottom with strange symbols and sealed with red wax, the symbols flashing scarlet periodically. Thankfully, I was never the curious type, and especially not at this level. Besides, reading other people's mail was a clear sign of bad manners.

The other letter was a bit more plain:

You've accessed the quest: Sales Report.

Quest type: normal.

Deliver a sales report from Jarus Province to Nittal and hand it to Venerable Yldiz, head of the traders' guild of Ashtar Dominion.

Reward: 2 gold, experience.

The human mood is a strange thing indeed. It hadn't been twenty minutes since I wanted to howl at the moon from despair, and now I smiled up at it like an old girlfriend. Who was I twenty minutes ago? A pauper without a penny to my name, without a home or occupation, hated by everybody around save for perhaps those gophers. But now I had things to do, quests to complete. I only needed to find out the location of Nittal, which, seeing as the lord lived there, was probably the dominion's capital city.

I got on the road and headed toward Lamorna. Bit by bit, a plan was taking shape in my head. All of Arkon's kingdoms had similar layouts. For example, in the human kingdom of Erantia, the capital—the humans' starting city—was situated roughly in the center. Abutting the capital were the royal lands—zones ranging from early levels to low 50s. Beyond the royal lands stretched the Great Princedoms, its zones offering content from roughly level 30 through 180s. Further still lay the Borderlands, designed for players levels 150 through 250, brimming with fortresses, wild tribes, lawless gangs and no large cities to speak of.

To the south Erantia adjoined the Great Forest—home of light and dark elves; to the southwest loomed the Kraet Peaks, populated by dwarves and drow; and to the east stretched the steppe, inhabited by orcs. The kingdoms' borders were not strictly defined, which led to frequent conflicts between warring races. That fact, however, hardly precluded dark elves, drow and orcs from traveling throughout Vaedarr and taking up service with its human rulers.

The realm employed a sophisticated system of reputations, ranks and titles. In theory, any player could become the king of Erantia, but the reality was much closer to the real world. Taking an honest look around, what chances did a regular person have of becoming president? Or governor? Truly powerful clans built their castles on vacant territories and entered into vassalages and alliances. You could build a castle for free and without anyone's permission in the unclaimed lands abutting Erantia to the southeast, which, as the rumor had it, contained the Shadow Empire of Darkaan. But there hadn't been any volunteers to build a castle in places teeming with hostile NPCs and 200+ level monsters. To my knowledge, at least.

Demon Grounds were probably planned similarly, which meant I had to make it to the capital and start my path from there. My "unfriendly" reputation would make most of the quests unavailable to me, but I should be able to make do just fine with what was left. Besides, reputation was a flexible thing that could be changed. The one glaring disadvantage was that I was alone. A tank and a healer in one. I didn't even have anyone to talk to—NPCs didn't really count. Among my few available resources was the game wiki, which had virtually zero information on Demon Grounds or its capital. There was no one to reach out to—the zone chat was unavailable. Mail service with the other planes hadn't yet been established, and I didn't have any local contacts.

Then I remembered that I had money and could call my sister! I dialed her number, but for some reason she wouldn't pick up. Could she be sleeping? But it should be daytime in Moscow. Weird. I stopped and considered whom else to call.

"Who are you and what are you doing here, o human with a demon's soul?" a deep, imperious voice sounded behind me, catching me off-guard. Startled, I spun around... And my jaw nearly hit the ground.

Standing before me was a ghost with a level of 516... 516!!! In life, the stranger had been human—above average height and roughly fifty years of age, with strong-willed features, a neatly trimmed beard and shoulder-length hair bound at the forehead with an ornate band. His piercing gaze regarded me as though I were a fly that had had the rotten luck of landing in his soup. "Ghost of Archmage Altus"—read the legend above his head. Level 516! The baddest raid boss killed by the Azure Dragons wasn't higher than 350! My eyes bulging, I stared at this NPC that had showed up out of nowhere, thinking frantically of what to answer him...

"Are you deaf?" the mage cocked his head, as if eavesdropping on my deliberations.

"No, not deaf," I sighed. "I don't know how I ended up here. I was born in Vaedarr," I wasn't going to traumatize the NPC with my tales of skyscrapers and airplanes, "fell asleep by some kind of temple, and woke up here. The gods must have chosen me to carry out some mission yet unbeknown to me," I concluded with a glorious fib.