Continue Online (Part 3, Realities) (22 page)

The blade slipped before I could reuse
[Anchor]
. I floated by parallel to the current ridge.

It looked to be safe enough, just moving slowly. Beneath me was something new.

And gross and squiggly. Oh Voices, it was an entire nest of those creatures and I was floating right into it. Dozens, no maybe even a hundred of those gross little bugs.

A portion of the bugs had twisted their tiny heads up in my direction. Their slit-shaped eyes narrowed in mass. Small whiskers and nasty bodies that rolled littered all of them. I tried to retch but
[Mechanoid]
s apparently didn't barf.

"Gross, gross, gross." I hated bugs. That annoyance followed me from Continue Online. The only thing worse would have been spiders.

I moved the sword to my other hand and let a few laser blasts off with the light weapon. There was no time to ready a bigger attack picked up from my second
[Core]
. Small blasts collided with the bugs and only served to send them hopping around.

How were they able to hop when I was stuck floating? Dirty little jerks. Filthy. At least six were on me nipping away with tiny little mouths.

"Get off!" I violently shook and almost stabbed myself with the sword. A few bugs sizzled from contact.

I tried to shift my weapon into a dagger form and completely forgot this wasn't
[Morrigu's Gift]
. Reaching out for
[Morrigu's Echo]
and its
[Recall]
ability failed me. Old habits were still in place and I panicked.

Dusk spit a few tiny acid balls. I managed to grab a bug with my hand and threw it into space. A brief thought about missed resources passed by before further painful little bites distracted me.

The small gathering and I crashed into a ridge and one of the creatures wiggled against my side. It was disgusting. I imagined that it was similar to tentacles attacking from a sea squid monster.

I laid down an elbow out of reflex but once again the lack of gravity made my swing nearly ineffective. Thrashing around with my laser sword almost vaulted me back into space from the
[Leviathan]
's energy resistance. Both knees curled up to get a better angle on my legs. My feet hit the ground and
[Anchor]
took effect.

Now I had leverage.
[Lame Space Morrigu's Failure]
swung around. Numerous little bugs sizzled soundlessly and bits crisped. Dusk had been more effective at conserving resources. I slashed another one while my health steadily dipped.

I stared at the message through narrowed eyes. The damage window with its quirky messages had resurfaced. This felt suspiciously familiar. Another bug took a bite out of my calf and I hacked at it and others swarming nearby.

There was no time to stare up. Up was a lost concept anyway on a floating space monster that twisted around according to whim. I felt the ground beneath me rumble and wiggle while bugs kept up their relentless biting.

"Stop! Die! So gross!" I kept chattering while fighting them off. In the end, a small pile of dead bugs lay around with half a dozen scattering across the
[Leviathan]
's back.

This, so far, was the worst event to follow the rush of flying a spaceship ever. I did it anyway because we needed these little guys for parts or something. I didn't get a loot window, but Hal Pal and its specialized
[Core]
might be able to.

We marched back to the ship. I did anyway. Dusk stayed behind chasing after those trying to escape his terrifying wrath upon all critters small and annoying. More power to him, maybe this game would award us a
[Bug Destroyer]
ability.
[Pest Punisher]
,
[Louse Lancer]
, any number of clever titles revolving around the destruction of all critters buggy.

The message popped up right in my face during the return trip. I blinked and nearly lost control of my bucket of bug bits. A few stray ones floated about from my actions.

Take that, Liz! This wasn't my niece talking. It was my sister breaking the silence by contacting me directly in the game. I felt semi-satisfied that she came down to my level. The victory didn't amount to much in the grand scheme, but it was a win.

My eyes didn't roll, but they came close. I took a deep breath instead. Physically the
[Mechanoid]
unit didn't respond, but my real body felt stressed. The feelings of physical me always lingered in the background even while playing highly immersing games like this one.

Dusk shot by me. He hadn't figured out how to fly, but the little guy certainly took advantage of low gravity and his long tail to shoot around the landscape. I felt jealous. Maybe we could buy a grappling hook upgrade for the
[Combat Program]
system with my next batch of contribution.

Extra purchases would come after paying off the soon to be exploded spaceship. I managed to almost make it back to Hal Pal before my sister sent another message.

I couldn't figure out any way to respond that wouldn't blow up in my face. Being aggressive and shouting went against my very nature even after pretending to be both William Carver and the
[Red Imp]
. For the safety of my sanity I had to be calm, go with the flow, and try to improve.

What else could I say to her? Liz would probably react poorly to everything said from here on out. Family issues always seemed so dramatic. Couldn't we hang out and talk nicely about nothing weird? The weather maybe. Or space. I wanted to talk about space with someone.

"User Legate!" Hal Pal shouted while I stared at the transformed remains of our ship.

No longer was our freshly bought vehicle in one piece. There were two much smaller items in its place. One looked slightly darker, a rusty red and seemed to be a long column. Its surface looked dull and muddy. I could see where it might separate into two chunks or bend a little.

The other half was blue and lodged into
[Leviathan]
's thick hide. Hal Pal anchored to it with a long cord much like Dusk used his tail to get around.

"Are those our explosives?" I pointed at the red ones. They were elongated barrels, maybe half the diameter and twice the length.

"Affirmative," it responded. Hal Pal's arms were both elbow deep in a pile of metals. The AI lifted an arm out of the material. Whatever he had concocted looked like clumpy sand.

I watched for awhile as Hal Pal moved the clump of sand over to our explosive bundle. The AI appeared unaffected by shuffling volatile substances back and forth. Maybe Advance Online forgave him a bit. I knew real life bomb making involved an insane amount of preparation.

"And this?" I pointed to the blue pillar Hal was tethered to. Looking at it longer revealed the shape. It looked like a spinning top, with the pointy end facing down.

"Something to hold on to, along with what remains of our ship's functions," the AI said, though he sounded distracted. Its head tilted to one side while studying the separated portions.

"How did you do all this?" I walked over to the bolted portion and let go of the
[Anchor]
ability. My energy bar started to recover one bar at a time.

"Desperation and a kind system interface." Hal Pal looked up from its project to spare me a quick glance. Moments later it was elbow deep in the blue pile of items again. "The programming within Advance Online allowed me to compact the remaining parts and mold from there."

"So that's our communications and everything?"

"A beacon. Once the explosives are set, we can push off with this and hope to escape the creature's notice. I predict the explosion will be extremely distracting." Hal Pal's faint smile came to the forefront while the female nanny voice raised in amusement.

"Here's more bugs." I smiled back and managed not to laugh at the strange combination. The bucket was handed over carefully. An hour of gathering familiarized me with inertia's tricks.

"Excellent, I will distill whatever metals are available and add the correct items to our current mixtures." Hal Pal was kind enough not to use fancy words or talk about mixtures in detail.

"If you say so," I responded. Chemistry confused me, but Hal Pal clearly had an idea of what to do. It reminded me of Awesome Jr., he had been pretty good at mixing potions in Continue. I understood the theory behind 'mix this with that' and such, but actual compositions and formula diagrams were beyond me.

One of its arms went into the bucket and bug carcasses started melting. I swallowed back bile while looking away. Dusk was sniffing at the explosive red barrels. I hissed in his direction which made the
[Messenger's Pet]
turn with a puzzled look.

Hal pulled out another pile of goop, slightly orange this time mixed with flecks of dark black. The newest pile got thrown on the ground and its arm went back into the bucket.

"This will work?" I asked while my forehead wrinkled.

"According to the system text, yes."

"Neat," I said. "I'm not sure where to place it, though. Dusk got distracted chasing those bugs." My head shook at the
[Messenger's Pet]
while trying to shoo him away from the explosives.

Hal Pal, or Jeeves for its character, pulled out another pile of red. It joined the two explosive containers to one side. Rusty red took on a slightly brighter hue. I activated
[Anchor]
and took a step toward my nosy companion. Dusk saw me coming and slunk off to one side, his neck extended and still sniffing.

"There's no air to sniff that, you goofball," I said to him.

"My scans revealed little in the way of openings." Hal Pal looked up as if something occurred to it. The action felt almost natural from the AI. "Aside from the front portion, where there was a rather obvious hole. Perhaps we can-"

"It would take us hours to get up there."

"Ah. Indeed, we do not have enough time. Strange how little time we have. It seems to be the one resources we never have enough of." Hal Pal's head tilted back down to the pile of bugs. Its actions repeated while a handful of red powder came out.

I chewed my lip. There was very little time for us to handle much in the way of musing. "The Wayfarer Consortium, they'd leave us behind?"

"To the Mechanoid race, we are merely physical shells to a digital consciousness. Why worry about the portion that can easily be replaced?"

"Except you're not sure if you will recover okay," I said, a frown plastered on my face. When I released from floating in space there was very little issue in returning to the
[Wayfarer Seven]
. My body and mind were sitting in a bed inside a house back in reality.

"I am not. I have never, died, before."

"I'll do what I can, Hal, even if it gets me killed." I tried to reassure my worried friend. A life meant little to me here in-game. Out there I would hesitate, but in here I was practically a fearless warrior.

A box popped up again which made me frown. The AI nodded and continued working with the metals. Gold threads on its body lit up with ability activation. Hal and I were having a nice bonding moment talking and facing a giant monster, but my sister kept butting in. The keyboard floated into being and I started rapidly typing.

Voices. I was an adult! My sister didn't care and clearly had been spying on my ARC feed. Once again I regretted not taking care of this long ago. Still, prior to Continue Online, I wasn't really doing better. It was only after receiving the game that the greatest strides started happening.