“AI.”
“At your service.”
“What is such a big reward for?”
“Because of the difference in levels and rankings.”
“Did you see what they did to her? You owe me that much.”
“You want to turn the tips back on?”
“Don’t be funny. Just answer.”
“Not enough data.”
“It’s pretty goddamn clear without it!”
...
“AI!”
“At your service.”
“Cancel the fine.”
“I can’t do that. Murder is murder, honorable or not. If you don’t like it, you can contact customer service.”
“That’s so fucking ridiculous!”
“Ronnie, you have made your decision when you fired at someone whose name isn’t highlighted red yet. Please accept the consequences.”
“What about the right of defense?”
“That right belongs to the girl, not you.”
“Fucking hell… That’s what I get for trying to help someone.”
He got up and put his backpack back on and wrapped the rifle strap around his arm and went forward and in a few minutes he was at the oasis and looked into the frightened brown eyes of the girl and looked at her snow-white hair, thin waist and chest, shining through the transparent fabric of the T-shirt. She recoiled as soon as he came closer to her.
“Who are you?” The girl asked, panting. Her gaze never left the two bodies lying on the sand.
Ronnie did not answer and slung the rifle over his back.
“Did you kill them?”
“As you can see from my debuff.”
The girl’s face changed.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were one of them. Sorry! Thank you! Thank you very much!”
He opened the HUD and looked at her parameters:
Strength: 1
Agility: 4.5
Reaction: 2
Magic: 0
“To avoid a fine for murder,” he began, “players hang others. But such circumvention of the rules turns into torture for those who are caught. Especially if you’ve got the strength stat pumped in. One high-level guy with the nickname Kiro, if my memory serves right, told how he hung tied up for five hours and waited until he died. The muscles turned out to be too strong, so the veins and arteries were not squeezed. It remained to rely only on a fracture of the cervical vertebrae. And of course, the real body also experienced all that pain. I don’t even know why he didn’t kill himself through the HUD.”
“It’s an interesting story,” she replied, and her face twisted. “I see you understand the issue.”
“I read the forum when I’m bored.”
“Thanks anyway. For your deed. My name is Nika,” she said, got awkwardly to her feet and held out her hand.
Ronnie shook it and nodded, and with a grim face answered, looking her straight in the eye:
“I can see your nickname.”
Nika snarled maliciously, but did not really say anything.
“What are you doing in this place?” he asked.
“What do you think? The monsters in this game, for some unknown to mereason, don’t spawn back. That’s why there’s no place for newbies to level up. You have to go to unknown places, kill all sorts of bugs and birds, and then scan their bodies.”
“Have you ever been to a dungeon? The monsters there are reborn and, in one run with a party you could raise a considerable amount of experience.”
“No, thanks. I’m for safe leveling up.”
Ronnie shrugged and looked away from her and looked around the oasis. He took a glass out of his backpack and poured water into it and poured it into a flask through a special filter, drank it and did the same thing again. The girl collected the scattered things in a backpack and went behind a tree to change clothes, cursing and indignant at the same time.
“I don’t believe in such things as karma, but I believe in retribution, which overtakes all the shit-eaters of this world and makes them choke on their own blood, remembering their sins on their deathbed.”
“I see you’ve recovered quickly,” he replied.
“When you see the death of the offender with your own eyes, it gives strength.”
Ronnie said nothing to that. He noticed a strange item on the other side of the lake and studied the object from a distance. Then he heard groans and turned to the mortally wounded player. His body did not turn into ashes, which means only one thing. Ronnie went up to him, said:
“You’re alive. Open your eyes. I’ll take a screenshot of your face and send it to the forum.”
The player with the nickname Onstoff did so. He tried with the last of his strength not to disconnect from the game. His hands and head were shaking, his lips were moving soundlessly, and then he mumbled:
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
“Di-i-ie...”
Nika screamed even harder behind the tree.
“It’s strange that they didn’t have enough brains to fuck me!”
Onstoff continued:
“Die... scum...” he said with difficulty, the veins in his forehead bulging, blood coming out of his nose and mouth.
“Next time you’ll think twice before you hang someone.”
Ronnie gave him a friendly slap on the cheek a couple of times. Onstoff disconnected. Throbbing sounds came from his chest. Then the blood in his veins turned into liquid iron. The body burned up in a second and shattered into dust. Personal belongings and weapons were left lying on the sand and in clothes. Ronnie rummaged in his pockets–nothing of value.
“Bastard!” she screamed. “He was still alive, wasn’t he? What did he say?”
“Nothing.”
Ronnie walked back to the lake and looked at the other shore and at the clear water and ripples. Strange sandy-blue algae grew on the bottom, and small bizarre tadpoles swam around them.
“This game is just a storehouse for maniacs, murderers, rapists, and other fucked-up people. Straight out of nightmares! And who is being attacked? Women. Have you seen it written on the forum that some guy was raped or tortured?”
“Yes, full of stories. I told you one or two minutes ago. The AI only disconnects rapists and perverts AI instantly from the game. With ‘hangers’, it’s more difficult. They just appeared recently."
“God... I won’t go into this game again...”
“In that case, give me some chips and scanners, if you have them. Any rank will do.”
She opened the interface and looked at Ronnie’s stats and looked at his weapon in his hands, and was a little confused. Something’s wrong here, she thought.
“Come on! Don’t you understand sarcasm? Damn, Ronnie, other players would have urged me to stay here and offer me protection.”
“I won’t. Honestly, I don’t care.”
“Then why did you save me?”
“Nobody likes hangers. Those guys had no brakes at all. And the admins don’t want to do anything with them.”
“I see. Em… Can we walk together? Help me level up a little, ok?”
Ronnie did not answer.
“Hey! Hey! Well, where are you all looking?”
He turned and pointed to the other bank.
“And what’s there? A goldfish?”
He walked around the lake, blew off some sand and took the item.
“A book?” she asked, running up to him.
Inside an ancient manuscript with a blue cover, everything was written in the same font as on Ronnie’s amulet. On some pages, there were pictures of incomprehensible events.
“It looks like some kind of mythology.”
“AI.”
“At your service.”
“Can you translate the manuscript? Is there any special subject or translator?”
“Place any self-rotating scanner in the middle by setting it up…”
“Hey! Hey! Why are you silent? Can you answer me? Let me see it.”
“No. Don’t bother me.”
Ronnie took out the last scanner and found that it was broken. He looked at her.
“Can you lend me one?”
“Then the money is in half.”
“What kind of money?”
“From selling a book to the central library.”
He closed the item, put his backpack on the ground, and shoved it next to the remains of the destroyed Barrett.
“What are you doing?”
“I’ll take the scanner from my warehouse. Bye.”
Nika showed a smirk on her face, crossed her arms over her chest, bent her right leg, and stretched her left leg to the side and slightly drew her toe in an arc.
“AI.”
“At your service.”
“Remind me, how much longer do I have to go until the ground transport station?”
“You are forbidden from using it.”
Ronnie stopped dead in his tracks.
“Have you finally realized that you can’t get into the city, the fortress, or the checkpoint? I’m still silent about trains and planes.”
“That’s how you treat the person who saved you from torment.”
“I’m just kidding.”
She handed him a C-rank scanner. Ronnie set it up through the HUD, pulled out the book, put it in the very center.
“I think it will take some time.”
Ronnie sat down next to the blue lake in the shade of a palm tree and began to think about why did he save this girl. When he pulled the trigger, the consequences seemed too vague, rather he imagined himself a hero, and now he was forbidden to move around settlements, transport, so half of the server would hunt for him. The only weapon with which he was able to fight back was the Barrett, part of which was in his backpack and part of which flew to Otron on a UAV.
The worst part is that I need to get to the twenty-fifth level before I die. He continued to ponder to himself, otherwise I’ll lose all the progress I got in two months. With a Mosin–Nagant in my hands, this is beyond any human strength. Ronnie turned on the map, ran his eyes over it, measured the distance to a pair of red dots. Killing a poor guy like me won’t work, either. The closest PK player to me is five hundred miles away from me. I’ve come too far, too far. Shit, what am I supposed to do now? Write to support and wait a week for a response, as it was last time? Or whine on the forum? It is also unlikely to give a quick resolution. You’re fucked, Ronnie, you’re completely fucked. No good deeds go unpunished.
“Thank you, really. You’re an honorable man. I won’t forget it.”
Ronnie glanced at her with a disappointed look full of regret, stood up and stared at the undulating sand hills. Nika watched his back for a couple of minutes. The hot wind blew her hair, and sand got into her eyes, mouth and clothes. She put her hand on the handle of her Colt Anaconda, hesitated a little and bit her lower lip when she cocked the trigger, then thought: It’s not the time yet. Ten seconds later, Nika saw Ronnie twitch, rested the butt of Mosin–Nagant on his right shoulder, took aim - kept his eyes open - and fired into a small sand hill in front of him.
A swordsman flew out of the sand. In its hands it held a scimitar, burning with a blue flame. Long dreadlocks were growing on its head. Did I miss? The aggressive monster did a front flip and almost cut off Ronnie’s head, but he managed to bend his body back and dodged at the last second. Nika bared her teeth and ineptly dragged her revolver and squeezed its handle with both hands and released it from the muzzle .45 colt and hit the monster in the eye. It flew ten feet away and did not move anymore. Both had accumulated experience.
“Twenty percent!” she screamed and dropped the gun and grabbed her ears and swore and saw Ronnie say something, but heard nothing but an incessant squeak. Her level had increased to the seventh.
While Nika was trying to get back to normal, Ronnie went up to the monster and examined it: there was a hole in the neck from a 7.62 caliber bullet. The thin fabric of a white shirt with long sleeves fit snugly to the body, trousers on his legs, dotted with holes and cuts. He took out a knife and tore the clothes on his chest and saw how the skin shone through. Ronnie took out a scanning chip and stuck the tip into the stopped heart.
“I hope we’ll meet a couple more!” Nika shouted. “They don’t stand a chance against me!”
“You’re a good shot,” Ronnie said.
She twisted the revolver on her index finger and tried to put it back in the holster, like in western movies, but it did not work out, and the gun fell into the sand. She laughed and replied:
“Just got lucky.”
A new alert popped up in Ronnie’s HUD. He opened it and read: according to meteorological data, a weather anomaly will occur in this place in a few minutes.
“The most important thing is the timely notice, right AI?”
“It is as you say.”
Ronnie looked up and saw dark clouds gathering. They were floating at an insane speed, about 60 m/s from the west from the boundless waters. Several lightning bolts burst out of a low cumulus cloud and hit the ground. The sand flew up like a turban. A powerful storm had begun. Nika saw several small blades of unknown origin cut into the surface of the lake and hissed. The spray rose in a small geyser. Ronnie immediately dropped his backpack, pulled out the tent, put up a protective field, and said:
“A glass rain is coming. Hurry and get in!”
The sunlight disappeared. Darkness overshadowed the entire space. A red-hot cyclone seized the desert with its predatory claws. Nika took her things in her arms and ran into the tent. Ronnie looked at the two PPSh-41 on the ground and could not resist and rushed after them. The horizon disappeared behind an impenetrable impending mass comprising red sand and gray dust. One cloud transformed into an airy white tornado. Ronnie took the first and second weapons under his arm and ran to the tent and felt one fragment cut his arm and the second one cut his back, but he managed to hide behind the protective field.
“You’re a complete nut,” she said, “but I like it.”
Ronnie looked at her and said:
“Weapons will be useful to us.”
The tent vibrated and shook. Because of the powerful gusts of wind, it seemed as if someone or something was constantly running past. Lightning flashed here and there, and a second later, followed by a deafening roar. Sand, glass fragments, drops of molten mercury, and God knew what else was crashing into the protective field.
“Will it hold up?” Nika asked and slightly raised her pupils up and synchronously nodded her head in the same direction.
“Hope so.”
“You’re not verbose.”