Continue Online (Part 4, Crash) (25 page)

That explained why he was fairly calm working with me. Bodyguards probably had all sorts of quests to interact with questionable people. It would only be a matter of doing the job and getting paid.

Our path kept going up. My ankles hurt. Knees buckled and my damaged arm failed to prevent a spill. Viper got caught in the slip as we dropped a dozen steps. He hissed at me but said nothing.

“Lucky.” I dusted off while trying to ignore the glowing white to my skin. [Dipped in Starlight] still flashed. Barks from half broken
[Heavenly Body Clone]
s were echoing far below us.

We traveled another twenty feet before Viper asked, “How many criminal pointss did you get sstuck with?”

“Seven thousand.” We were almost level with
[Charge]
’s floor. Our path tilted up unceasingly. I lifted the fireball and winced as my weight shifted. Light bounded up the hallway.

Viper hissed a low tone. He settled on saying, “That will take ssome time.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Ah. It’ss time for my flight. The car iss here,” he said.

My upward climb halted. Turning to look at Viper didn’t reveal much in the way of expression. He never seemed to have much positive or negative tone. Everything felt almost passively ‘obsserved’. Even now he looked barely annoyed at the idea of leaving his character behind.

“I should take a break too. Have a safe flight.” I tried to sound professional and polite but couldn’t feel much of anything.

Continue Online’s reality disappeared as I logged out of the ARC. Dizziness hit as I stood. Lingering sensations from Hermes made walking hard. I inched toward the kitchen while clutching the wall. Everything in my two room home felt too open. Still, I might have claustrophobia by later today. Four mental days in a cave system couldn’t be helpful.

Food went down without thought about taste. Two glasses of water were gulped as I tried to focus. It was too early for coffee. Middle age ruined my ability to pull all night sessions.

Only one goal mattered right now, escaping with Viper and our points. An hour, maybe more of awareness would get me through. Afterward, I could give into the exhaustion threatening to drown my mind in unconsciousness.

I logged back in and felt immediately depressed. Our characters were standing in front of a dead end. My eyes closed briefly and time skipped. I was in no mood for such nonsense. Another message sat off to the side flashing for attention.

“Oh no.” I groaned. We had under two hours to make it to the surface. Would my abilities shut off as well? This was not neat at all! “Dusk? Can you be unsummoned or something?”

The little guy, who I still thought of as tiny despite his larger size, chirped a few times then did a circle. There was no message box above his head that might help.

Walls rattled. Dirt fell from above and crumbs got into my hair. Something could be heard digging at the wall nearby. My small
[Messenger’s Pet]
hissed in unison with Viper. Both were upset. Their echo made me turn around to stare at them.

I looked around then quickly pinged the area with
[Sight of Mercari]
. Players weren’t near us, so that left [
Heavenly Body Clone]
s trying to dig tunnels to us.

Dusk had fireballs. I had
[Blink]
and the sharpness of shape shifting objects. I was exhausted though. The disorientation of
[Blink]
and
[Awareness Heightening]
would probably make me pass out if used excessively. Sure they were overpowered, but only if I was rested in real life. Running this character now was like a high powered car in a drunk’s hands.

I took a breath and looked up. The ceiling was a mixed sort of dirt. The walls kept flaking off and scraping could be heard. Muffled barks of noise could be heard in the walls and behind us. If monsters could dig through to me, maybe we could mine a path out.

Both eyes closed as I pinged again. Wyl was close. Other players were too, probably brought back to base by the
[Convict Brand]
. At least six people had respawned recently, but the names didn’t line up.

“Dusk, can we, get back to Wyl from here?” Dusk knew who Wyl was. We had spent hours talking to the man during the William Carver era.

Dusk stared up at me with his head tilted. Tiny claws teared away at the wall. Dirt gathered behind us rapidly. I reformed
[Morrigu’s Gift]
and
[Morrigu’s Echo]
into pickaxes and swung them. There was no finesse to my efforts. My actions might have been the flailing of a confused child. Still,
[Brawn]
and
[Coordination]
kept me moving forward through earthen walls.

“Why didn’t we do this before?” I asked.

The wall tore apart in chunks under our combined effort. Dusk squawked as larger pieces hit me, then he hissed with annoyance. I didn’t have the brainpower to do much besides keep swinging. Rocks echoed with noise.

My head felt heavy and breathing was a struggle. Maybe dizziness hit me from a lack of virtual oxygen. Our steep climb took a toll, such that even Viper lacked color. Or it was his autopilot being literally dull. I hammered away and tried not to grumble or huff. I couldn’t tell how much progress we were making without a ball of fire.

Walls below us crumbled. Hands from
[Heavenly Body Clone]
s could barely be seen wiggling through the dirt. Viper stabbed some of them. There were other noises in the distance. Sounds like power lines overcharging. A flash of blue poured into the monster’s freshly made hole, illuminating the darkness. Android Seven and his weird blue laser beams were completely insane. His dot sat at least three floors down. Fighting him again might be neat, from an objective standpoint, but deadly. The challenge of fighting another player didn’t outweigh survival.

Dusk and I needed to get Viper and his stock of loot to freedom. More chunks fell away while I grew dizzier. Exhaustion messages came up. Breathing came slower. Air felt heavy.

I swung again and prayed that we were getting closer.
[Convict Brand: Docile Binding]
drained me slowly. Physical abilities being constrained made it harder to swing. Dusk made more progress than me.

Monsters behind us had arrived in droves, tearing apart the wall and wading through our dirty leavings. Viper fought a few off. There would be no fighting them in my condition, not anymore.

Lifting chest muscles burned.
[Morrigu’s Echo]
went under my belt. Both hands gripped
[Morrigu’s Gift]
and swung. We lasted another four minutes while burying a pile of
[Heavenly Body Clone]
s behind us.

My vision blurred. Every swing required three hurried breaths. I felt sharp nails dig at my heel. Dusk chirped in urgency at his tunnel. I tried to bend and look but fell instead. Pain radiated up a captured leg.

There was a clear line of sight through to freedom. The narrow hole couldn’t be much larger than Dusk was. He had broken through though, three feet of dirt between us and the initial stairwell out.

“Shit.” I huffed and tried to understand while Viper’s autopilot hissed. “Viper, put your hand through! I’ll pull!”
[Blink]
went off and I appeared in the barely visible pathway. My head swam and heartbeat stuttered.

I got back down on my knees and saw fingers poking through the hole. Dusk was on the open side trying to dig our small escape way out. Starlight dripped from the walls in large quantities, bleeding around the hole my
[Messenger’s Pet]
made. I briefly wondered why we hadn’t dug through veins of liquid on the other side, but there was no time to figure out these mechanics. The
[Abyss of Light]
clearly had secrets.

[Brawn]
was below half but that was more than enough. I got a firm grip on Viper’s arm then pulled. Dirt ground along smoothed features and the man’s health bar dropped. Shoulders looked disjointed but somehow he contorted into a thin shape. His face never looked more like a snake’s.

His autopilot hissed on the way through then stood and ran uphill. The face of a
[Heavenly Body Clone]
came through just behind him. I stabbed the monster with
[Morrigu’s Gift]
, silencing its barks.
[Dipped in Starlight]
flashed again.

Viper shuffled ahead with one possibly broken leg. Dusk tossed a few balls of fire at the dirt, doing more harm to the dirt than my latest victim. I pinged the area again with
[Sight of Mercari]
.

Big O and his trio were up with Wyl. Android Seven was behind us but getting closer. He had to be near the entry path. The Traveler would be in for a surprise upon seeing all these
[Heavenly Body Clone]
s. Electrical hums echoed down the hall.

Legs refused to run and my head dragged. Exhaustion pulled at me. I gave a halfhearted toss of
[Morrigu’s Echo]
into the latest creature chasing after us. It pierced through and distracted a train of monsters for a moment. I
[Recall]
ed then tossed my spear formed weapon again, and again. Five throws and
[Morrigu’s Echo]
no longer had enough durability to risk another
[Recall]
.

We were so close to freedom. Liquid starlight faded in favor of actual sun. The dull scent of dirt and undead monsters mixed with flowers. I remembered that smell. Alyssum, tiny little flowers with a sweet fragrance. I got them for Xin all the time. That thought was delirium.

I stepped out of the dungeon and was blinded by the fresh light. An abrupt pressure on my hands resulted in my arms being locked in a restraining grasp. My body fell forward and Dusk made an odd noise. Both eyes closed and I almost dropped into unconsciousness.

Continue Online felt distant. The ARC connection dimmed as my awareness shut down. There were no boxes telling me we were in a safe zone for convicts though.

“What?” I mumbled.

“Two more. They don’t look like our man,” an unknown voice said. Strong arms lifted me from the ground. Viper had been cuffed and Dusk ran around anxiously. “One’s got a pet, tamer maybe.”

We came into the square where our caravan first set down. Four weird ox giraffes were dead. The guards who sat up top with arrows were no longer at their posts. A man nearby screamed and it felt like an alarm clock going off. I tried to wake up enough to give everything a good look.

[Arcadia]
tilted sideways as I tried to reconcile everything. This was not neat. There were three players still alive. The guards who carried crossbows were dead and lying on the ground. People that didn’t belong to our convict caravan had Wyl and Knight Middleton hostage.

“Who’s this?” A huge man moved forward. Scars rippled across the figure’s body. “Another prisoner? Kill him and continue to wait for Android Seven.”

“Bounty can’t be worth all this, what, seven players, fifteen stupid NPCs?” one of the figures whispered.

I felt too Voices damned tired to deal with this. Virtual statistics couldn’t cure my physical exhaustion in reality. My mouth opened in a wide yawn. This jailbreak wasn’t even for me, based on the few lines of conversation so far.

“Android Seven is down below. If I lead you to him, can you let us go?” I said after a deep breath of fresh air. My own words came out as a slur. Nearly four game days and being awake for over thirty hours straight counted against me.

“He said something about finding our bounty,” the man holding me said.

“No need. These convict train gangs always work the same way. He’s bound to this place.” A large ogre of a man stepped over a dead body in our direction. “We can farm the whole lot of them for easy experience, take the loot, anything else of value. Kill him, kill the remaining guards, and Android Seven will come out eventually.”

Wyl looked upset. The Traveler holding Wyl had long pink hair. He swept to the side and brought up a glowing hand. I had to try to help but the world swam. My eyes settled on the broken pillar of light that the two guards had once stood in. Solid chunks sat on the ground. I tried to understand how light could turn solid, but maybe I had been mistaken the whole time.

Eyes closed once then opened slowly.
[Blink]
failed the three times in rapid succession. Boxes appeared. Neck muscles jerked while I tried to shake awareness into my head.

This just wasn’t my week. Luckily I could hear the solution coming in behind us. A body flashed into being as one of the other convicts resurrected. The timing worked out perfectly.