Текст книги "The Clan"

Автор книги: D. Rus

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

Chapter Thirteen

 

Well now! I'd done everything I could to make everybody happy. The only thing left for me to do was to prioritize the order of the Temple's regeneration. Then I could finally set off on a marathon along the castle walls in search for the dragon's eggs. Last time I checked, the three defense walls counted at least a couple dozen northbound towers. I knew I didn't have to have contact with the altar in order to control the mana flow but I couldn't very easily send mana to someone I didn't know: it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. I needed to know enough of the item's or character's stats to prevent any mixups—as my own crude way of placemarking its astral position. Even that wasn't so important as long as I could give instructions to the altar to redirect the mana flow.

I touched the stone's glossy black surface, receiving a status message of the five percent available. It looked as if the Fallen One had already redirected the mana flow overrunning my earlier obligations. I opened the utility menus. I had no idea how long it would take me to restore the entire castle and how much time I'd have to spend afterwards adding the finishing touches by hand but at the moment, the control hall regeneration was my top priority. I had to have total control over the entire castle, otherwise the Temple would become a defenseless standalone building, however pretty. Personally, I was looking forward to meeting the hordes of Light armed and prepared once my fortifications became something more serious than piles of debris.

Jesus. What a mess of options, menus, submenus and dropout lists. Had the developers outsourced the creation of this interface to some Indian sweat shop? My unfocused stare fell on a section entitled Summoning the Temple Guards. This might be interesting. I decided to check it out.

Apparently, I had 30,000 level units available, calculated as the temple's rank times ten thousand. You could cash them in, summoning the widest range of creatures, both sentient and mobs. This exchange rate wasn't linear, either: the ratio remained at 1:1 until level 100, then began rapidly growing. In the most irrational scenario you could waste your whole 30,000 on one level-900 uncategorized entity. To give you some idea, I could summon a giant Cerberus the size of a five-story house and properties to match. Wonder if the Hell Hounds would rejoice at seeing their big brother and appoint it their high canine deity? In any case, I wasn't going to hire any guards at the moment. They demanded payment on a daily basis: one gold per point spent. By doing some simple math, you could see that full-scale hiring would cost me three grand a day. In case of a guard's death the spent points returned into a common pool and became available for repurchase after twenty-four hours.

After some hesitation, I decided to hire a few status guards for the Guard of Honor who would also prevent the mobs' access to the donjon. After five minutes of fiddling with the settings, a dozen orcs in heavy armor took their posts by the Temple's doors and gates, led by a Lieutenant in a suit of armor embellished with silver. The pleasure of having them cost me fifteen hundred gold. Actually, was I supposed to keep the Temple army all on my own? Again I buried myself in the menu, finally discovering the finance section which said that the First priest had access to 1% of all donations to the Fallen One. At the moment, the sum was negligible as the sheer motivation to earn Faith points hadn't even existed until less than an hour ago: hardly enough time for anyone to have found a Dark priest and dedicated themselves to the only available deity, i.e. Macaria. I was worried, though, that the digitized community had already sussed out all the advantages involved and was now at boiling point and threatening to explode. They didn't need consecration rituals to appreciate the entire range of services offered, so quite a few people had to be ecstatically looking for a suitable priest or altar.

While I was at it, I looked into their faith point catalogue. To receive one Faith point, you had to either donate 1000 mana, 100 XP of 1 gold. Considering that the first religious rank called for 1000 Faith points, you could easily work out that it would cost the buyer exactly one hundred bucks. Of which I was getting one miserable dollar bill. Still, this was a numbers game. I multiplied one dollar by the number of potential followers, multiplied by eternity. Immortality was a good thing any way you looked at it. The resulting figures were impressive.

Finally I got to the upgrade and rebuild menu and opened the submenu tree. So! Macaria hadn't wasted her time! Apparently, she wasn't one for half-measures, having reanimated not only the Temple hall but also all of the central donjon. I was pleased to see that the First Temple's potential allowed the use of its self-restoration facilities also for rebuilding other castle structures. I could see now that the entire complex had been conceived as an organic unity whose defense and regeneration functions often overlapped or even merged with only one objective in mind: the enhancement of the Temple's defense potential.

Even on their own, both the castle and the Temple must have cost tens of millions. But their combined value was tenfold. A dream goodie, as precious as it was useless. I had to be careful not to choke on it. The only chance I could have in this new game was due to my freshly-acquired post and celestial support. Had I been just Laith, even a clan leader, I'd have already auctioned the castle's coordinates, creamed off my couple of million and washed my hands of the whole thing. But as it was now, fate had dealt me half a pack of trump cards so I'd better use them while I had the chance. Another one like that might not present itself for a long time.

As somebody said, luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Fate may keep opening doors to new opportunities, but how ready are we to jump at them? When you get a dream offer of a job abroad—is it time to regret you never got down to mastering your language skills? When you are confronted by a zombie towering over the body of a policeman who'd just emptied his AK (rather uselessly) in it, is it time to regret you don't know how to change the spent clip? Well, in that case it's no good blaming your luck: you're your own worst enemy.

I leafed through the castle plans, storing the schemes and building's statutes in my memory.

The main flight of stairs. I placemarked it on the map. Status, green: fully functional.

Arsenal. Status, yellow. Partially functional. Restoration time: 28 days using the current configuration, 6 hours if assigned top priority and all available resources.

Underground dungeons, communications and cellars. Status, red. Decay level: 81%.

And so on and so forth. Macaria had poured her main effort into refurbishing the Temple hall and façade, restoring the rest of the facilities to their minimal functionality levels.

Finally, at the donjon's fifth level, I discovered the Control Room marker. Status, yellow: partially functional. Did it mean I could just walk in and take over the castle? My inner greedy pig was throwing a fit threatening to rip the place apart if I didn't go there now and claim control over the abandoned property. For a brief moment, he gave me the creeps as I remembered an ancient Alien movie where the monsters ripped their hosts open from inside. You hear that, porcine face? You'd better not upset me, buddy, or I'll upgrade you to a toad and pretend you'd had always been like that.

Actually, I was curious too. To stumble across an unwanted Super Nova-class castle was cooler than finding an abandoned car transporter loaded with unclaimed brand new Bentleys. I checked the map for a shortcut and had a good look around, adjusting the visuals to the freshly-digested maps. Then I closed the menus, severed contact with the altar stone and dashed under the archway above a far-off flight of stairs.

My corridor run brought me equal doses of disappointments and new discoveries. What had Macaria been thinking about? All the rooms I passed were immaculately clean, their functional granite tiles sparkling. Clean being the operative word! Whatever happened to all the technogenic debris? Where were all the spent shells, empty clips and broken ammo belts, precious mithril shrapnel and fragments of armor? Where were all the heaps of rubble I had counted on in which to unearth a couple of slightly soiled Warmechs? This wasn't cleaning, this was plain sabotage.

I felt like a husband who had unlocked his garage expecting to face the familiar mess where he could find every screw blindfolded, only to discover that his wife had given it a surprise spring clean, sweeping out all the precious bent nails, torn elastics and bits of wire creating a clean, neat and absolutely useless space. What had Macaria done with all the trash? Had she unthinkingly shoved it all away in the astral depths? It might have been worse: she might have processed mithril into energy, no wonder she'd pulled off this sixty-minute makeover single-handedly. What a bummer. I just hoped she confined herself to a surface clean which left me the hope to find a few stashes. And I still had the cellars. I just had to pray her obsession with cleanliness hadn't stretched that far.

The fifth level. A long spiraling corridor circled the windowless donjon, taking the potential attackers past rows of barracks and cutoff zones peppered with gunslots. Massive slabs of basalt stood ready to collapse creating an impenetrable barricade. All you needed was access to the control artifact or even a mere key that could open the intricate Dwarven locks.

The last corridor was angular, its sharp bends getting narrower with every turn. The last thirty feet or so could be successfully defended by just a couple of soldiers who could easily block the passage. That was clever, like everything here. Shame the restoration wasn't on a par thanks to one hasty young lady. This Macaria of Milo by an unknown sculptor deserved having her arms pulled off.

With a sigh, I examined the pale tiles lining the corridors. It looked as if a team of cowboy builders had hung cheap suspended ceilings over the Hermitage frescoes.

Shivering with anticipation, I finally heaved open the small but unmanageably thick iron-oak door, entering the castle's sancta sanctorum. I felt sorry for the castle's potential attackers who had to fit into the ever-narrowing corridors, leaving behind first their battle golems, then ogres, and finally trolls. The defenders wouldn't have any such problems, especially considering their monopoly on portals. The high ceilings—twenty feet at least—allowed the defenders to use a whole variety of AlterWorld races, including the latest in golem building. The power center was located behind the fenced-off battle grounds. The walls were lined with empty sockets meant to house accumulating crystals. How many could they hold, a hundred, two hundred? Considering each cost about a million gold, the castle builders had to have been quite ambitious.

I walked down an L-shaped passage between two fenced-off areas and found myself in the castle's heart: the control room.

Almost all of the space inside was occupied by a white U-shaped marble desk gaping with dozens of empty slots for artifacts of truly unknown purpose and nature. It looked rather like the control desk of some high tech submarine or nuclear power station with its empty mountings and ripped-out units. Some mysterious panels—once mirrored and now dented—looked suspiciously like monitors.

In the desk's center, the control panel of the castle artifact glowed a subtle green. The exact location of the artifact itself I was yet to determine; its unknown makers could have cemented it into the room's foundations for all I knew. I crossed my fingers and lay my hand on the imaginary keyboard.

Welcome to the Super Nova Castle control panel!

Your access level: Guest

Information output mode: video-assisted telepathy. How can I help you?

I shook my head, amazed. This didn't look like your ordinary menu options.

Are you sentient? I asked, just to be on the safe side.

After a second's pause, a faceless voice answered,

"Not exactly, even though I am closely approaching that idea. The control crystal contains a dissected soul of one of its mage creators, its freedom of will suppressed and all unnecessary emotions removed. My desire to serve and obey orders has been increased—the only thing that brings me satisfaction. What else can I do for you?"

I could hear a badly concealed plea in his voice: Do ask me something, anything at all!

"Current status?"

A Super Nova Castle. Decay level: 68%. Last authorization: 790 years ago. Last important event: 43 minutes ago, the restoration of 11% of its structure.

"Whose property is it?"

Question unclear.

"Who owns this castle?"

Since the restoration of the control center functionality, there were no registered ownership requests. Would you like to submit one?

You bet! "Yes!"

Forced activation of a one-off script. Establishing connection with the financial center as of instruction 82а.

 

This is AI Bordeaux7 stream 155. Congratulations! You have discovered an unclaimed castle. Class: Super Nova. As of clause 59 of EULA, you can claim ownership by paying the price of the real estate and repurchasing the land. Would you like to complete the transaction?

 

Yes! My voice broke. I swallowed. I'd never owned as much as a studio, let alone a castle.

The price of the 3 sq. mile plot is two million gold.

The price of the Super Nova Castle, including the unique Temple Complex with 68% wear and tear is 23 million. For your information, the castle has been recently restored.

"I know, thanks. That's twenty-five million..."

All that was left to do was bite my lip and tap the control panel. Over two million US dollars, an enormous amount even in real life. But more importantly, I just didn't have it. I simply had to wait for some Olders or others to buy the castle, then be cloistered in the Temple Hall without much right to anything else.

If you thought in terms of eternity, there was always the possibility of earning this sort of money. But right here and now? Then again, why not?

"Would it be possible to pay in installments?"

What monthly amount could you afford?

Did this mean it was possible? That's the solution, then! "How about ten thousand gold?" I added a pleading note to my voice.

The installment plan is limited to one year. Considering the state of your bank balance, we suggest the following solution: a down payment of one million gold which would secure your ownership of the castle, followed by twelve monthly payments of two million gold each. This is our best offer.

Oh. Where was I supposed to find two million a month? True, I had indeed managed to raise a similar amount in my first month in the game. The question was, how sure was I I'd have the same kind of luck for a further twelve months? Sure, I possessed a number of unique opportunities, but turning them into cash quickly and error-free was not going to be easy. In case of success, it would indeed consolidate my position in AlterWorld. If I failed—well, I would lose all the cash I'd paid. That was bad but sufferable. Should I go for it? What would my greedy pig say?

For the first time in my memory, he didn't react. Was the million in hand better than a castle in the bush? No answer. How I understood him! I had to do it.

Switching off all self-control and sense of reality, I said in a stilted voice, "Agreed."

This was how I'd always reacted whenever a situation called for inane determination, like doing a high-board dive or approaching a stunningly beautiful girl. I switched off all emotion, shrugged and stepped forward.

"Agreed," I repeated in a more confident voice.

Congratulations on your acquisition! I thought I heard a hint of amazement in the AI's voice. An invoice and standing order request have been sent to your address. Upon confirmation of payment, all deeds will be sent to your Private Message box, signed and sealed by the official AI of the Cayman Islands offshore zone. A copy of the deeds will be forwarded to your official registered mailbox.

Indeed, my Inbox flashed with a new message. That was Drow Bank informing me of the requests received. I heaved another sigh and confirmed the transaction, burning all bridges. Sorry, Mom, sorry, Dad. I know you'd spent a lifetime hammering into me that credits were evil. You knew better, what with your Second Great Depression experience and all. But this thing was completely interest-free. So I just prayed I hadn't made a fool of myself and hadn't just become the winner of the How-to-Lose-Your-First-Million race.

More messages flashed before my eyes.

Congratulations on your acquisition! You are now the legal owner of a Super Nova Castle.

Updati ng the virtual property register... OK

Sending form H:244 to the tax authorities... ОК.

Control of the funds' provenance... in progress.

For your information: As of 2029 Law 5011 on virtual property, the yearly tax rate of your property is 1.5%. The nonrec urring virtual property tax for amounts over 1,000,000 is 4%. Notice of payment has been sent to your bank. Please note that non-payment within ten days will incur a late-payment surcharge of 5% on every 24 hours.

They didn't mean it. I had barely signed the freakin' thing and already I owed the Feds one million gold. Talk about conjuring money out of thin air. If you closed your eyes and turned round, then pointed your finger blindly, whichever object you pointed to would be taxable. All those excise and customs duties, direct and indirect taxes—the entire society was entangled in a golden web, its precious threads wound into gigantic balls somewhere in the depths of the state machine. How many months a year did it leave you to work for yourself? Two or three? Four max. The rest you were supposed to surrender. I remembered reading that every loaf of bread included over a hundred various taxes. AlterWorld wasn't like that yet.

I imagined a monster dropping one gold and dozens of greedy hands reaching for it. Before you blinked, you were left with a handful of coppers you'd then take to the shops and pay VAT on top of everything else. The Tartar Yoke with its negligible tithe paled in comprison—a true tax-free Golden Age.

In any case, I had nothing to pay their taxes with. My rainy day million had already cleared my account, leaving me with a miserable twenty grand and over two million in monthly payments. Without the six-digit bank account, the world had changed its colors. The debt load burdened my shoulders, breaking my fragile wings and dissolving all my opportunistic plans. From now on, it was nose to the grindstone for me, only raising my head in order to look around for more work to do and someone willing to give it to me. Mom had been right, after all.

No. They weren't going to do it. No one was going to break my wings. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

I'd find the money even if I had to eat dirt.

By then, I was a bit fed up with standing bolt upright, but this sterile box of a room had no seating facilities. I slapped the desk. It reacted so fast I didn't have a chance to speak.

Master! so much passion and barely suppressed joy was in that voice that I felt ashamed.

"I'm Max. Call me Max, okay?"

As you say, Master.

Yeah. "Listen, Castle..."

There's no need for tactile contact. You ownership entitles you to a copy of the control artifact which allows you to stay in mental contact with the castle at virtually any distance.

With a pop, the control desk created an octagonal charm on a thin platinum chain. I weighed it in my hand. It was heavy. I put it on and addressed the Castle AI mentally. Can you hear me?

Yes, Master.

Yeah. Never mind. So what's with the lack of soft furnishings?

Allow me to explain. The castle generates three hundred universal points an hour. You can spend them on restoration, building works or upgrading the existing facilities, including interior design. At the moment, six universal points are available. This will only be enough for the simplest of all devices meant to support a human body in a seated position.

A chair, I presume? I don't need a fancy one, just something to rest my backside on. Go ahead and generate it.

I'd suggest you wait another seven minutes. That would allow you to order a Gothic Chair #52 from the Miserly Knight collection I have just finished downloading.

It sounded a bit suspect. I frowned, "Don't tell me it was a pop-up ad. You're not going to hang the castle walls with banners and promote panty liners via the intercom? I hope not. And please, none of those oak chairs with high straight backs. Let the designers themselves get numb bums from them. I personally prefer ergonomic soft furniture. Now, where's my chair?"

The emotion the Castle AI sent me was the mental equivalent of a shrug. The air quivered with a snap and I realized I should have waited. On the floor stood a handmade stool, rough and wobbly. Oh, well. Haste makes waste. Now I had to keep this contraption out of principle to make sure I didn't forget that particular old adage again. I crouched gingerly and swayed on it trying to balance myself. At least I wouldn't fall asleep on it. I had too many things to take care of.

"AI, do you hear me? Is there a master suite in the donjon?"

Yes, there is. The entire sixth level.

"How much time would it take to restore it to a medium comfort level?

Castle AI paused for a moment. Approximately ten to fourteen days depending on the chosen design.

Too long. "How about guest rooms, then?"

Yes, Master. Fourth level. Six detached suites.

"Excellent. I want you to restore one every couple of days. Just a bed, a table, a chair or two and a fireplace. Look up a few ready-made designs and send them to me, I'll choose one. You think you can do it?"

Yes, Master. I will start now.

Excellent. That would give him something to do. In the meantime, Master—myself, that is—would get busy cashing in on his skills and statuses.

I opened the auction and checked my auto buy's anonymity settings. Full-blast paranoia, that's my boy. The vendor is only known by his number, all correspondence redirected, no way to identify him. So—what did we have to offer the world?

I opened a new window and generated a new auction. A few minutes later, I entered the first lot:

A unique raid buff for sale. Effect: +25% to all kinds of magic resistance, +10% to physical damage resistance. Duration: 12 hrs.

The success or failure of your raid is in your hands!

Offered on condition that the buff will not be used in raids targeting worshippers of the Fallen One, their clans or castles.

Price: 30,000 gold

Not too expensive, especially considering the price of the Spark. Still, this was a reusable offer so it should generate a trickle of steady money my way.

Next one:

A unique offer! A raid portal to Inferno! Hurry before your rivals beat you to the ancient castles of their demon lords!

The offer includes a one-way group portal. Return is done under one's own steam, via respawning or teleporting.

Price: one-week's public auction, bids start with 1 gold.

Good! What next?

Only a perma player can appreciate the choice of Macaria as their patron deity. Unique offer: her priest will personally consecrate you to the Goddess of Blissful Death.

Potential buyers are invited to teleport to the point given by the vendor. The consecration rite is 100% anonymous.

Price: 10,000 gold

The next lot—or rather, my pack of trump aces:

A unique offer for big clans or connoisseurs: the First Priest will ordain you as a Dark Priest. Bring your clan under the protection of the Fallen One and secure your people's immortality.

Price: 1,000,000

I reread it and paused, thinking. Was it the right thing to do, really? The price was high, but in all honesty I could add another zero and still our oligarchs would cringe and pay it. And what was I supposed to do with that clique of professional schemers with their security services, analytics departments and cellars full of gold? How sure was I they wouldn't cut me out and start their own game that wouldn't do any favors to the name of the Fallen One, his religion or his First Priest? Those gentlemen were the opposite of cute and cuddly: those were sharks who'd survived the Second Depression, the Dictatorship of the State and the New NEP. They'd swallow me whole without even noticing.

That wasn't the way to do it. Hadn't I said myself just lately that cadres were key? And was I really going to apply the trial and error approach to this crucial step? Next thing I knew, I'd have a quiet modest man sitting in one of the Temple rooms under a sign, First Secretary Comrade Stalin who would start placing his own men in all key posts. Before I knew it, he'd hold a re-election campaign which would demote me to the post of junior carpet sweeper. No. I had to think it over, then think again and again some more. I blinked, sending the finished description into the Recycle Bin and made a mental note to deal with it later.

Next. Deactivating a castle shield. The altar's help allowed me to cast a High Spell while the Shadow of the Fallen One secured my anonymity. Still, I wasn't going to auction off something that scandalous. I'd have to look for potential buyers myself.

I opened the long-forgotten news feed, the section of war conflicts. Most clans were constantly in a state of smoldering vendetta with each other. I was sure I could find someone interested enough.

The OMON clan has besieged two central castles belonging to the Gold Net trade clan. The latter have hired large mercenary units which makes the outcome rather unclear. If you remember, OMON members have taken and resold three standalone castles in the last few months, all belonging to second-division clans.

The Pratz clan has been besieging a private castle on the border of No Man's Land without success. The point of their activity is dubious as they don't seem to have the potential to breach the shield.

The Korean farm alliance has completed a raid on the human city of Humas. Within the last twenty-four hours, they have taken and destroyed four nearby castles and a dozen mansions. The persistent Koreans seem to be quite happy with the twenty percent profits paid out for destroyed property. Insurance companies are said to have raised their premiums.

Last night, a blitz operation carried out by the Ninja Looters resulted in the taking of Silver Citadel, a strategic point covering access to the mines of the same name. An anonymous source claims the success of the operation was the result of treachery by a senior guard officer who had apparently leaked the portal access codes to the attackers. Reportedly, the officer in question is a professional spy specializing in this kind of one-off operation. It had taken him over a year to prepare the mission. Having joined the clan after a period of express leveling, he excelled in his duties, enjoying a quick career growth which culminated in a lump sum of over a million gold for the valuable intelligence. Consequently, he deleted the character concerned.

Oh. I scratched my head. These guys played big. The Looters now had a half-a-million dollar castle. And the patient spy, a hundred grand for a year in the game. Now he'd go to the Maldives for a well-deserved month in the sun before registering a new character. So how were we supposed to protect ourselves against his type?

I remembered the incident with the tobacco smoke turning into soap bubbles, giving away the nondescript individual who'd been trying to worm his way into the Vet's clan. Wonder if my invention had saved the Veterans that day from professional infiltration like the one above?

I had gleaned something, anyway. Now I had some idea of the prices people were prepared to offer for breaching a castle's defenses. In all honesty, I didn't feel like offering my services to any of the clans involved in current military actions. I had an idea, though. It looked as if most of the OMON forces were drawn to the besieged castles. What if I offered their victims the possibility to counterattack? I could remove any shield from any of the castles mentioned by the vendors. All they needed to do was assault it which would probably allow them to alter the situation and save their property, making a nice few bucks on the side. I could also make a similar offer to the ex-owners of the Silver Citadel. I had a funny feeling they wouldn't say no to the opportunity to bring it back under their control.

Very well. A quick search brought me the names of clan leaders of both Gold Net and Minediggers. I created an anonymous mail address and sent them my offer. They could forward their payment via official middlemen who, for a mere two percent, would make sure that all parties respected the fine print. All I had to do was remove the dome shield of a specific castle at a specified time. Price quoted: one million. That was it. Now I could sit back and watch the sharks and whales swarm into my net.

A double clink of gold informed me of the first bite. Sold: one dedication to Macaria and one raid offer. I was forty grand richer. Things were moving!

Clink, clink! Another bite!