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

  “Didn’t fit?” I suggested with a smirk.

  “Worse! No centaur had ever seen a condom before. You really should have told her what to do with them... Phylira invited the oldest son of the chief of her herd to the open plains last night and had him swallow your rubber. It got stuck in his throat and the lusty stallion keeled over. It was quite the scandal. Phylira was accused of poisoning him and nearly got ostracized from the herd. But she blamed it on you, saying a man by the name of Gnat had tricked her and she didn’t know it was poison. So, if you ask me, you should keep your distance from the centaur lands… Oh yeah, I almost forgot! For your safety, they told me to tell you to stay right here.”

  I didn’t ask questions. I knew I wouldn’t be getting any answers. Out the door was a huge puddle. I had no choice but to jump right into it, cursed a bit, then walked up to a sign with two arrows: Yellow Mountains and Capital. There was another road, clearly less used, but it wasn’t marked. Leaving me in a cloud of gray smoke, the bus sped off down the forest road, leaving me all alone.

  * * *

  Five minutes passed, and nothing happened. It had just started getting light out, and the forest was coming to life. I heard early birds singing. Some extravagant grasshoppers, despite the fog and damp were already trilling out their songs. A woodpecker had gotten up at the crack of dawn and was poking holes in a rotting tree. But all these sounds were far away. There was a small zone of silence around me, and that made me suspicious.

  Successful Perception check.

  My intuition was right again! A soldier was hidden ten steps from me and gave himself away with a passing motion. He moved his leg out of an uncomfortable position. Just a few inches, but I caught the slight movement with the corner of my eye. Then, I turned to face him and made out a human figure in the pile of mossy branches.

  Shoot_To_Kill. Human. H3 Faction. Level-71 Scout

  Familiar name. Ah, right! One of the First Legion soldiers punished for playing cards. And he was probably not alone... My scanning ability had just reloaded, so I tried emphasizing suspicious mounds, bushes, and people in camouflage. I knew it! There were another three faction allies nearby, all high-level First Legion bruisers, the best of the best.

  Scanning skill increased to level twenty-one!

  Eagle Eye skill increased to level twenty-five!

  I lowered the IR-lens and gave a whistle of respect. The First Legion group was well equipped. They were all totally invisible in the heat spectrum! They were probably wearing temperature-regulating suits like I had seen on the Dark Faction. I wondered what they were waiting for?

  The obvious conclusion was that I was being used as live bait. But who were we fishing for? Enemies or… allies? All the suspicious secrecy around my patrol duty was leading me to the second option. I really hoped it wasn’t allies. And it would be really bad if these “allies” wanted to harm me, whether they just disliked me or were working for the enemy.

  Realizing the importance of my mission, I didn’t expose the hidden soldiers. I even purposely looked away. But time passed, and nothing happened. Then, when the morning chill had made me totally stiff, and the biting insects had covered every inch of my body, I heard a strange sound from the road leading to the Yellow Mountains.

  I got off the road and hid behind a fallen tree, loaded my shotgun and hurriedly screwed the fuzes into my grenades. I again lowered the IR-lens and saw three large bright spots approaching in the fog. They were clearly vehicles, based on the humming and metallic clang. I thought for a second, stashed the useless shotgun and equipped a grenade.

  “Gnat, don’t be stupid! Put the grenade away, they're allies!” Shoot_To_Kill shot out, revealing his presence, standing to his feet and brushing the twigs and debris off his camouflage smock.

  “Yeah? How was I supposed to know that?!” I objected, but still put the grenade away. “I saw your whole group sitting in ambush, all four with weapons at the ready. What was I supposed to think?”

  “Wait, you could see us? But we were camouflaged. We have nice equipment, and high Stealth... And hey, how did you know we’re a group?” the scout asked, growing tense.

  I snickered, happy with the reaction. Apparently, the First Legion soldiers had no idea I knew they were there. Spreading my arms, I shrugged my shoulders and twisted my face into a guilty grimace:

  “Well, sorry. No one told me I wasn’t supposed to see you. But if you’re being serious, my character is a Prospector, so I'm supposed to be able to find hidden things. My Perception is twenty-two, plus I have a bunch of skills that help me discover stuff. And as for your group, that’s no secret either. Yesterday, after Gerd Tamara caught the Dark Faction scout group, I was there when she saw you four playing cards through a telescope. She told me your names and ordered her assistant Roman Pavlovich to take down three of your names.”

  “Son of a bitch!!!” came Nelly Svistunova, level-69 Saboteur, also giving up and standing to full height. “So that was why Tarasov made us do four-hour weighted CrossFit yesterday!”

  I didn’t reply to the angry young girl’s sharp words. She had a fine figure, and the baggy camo couldn’t detract from that. Her pretty little face was painted in green, black and yellow stripes. I had been punished for insulting high-status players before, and I had taken that painful lesson to heart. What was more, an armored mechanical vehicle had just come lumbering around a turn. It was somewhere between a truck, armored transport and hovercraft. And there wasn’t just one, but three of the steel monsters.

  From what I’d seen so far, I assumed my faction had nothing but dumb-looking makeshift vehicles. This respectable craft proved just how wrong I was. These things had sheet armor, thick reinforced windshields, four pairs of metal mesh wheels, high-speed cannons mounted on spinning towers, spaced armor, and reactive armor bricks. And on the underside, there were powerful antigrav plates to provide extra thrust and mitigate their many-ton weight.

  Peresvet. All-terrain armored cargo transport.

  These armored vehicles had very little in common with San-Sanych’s little bus. That must have just been a prototype. But there was a remote resemblance. This was some serious tech. And the three combat vehicles were identical, which made me think they were being made on assembly lines. And the number “8” painted on the lead vehicle seemed to mean there were at least five more. Cool! If of course that wasn’t just to mislead our enemies.

  The first Peresvet came up to me and stopped. The side door opened, and Ivan Lozovsky waved me inside:

  “Come on Gnat, hop in. You must be getting eaten alive out there. There were Dark Faction saboteurs after you in the Yellow Mountains, but we already took them out. The little bus didn’t get so lucky, though. The enemies torched it. They say it’s too damaged to be repaired...”

  “What do you mean torched?” I had already set my boot on the running board, preparing to climb inside, but the diplomat’s last words shocked me. After all, just half an hour ago I was sitting in in the little bus with a few other soldiers!

  “It got ambushed and blown up. San-Sanych was shot and Kisly’s whole group was executed. The commander put up a good fight, though. He managed to take three of them down with his machinegun. But we thought that might happen. The Second Legion was standing by. They got there quick and killed the six enemies. We even took two alive. So, we’ll exchange them for materials and build a new bus for San-Sanych. It’ll be better than before, don’t you worry! But you’re coming with us to the Geckho base. We're buying you an electronic scanner, Leng Radugin approved it himself. He said you’ve earned it! So get in and close the door. It’s time to go. And we can talk more on the way. You’ve probably got a bunch of questions.”

  Chapter Twenty. Around the Bay

  HE GOT THAT RIGHT! I had a truckload of questions and enough to fill an economy-sized car after that. I didn’t even know where to begin. On the mini-map, I saw the four First Legion soldiers hop into the other two vehicles, so I decided to start by getting the details of our cur
rent mission:

  “So, I assume the faction didn’t send three armored vehicles all the way to the Geckho base just to buy me a scanner.”

  The driver of the Peresvet gave a happy chuckle, and Ivan Lozovsky couldn’t hold back a smile.

  “Of course not,” the diplomat replied goodheartedly. He filled me in on all the relevant details. “Our faction just sold a large shipment to the Geckho. Mostly rare steel alloys, rolled metal, and high-tension glass...”

  “Palladium ingots...” the level-54 Mechanic-Driver named Vadim threw out. But that was all he said, intimidated by the diplomat’s fearsome gaze.

  “Yes, palladium as well,” Ivan Lozovsky confirmed after a long pause. “That was supposed to be top secret, but apparently the whole faction already knows. We’ve got just sixteen tons of cargo, but it’s worth fifty-five thousand crystals. This is our highest-value trade yet. It's a point of pride for our faction, but a huge responsibility for us. Our suzerains have already paid for the goods, so now it's a matter of honor that we reach our buyer.”

  “Wouldn’t it have been easier to send it by sea?” I asked in surprise. “We could just drop it off at the Geckho storehouses by the pier.”

  Ivan Lozovsky gave an unhappy chuckle and shook his head.

  “It isn’t all so simple. You see, Gnat... How can I explain it...? The Geckho are a very populous space-faring race, but their society is multifaceted. The Geckho have many leaders of different varieties and levels. And those groups don’t always have trusting and warm relationships. You see, the Geckho responsible for the pier on Antique Beach, and the ones buying this cargo...” he got stuck trying to choose his words.

  “I get it. In that way, the Geckho are just like us. If some extraterrestrials wanted to sell platinum to, say, North Korea, they might think it reasonable to drop it off in South Korea. But even though they are neighboring countries, and speak the same language, it would never reach its intended destination.”

  The diplomat clearly found my example funny, and even laughed:

  “This wouldn’t be quite as hopeless as that, but you get the idea. We can’t send it by sea, so we have to go around the bay through three neutral nodes. That’s twenty-nine miles each way through swamps and forests. By the way, this is the first serious test of our Peresvets. We’ve driven this route a few times before with somewhat more basic trucks, but we had an order of magnitude less cargo, and it was of lower value.”

  The diplomat went silent, because a man in a camouflage smock appeared on the road ahead. But I saw on the mini-map that he was an ally. A First Legion scout, he had some recon for us. Our driver clearly knew the man, started smiling, lowered the armored glass on his side and stopped. The acquaintances exchanged handshakes, and the Scout extended a tablet to the driver:

  “Vadim, here's the route. It’s basically the same as before, but the pass near the Harpy Cliffs is blocked by a landslide. You’ll have to take a two-mile detour. We’ve marked it on the map. We checked the whole length of the road and cleared a few fallen trees. Also, we dug out the boulder you got stuck on last time and rolled it away.”

  Here the scout saw Ivan Lozovsky sitting next to the driver, stood at rigid attention and hurried to issue a report:

  “Deputy director, sir! Late last evening in area 22-40 we observed an army jeep of terrestrial origin at the Geckho space port. It came to the Geckho base from the north via a gravel road. It was carrying four members of the H1 faction. A diplomat, a driver and two bodyguards. Our soldiers did not reveal their presence and the vehicle left the area unharmed.”

  “Well done, soldier! I suppose that was the Chinese coming to apologize for the low-quality security-system sensors. I imagine they let ‘em have it...”

  The driver and soldier both snickered, but the diplomat put a damper on it:

  “I don’t see what's so funny here. The Chinese will take it into account and quickly correct the faults in their system. But them producing one piece of bad technology does not diminish the fact that the H1 Faction is significantly ahead of us in semiconductor and electronics technology.”

  The scout turned serious and, placing his hand on his helmet, wished us a pleasant ride. Our Peresvet raced off into the thick fog. Three minutes later, Ivan Lozovsky, having led his gaze over a crooked leaning pipe, commented to me:

  “We’ve just crossed the border into neutral territory. This node is strategically important for us. It has access to the sea and provides the shortest path to the Geckho base. And there we can trade, acquire new technology, access the space port and improve our development. Overall, our faction is very lucky the Geckho base is so nearby, and that we have smooth trade relations. I cannot even imagine how we’d get by in this difficult world without the technology they have provided us.”

  Perception raised to 21.

  That short message made me shudder. What? Why? I checked Gnat’s stat table, and made sure Perception really was one point higher. I was reminded that, during the Assassin’s fitness class, Svetlana had said that any statistic could be improved, and the first increase would come after eight hours of intensive use. That meant that I had been using my Perception actively for eight hours already. Cool!

  Meanwhile, the diplomat turned the settings of his sophisticated radio and sent a message to Border Post One that our scouts had spotted members of the Human-1 Faction. After that, he turned off the radio and turned back to me:

  “Unofficially, we already consider this node to belong to our faction. We call it Karelia due to the similar climate and landscape. It borders three of our territories: Capital, Yellow Mountains and Antique Beach. We always have a few scout groups here, and our military divisions often comb the area. Also, our Geologist Mikhalych sometimes comes here to work. There are no organized hostile factions here. The only threats are a large pack of man-eating wolves, lone bears over level 100, and lots and lots of poisonous snakes. But all the animals won’t stop our faction from founding a base here.”

  “But then why haven’t we done so yet? Especially if the Karelia node is so important to us!”

  “Gnat, we have less than fifteen hundred people in our faction, and that is not enough to do everything we want. It’s scary to think, but we have just one capable guardsman for every square mile of territory, and that’s barely enough to secure our external border. Due to the lack of manpower, enemies occasionally break through our lines, and can remain in our lands unnoticed for weeks at a time, as you’ve already seen. So, expanding our territories and extending supply lines is a huge risk.”

  I lowered my head, downcast by the alarming news. No, I had already understood that we didn’t have many people. But I didn’t even come close to understanding the scale of the problem. Seeing my disheartened state, the diplomat tried to perk me up:

  “Don’t worry, Gnat! In a few weeks, if everything goes according to plan, we’ll get the Antique Beach node up to level two, then we can bring another hundred seventy-four players into the game. But, to be honest, we’ll have to build two new corncobs first. But I hope everything goes smoothly both in the real world and the virtual one. Then, the situation will improve, and I’ll ask Radugin about building a base in Karelia. Before we expanded into the Eastern Swamp, I suggested this might make a better choice, but I was in the minority. All other faction leaders voted for the Eastern Swamp because it has oil. What's more, the Eastern Swamp node borders the Dark Faction, so it was very important to occupy and fortify the land before they got to it. Perhaps my colleagues were right. In the last couple days, we got an oil refinery up and running, and now we have plenty of fuel to send our vehicles on longer journeys.”

  Cartography skill increased to level thirty!

  Scanning skill increased to level twenty-two!

  I dismissed the popup messages. Not bad, not bad at all. I felt lucky I was being taken through three nodes I’d never been to. By the end of the trip, I suspected I would get at least one more level in Cartography, and maybe even two! But I still wanted the
deputy leader to explain why I’d been scheduled for patrol. So I asked.

  “You see, Gnat...” I could sense the diplomat straining to find the words again, as if he was afraid of saying too much. “We have long suspected, and are now quite certain, that one or more of our people are working for the Dark Faction. We’ve had a string of failures in scouting and combat operations that are hard to explain otherwise. Also, they know about our secret inventions and negotiations.”

  Seeing a lack of understanding on my face, the diplomat clarified:

  “You see, Gnat, this is a harsh world. And there’s too much riding on this horse. If they win, humanity as we know it will be wiped out. So, we torture prisoners. We need all the information we can get, no matter the cost. Sure, it's barbaric, but they do the same to our soldiers. Anyhow, most of what we get is useless, but sometimes we glean surprising tidbits. For example, before we finished building some 152-mm howitzers at the Prometheus, the enemy already knew not only about the top-secret production project, but exactly where we were going to install them!”

  Holy crap! I whistled in surprise. That meant there had to be a leak. And this wasn’t the kind of information every H3 player would have, either.

  “And there’s another cause for worry. There have been strange rumors swirling recently that the Dark Faction is quickly gaining power and is already a head and shoulders above us in technology. Very soon, according to this rumor, resistance will be futile. They say our days are numbered, all our nodes will be captured, and we will no longer even be able to enter the game that bends reality. But supposedly, our players who join the Dark Faction and earn their gratitude will be given asylum and can even leave their virt pods not under the Dome, but in their world. After that, they can supposedly change sides and play for the Dark Faction.”