66

3-3

Rian started his way up the mountain and through the forests. It was completely quiet again, and he supposed himself lucky. The fewer players, the less the chance of getting attacked over the final key.

Among the trees were some impossible-to-miss flowers, their petals a vibrant blue. When an info box told Rian that they were consumables capable of healing him, he set out to pick them. He had no idea how much he’d need for the Zeniyon fight—if he made it that far—but stocking up on healing items was the logical thing to do.

“You needn’t waste your time,” Corvis told him. “I’ll heal you in combat from here on out.”

“Really? Even if it’s in front of another player?”

Corvis sighed. “It won’t make a difference now. If the Game Masters haven’t taken notice of me yet, they won’t from here until the end of the Rift. Communications with the Overworld become more unstable the further we go.”

Until it breaks completely, in World 4? Rian wondered. “So,” he said. “I can just…cheese the Zeniyon fight like that, with you? Infinite healing?”

“Of course not. Zeniyon becomes more powerful the longer you fight him. I could perhaps heal you indefinitely, but I won’t be able to do anything if you die. My class specialty is…repairing things. Not raising the dead.”

“Oh, that’s right. You’re a Seamster, aren’t you?” Yatagara had said that just before Rian had fled from his attack. “You’re like a demonic tailor.”

“Sure. What you should know is that I have four particular healing abilities: a slow, gradual heal that I can use quite often; an instant, full replenishing of health and stamina once every forty seconds; a complete reversion of status effects once per four minutes; and a cooldown reset of all skills once per sixteen minutes.”

“Can you use that cooldown reset on yourself?”

“Yes, though obviously the reset doesn’t apply to the skill itself.”

“That’s sick. So you could feasibly do two full heals or two status reversions one after the other. Still not gonna fight for me, though?”

“It may come to that. But know this: in order to accompany you, I was required to make a pact.” Corvis was silent for a moment. “If I directly enter combat on your behalf, specifically to either block an attack or attack another off-worlder, I will die.”

Rian swallowed. He kept onward up the mountainside. “But you’ll respawn, though, right?”

“Yes,” Corvis said. “But without the memories of my old self. The Corvis you knew will be gone.” He went silent for a moment as if considering whether to elaborate. “It’s something which the Game Masters enchanted their System with. We’re able to hire off-worlders as mercenaries to fight for us, but the Game Masters fear what would happen if the Loyalists and off-worlders were to directly join forces in battle. However…”

Corvis suddenly stopped, turned his head. “You’re being watched,” he said.

“By what? Another player?”

“Yes.”

Rian stopped walking. An arrow howled past his face, then struck a tree which exploded like a semi-truck had plowed through it.

That was enough for Rian to start sprinting.

“Keep running,” Corvis said as he floated alongside at a distance, dodging the trees. “They have stealth bonuses. I almost didn’t hear them in time.”

Rian wasn’t really sure where he was going except up, where the monolith was. He still needed to find the third key, but he would have to figure that out on the fly.

He zig-zagged between the trees as he ascended the mountain, jumping over fallen trunks and climbing up rocky ledges. After a minute, he stopped and watched Corvis, who was gazing across the mountainside.

“Did we lose them?” Rian said.

“They’re not as nimble as you, but they’re following. You should keep moving. It will take you about five minutes to reach the summit.”

Rian kept onward until a noise made him stop and listen.

It sounded like a freight train was hurtling toward him, and it wasn’t from the direction of the archer—not unless they’d somehow gotten around on his other side already.

In the distance, entire trees were going down as something approached: a ball of writhing creatures the size of a small hill was barreling toward him. Limbs, eyes, bones and loose flesh and teeth, fused together, jutting from wrong positions. A dozen crying voices, both low- and high-pitched, wailing in dissonant unison.

It was like a rolling amalgamation of every Miracian creature he’d seen so far, combined with floating glass shards that formed cracked-mirror reflections in the air nearby. It consumed everything it touched: the nearby flowers, the ground itself, and even entire trees vanished into it like a lumber grinder—before shooting back out at speed and causing even more destruction.

“What in the actual hell is that?” Rian shouted.

Disfortune (Level 40)

HP: 4333/4333

Difficulty: A (Legendary)

“A creature formed from the splintering of other creatures through fractures in space-time. Contains a large amount of temporal energy, causing unpredictable interactions.”

Rian had the sobering feeling that this thing’s existence was the players’ fault. All that cracked glass within it was probably some kind of temporal instability created by the use of tesseracts. And the creature itself was, in all likelihood, the thing that the Onsolian merchant had warned him about.

Another arrow howled past Rian.

It struck the creature and killed it instantly.

Rian almost thought that the archer had helped him out. And then the arrow splintered into four more arrows through the mirror cracks like light entering a prism, and after a pause they shot off in different directions at the same speed as they’d entered.

Two of the arrows hit the ground at long angles and burrowed along the surface for several yards, sending up walls of dirt as tall and wide as the trees nearby. The others went skyward.

As if that wasn’t enough, the disfortune exploded on death. Rian had started running as soon as the first arrow had come, and everything had initially missed him, but he kept running through the falling soil and dodged the rain of creature limbs.

He kicked into gear up the mountain, hoping to lose the archer’s sights again. A level-capped creature coming after him was one thing, but a level-capped and probably fully-geared player was worse.

Another minute of silence passed until he spotted something.

There was a dead player here, a mage with an arrow sticking out from his chest.

Rian understood: when he had entered 3-3, it wasn’t that he’d joined an instance with fewer players. The other players were dead.

The archer had killed them all.

Rian was about to leave the body until he had an idea. He checked the mage’s pockets.

You’ve obtained (1) Fragment of Altir’s Dimensional Key!

As he’d thought, the archer didn’t seem interested in progressing to the Zeniyon fight. They were just here to pick people off, probably for a sadistic sense of fun.

Rian inspected the key. It was a semicircle of iron, likely missing the other piece that would complete a ring.

Another rumbling in the ground—a second disfortune was approaching. Long before Rian could see it, he could hear it: the sound of a tumbling boulder crushing everything in its path.

He moved as fast as he could, climbing higher up the mountain slope. When he could see it, the disfortune was slowly turning, taking a curved path toward him. It was horrifically fast for its size, quick enough to outpace him at top speed. But since it was rolling, it couldn’t turn quickly, which gave him time to gain distance once he initially dodged. As long as he was careful and attentive, he could avoid it.

With some ground between it and him, Rian looked back just as the disfortune ran over the dead mage. It shot out four duplicates like a tornado had picked them up. The bodies went flailing into the night sky.

Rest in peace, random mage guy. Rian saluted.

As the disfortune corrected its course, Rian had an idea: he waited for the disfortune to finish turning and approach him dead-on, and then he Dash-canceled toward it and used the momentum to hurl the half-ring item.

His aim was true. The item entered the vortex of glass and creature limbs, splintered, and scattered into four duplicates.

He dodged the disfortune at a right angle to maximize his window of time, and then went around to locate the new fragments, which glimmered helpfully among the foliage.

Each piece automatically combined itself with the other, forming an interlocking sphere of two rings.

You have obtained (1) Altir’s Dimensional Key!

The barrage of arrows seemed to’ve stopped. Rian noticed that Corvis had disappeared for a while, too.

As Rian returned to ascending the slope, he focused his hearing on the sound of the disfortune rolling after him. He had to evade it every half-minute or so, and it was about time again.

Corvis joined him a moment later.

“Where were you?” Rian said, watching his stamina carefully as he maneuvered up the mountain.

“Creating a distraction for our archer friend. I suggest you hurry up before they spot you again.”

“I thought you couldn’t intervene.”

“Not directly.”

Rian slid to a halt.

“What are you doing?” Corvis said.

“Just realized something.” Making sure he wasn’t currently in its path, Rian watched the disfortune as it curved along the mountainside. Then he looked up the slope. He could see where the trees yielded to a rocky surface: the end of the forest and the beginning of the summit. “We’re walking into a trap.”

Corvis glanced around.

“That archer,” Rian said, heading along the slope now rather than up it. “If you scared them off, they’re just going to head to the top of the mountain and wait for me. We’ll need another distraction. Can you still hear them?”

“No, that disfortune is making too much noise, unfortunately. And I was downing trees before to get the archer’s attention. There’s none at the peak.”

Rian paused in thought. “Actually, can you just catapult me toward the monolith? I mean, you’re already floating.”

“I am not carrying you to the finish line, Rian.”

“But I thought we were friends!”

Another arrow came hurtling from the direction of the summit, as Rian had expected. He’d been listening for it and dodged it in time. It took out several trees behind him.

“Okay, fine,” Rian said. “You won’t have to do anything, hopefully. That ball of creatures should do it for us.” He smiled. “I just need you on standby to heal, if I screw it up.”

“You’re not planning to—” Corvis raised his brow. “Oh, I see.”

“Go to the peak and wait for me,” Rian said, and Corvis took off.

Rian peered down the mountainside to gauge the distance between himself and the disfortune. When he could hear it coming into range, he stopped again and waited. The timing would be strict. Too early, and he’d waste a tesseract. Too late, and he would probably die.

He could see the trees splintering as the disfortune approached.

RNG, blessed be thy rolls, he prayed, pulling out a tesseract. He crushed it in his fist, activating Mirage: Cancel and splitting himself in two. The effect would only last for a few seconds at most, but it was enough. He directed one of his selves to dodge like normal and let the other stand in the way of the disfortune.

It was a very good thing he couldn’t feel pain, he thought, as one of his selves entered the disfortune’s vortex of limbs and broken glass and split again into three more selves.

Five perspectives crowded his mind for an instant. He perceived each one as if he were disembodied, able to direct his attention to them individually or as a whole, and he naturally latched onto the self that wasn’t moving: the one that had sidestepped the disfortune.

Two of the other Rians went dark, having been thrown into the ground at sufficient velocity to kill them instantly.

The other two Rians had been sent airborne and were spinning wildly. One died to an arrow traveling as fast as a bullet, leaving two: the Rian on the ground, and one damaged Rian hurtling through the air up the mountainside and toward the monolith.

He focused on his grounded self.

Welp, goodbye, Rian thought and punched a tree, ending Mirage: Cancel and destroying the universe.

He snapped into full awareness of his last remaining self, caught himself as he landed and slid up the rocky slope. The monolith was mere yards away. Glowing threads crisscrossed through his body, bringing his health back up to full, and he silently thanked Corvis for the healing assist.

Rian noted, amid all the chaos, that his last surviving self hadn’t shared the damage that his dead selves had taken. Normally, when his selves recombined after a Mirage: Cancel, his singular self would take on all the damage that his split-selves had taken. But if his other selves died…there was nothing left to recombine with, and so he ended up taking no damage. It was better to let his other selves die before he ended the skill.

An interesting perk, but he could worry about the implications of cloning and killing versions of himself later.

The archer, standing before the monolith, was in the middle of nocking another arrow and staring at him in shock. Most of her face was covered by her hood, but Rian thought she looked familiar. Her weapon was a sleek, ivory monstrosity of a longbow, and the bowstring shimmered like a ray of sunlight. The color of her cloak changed each moment, and she was covered in items—sheathed knives, tied pairs of extra boots, a shovel, potion vials, bear traps, whistles, and quivers stuffed with arrows of shining material.

Above her head was the text, LastWhisper.

She took a stance, a whirlwind erupting at her feet, and aimed.

Panicking, Rian retrieved another tesseract and activated Mirage: Cancel only to remember that the skill had a one-minute cooldown—then realized that it had worked anyway. The cooldown had reset, whether that was because his split-selves had died or because of Corvis’s healing spell.

Rian dodged in opposite directions, and the archer’s aim followed his left self. She was patient, having waited for him to dodge first.

She loosed the arrow.

Before Rian’s perspective settled again into a singular body, he realized the arrow had broken the sound barrier. He’d seen the compression wave form around it as it left the bow, and a sound like an explosion had temporarily deafened him.

It was also the first time he’d used Mirage: Cancel against another person, and he had to wonder: what was it like from their perspective? They could only see one of him. But which one? Was it truly random, like a quantum event?

He saw the archer’s reaction as his other self died and the universe collapsed, leaving only one of him. She glanced over as if she’d just witnessed him popping into existence some distance away from where she’d killed him.

The utility of Mirage: Cancel was becoming more and more apparent. Not only could he cancel an attack into another, but he could also tank a hit with it and catch his opponent off-guard by warping near or away from them, from their perspective.

Approaching the monolith, he dashed through the pressure wave radiating from it, which parted around him with the key in his inventory.

But he wasn’t moving fast enough. The final monolith’s pressure was three times as intense as the ones before it, and the key only let him move so fast. He risked a glance, and the archer was already nocking her next arrow.

Corvis was suddenly in front of her.

“Hello there,” he said, and judging by the surprise on her face, Corvis had dropped his invisibility.

She raised her bow and tried to aim Rian, but Corvis kept floating into her line of sight. Rian hoped he understood: as long as she didn’t release that arrow, Corvis technically wasn't blocking an attack.

“What are you doing?” the archer muttered. “Get out of the way.”

Something about her reaction was strange, but Rian shook off the thought. The monolith was almost within reach.

And then a dire wolf stepped out from behind it. The pressure wave rippled its fur, but it stood within the gale like it was nothing more than a gentle breeze.

Another creature? Rian thought, his stomach dropping. No, that has to be the archer’s pet.

The wolf charged toward him.

With some quick thinking, Rian plunged his hand into his inventory, thought of exactly what he needed, and pulled it free.

He threw the Temporal Stick at the dire wolf. The stick, caught in the pressure wave, came flying back like a boomerang and went overhead and into the forests behind him. But the effect was as he’d hoped: the dire wolf suddenly lost its aggressive demeanor and took off after the stick, ignoring Rian.

Heart racing, Rian touched the monolith, and everything went dark.