Continue Online (Part 4, Crash) (14 page)

“So can you find us a safe spot?” I asked him at long last. “Something better than a path to the Grand World Crossroads this time.”

Dusk looked around. Viper turned his mostly white eyes toward the shorter creature. We watched as he stood on hind legs and sniffed the air. He looked around a few more times.

“Usselessss. I sshould jusst kill you now, and find a place to hide.” The other Traveler’s neck bent too far to the left.

It was enough to distract Dusk. He looked at my makeshift partner and actually curled back his lips in disgust. The two of them stuck their tongues out at each other, which made my face freeze and hands drift toward weapons.

“I would prefer if we got along, at least until we’re out of this dungeon.” I had seen Dusk die in that other world. Now I knew he wasn’t immune to pain or fighting others. He had a character stat window just like I did.

“What then, can you offer, worth my continued attentionss?” he asked before tensing up toward Dusk.

Dusk was still making his standard mixture of animal noises. Part snake, cat, and bird. I put a hand on his much higher head and scratched between his ears. The motion distracted him from the hissing match.

“You implied players like to hide goods for other people, as payment, right?”

“Yess.”

“What do you say we steal them while they’re unguarded?” Both Dusk and I pulled back our cheeks in equal smirks.

“I’m lisstening.” Viper tilted his face to one side to bring us into focus. The narrow slit of his eye widened to take in more light.

“Dusk, do you think you can find some treasures for us?” I said while thinking about my own
[Treasure’s Gift]
. Hopefully we could get one small pile of items squirreled away by other players. Once Viper was on board I could get breakfast and take care of real life needs.

Dealing with Dusk had grown a lot easier months ago. Now, most ideas in his head came with comical thought bubble projections. Above his head, two cupcakes showed.

“Yes, of course, I’ll get you cupcakes,” I said.

Viper muttered in confusion while Dusk turned toward me. His eyes looked into mine, then back to the path we had arrived by. Both my eyes closed briefly to drown out the visual overlap of
[Sight of Mercari]
. According to the sensations, team four with Big O was already on the way down. After that would be Android Seven and his partners. I longed for a quiet corner of the dungeon but based on Dusk’s sniffing, that wasn’t going to happen.

“What’ss that?” Viper asked.

“Fellow Travelers on life’s road,” I muttered.

“Sshit,” he said, and I couldn’t help but laugh.

One of the groups ahead of us went toward the dungeon’s western side. Another group traveled farther away. This place was almost big enough that a dozen people could roam, but once the other half started we would be hard pressed to avoid each other. Viper and I had to contend with too many factors for other players to be our only concern.

Dusk sniffed, an exclamation mark appeared in the thought bubble above his head. A treasure box showed shortly after complete with golden coins. Using the
[Messenger’s Pet]
to hunt down treasure was certainly a new application.

“Lead the way,” I said to the large cat-sized dragon. He wasn't going to fit in my hood anymore, and that made me kind of sad.

“You got a pet bribed with cupcakess?” Viper fell into line behind me.

“What do you use?” I turned to check on him. The man was completely perplexed by our situation.

Part of me couldn’t help but smile. Sure he wanted to get the most of this dungeon, but so did I. I was easily willing to work with someone for safety and split the resources. Logging out left an autopilot active in dungeons, that’s how they all worked. Players could go in, but none of us would be allowed to log out to safety.

Often times autopilots were prone to stupid actions. Mine had eaten a slew of
[Ghost Mushroom]
s and ended up seeing sound as splashes of color.

There were additional monsters like the ones prior, but with Dusk helping we made quick work of them. Viper insisted we stop and gather their energy or whatever that crystal of his did. After a while, he figured out which question to ask.

“You. You’re an Ultimate Edition Usser, aren’t you?” he said.

I shrugged but didn’t answer out loud. It always sounded like an excuse compared to the months of work I put in learning new skills and changing from a passive depressive man going through the motions to a person that defeated monsters in rapid succession. Almost a year’s worth of game time, months of real world time. I had changed dammit.

“That explainss the weird itemss. You got ssomething during your trialss. Didn’t you?”

“Yes,” I said, feeling annoyed that all my efforts were boiled down to ‘pay to win’ gaming.

“Ahhhhh.” He let out a long hiss. We fought another small pack of the legless creatures with monstrous arms. Bits of blackened blood stained the leather armor given to me through King Nero’s pity.

As we traveled on my irritation grew. My efforts being discounted hurt, but we hadn’t found a safe spot to hide yet. My bladder was full and belly rumbling. To top it off, the
[Messenger’s Tube]
practically glowed with communication from the Voices above. Hopefully soon Dusk would reach his destination, and I could set about getting things sorted.

Snake eyes followed along behind us, gathering loot while my own inventory stayed nearly empty. The price of loot was small for a measure of freedom and cooperation. One that didn’t hurt to pay.

Coldly inflicting mental pain to two other players without hesitation, that was another issue entirely. I tried not to let the worry about what this place might do to me cause problems. There were still two items to open and get straight before I could let myself reflect completely.

Session Seventy One - Nightmares and Dreams

My head throbbed from repeated usage of abilities.
[Blink]
was bad enough due to losing my anchor in space repeatedly. It required me to look at a target location and imagine being there, and how the game picked that up was often beyond me.

Then again,
[Morrigu’s Gift]
transformed shapes, and this entire world was in my head and digital coding. Advanced science clearly didn’t care one whit about piddly human limitations. My head shook slowly and tried to focus on creeping through the dungeon.

Dusk sniffed at the ground ahead of us. I watched the area around us in case he might fail to notice something, but Dusk normally had an insane level of awareness. He could find any critter smaller than him in a ten-mile radius, and now he was bigger.

“Any place close, Dusk?” I asked him. We kept running into single monsters but nothing big yet. Those other players had entered behind us and things would start getting bad soon.

“Yess. Tell your lizard to find a place fast,” Viper said. His eyes shifted constantly as we turned corners.

Our route led down a hallway, through four junctions, and to a two story drop toward the dungeon core. Dusk leapt with barely a flutter of wings. I
[Blink]
ed. Viper had to use the handholds one level at a time.

“He’ss not going for the bossss, iss he?” my partner asked.

“No—” I checked the names in the dungeon. No players were nearby, but others were going down as well. “You’re not, right Dusk?”

The larger imitation dragon turned to me then rolled his eyes. One shoulder rippled as if to suggest the choice was mine. A huff of steam came out from his nostrils and he went back to tracking a scent.

“That’s probably a no.” I smiled and tried to
[Act]
confident. One hand stayed on
[Morrigu’s Gift]
anyway in case Viper tried to stab me in the back. I felt uncomfortable with him behind me, but couldn’t let him get close to Dusk either.

If I died, that was fine, but if Dusk died, I might lose my mind again. Seeing him, Jeeves, and Treasure all vanish in one go had been devastating the first time. For a few brief seconds, I lost rationality and forgot these virtual worlds were only real on the surface.

Going down a floor made it even harder to see. Less light dripped through this floor’s ceiling. The creepy glow that illuminated Viper’s eyes was reduced to almost normal hues.

“Is your beasst ssure?”

Dusk laid back an ear and growled.

“He’ss ssmart,” Viper remarked but didn’t apologize. He didn’t seem like the sort who really gave a damn about others. Those mostly white orbs made me feel distrustful.

“I told you,” I said, sticking up for one of my few friends in the world. It was odd that the people I got along with best only existed in a digital landscape. He looked like an animal but felt far too complex to be compared to Mister Sniffles.

This dungeon felt easy. We were a little over an hour into these depths and so far there had been no signs of traps or complicated puzzles.

“This place can’t just be monsters.”

“I’m not ssure. It’ss getting harder to ssee though, I worry what might be in the darknessss.”

That worried me also. Without a scroll to light the area, we would be in for trouble. Maybe I could wrap up the convict’s garb and set it aflame.

“Do you have anything we can use for a torch?” I asked.

Viper shook his head. He probably hadn’t been desperate enough to use clothing as a torch yet. It ruined the durability, and would screw up the few points such an item would be worth. Maybe he had an ability to see in the dark.

I grumbled about being robbed of all my items again. They didn’t even give me a discount on the
[Sinner]
status after taking my gold and goodies.

Dusk stopped and perked up. The bobcat sized dragon swiveled a long neck around to peer behind us. One ear flicked forth as something in the distance drew his attention. Viper looked confused, but a short blade sat clutched in each hand. His body crouched low to the ground.

I couldn’t tell what had my friend so enthralled. A hand sat ready with
[Morrigu’s Gift]
and played through one of the other convict’s words earlier. Average players died down here, and that couldn’t be from team combat alone.

Dusk hissed and my stomach dropped. When he made those little angry squawks of noise, our situation would get bad.

Out from behind one of the earthen dungeon walls shuffled a much taller creature then our prior enemies. This human-shaped monster had legs that were nearly impossible to separate from the dim background. Flesh and muscle were missing from a shoulder down to the thigh.

“Sshit,” Viper said.

“You see that? It’s impossible to kill!” I didn’t like that kind of message. In all my time playing this virtual reality game, monsters who didn’t die had never come up.

“Ssshit, seven dayss of running?” the other man voiced a thought completely different from my own.

“Viper, throw some body parts of the lesser versions at it!” I snapped at the part serpent player. Being trained to react suddenly to Continue Online’s crazy world had taken a lot of time with Shazam. “Dusk, we need that safe spot!”

Viper didn’t throw anything, but instead turned and ran ahead of Dusk. A single slit of eyes was visible as he hauled down the hallway. Dusk squawked then tried to shuffle off as well. I debated hitting the creature with my weapons for a few seconds too long.

Voices but they moved fast. The shuffle from before must have been an act because a few seconds later long arms were grasping toward my body. The
[Speed]
and
[Reaction]
weren’t enough without
[Awareness Heightening]
to completely avoid fingertips raking across my chest and face.

I spun, got a line of sight on where Dusk was fleeing around the corner, then
[Blink]
ed. My landing footwork was poor, the limp from before ached just wrong. A second thud of pain jolted my shoulder as I tumbled into a wall upon reappearing.

Loud angry walrus barking echoed behind us. I managed to keep
[Morrigu’s Gift]
in one hand and pulled myself upright with the other. My mind tried to piece together what was happening as we ran down a corridor of the dungeon. Another
[Heavenly Body Clone]
came out ahead of Viper, bones shone through on its arm with an obvious glow.