Spear of Destiny: Chapter 21

I went with Rin to the smithy, where she'd set up her quarters. It was still fairly chaotic. Rin's workspaces were neat - organized by shape, size and color - but her personal belongings were heaped on her bed in a pile.

“Hi, ladies!” She sang out as she opened the door. I hung back as her artificed sentinels, Lovelace and Hopper, scuttled over to greet us. They were Artificed mobile turrets the size of large dogs. Hopper was heavily armored and engineered for defense, capable of deploying magical protections and barriers to shield Rin from damage. Lovelace was her attack drone, armed with what looked to me like a really, really old-fashioned machine gun. They waved their front legs at me in what I hoped was a friendly gesture as Rin hung up her coat.

"Okay, parachutes. There’s two kinds I know how to use, the T-11 troop dispenser and the HI-5 free fall rig, and I’m pretty sure I remember how both are put together.” I gingerly patted Hopper on her ‘head’ as the machine came up to me. “And while we're at it, two things. Can you possibly repair the Raven Helm and the Spear for me? And do you mind if I ask you some stuff before you get stuck into the design? About Michael, and OUROS."

"Oh! Sure! If you can leave the helmet with me, I can repair it this afternoon, but you need an Aether Forge for the Spear and we don’t have one here. There is one at Litvy, but we won’t have time for that today. As for questions…umm… I don't really know much more other than what I already told you, but I mean, it can't hurt to ask?" Rin smiled prettily at me, plopping down onto a heavy-duty stool built to withstand beings who weighed as much as Mercurions.

"We spoke to Jacob." I pulled the scarred Raven Helm off and set it on an empty worktable. "He told us that Michael experienced hallucinations when he was glitching during his upload. Did you know about that?"

"What? No." Rin shook her head, picking up the helmet and turning it over to appraise the damage. "We watched him enter the game and go through character creation, but when the glitch happened, we only saw him die a couple of times before HR cut the feed. They gave us some peppy little Silicon Valley propaganda talk about it afterwards. We heard the truth via gossip, of course, but when management reactivated the game stream, Michael seemed to be fine. He was laughing and talking... no mention of hallucinations or other problems. He reassured us they fixed the issue and he was okay."

"Yeah. Well, the SysAdmin team heard the real story," I said. "Apparently, it was real bad. While they were scrambling to fix his spawn problem, the Drachan began whispering shit into his mind. Violent stuff, maybe even Total War imagery. And you know, now I think about it...”

“Hmm?”

I reached up to squeeze the line of braided hair that ran along the centerline of my skull. “I've had NPCs tell me the same thing. Not the Drachan, specifically, but nightmares of fleeing from war, or seeing people shot with modern weaponry. There was one village in Ilia, Lyrensgrove, where all the townies had dreams like that."

"Really?" Rin's brow furrowed. "That's… not supposed to happen."

"Matir said the Drachan have gone beyond their operational parameters. But Jacob, who managed the ATHENA database team, said that was impossible. That there's no way for them to." I began to pace, fidgeting. "So I'm trying to figure out what exactly we're dealing with when it comes to Ororgael and the Drachan."

"Well... if Michael was having violent hallucinations that he thought were some of Archemi’s mobs speaking to him, that explains why he wants to destroy them." Rin began laying out her drafting tools, neatly arranging pencils, her protractor, and rulers. "As for Jacob, I don't know. He was one of those young rockstar programmers, you know? He wasn't much older than me. As far as I know, he's good at what he did, but he wasn't an expert on AI. Information Architects are kind of…what’s the word? Shortsighted? They look at databases all day, modify and organize information in different dimensions. They aren’t really looking at that data in a wholistic way, not like how Michael and Steve did."

“What about you?” I asked. “You seemed to know a lot about AI in Korona.”

“Oh, me? No…I’m a hobbyist, at best.” She gave a prim shake of her head. “The theory of AI fascinates me, so I read a lot of books and articles about it. I realized early on in my degree that CompSci wasn’t for me. I moved into VR Modelling and Architecture. Growing up in an arcology gave me a head start on designing artificial environments, so…I just ran with it.”

I rubbed my face. "Guess we're shit out of luck, then."

"Matir can't tell you more?" Rin took out a sheet of parchment and weighed the corners down with small metal discs. "Suri... she mentioned that, umm, Matir might be Steve."

I sighed. "It's complicated. Matir isn't Steve. Steve uploaded some fourth wall-breaking information to him somehow. He told me my brother might not have ever intended to become a character. He might have just delivered some kind of data payload and died, or become something else."

"What else could he become?" Rin gave me a curious look.

I rolled my eyes. "Knowing Steve, he wanted to become a god, so that he could lord over everyone here and lecture them on their bad posture."

Rin laughed, a musical, tinkling sound that filled the chamber. "I mean... he DID do that. A lot."

"Just like dad." I made a face, absently petting Hopper. The machine was dog-like enough that I felt compelled to tell her she was a good girl and rub what passed for her head. "Anyway. I'm probably just overthinking shit. Ororgael hallucinated some old war trauma he had and went nuts from dying a couple hundred times. He wants to free the world bosses before anyone else is ready, destroy the global order, and declare himself God Emperor of Mankind. End of story."

"Maybe. I’ll have to think about it." Rin shrugged, and turned to the paper. "Anyway, let's just focus on this for now. I need you to describe as many features of these parachutes as you can for me..."

***

Rin and I worked on the parachute designs for a couple of hours. I was able to describe a lot of what I'd trained in: the static lines we'd used for our T-11 jumps, the harnesses and toggles that were part of the free-fall HI-5 system. I had clear memories of being drilled over and over in how to pack and unpack both kinds of parachute. I left everything I could dredge up from my memory with her - she already had a stack of silk in her inventory - and went to go sort out my level up.

Level 26 hadn't opened up any new abilities. After Level 25, new ability acquisition began to slow down. My skill tree had fifty slots, so I figured I'd have access to that many abilities by the time I reached Level 50 or 60. That meant I had two points to spend on combat abilities I already had, or a Mark of Matir ability that had levels, like Spider Climb.

In my opinion, my Advanced Path was still kind of meh. I was powerful in combination with Karalti - she was a frigging dragon, after all - but the fight with the Rotmother had exposed a major weakness in the Lancer and Dark Lancer/Dark Dragoon Paths: they relied on the same key spear-fighting ability used in many Japanese-made RPGs, Jump. With Jump V, I could leap 50ft in any direction and deal a huge amount of damage on anyone I landed on, but because of Archemi's realistic physics, enemies with enough strength or reach could potentially knock me out of the air. If I was thrown out of the attack, it canceled the Jump and its bonus damage, along with any combos I might be chaining off that one maneuver.

The obvious solution was mobility, more training – and better gear. Oh lort, was I ready for better gear. Anything that made me faster, less visible, offered me mobility or teleporting - or even better, some kind of time-slow ability - was top on my list. After the tragic demise of the Raven Suit, all I really had right now was a Medium set of [House Bolza Guard Armor]. It was better than my Jack of Plates mishmash, but still not great. The Naziri Set, which I’d been using since I was barely Level 10, was also an option – but unless Rin could work some miracle with it, it just couldn’t handle the kind of damage and armor penetration my enemies threw at me now.

I plugged both points into Shadow Dance, levelling it up to Shadow Dance V: the maximum level for combat abilities until I hit Level 30. It was my primary mobility ability, and once I read the description, I knew I’d made the right decision.

Shadow Dance III

Basic Evasive Dash reduces damage by 95% at the cost of HP (5 HP per dash). Can now be used three times in a row before recharging, including while in mid-air. You can now dash in any direction without needing prior momentum: straight up or down from standing, etc.

Satisfied, I closed the window. I had 5366 EXP to go before I reached Level 27, but there wasn't going to be time for grinding monsters just yet - because this bitch was gonna train.

Cue the montage.