I nodded. "My kingdom for a pair of ballistic goggles! Freckles, do us all a favor and control them a bit further away, at fifteen paces or so, would you?"
While we recovered, the croc's life had sunk into the yellow zone. The restive silent Bomba reached into her backpack and produced an impressive club of meteorite iron studded with diamond shards molten into its impact surface.
Bang! Crit! Corpse!
Wow. Having said that, the croc was all of a hundred levels below her. You would hardly expect a drawn-out combat at these odds. She had just swatted him, end of story. My pets were full of life, having barely lost 10% hits. Which was also quite predictable, really: the demoness' level was higher than the croc's with Teddy not too far below.
Aha, there was Whizz bringing a new customer. I immobilized the arriving anaconda and set off both pets, casting a couple of Life Absorptions. The rogue chick ran past us and turned round, skidding in the deep sand, then headed back to the water edge for more clients to stuff.
"Bah, it stinks," she dropped sarcastically as she ran past, "has something just died here?"
Followed by some hearty f-words, she laughed happily and hopped over the dunes, reaching for her throwing knife. Things got rocking!
Four hours later, we took a break. By then, we'd already advanced more than half a mile down river. I'd surprised them by my XP building: one level every forty minutes. The pet had long since been raised again so now we were sitting next to an enormous hippo, his bulk frightening the pants off occasional players who tried to approach us. That's right, I'd allowed the girls to do their own little bit on the side so they made a small announcement location-wide, offering their buffing and resurrecting services. They charged a good rate for those but in the absence of competition, they could ask for whatever they wanted. The way it was going, they would make at least a grand by evening—a nice little bonus for them. It didn't really affect my leveling, we had plenty of mana, we'd had no emergencies even though by now Whizz alone couldn't always deliver and had to occasionally turn to Bomba for a successful pull. Zena made sure no one dropped below 40% in case we had to deal with an unexpected pull or a PK. The loot wasn't much to write home about. Lots of meat and pelts, a few gems and various bits of gear—probably, whatever was left of the less lucky players who'd tried to swim across in full armor with a double-handed sword on their backs. I could, in theory, get about four hundred gold out of it toward my operational costs.
My girls turned out to be foresighted and domesticated. In their bottomless backpacks they even had a few sitting rugs, a spotless white tablecloth and a good dozen pots filled with various edibles. We had a hearty lunch and a bit of a siesta as the girls talked between themselves, discussing very ungirly things like the pros and cons of spears as a close-combat weapon. We all seemed to be getting along. They didn't drag their break out until the last, so in less than forty minutes the well-oiled wheels of our conveyor belt were rolling again.
Half an hour before midnight, I dinged for the last time that day. 65!
"Congrats," the tired girls managed.
I nodded. "Thanks, ladies. Great job. I'll be seeing crocs for a week now."
Whizz grinned. "They will, too, after the genocide you committed."
"Not without your help. Freckles, you can port the team back now. Having said that, know of a decent hotel to spend the night?"
"Everything's been taken care of," Zena answered. "There're some nice apartments in the mercs guild. Third floor. They're not cheap, but that's not your problem. Consider it our gift to you. We can appreciate generosity."
I didn't say no. No need to disappoint good girls like those. "I can, too. Okay, tomorrow eight a.m., meet you all in the guild hall. We'll buff ourselves up and off to the Frontier we go. The Dead Lands are waiting. I've got unfinished business there, ladies, that's the whole thing..."
Chapter Nine
S trictly confidential
Foreign Intelligence Service to the President of the Russian Federation .
Memorandum (excerpt):
Alternate checks have supported the information received from independent sources about China's latest short-term development trends regarding the recent perma mode effect.
1. Their building of an underground perma mode facility is nearing completion. Intended to hold 200,000 FIVR capsules, this class-A sensitive installation is protected by an efficient anti-aircraft canopy and is capable of withstanding a strike from a 10 kiloton tactical warhead.
2. The production of unlicensed cloned versions of iVirt4 capsules has been launched at a classified assembly line aiming to produce 4,000 capsules every 24 hours.
3. A strictly classified Expansion program aims to establish China's domination and control of the more promising virtual worlds. In the light of the latest confirmed independence trends, we deem it vital to develop a similar program of our own.
4. Their new confidential software, Insanity aims to spread terror in the worlds chosen for research or immigration purposes. Over 150,000 mentally ill patients from all over China have been handpicked and are ready to be dropped into the aforementioned worlds. Several hacker groups will be waiting on standby, ready to take over the worlds' l ogin servers within a few hours if required.
5. They have created a seven-level secret program entitled The Great Cleansing aiming to conduct the step-by-step digitalization of the following population segments: criminal elements, political unreliables, long term convicts, the terminally ill, the handicapped and, finally, all sections of the population unfit to work. The final figure of the individuals chosen for the program exceeds 80 million.
All of the above is the subject of deep concern. The success of the aforementioned programs would enable China to dominate not only the virtual worlds (if we can still call them so) but also the world as we know it.
* * *
The teleport made our ears pop as it ejected our A-team under the Frontier's striking sun. Fortunately, the teleport point was up the hill where the breeze fanned us against the heat and the visibility allowed us to survey the area before hitting the road.
"WTF?" I heard Bomba's voice full of indignation. We swung round, staring at an old road skirting the hill several hundred feet away from us. A column of prisoners dusty beyond all recognition dragged their feet toward the depths of the Frontier.
Behind me I heard the sounds of a spell being cast: Eagle Vision x10, immediately allowing the group to zoom in on the approaching procession.
"Gnolls," Zena concluded.
"Yeah," added Whizz. "Tiny. Not one over level 30."
I peered at the crowd loaded with their meager possessions: messenger gnolls, overseers, warriors, shamans... It reminded me of some WW2 footage: the hot summer of 1941, fugitives fleeing their homes, trying to shake off the creeping front line. Warily I looked up, searching the clear sky for any cross-decorated wings eclipsing the sun, descending deathlike onto the helpless stream of refugees.
"Fancy a bit of genocide?" the Troll patted her club with a shovel-shaped hand.
I startled at the scary accuracy of her suggestion. "No, don't. Let them go. Don't know what kind of exodus that is. Could be some community event. In any case, they're not an army. They're refugees. We're not animal enough to assault them."