Continue Online (Part 4, Crash) (9 page)

“Or Hermes,” I offered, neither name bothered me that much at this point. My interest lay in all those details they were spouting. Those prisoners back in the jail cell believed this was a terrible place to be, yet three of these players had conversed already.

Maybe there was a certain amount of disconnect, this was a virtual world after all. There was pain feedback when we died, nothing minor either. Especially considering the heart attack I had been exposed to as William Carver. Maybe they all made choices like I did.

“Alright, Hermes. Some ground rules to make life easier during your stay,” the big tanned guy said. He didn’t bother turning his head much. “Listen up, ‘cus those that don’t get boned quick.”

“I still like Mister Daft. Daft, ‘cus he’s got air between his ears.”

“Don’t listen to him, he’s got some skill that makes NPCs believe his lies. Works on players also,” the rumbling one said. I tried to use
[Identification]
but the skills were locked. Mine, at least, but this other guy had managed to figure out my name at some point. Maybe we were unlocked briefly in order to do dungeon stuff.

“Shut up, convicts!” A guard pressed something hanging off the giraffe oxen monster then pain arched through our bindings. The big guy ground his teeth a little. I yelped from the unexpected spike. Others made varying noises.

“No one here is your friend unless circumstances force it. We’re headed to a team dungeon, but expect no favors just because you’re grouped,” he tried to whisper but failed. Apparently it was good enough for the guards.

“Okay.” All sorts of ideas raced through my brain.

“I’m only talking because I enjoy a certain amount of fairness, and don’t bother asking why we’re in. To sum this shit up, at least four people here are in for murdering everyone they could before enough other players brought them down.” The Hispanic guy shrugged. “Seven others got burglary raps, add in some political hatred or getting on the wrong side of quests. Squisks back there tried to touch a bunch of elf girls who may be eighty but are mentally eight.”

“Game’s rigged. They were legal,” said the man and grumbled. “Way, way over eighteen!”

“Jesus, you kill him before he suicides and I’ll consider it a personal favor. Same offer I make to everyone else. Free pass.”

“How many times!?” the guard yelled as armor clinked. Another round of electrical collar abuse kicked in. This time, everyone cried out except the big darkly tanned guy who had been explaining things to me. “If the new guy needs to know something, he can learn by trial and error, or check that guide shit you Travelers have.”

“Calm down, Knight Middleton,” said the other armored figure. He rode on a creature that looked as if someone had shoved a gazelle and bull together. Without
[Identification]
I was unsure, but this beast was probably a
[Larodeo]
, which apparently combined ‘the’ and ‘rodeo’ together.

The guard paused and glared at all of us. His hand hung above the electrical trigger button. I contemplated racing to log out of the ARC before another one hit. Dealing with pain when there was no choice was bearable, but this wasn’t Requiem.

“Knight Middleton, shocking the Travelers does nothing to help them be rehabilitated, despite your beliefs,” the other knight said. There hadn’t been a system pop-up regarding
[Rehabilitation]
points as a result of being damaged.

“It should. If the Voices left me in charge, I could shock them endlessly, one point per minute endured.” The man pressed the button again anyway, despite his orders. I gasped as limbs shook from the jolt of electricity. “Then even that child raping scum could be redeemed in a few months. I bet he would even thank me if there was some, stupid, skill.” A finger jamming jolt of pain accompanied each of the final words.

“Knight Middleton, once again I will remind you that justice is not ours to dispense. We only follow the rules set forth.” The other guard’s tone sounded familiar. It was hard to place, almost as though it were from a half-forgotten dream.

“Fine,” he said.

“Convicts, for your own health, keep quiet until we reach the tower’s base.” The guard in charge didn’t turn to look at us. His words were oddly clear.

Most of the other convicts flipped back to autopilot. They must have been checking on their characters when someone talked. The remote screen was good at seeing when things moved, but time dilation made it hard to track conversations sometimes.

I decided to log out and get the rest of my sleep. We clearly had time to wait before anything super exciting happened and I needed to be rested before dealing with group treachery. What exactly might they do? Form alliances across teams? Lead other people to their deaths?

When we were all chained down and sitting together in daylight it felt peaceful. Compared to frothing beasts in my face they were only human. Still, any one of these people barreling down on me in a game might turn ugly fast. That large man who shrugged off electrical jolts had to be skilled, or tough with a damage reduction. Those hands had been huge too, like, Iron sized, or Leeroy, and he sounded nothing like those two.

He felt informative, but not friendly. The guy behind me, upon reflection, had been condescending and weasel-like. Inside the game, I had suppressed those impressions in order to listen and get my bearings in the new location. Thinking of being in the middle of all these literal criminals with unknown Continue Online abilities worried me about future prospects. My sleep was fitful and sweat filled.

A few hours later I logged in, more nervous than before after a moment to reflect. I planned on fighting when needed, but it wouldn’t be fun or exciting. Battle blinded lust wasn’t one of my personality traits at all.

The guards were far enough away that we might be able to risk conversation. Our two escorts had met up with another six people wearing bulky armor. The bus was heading to a harness platform of some sort. Looming up above in a swirl of brightly lit orbs was the tower that had been visible from a distance. It reminded me of the old Starry Night work only the very air around it warped with colors. It went up into the sky quite a ways.

“Tower of Stars, that’s it, right?” I vaguely remembered Beth talking about it being a raid level zone. She died here more times than I cared to think about trying to beat this place again and again, but so far no one had made it to the top.

“Stop three on The Wheel, average deaths per three-man clear, seven. Loot we get to keep, bound. The winner last round? Android Seven over there. Soloed the boss when all the other convicts were dead,” a man next to me spoke calmly. His shoulders looked lopsided. “But we’re not doing the tower, we’re doing the much less exciting group dungeon called the Black Hole of Light.”

The carriage stopped completely and the giraffe oxen creatures groaned in unison. They sat down and our cart rocked as the platform took on the weight. We were four feet above the ground but now suspended by heavy wooden beams. Two clearly patterned circles were marked nearby. Both guards got off their own mounts and walked toward the circles.

“Android Seven?” I tilted my head in confusion. Continue Online didn’t have robots or androids, did it? Luckily our guards were away from the shock buttons so we should be able to converse a little.

“Just another player, punished for whatever crimes the game lured him into. If you draw his group he’ll probably let you live. He rarely does anything to lose points.” This person didn’t even stop to introduce himself.

“We’re going to be in groups?” I asked while eyeballing the crowd around me. A gate clinked behind us. My head had just enough slack to see some sort of fortified wall with guards up top. It felt similar to
[Camp Grey Skull]
but with NPCs all dressed in fine armor.

“We’ll be in groups of three. Luck of the draw, we get about an hour between groups,” the man nearby said. Without a completely visible face, it was difficult to anchor all these people. Plus everyone wore the same orange and black looking clothing. Why a fantasy world was intent upon using modern prisoner coloring was beyond me.

The tower’s base was almost the size of two football fields long. We could see it through a set of bars that separated us from the actual dungeons. There weren’t any other Travelers headed up into the building, so maybe normal people were given a different entrance. A tunnel could be seen wrapping around the tower’s base like a nautilus shell. One route tilted up into the dungeon that Beth had probably traversed. Down went into a darkened pit.

“That sounds messy,” I said while trying to figure out what would happen next. The two guards that had ridden with us were now sitting in their circles. Runes on the ground were lighting up from
[Lithium]
spells. I smiled briefly, remembering Requiem’s lithium chanting. It sounded like bad childish poetry or did back in my
[Red Imp]
era.

“It is. Groups are encouraged to kill each other and whatever monsters they can find to keep the dungeon under control,” the other Traveler said and gave a barely visible shrug. He must have known I was new. Even now I hardly remembered the rules on how dungeons worked. There were bosses, lots of little creatures, some had treasure or puzzles. Others came with quests inside. It was dynamic, so each person entering got a slightly different experience.

“Why does Android Seven win?” I had to know if there was a secret that might help. This guy would be within rights to keep it himself, or feed me false information, but he didn’t seem to care.

“I got nothing. He just does. Man has about five hundred murders under his belt and will be out in week's at this rate.” His head shook. “Good for us, I guess. I’m more worried about what quest might require mass murder.”

I blinked a few times then stared at the quiet man in a corner. He looked almost, normal to me. If I were to slap a business suit on the other person then he could fit in on Wall Street or some other business area. Not that they were popular anymore with the technological growth these last two centuries. Still, he wore the same bright orange garb all of us did.

There was a flash of light up front that distracted me from staring at Android Seven.
[Lithium]
fueled runes had spiraled into a bright glowing shield around the guards. It looked to be a protective barrier. There was a third light slowly coalescing between them of a box sitting atop a table.

“Shut up!” Knight Middleton yelled at us. “Listen closely! Your kind-” the man briefly sneered under his visor then went back to shouting loudly, “-should be getting information from the Voices right now. You’ll get regulations for your stay. Kindly don’t waste our time by trying to escape.”

“Next up is group lots!” one of the guards shouted. “Most of you should know the drill by now! As this is what you Travelers call a group dungeon, three make up a squad. Survive, bring out your trophies displaying kills, highest group stays off the equalizing block.”

The bindings keeping us tied down dropped away. I reached up and felt along my neck for a heavy bracing that hadn’t really been noticed yet. The weights around my ankles and hands were gone as well. I looked around but no one appeared to be taking advantage of the freedom to rush or attack mindlessly.

We slowly formed lines, with a startling level of organization given our
[Criminal]
status. I tried not to flinch away as the other people bumped into me. They weren’t bigger or anything, especially considering my Hermes character had an insane amount of
[Brawn]
, but they could have been crazy, or backstabbing. Plus my clothes were beyond recovery. Maybe it was the reminder of my own clothes and their dried crusty status.

“What about the losers?” I asked the talkative guy. We had been getting along well enough for now. He hadn’t been revealed to touch young elves or murder hundreds of people. Both ideas were reprehensible to me.

“You can come out ahead if you do well enough down below, or at least, try to break even with the death penalty,” he said.

I nodded then looked at the next message on my screen.

“Worst case, take the easy out and die to a boss or something. Just don’t let another player get you,” he said.

“Why would they want us to kill each other?” I asked while shaking my head. It made no sense. They could have offed us all easily while we were bound in the cart. Based on what little I had gleaned, they had the option of setting our resurrection points in a kill box and fire walls of arrows down each time we risked coming back.