The Clan (17 page)

Laith

I ticked the menu,

Laith, Level 72.

More clicks:

Laith, Level 72, Death Knight , .

I unticked the extra information. "Your adversary doesn't need to know your particulars," I nodded to the Hound. "See now?"

The Hound wrinkled the only line on her forehead, all her muscles trembling with the exertion. Once again I could hear celestial gears crunch. Finally, another piece of the world puzzle fell into place.

Hell's Hound. Level 151. .

I glanced at the mini map and smiled. The red dots that had marked the hounds as
dangerous and aggressive
were now glowing blue: the color of regular NPCs like the guards that used to patrol the Vets' castle walls.

Throwing caution to the wind, I approached the battered animal and patted her armored neck level with my chest. The pup must have been hanging on by the skin of her teeth. Only now had I noticed that her life was deep in the orange zone and virtually not regenerating. Was she so hungry? I studied the pack again
—this time not as a victim but as a proprietor. Fugitives any way you looked at them. Deadly dangerous, still seething with the heat of the battle and the agony of their loss. Their puppies were their only salvaged possessions. Time to bring the pooches under control: this was not the right moment to breed anarchy.

I rummaged through my ever-lengthening ability list for the God's gift. Help of the Fallen One. I selected the pack's leader as target and activated it. In a flash of special effects, the Hound sprung back on all four feet. Tilting her head this way and that, she studied herself, disbelieving. Then she turned her massive head to me, slouching in a grateful bow.

I nodded and shrugged her gratitude off:
don't mention it
. I'd better double-check my control of the pack, outline a few tasks and try to solve a few pressing problems in the bargain.

"Think you could use the Temple cellars for your quarters?"

The Hound glanced at the altar. A greedy spark flashed in her eyes. Looked like I wasn't the only one profiting from my close relationship with an artifact of this caliber. It had plenty of goodies to go round.

"Very well," I said. "Now listen here. Make a quick check of the cellars. Purge any insentient creatures. Leave the sentient ones for me, I'll sort them out later. Find yourself a good place to make a den, preferably in the furthest reaches. If it needs a bit of work, just let me know. The whole place needs quite a refurbishment so it won't be a problem digging a couple extra rooms or exits."

The Hound stomped and shifted her feet, impatient to dash off in search of fresh food, experience and a new home. I hurried to finish,

"One last thing I want to ask of you. If you find any big lumps of metal like this one," I reached into my bag for a handful of the purple fragments, "bring it to me here, will you? You can leave it... say, over there," I pointed at a far corner, gesturing in the air to show them the size of the anticipated pile of wonders.

The Hound leaned forward, sniffing the fragment, and recoiled. "The true silver! The cursed metal. Very well, my Dark brother. We'll keep our eyes open."

Turning her armored muzzle toward her pack, she barked a short command. The females looked relieved as they laid their puppies on the floor, shepherding them expertly together. Three of the more battered ones stayed on to supervise the nursery while the rest followed their leader who had already dashed off, disappearing into the depths of the Temple.

Quest completion alert: Hell's Temptation II. Quest completed!

I dismissed the rather useless message and wiped the sweat from my brow. Phew. Looked like I'd just settled a potentially stinking situation and even emerged with some decent prospectives. I glanced at the tired hounds sprawled on the cold floor watching the puppies crawl about, their blue tongues hanging out.

Remembering my school years and mom-packed lunches that I used to feed to our local feral dogs, I pulled a dozen sandwiches out of my bag: I had plenty left after leveling my culinary skill. I walked over and crouched next to the immediately tense animals. I removed the cover and took a bite, demonstrating their edibility. Thank God, they started eating, casting grateful glances my way. I patted a puppy behind the ear and returned to my position by the altar.

It was probably a good idea to invest into a couple of Sparks of Dark Flame. Useful ingredient, you should never be without them. Wonder how much I could retail them for? There was a chance that the auction crowd had no idea how to get them and was therefore prepared to pay a King's ransom for them. In that case, they could be a veritable cash cow. I clicked an auction window and basked in anticipation as I typed in the key word. Then I froze. It wasn't that the Sparks weren't available
—on the contrary, a good couple dozen had been languishing at the auctions for several months. Even though raid bosses dropped enough of them, no one had yet thought of a way to use them. And as for NPC priests, they weren't interested in goods-for-money exchanges. Still, it was a freebie even though of a different kind. The offers were for fifty gold, you couldn't complain about that. I activated the auto buy with a mental raspberry to all the priests (whom I admittedly hadn't appointed yet). Those would quickly catch up on the item's true value but by then I'd cream off all I could.

Only then I noticed the Inbox flashing. Oops. Two PMs, one from Zena, the other from Dan. In different wording, both said the same thing:

Is this your work? We need to talk.

Zena I could understand. But how could our cloak-and-dagger have figured it out? I understood, of course, that they were obliged to keep tabs on me as an important figure, a patent holder and a universal lockpicker. In other words, the clan's mysterious friend that they were obliged to keep an eye on so that he didn't stray to the wrong side of the barricades.

I paused to think, then typed off a quick note explaining I was awfully busy but ready to speak once I had a free moment. Told them there'd been some interesting developments—asking them not to make their speculations public just yet.

A portal popped open, bringing me back to reality. The Fallen One hummed something, looking pleased with himself. Catching my quizzical glance, he gave me a wink
. "You'll be paying the Dragon five percent of mana flow for next year. I'll add the rest. We need to resuscitate that bag of bones double quick. Shame to waste mana, of course, I could use it myself. I need to grow too, and in my case simply killing monsters won't cut it, I'm afraid. That's it, gotta dash. I have some plans for tonight."

He gave me a meaningful smile, then
glanced over the nervous hounds and gave me a thumbs-up. Apparently, he was already in the know. Had he kept an eye on the Temple all the while?

"Ahem, Sir... O Fallen One, I wonder if I could have these stupid marks removed? I'm all covered in medals like a champagne label."

The god tapped his forehead, remembering, then snapped his fingers, materializing a bottle of champagne. "Why? Do they itch or something?" he guffawed, turning to me. "That bag of demented bones must have forgotten that a mark works both ways. The astral link that connects you is his own doing. You have a long life in front of you; you might still cross paths with the Titans and talk them into granting you a couple of skills—Rider, or even Tamer. Then the boot might be on the other foot: the dragon will be yours to ride and travel on! Okay then, got no time to chat, sorry. I've got business to attend to," he lovingly stroked the bottle as I came up with some last-minute advice,

"Don't forget some flowers for the lady, you Romeo. And a box of chocolates."

The god nodded, preoccupied, before disappearing down the portal.

"Wild nights, wild nights! Were I with thee, wild nights should be our luxury," I commented into thin air.

Chapter Thirteen

W
ell now! I'd done everything I could to make everybody happy. The only thing left for me to do was to prioritize the order of the Temple's regeneration. Then I could finally set off on a marathon along the castle walls in search for the dragon's eggs. Last time I checked, the three defense walls counted at least a couple dozen northbound towers. I knew I didn't have to have contact with the altar in order to control the mana flow but I couldn't very easily send mana to someone I didn't know: it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. I needed to know enough of the item's or character's stats to prevent any mixups—as my own crude way of placemarking its astral position. Even that wasn't so important as long as I could give instructions to the altar to redirect the mana flow.

I touched the stone's glossy black surface, receiving a status message of the five percent available. It looked as if the Fallen One had already redirected the mana flow overrunning my earlier obligations. I opened the utility menus. I had no idea how long it would take me to restore the entire castle and how much time I'd have to spend afterwards adding the finishing touches by hand but at the moment, the control hall regeneration was my top priority. I had to have total control over the entire castle, otherwise the Temple would become a defenseless standalone building, however pretty. Personally, I was looking forward to meeting the hordes of L
ight armed and prepared once my fortifications became something more serious than piles of debris.

Jesus. What a mess of options, menus, submenus and dropout lists. Had the developers outsourced the creation of this interface to
some Indian sweat shop? My unfocused stare fell on a section entitled Summoning the Temple Guards. This might be interesting. I decided to check it out.

Apparently, I had 30,000 level units available, calculated as the temple's rank times ten thousand. You could cash them in, summoning the widest range of creatures, both sentient and mobs. This exchange rate wasn't linear, either: the ratio remained at 1:1 until level 100, then began rapidly growing. In the most irrational scenario you could waste your whole 30,000 on one level-900 uncategorized entity. To give you some idea, I could summon a giant Cerberus the size of a five-story house and properties to match. Wonder if the Hell Hounds would rejoice at seeing their big brother and appoint it their high canine deity? In any case, I wasn't going to hire any guards at the moment. They demanded payment on a daily basis: one gold per point spent. By doing some simple math, you could see that full-scale hiring would cost me three grand a day. In case of a guard's death the spent points returned into a common pool and became available for repurchase after twenty-four hours.

After some hesitation, I decided to hire a few status guards for the Guard of Honor who would also prevent the mobs' access to the donjon. After five minutes of fiddling with the settings, a dozen orcs in heavy armor took their posts by the Temple's doors and gates, led by a Lieutenant in a suit of armor embellished with silver. The pleasure of having them cost me fifteen hundred gold. Actually, was I supposed to keep the Temple army all on my own? Again I buried myself in the menu, finally discovering the finance section which said that the First priest had access to 1% of all donations to the Fallen One. At the moment, the sum was negligible as the sheer motivation to earn Faith points hadn't even existed until less than an hour ago: hardly enough time for anyone to have found a Dark priest and dedicated themselves to the only available deity, i.e. Macaria. I was worried, though, that the digitized community had already sussed out all the advantages involved and was now at boiling point and threatening to explode. They didn't need consecration rituals to appreciate the entire range of services offered, so quite a few people had to be ecstatically looking for a suitable priest or altar.

While I was at it, I looked into their faith point catalogue. To receive one Faith point, you had to either donate 1000 mana, 100 XP of 1 gold. Considering that the first religious rank called for 1000 Faith points, you could easily work out that it would cost the buyer exactly one hundred bucks. Of which I was getting one miserable dollar
bill. Still, this was a numbers game. I multiplied one dollar by the number of potential followers, multiplied by eternity. Immortality was a good thing any way you looked at it. The resulting figures were impressive.

Finally I got to the upgrade and rebuild menu and opened the submenu tree. So! Macaria hadn't wasted her time! Apparently, she wasn't one for half-measures, having reanimated not only the Temple hall but also all of the central donjon. I was pleased to see that the First Temple's potential allowed the use of its self-restoration facilities also for rebuilding other castle structures. I could see now that the entire complex had been conceived as an organic unity whose defense and regeneration functions often overlapped or even merged with only one objective in mind: the enhancement of the Temple's defense potential.

Even on their own, both the castle and the Temple must have cost tens of millions. But their combined value was tenfold. A dream goodie, as precious as it was useless. I had to be careful not to choke on it. The only chance I could have in this new game was due to my freshly-acquired post and celestial support. Had I been just Laith, even a clan leader, I'd have already auctioned the castle's coordinates, creamed off my couple of million and washed my hands of the whole thing. But as it was now, fate had dealt me half a pack of trump cards so I'd better use them while I had the chance. Another one like that might not present itself for a long time.

As somebody said, luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Fate may keep opening doors to new opportunities, but how ready are we to jump at them? When you get a dream offer of a job abroad
—is it time to regret you never got down to mastering your language skills? When you are confronted by a zombie towering over the body of a policeman who'd just emptied his AK (rather uselessly) in it, is it time to regret you don't know how to change the spent clip? Well, in that case it's no good blaming your luck: you're your own worst enemy.

I leafed through the castle plans, storing the schemes and building's statutes in my memory.

The main flight of stairs. I placemarked it on the map. Status, green: fully functional.

Arsenal. Status, yellow. Partially functional. Restoration time: 28 days using the current configuration, 6 hours if assigned top priority and all available resources.

Underground dungeons, communications and cellars. Status, red. Decay level: 81%.

And so on and so forth. Macaria had poured her main effort into refurbishing the Temple hall and façade, restoring the rest of the facilities to their minimal functionality levels.

Finally, at the donjon's fifth level, I discovered the Control Room marker. Status, yellow: partially functional. Did it mean I could just walk in and take over the castle? My inner greedy pig was throwing a fit threatening to rip the place apart if I didn't go there now and claim control over the abandoned property. For a brief moment, he gave me the creeps as I remembered an ancient Alien movie where the monsters ripped their hosts open from inside. You hear that, porcine face? You'd better not upset me, buddy, or I'll upgrade you to a toad and pretend you'd had always been like that.

Actually, I was curious too. To stumble across an unwanted Super Nova-class castle was cooler than finding an abandoned car transporter loaded with unclaimed brand new Bentleys. I checked the map for a shortcut
and had a good look around, adjusting the visuals to the freshly-digested maps. Then I closed the menus, severed contact with the altar stone and dashed under the archway above a far-off flight of stairs.

My corridor run brought me equal doses of disappointments and new discoveries. What had Macaria been thinking about? All the rooms I passed were immaculately clean, their functional granite tiles sparkling. Clean being the operative word! Whatever happened to all
the technogenic debris? Where were all the spent shells, empty clips and broken ammo belts, precious mithril shrapnel and fragments of armor? Where were all the heaps of rubble I had counted on in which to unearth a couple of slightly soiled Warmechs? This wasn't cleaning, this was plain sabotage.

I felt like a husband who had unlocked his garage expecting to face the familiar mess where he could find every screw blindfolded, only to discover that his wife had given it a surprise spring clean, sweeping out all the precious bent nails, torn elastics and bits of wire creating a clean, neat and absolutely useless space. What had Macaria done with all the trash? Had she unthinkingly shoved it all away in the astral depths? It might have been worse: she might have processed mithril into energy, no wonder she'd pulled off this sixty-minute makeover single-handedly. What a bummer. I just hoped she confined herself to a surface clean which left me the hope to find a few stashes. And I still had the cellars. I just had to pray her obsession with cleanliness hadn't stretched that far.

The fifth level. A long spiraling corridor circled the windowless donjon, taking the potential attackers past rows of barracks and cutoff zones peppered with gunslots. Massive slabs of basalt stood ready to collapse creating an impenetrable barricade. All you needed was access to the control artifact or even a mere key that could open the intricate Dwarven locks.

The last corridor was angular, its sharp bends getting narrower with every turn. The last thirty feet or so could be successfully defended by just a couple of soldiers who could easily blo
ck the passage. That was clever, like everything here. Shame the restoration wasn't on a par thanks to one hasty young lady. This Macaria of Milo by an unknown sculptor deserved having her arms pulled off.

With a sigh, I examined the pale tiles lining the corridors. It looked as if a team of cowboy builders had hung cheap suspended ceilings over the
Hermitage frescoes.

Shivering with anticipation, I finally heaved open the small but unmanageably thick iron-oak door, entering the castle's sancta sanctorum. I felt sorry for the castle's potential attackers who had to fit into the ever-narrowing corridors, leaving behind first their battle golems, then ogres, and finally trolls. The defenders wouldn't have any such problems, especially considering their monopoly on portals. The high ceilings
—twenty feet at least—allowed the defenders to use a whole variety of AlterWorld races, including the latest in golem building. The power center was located behind the fenced-off battle grounds. The walls were lined with empty sockets meant to house accumulating crystals. How many could they hold, a hundred, two hundred? Considering each cost about a million gold, the castle builders had to have been quite ambitious.

I walked down an L-shaped passage between two fenced-off areas and found myself in the castle's heart: the control room.

Almost all of the space inside was occupied by a white U-shaped marble desk gaping with dozens of empty slots for artifacts of truly unknown purpose and nature. It looked rather like the control desk of some high tech submarine or nuclear power station with its empty mountings and ripped-out units. Some mysterious panels—once mirrored and now dented—looked suspiciously like monitors.

In the desk's center, the control panel of the castle artifact glowed a subtle green. The exact location of the artifact itself I was yet to determine; its unknown makers could have cemented it into the room's foundations for all I knew. I crossed my fingers and lay my hand on the imaginary keyboard.

Welcome to the Super Nova Castle control panel!

Your access level: Guest

Information output mode: video-assisted telepathy. How can I help you?

I shook my head, amazed. This didn't look like your ordinary menu options.

Are you sentient?
I asked, just to be on the safe side.

After a second's pause, a faceless voice answered,

"Not exactly, even though I am closely approaching that idea. The control crystal contains a dissected soul of one of its mage creators, its freedom of will suppressed and all unnecessary emotions removed. My desire to serve and obey orders has been increased—the only thing that brings me satisfaction. What else can I do for you?"

I could hear a badly concealed plea in his voice:
Do ask me something, anything at all!

"Current status?"

A Super Nova Castle. Decay level: 68%. Last authorization: 790 years ago. Last important event: 43 minutes ago, the restoration of 11% of its structure.

"Whose property is it?"

Question unclear.

"Who owns this castle?"

Since the restoration of the control center functionality, there were no registered ownership requests. Would you like to submit one?

You bet! "Yes!"

Forced activation of a one-off script. Establishing connection with the financial center as of instruction 82а.

This is AI Bordeaux7 stream 155. Congratulations! You have discovered an unclaimed castle. Class: Super Nova. As of clause 59 of EULA, you can claim ownership by paying the price of the real estate and repurchasing the land. Would you like to complete the transaction?

Yes!
My voice broke. I swallowed. I'd never owned as much as a studio, let alone a castle.