Countdown (Reality Benders Book #1) LitRPG Series Read online

  And then I got startled by an alarm. My food bar had dipped below half. I got some briquettes of dried food from the warehouse in the Capital today, so I dug into my inventory. There was dried meat, bread and some dried green blocks which must have once been plants. Sure, I was glad to have food, but it was pretty hard to chew. I needed water, which I could get at the Geckho base.

  “Let’s hurry up!” I turned and shouted at my companions, who had lowered their speed to that of a tortoise, stopping frequently and poking around in the sand.

  Anya was crouching down in the surf and looking closely at something. She stood up and wiped her wet hands on her light shorts:

  “Wait, Gnat! The storm brought all kinds of shells here. Some of them are beautiful. And there’s something alive in practically all of them. Maybe I’ll find a pearl.”

  “Hey, I just found one!” Imran shouted in satisfaction, having opened one of the shells with his blade and showing us the quarter-inch-diameter pearlescent sphere.

  Sea Pearl (trade good)

  I walked up and took a closer look both at the pearl and oyster shell. The gnarled outside of the mollusk was a blackish-brown. The inside was white and contained the torn remains of a tiny shellfish. The game system obligingly told me the oyster counted as food. Sure, why not? I tore out the slimy veiny meat and carefully stuck it in my mouth.

  “Ick, how can you eat that crap?!” Anya cringed and hurried to run away so she wouldn’t have to watch the unpleasant spectacle.

  I delicately chewed the mollusk and swallowed. Hmm... Well, what could I say...? The flavor was, of course, unique, but not bad. My hunger bar went up noticeably. I took another look at the shell and activated the Scanning icon, wanting to search for similar ones in the area.

  Scanning skill increased to level seven!

  You have reached level six!

  You have received three skill points!

  Oh yeah, sweet! Although, before using the points, I looked to see what the scan had found. Now this was even cooler. There were now a few dozen oysters on the mini-map. That meant I could set priority targets for a scan! A few minutes later, I had shaken out thirty brownish-black shells and tossed them up to Imran.

  “I don’t get how you open them,” I admitted. “It seems too tight to get a knife in!”

  The Gladiator chuckled and gracefully opened all the shells with his sickle in just under a minute. Only four of them contained pearls. I wanted to split the bounty evenly with Imran, but he refused:

  “No, those are yours. I already took my reward. Opening those shells raised my Blades skill by two levels in the blink of an eye! I got my character to level three! So, throw me all the oysters you can find. I'm more than happy to shuck!”

  I didn’t argue and, working the meat out of the shells, I started eating them raw. My hunger bar quickly filled to eighty percent, but would go no higher, no matter how much of the slimy meat I forced down. Why? I asked my friends, and Imran explained:

  “Gnat, you missed the beginning of the presentation today. That high-level diplomat... I forgot his name... told us about the game menu and interface. Somewhere deep in the settings you can customize the hunger bar display, but there’s no real reason. You just need to know that game characters need three kinds of food to live. He called them red, blue and green. Most dishes contain just one type. Red is in meat-heavy dishes, blue in seafood and green is veggies. It's all relative, but I think you understand.”

  “I see. You need to eat a varied diet, like the food pyramid,” I chuckled.

  “Yeah, that’s right. By the way, our medic friend Anna said that she was a firm vegetarian and wouldn’t eat any meat, even in the game. Or fish either...”

  We both turned our heads toward the girl. Anya, who was now at level three, had managed to climb pretty high up the stone slope. Digging at one of the boulders distractedly with her knife, she was trying to pick something out of it. Finally, she managed, straightened up and called us to join her. Imran, using his jumping ability, bounded over to Anya in a second, and shouted to me from there:

  “Gnat, come up here! She found gold!”

  Gold?! Very interesting! My level-6 Prospector took a bit longer to get up there but, gracefully jumping from rock to rock like a mountain goat, I ascended the crumbling boulders to meet my friends.

  “Here! Gold!” Anna pridefully showed me a chunk of golden fine-crystalline nodules she'd worked out of the large stone.

  I didn’t even have to hold the fragment of stone to realize my friends were mistaken. Nothing to be ashamed of, though. It was a common error. Almost everyone who saw crystalline iron sulfide for the first time thought the same thing. Pyrite, or “fool’s gold,” as it’s also known, looks quite similar to native gold ore. That was what I told my friends.

  “Are you sure?” the pretty blonde asked with doubt in her voice.

  She clearly didn’t want to part with the dream of striking it rich. I saw a marker over the chunk reading “Unknown mineral.” The “prospecter” probably saw the same.

  “Yes, I'm one hundred percent sure this is pyrite,” I repeated with emphasis and a miracle happened:

  Mineralogy skill increased to level two!

  Mineralogy skill increased to level three!

  Mineralogy skill increased to level four!

  Mineralogy skill increased to level five!

  Mineralogy skill increased to level six!

  You have reached level seven!

  You have received three skill points! (total points accumulated: six)

  Woah... The game system gave a very generous reward for identifying just one mineral. The sheer number of messages spooked me a bit. A clear explanation immediately came to mind, though. Most likely, a player had to reach Mineralogy level six to identify pyrite, and the game had brought my skill level in line with my real-world knowledge.

  “It isn’t gold anyway, just some crap,” the level-3 Medic threw away the stone, which she considered useless.

  I didn’t agree and explained that pyrite was used in chemical manufacturing to make sulfuric acid, iron sulfate and many other things. Just in case, I marked the source of iron sulfide on my map. I’d tell the higher-ups when I got back to the Capital and let them decide whether it was economically justifiable to mine and process.

  * * *

  It took us another hour and a half to reach the pier. In that time, I discovered another rich vein of hematite, chalcopyrite and, I believe, skutterudite. To be honest, the game wouldn’t identify the matte-white crystals as skutterudite, so I couldn’t be certain. At any rate, I managed to get my Minerology skill to level eleven, and I was very satisfied with that.

  I also leveled Cartography, Scanning and Medium Armor by one, and reached the Geckho pier as a proud level-eight Prospector! My companions also leveled noticeably during our walk along the Antique Beach and were now both at level five. Anya was especially fortunate to use her primary skill. Imran, training his long-jump ability had once miscalculated and slammed full speed into a granite cliff.

  It hurt to even look at his broken body after that. His whole face was bloody, he had a huge dark bruise on half his torso and his left arm was hanging down limp... But Anya took out her big first-aid kit and patched up our friend in just half an hour, even fixing his broken collar bone. Near the end, clearly satisfied with her work, she proudly declared that she had made peace with her profession, and no longer wanted any other.

  The Dagestani was very grateful for the aid and, whether joking or serious, promised Anya to sometimes purposely break his body from now on. He said he liked being cared for by such a pretty girl and wanted to help her level her medical skills.

  I used my nine free skill points as well: three in Rifles, three in Scanning, and the remaining three in Astrolinguistics. I figured we would be meeting aliens soon, and it would help us all if I could speak their language.

  But, after another bend in the coastline, it became clear that there was a ways to go before that. Our path
was unexpectedly blocked by a sturdy ten-foot-tall chain-link fence. It was exactly like the one outside the Firing Range, right down to the high-voltage barbed wire on top.

  The fence extended far into the ocean on one side, the other end stuck into a tall and nearly sheer cliff. There was no way around. We stopped in indecision, discussing the unexpected obstacle. Anya took the radio off her belt and called Kisly to find out how other players had gotten around this before:

  “Commander Kisly, this is Anya. There’s a tall fence on the beach and we cannot reach the pier.”

  In response, we heard a high-pitched squeak and a few poorly audible words:

  “What the hell... there wasn’t... (distortion)... fence... damn Geckho... (distortion)... come back.”

  And although we didn’t get the full meaning, I got the impression the commander didn’t know about this obstacle and thus couldn’t tell us how to get around it. Imran noted in dismay:

  “How can there be any talk of antigravs and other high tech stuff, if our faction can’t even make a decent radio?! We’re just under two miles from the Border Post Eight, and we can already hardly hear a thing.”

  It also seemed strange to me that, if the Dome project was so high-priority and had huge government investment, our faction couldn’t even get decent radios. But I didn’t discuss it. First of all, I didn’t know all the details, and there might be good reasons for the distortion. Second, I had spotted a gate in the fence.

  However, it immediately became clear that the door was locked from the other side, and this side didn’t have a lock or even a handle. Although... I looked higher. At around eight feet above the ground, there was a device that looked like an intercom with buttons and a microphone. I asked Imran to let me stand on his shoulders, so I could reach it.

  I pressed the button for the next four minutes and tried to say who we were and why we were here. At the same time, all three of us were shouting through the gate, hoping any Geckho on the other side might hear us. But it was no use. No one answered, no one opened the door, and no one came to the fence.

  “We were screaming so loud a deaf person could hear. I don’t think there’s anyone there,” Imran said.

  “I have one free skill slot. I could take Swimming and get around the fence by the sea!” Anya offered, but it seemed wasteful to have her use a valuable skill just for this.

  Meanwhile, having tested all ways of communicating with the guards via intercom, I decided to try speaking Geckho:

  “Kento duho!” I said the traditional greeting phrase. In response, a Geckho phrase came through the speaker:

  “Sabi fsen vari.”

  Some nearby sand started rustling, and a metal pillar with a square white sensor panel rose up five feet. It was seemingly a sign to identify myself. I jumped off the shoulders of the Dagestani athlete, walked over to the panel and placed my right palm against it:

  “Gnat, Human, H3 faction,” I introduced myself, but the system didn’t like that answer, and the post went back underground.

  Hm... No dice. It seemed I was not on the list, or it simply only allowed Geckho to enter. The sensor panel was too large for a human hand, so that seemed only natural. So, I remembered the only Geckho I’d met, a diplomat by the name of Kosta Dykhsh. His huge hand had a hairy palm with four fingers. I hadn’t seen any parts free of fur. All his fingers ended in large claws. The scanner couldn’t be reading fingerprints through all that fur. What if...

  I dug through the sand on the beach, picked up a couple empty shells, cleaned them off and stuck them on the four biggest fingers of my right hand. I said the Geckho greeting phrase again, calling up the sensor panel. I placed the shell-hand up to it, trying to touch the white surface only with the shells:

  “Kosta Dykhsh Geckho. Waideh-Dykhsh.”

  Electronics skill increased to level four!

  Astrolinguistics skill increased to level eight!

  Break-in skill increased to level three!

  Break-in skill increased to level four!

  The gate slid silently aside, letting us through to the pier and warehouses.

  Chapter Fourteen. Talking with Centaurs

  AS SOON AS we’d gone a hundred steps and turned around the jutting cliffs, we could see the long sturdy dock, some hemispheric hangars and a large stack of containers. We stopped and took a look around.

  “Don’t touch anything!” I immediately warned my friends.

  Imran and Anya nodded in agreement, also understanding that, if we stole anything from the warehouse, our Geckho suzerains would react very badly, and might even destroy human civilization. We walked across the pier to the opposite fence, then looked into the locked hangars. They had stacks of lumber ready for export and many sealed freight containers with incomprehensible markings.

  We very quickly realized that there was nothing to do here at the warehouse. There were no living people or Geckho here, and we did not find any fresh water. And naturally, we were not going to break into the buildings or crack open the containers. Especially after I noticed the security system. On the building roofs and the fence, there were cameras keenly tracking our every movement and constantly holding us in frame.

  It was midday. The sun was burning. A few times, my friends suggested I remove my jacket and dress a bit lighter, but I said I’d rather get soaked in sweat to level my Medium Armor skill. Anya then, as she was planning, took the Swimming skill and went for a dip, diving off the pier. Imran stripped down to his trunks and, right on the pier, started practicing with the sickle-like blade, also leveling his skills and showing off for the pretty girl.

  I meanwhile walked the perimeter of the warehouse and used my shell glove to trick the sensor system two more times. My Break-in skill leveled to six, along with Electronics. But as for Astrolinguistics, it didn’t get any better. Then my radio turned on. Through distortion, I heard Kisly saying the centaurs had come out of hiding and could now be seen from the tower. Our commander suggested we start making our way back to catch a glimpse with our own eyes. Also, he said we should leave soon just to be at Border Post Eight by the time the little bus came back.

  We all turned and started back. But we didn’t manage to leave the fenced-in area before we heard a whistle and hum from over the sea. Flying very low over the water, a strange silver vehicle was speeding along just above the waves. It looked most of all like a fat airplane with miniature wings. When it got closer, I managed to read some information about the object:

  Shiamiru. Geckho cargo shuttle.

  “We’re here illegally. We should move our asses!” Anya suggested, alarmed by the approaching guests.

  “It’s no use. They probably already saw us. And we’ll be in plain sight on the sandy beach. There’s nowhere to hide...” Imran objected.

  In the end, we didn’t run. In fact, we stood on the pier for all to see and watched the heavy vehicle climb higher, flying over our heads and landing in a free space in the middle of the warehouse. The heavy craft didn’t entirely quiet down before the doors slid aside. Many strong figures in dark armored space suits poured out. Their furry faces weren’t visible due to the darkened helmets, and there was no more information available about these extraterrestrial newcomers — no names, levels or classes.

  There were fifteen Geckho but, surprisingly, they didn’t pay us three any mind. Quickly, in a business-like manner, the furballs unfolded a crane attached to the side of their shuttle and started loading containers into their flying vehicle. And they weren’t loading at random, but very selectively running up to certain containers, attaching hooks and transferring the goods into the cargo bay. Some boxes were negligently shoved out of the way because they were blocking more desirable ones. While they rushed to load the containers, a couple dark figures split off from the main group and forced open the doors to one of the buildings with crow-bars and hatchets. It took them around a minute to get inside. They took out something in a small transparent bag and threw it into the shuttle.

  After just four mi
nutes, the whole team of loaders was folding the crane back up and hurriedly returning to the flying vehicle. It took off vertically at an extreme pace and disappeared into the sunny sky in less than a minute.

  “They sure worked fast,” Anya commented. “Although it was also quite careless. Look how many boxes they knocked off those piles! And I'm not even talking about the door they broke! You think they were in such a rush they just forgot their keys?”

  “Yeah, they were acting weird,” Imran agreed. “It was like they were pressed for time, and didn’t care if they broke stuff. All that mattered was taking what they wanted.”

  “Guys, do you think we just witnessed a warehouse robbery?” I suggested, as if I had second sight.

  At the same time, both from the sea and the path leading into the mountains, many flying armored vehicles appeared and rushed toward the warehouses. Another couple minutes later, the pier was packed to the brim with armed and very angry Geckho soldiers. We were surrounded, had our weapons confiscated brusquely and were searched, including with some kind of scanner. An enraged dark-brown Geckho by the name of Sysa Kuttsh yelled something, clearly demanding an answer. But my friends didn’t understand him at all, while I could only make out at most one word of five, but that didn’t add up to anything sensible.

  “...Shuttle ...ore... sea... idiot... damn... Geckho...”

  I simply didn’t have the words to explain what we'd seen, or how we’d gotten near the guarded warehouses. However, hearing his select phrases noticeably enriched my vocabulary, raising my Astrolinguistics skill to nine. Fortunately, another fifteen minutes later, a representative of our faction arrived on a two-seat antigrav. It was Ivan Lozovsky accompanied by the Geckho diplomat Kosta Dykhsh.

  They conversed with Sysa Kuttsh in elevated tones for five minutes. At the end, the dark Geckho, seemingly responsible for defending this warehouse, took out a short high-caliber sawed-off and... shot himself, placing the weapon to his own forehead and pulling the trigger!