Continue Online (Part 4, Crash) (21 page)

I walked through the giant spiraling staircase down the first few floors and prepared my weapons. Three days of sneaking, looting and avoiding other players had helped get me back in the groove. As long as I avoided Android Seven, the player who had shot a hole through me, then we would be fine.

“I hate the darkness in this game. I hate it the most, I think,” I muttered. Having him around prevented me from feeling utterly crazy. The blackness of where all those Voices lived was a little different. It was like, absence or an empty backdrop.

Here, this dungeon felt oppressive. The ARC had picked up on an unquantifiable emotion that made me twitch the longer this place went on. Breathing was a little harder but the impact snuck up on me. The monsters were easy to disregard as minor creatures and yet disturbing as the lore stacked up. According to my system text, these humanoid creatures, and small lab rats were part of an attempt at recreating a divine being. Those that failed were originally locked up but had somehow escaped and kept reproducing from fallen bodies across this dungeon and the one above it. In essence, tossing prisoners like myself into this dungeon was doing more harm than good. Players like my niece, Beth, were theoretically contributing to the pile and probably didn’t know.

Such boring thoughts kept my mind from going insane. Dusk and I scrambled through a few stray legless monsters as we made it to the next staircase.

“Don’t eat those.” My warning resulted in Dusk making a grossed out face toward the dead monster. Neither of us had enjoyed that mess. He had carried on barfing into my hot tub program, which somehow found itself activated. I disabled it and started fresh. “I’d rather you get fat breaking into a bakery than barfing again.”

He looked over at me and his eyes focused slowly. A box appeared.

“Wait, is this why you got bigger?” I asked, to which Dusk nodded then hopped up and down on my shoulder. He was impatient for baked goods and to see what this Blessing would be.

I looked around and pinged the area. There weren’t any players nearby. Most of them were dead except Big O’s group, Android Seven, and Viper. We had a few seconds to spare before diving into the heart of this twisted blacklight dungeon. My eyes focused on the ‘additional details’ word floating in front of me and a new box popped up.

My lips pursed together. Balance had struck again, but her complaints sounded justified. Based on the survival rating of other players down here, in the war before, and during my travels, my abilities were already high enough. These Blessings were neat and explained more than a few people in the game.

I clicked through Balance’s disclaimer and three choices came up,
[Wings of the Messenger]
,
[Belly of a Beast]
, and
[Breath of Flame]
. The idea of having black Dusk like wings was kind of interesting, but I had no desire to try to navigate using them. Being able to eat anything in-game and resist poisons and diseases might serve to be helpful. At least, I assumed that’s what the abilities did since my attempts at getting additional details failed.

“Neat, but where were these a month ago?” I asked the creature while looking at the options.

Cupcakes popped into being above Dusk’s head.

“You mean you’re just making up rewards based on how much I feed you?” I felt dumbfounded. How had that not occurred to me forever ago? Or at least when seeing that it had reached rank four upon returning to Continue Online. Maybe I had focused on the wrong things. Like being in player jail, tossed in front of a king, paired with a player who felt useless. The list went on.

Dusk nodded rapidly then shook his head.

“Right, Balance.” I was on the right track. The fact that he had three possible blessings was interesting and confusing. Could he give me all three? Maybe if I went and spent another thousand dollars on cupcakes he might cave in. We could discuss it later.

He nodded again then shrugged.

I selected
[Breath of Flame]
, because growing wings or having my virtual innards transform into a garbage disposal seemed neat, but not really my style. My finger lifted and the system message shattered into a barely visible black and gold.

Heat built around me. A sharp twinge of pain caused me to breathe in air that felt like liquid fire. Each additional gasp brought another round of smoke and flame. Dusk made an indistinguishable noise. My pulse pounded as the suffocation grew worse.

This was only a game, right? The feeling of dying in a fire was all in my head, right? I curled into a ball and felt cold ground scrape against me. One leg jerked while air failed to fill my lungs. Rawness refused to let go of my throat as my eyes watered.

Then it was over, and I was left gasping with a pop-up box.

“Is that good, or bad?” I wondered briefly. It was like a summary of my life since this game came around. Part of me didn’t care, it sounded like an easier way to get to Xin. Even if my body now had scales and a prison tattoo.

Dusk didn’t have a response. His eyes were heavy-lidded and thoughts of food floated across his brain.

“Let’s go, before this dungeon gives me a piercing and an eye-patch.” I tried not to feel dry in my response. Already my eyes felt a little weird around the edges as if the skin crinkled where it once had been smooth.

The
[Messenger’s Pet]
snorted a ring of smoke, but it didn’t bother me. I tried to activate the ability multiple times but it didn’t trigger correctly. Barfing up fireballs to hold would probably take time to get used to, like any other ability in this game.

We walked farther along. I moved slowly due to the aftermath of my lungs being reworked. Dusk attacked most of the spiders while I quietly cheered him on. Getting to the center staircase required traveling a different path. The main spiral into the dungeon only went to the first floor, where it smoothed out into a series of branching paths. Following them far enough would lead to the second series of stairs down. Monsters of all stages lay on each floor, and those nasty tiny spiders had webbed up chunks of it.

I took glee in pausing my
[Blink]
just to put a small bit of fire, using my minor
[Lithium]
spell, under their webbing. The resulting screams and rapid smashing of bugs made the last three days enjoyable.

Dusk kept us on course, mostly. We arrived after thirty minutes of twisting and turning. Both of us glanced down the staircase.

“We’ve got to move fast, we’ll go straight for Viper first. Down here is the fastest way, and I can Blink through a lot,” I said to Dusk. He closed his eyes briefly in response then looked at one of the shambling monsters below. “All those cupcakes didn’t make you sluggish, did they?”

The dragon turned and snorted a ring of smoke in my face. I wanted to send one back, but his skill Ranks were probably a dozen levels above mine. We cleared the smaller monsters nearby but left their corpses alone. Eventually some
[Heavenly Body Clone]
s would find their way up here to feast.

Dusk leapt down first. I followed quickly, giving up stealth for speed. My feet pounded loud enough to stir various monsters. The
[Messenger’s Pet]
took great pleasure in blasting creatures in the face with small balls of fire. I marveled at what level his skill must be at to generate so many.

We made it three flights down before running into real trouble. Six shambling monsters sat in our path, trying to climb their way up a floor. Too bad
[Blink]
was insanely broken for dungeon crawling, especially at the Rank I had. Dusk didn’t care half the time anyway.

There were no party members nearby. Boss monsters didn’t litter this inner staircase down. I had scouted most of these paths over the last three days, staying away from glowing barrels of liquid starlight. We kept going until we reached a floor level with Viper. Dusk and I kept going, fighting smaller creatures but leaving behind carcasses. Skinning bodies or digging for ear bits wasn’t worth it at this stage. Plus I didn’t have a crystal to store energy like some of the other convicts did.

We came out of the floor at a full gallop. Dusk sped past me, like a vicious cat tearing around corners with unending energy. Above his head floated a small smiley face with turned up eyes denoting happiness. We were huffing by the other end. Thirty minutes, that’s how long it had taken us to sprint at high speeds through this dungeon with a complete disregard for safety and the monsters chasing.

Dusk huffed a bit as we came to a halt. We stood in front of large doors that looked almost like a vault. One metal wheel sat in the middle, clearly for spinning or a pressurized lock. That was pointless since a large hole had been torn near one of the hinges. I closed my eyes and pinged the area with
[Sight of Mecari]
. Viper was just inside, still unmoving.

My
[Messenger’s Pet]
wasted no time on unsatisfied curiosity. I took a few deep breaths and followed Dusk inside. The room was darker than most of the remaining dungeon. Part of our success at moving so fast had been due to the upper levels, and light which permeated the central stairs down. But this room only had a few pools of light. I tried coughing up another fireball, this time succeeding.

I stared at the glowing ball, it felt pleasantly warm sitting in my hand. Dusk looked back at me before moving on to inspect the room once more. I held up the ball to get a higher angle of the light.

This place looked to be a weird sort of laboratory. There were tubes against the walls and barrels filled with starlight. I avoided them, not keen on being chased by all the
[Heavenly Body Clone]
s that might be roaming nearby. They were like guided missiles of zombie hatred once set off.

Scorch marks and disturbed ashes littered the pieces of equipment. A few charred pieces of parchment sat on a table in the room’s center. This place was maybe a thousand square feet at most. Walls here were clearly unnatural, all the right angles betrayed intelligent design, where so much of this dungeon didn’t.

On the far wall, a dimly back-lit pane of frozen ice stood. I held the light even higher to try to get a better view. There was a body inside. We walked across a grated flooring. Chilled air traced a coiled path as I moved. There didn’t seem to be much under my feet, and Dusk walked in without a care. That meant nothing large or angry was nearby. My nonfireball wielding hand sat ready to grab
[Morrigu’s Gift]
in case things turned angry.

We came to a railing, and below that was a drop off that looked to be without end. In the middle of the pit was an upright tub of sorts. Water or some liquid chilled the air and made my ball of fire sputter. Inside was Viper’s unmoving body, his eyes were closed as if asleep. Apparently the reason his dot hadn’t moved was because Viper sat in suspended animation.

“He’s survived down here with all those bits of loot for eight days. That’s pretty impressive,” I said to Dusk. The
[Messenger’s Pet]
laid back an ear and sniffed the frozen pool.