Ronnie disassembled both PPSh, checked the magazines for the ammunition, cleaned the barrels from the sand, and reassembled them.
“AI.”
“At your service.”
“Check the serial number of its history, to whom it belongs. Find out all the information described in the weapon's passport.”
“Collecting data... information found. It was purchased two days ago in the virtual arsenal of the vanguard. It belongs to the player Onstoff.”
“Nothing suspicious?”
“No.”
Ronnie looked askance at Nika and crawled up to the mosquito net and opened it and then half unzipped the outer tent. The storm intensified. Outside, the shadows of the bushes trembled, and a single tree bent in a prayer pose to the ground. All-consuming darkness engulfed everything. An infinite number of portals seemed to open in the huge black clouds. They shone with fleeting bright light, yellow and pink colors. These otherworldly lights exposed the outlines of a ridge of clouds, endless and majestic, as if they were soaring mountains. The glass precipitation struck every inch of the ground with countless volleys of arrows.
Nika huddled in a corner of the tent and wrapped herself in a sleeping bag and shivered and saw in the interface how the strength of the protective field decreased to 95%. She closed her eyes, took a few deep breaths. Ronnie could not take his eyes off what was happening and felt excitement run through the body’s nervous system. A bad sign. He squinted and saw how the black silhouettes of sand soldiers rose from the sand opposite the tent, as if from the dead. In this oppressive, darkened hell, their eyes flashed blood-red, one after another. The army grew in size. All the warriors stood ready, glared at the players, made an inhuman hum, and in their hands spears, swords and bows burned with blue flames. They licked their lips with long snake tongues, grinned.
A hundred yards away, the bulky bodies of two titans flashed by in the light of blinding lightning, with stone lifeless eyes without pupils, a white beard, a naked torso and a single loincloth. From above, a humanoid skeleton in red and yellow imperial outfits with a velvet long collar on a flying carpet flew past the tent. Ronnie flinched in fright and cursed and closed the zipper back.
“What did you see?” Nika asked.
“What you’d expect. Nothing good.”
“Can you be more specific?” she whispered.
Nika did not wait for an answer. She lowered her head, buried her face in her bent knees, and shuddered after each thunderclap. Her hands and left eyebrow were trembling so violently that she could not stop shivering, but she did not show her weakness. Ronnie, in turn, did not care about that. He did not know how to busy himself and decided to disassemble the Mosin’s rifle.
After a couple of minutes, they heard a whistle, as if a meteorite was crashing to earth at supersonic speed. Then a deafening explosion followed, with such force that their ears started ringing. The tent shook harder than ever. Ronnie could not stop his curiosity and leaned back and saw in the light of a bright lightning how the black outlines of stones in the shape of a rectangular parallelepiped with alizarin veins were falling from the sky. The clouds turned red, glowing to exorbitant temperatures.
Nika screamed, and Ronnie watched with wide eyes. Several megaliths with a volley of ground-to-air missiles almost hit the emperor and his army, but he used magic to activate a protective dome over the heads of all the warriors, and the heavenly blocks flew off into the invisible darkness.
The tent was a third covered with sand and hot glass. Everything was hissing and smoking. The Nepril Desert was literally shuddering. Every ten to fifteen seconds, an explosion would thunder through the desert, mixing in a hellish symphony with the screeching of the falling boulders. The roar was such that they could not hear themselves behind it. The surface of the desert leveled out like a ruler, and the sand dunes were gone. Sand started melting in some places because of the unimaginable heat. In front of Ronnie’s eyes, a plateau appeared in all its glory, covering the horizon line to the north, at a distance of four miles, and on its plain, hundred-meter columns of flame soared up.
He closed the tent and sat down in the opposite corner from Nika. She asked him to use noise suppression function, and when he complied with her request, she started a conversation:
“Since my childhood, my father was angry that I got Bs and As at school with a minus. As a punishment, he handcuffed me to the battery for the entire night and, always at such moments, a storm would begin.”
Ronnie looked at her, at a small inconspicuous spot in the opposite corner of the tent, and said:
“Are you trying to make friends?”
“I’m terrified of this weather.”
“You could have quit the game.”
“I was confused.”
“Come out now.”
“I don’t want to now.”
There was a nasty squeal from outside, as if weapon’s blade struck on a stone and slashed it for a few inches down. She shuddered and asked what was that?
“Monsters.”
“What do they want?”
“Checking the strength of the protective field.”
Nika raised her head and looked into his azure eyes hidden by shadows and asked:
“Did you know that this would happen? That’s why you ran for the machine guns?”
Ronnie sighed and nodded in agreement.
“After death, whether it’s a player or a monster, they lose the mana accumulated in battles, or simply put, the experience that is transferred to us after defeating the enemy. This is how we level up the characters. The difference is that the monster dies forever, giving us everything it has accumulated during its life, and a player gives only a part, and then respawn.” Ronnie turned his head to the side and continued. “With magic or in any other way during weather anomalies because of an overabundance of mana in the atmosphere, monsters spawn out of nothing, or those who have been hiding underground for centuries wake up. In any case, this leads to changes. Sometimes there is so much mana that dungeons appear out of the blue.”
“Is the mana inside everything in this world?”
“Yes.”
“Then why are we not leveling up, being in the epicenter of this anomaly?”
“We’re leveling up.”
Nika opened a HUD and saw how every five seconds her experience bar rose by 0.05%.
“Is it the same in dungeons?”
“In those where the rank is higher than A+.”
“So you can sit there and accumulate levels?”
“What’s the point of levels if your stats won’t grow?”
“I’ll do exercises and run in circles. Strength and agility—I need nothing else.”
“It’ll probably work.”
They fell silent. Nika fidgeted, pursed her lips and cleared her throat:
“You’re interesting, though introverted. Did you take after your father?”
“You’re crossing the line.”
“I just want to talk. It calms me down.”
“And annoys me.”
“I don’t know which of my parents has a tougher character. My father is a military man, works in the IT department. Guns and Magic is his project. Since my childhood, he dreamed his daughter would be better than any boy, and in order to meet his expectations, I even promised to join the military academy. But... uh... I failed the entrance exam. It was so fucking stupid! It’s a shame to remember. I completed 98% of all tasks and looked at the mathematical formula for the last equation. The habit of doing everything 100%, although what I have already done would be enough to get a scholarship. But no! Nika can’t live without adventures! The system recognized by itself that I was cheating and it disqualified me. My father stopped communicating with me afterwards.”
Ronnie leaned back against the wall of the inner tent and put the submachine guns next to him.
“Maybe you should stop living for your father’s approval and live for yourself?”
“You wouldn’t understand that,” she snapped. “My mother left my family a couple of years ago. She didn’t say a word to me. My father is all I have left. You can’t choose your family, but it’s in our power to make it better. Maybe I can get my father to notice me here. And everything will be the same again.”
“Good luck.”
“Why are you playing? Or is it also some kind of secret?”
Ronnie lowered his head and looked at the floor and asked the AI what kind of creatures appeared outside.
“Information unavailable.”
“You don’t want to answer? Well, that’s fine. But at least tell me, if by the end of the second global update you take the first place, do you know what you will ask the developers?”
“If I didn’t know, I wouldn’t strive to be the first.”
“It makes sense. And what will you ask them for? Money, power? A new home on an island?”
Ronnie clicked his tongue, drummed his fingers on his knee and answered:
“When you blow out the candles on your birthday, do you make a wish?”
“Of course.”
“And after that, do you tell everyone about it?”
“No, then it won’t come true. Damn it! You are cunning!”
“The conversation is over.”
“Wait, let’s talk…”
Ronnie turned off the sound insulation. Nika immediately stopped hearing herself. Outside the tent, fresh notes of the infernal symphony appeared: something burst and whistled, pulsed in the sub-contra octave, as if magnetic fields were shifting, then buzzed and beeped at the level of the whistle. In fleeting lulls, Ronnie caught the barely audible muttering of monsters in an incomprehensible language with long words comprising rough consonants, and the breathing of titans merged with the howling of the wind.
“What do you think is going on outside?”
“Something between the paintings of Aivazovsky and Beksinski.”
She smiled and nodded. He looked at the PPSh-41, at the dirty stock, at the rifled barrel, at the muzzle brake and the slightly blackened front sight cover. He remembered all the information on this weapon, remembered how he first picked it up and how his father told him the story of its creation. Ronnie’s brain resisted talking, sinking deeper into memories and nostalgia. A thunderbolt hit the protective field. White light and fire illuminated the area with their reflection. The sound of the collision was so deafening that their ears started ringing. Nika screamed and covered her open mouth with her hands. On the interface, Ronnie got a warning about the strength of the protective field: 73%. He looked outside and saw burning sparks and an army whose numbers had increased by a couple of times, or even more. They did not move. They stood under the cover of the magic dome, looking at him. The emperor hovered in the last rows, holding a staff in his hands. Two harpies sat on his shoulders. Burning shards of glass along with sand had already half buried the tent, sinking it little by little underground.
Ronnie closed the entrance and looked at Nika and then at the PPSh and checked the smoothness of the shutter, the setting of the sight.
“We’re deep in shit,” she said, “aren’t we?”
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“AI.”
“At your service.”
“Have you translated anything from the book? Is there any information about the enemy there?”
“I have analyzed all the known languages on Earth, but I found nothing.”
“It’s getting better and better.”
“I’m glad I could be of help.”
“Sometimes I don’t understand. Are you joking or are you being sarcastic?”
“You flatter me,” it laughed mockingly in response.
“As I understand, developers created this language, and they didn’t teach you it, did they?”
“That’ is correct. This is a role-playing component of the game. If I knew everything, exploring the world would not be so interesting.”
“Ok. Are your algorithms not enough to learn at least some part of the language from the book?”
“Did you hear anything about the Chinese room?”
“Is it important?”
“Yes.”
“Then explain it briefly.”
“The meaning of the Chinese room is to show the difference between a person who is learning a language and a machine. While AI uses algorithms, a person puts meaning into words. In the Chinese room, a person is given a card and instructions on how to answer it. He does not know what the hieroglyph that is given to him means and what the hieroglyph that he has to answer means. A year later, the test subject will learn to respond mechanically to the same script, but does this mean that he has learned Chinese? No. Learning a language always requires a native speaker who could explain the words. Starting point. Without it, there will be no progress in language learning.”
“Where to find a native speaker?”
“A native speaker is any conscious monster in this world.”
“Like the ones who are waiting outside right now and looking for a suitable moment for my execution?”
“More compliant.”
“Could you not be silent when I ask a question?”
Ronnie came back to reality from the depths of consciousness and asked again:
“What did you say?”
“Eh? What?”
“What did you say?”
“Fuck, turn the sound insulation back on.”
Ronnie did so.
“Just don’t bother me. What did you ask?”
“We’re in deep shit, aren’t we?”
“Yes. A vast army of monsters is waiting for us outside the tent. Usually, in such cases, a raid of thirty to forty players would be assembled. But there are only two of us.”
“What should we do?”
“As soon as the anomaly will end, we’ll run outside. You’ll cover me with fire, and I’ll pack the tent and run towards the forest. We’ll run around each other in a semicircle. You shoot, I run around your back, I shoot, you run around my back. You need to move all the time. The main point is not to stop. Don’t try to hit them in the head, just fire to suppress them.”
“I see. There’s a reason that you’re the fifth place in the military rating.”
They sat in silence for another half hour, surrounded by the intangible pressure and roars coming from the monsters. They did not look out anymore. The storm subsided, glass fragments no longer broke on the protective field, the strength of which fell to 13%. They both put their things in backpacks. Nika checked the revolver in the holster and suddenly started laughing. Ronnie looked at her questioningly, but said nothing. She caught the look and explained:
“My father may have been in the military, but he never taught me how to shoot, much less with such an ancient weapon. My first shot with a revolver broke my arm.”
“Recoil.”
“Yeah,” she nodded. “For some reason I remembered, and it made me laugh.”
“The PPSh-41 has a small recoil. You can handle it. “
Ronnie crawled up to the mosquito net, opened it, then unzipped the outer awning and saw a pile of precipitation around the protective field, which filled them up and buried them underground. Nothing was visible. Ronnie swore. Nika asked what happened, and he answered:
“Change of plans. We are completely buried under the glass.”
“AI.”
“At your service.”
“What were those rocks falling from the sky?”
“From the data I received, it should be silicon.”
“What’s the temperature outside the containment field?”
“Scanning... Surface temperature is 60 degrees Celsius. Glass temperature is about 100 degrees Celsius.”
“How long before it cools down?”
“An hour.”
Ronnie closed the outer awning and saw Nika moving on her hands and knees toward him.
“What are you doing?”
“Going out.”
“Aren’t you listening to me? We’re buried under hot glass.”
They sat there for an hour, no more, no less. The last five minutes were hard for both of them. Nika emptied her backpack of unnecessary items and Ronnie saw her periscope and asked how she came up with the idea of carrying such an item with her?
“Well... if I encountered a dangerous monster, I’d bury myself in the sand and watch it, waiting for it to get away.”
“That’s weird.”
Ronnie took the periscope from her, pulled out a right-angled prism outside, and observed what was happening. Steam covered the desert. Sharp shards of glass littered the surrounding plain, so much so that it looked more like an icy lake. To the east of the army of monsters, there was an enormous maze of silicon pillars. Thick black clouds continued to float across the bloody desert sky. No ray, no lumen, only haze. It was getting very cold. In the distance, near the horizon line, there were yellow flashes. The temperature outside dropped to ten degrees.
“It’s time to get out. Are you ready?” he asked.
“Yes, my General,” she replied.
They passed through the tent’s protective field and made their way through the hot shards of glass and sand to the surface. Ronnie covered his face with keffiyeh and a sheet and climbed higher. Nika followed him. Their hearts were bursting out of their chests. A lot of scratches and cuts appeared on their body. It feels like being inside an iron maiden. Six minutes later, the torment stopped, and they got out. Ronnie took her by the hand, pulled her up with a sharp movement and said: “It’s time.”
Nika screamed like an Amazon in the heat of rage and fury and opened fire to kill. The sand soldiers smiled and hooted. Bullets flew through their bodies and did no damage. The emperor howled from afar in an ancient language, and the soldiers headed forward, while glass crunched and burst under their feet. With each step in the white mist, their red eyes gained clearer and more frightening outlines. Ronnie grabbed her by the shoulder and ordered her to run towards the silicon pillars. She obeyed.
He did not shoot, studied the enemy’s behavior, and the corners of his lips rose slightly. The thick veil of steam began to disperse with noticeable speed. The visibility had increased. Ronnie saw a cluster of water droplets sucked into a bluish-white sphere on the palm of one of the titans. He sounded like a bugle and fired a projectile forward. The perfect ball moved forward and stopped over Ronnie’s head. Its borders blurred into a thundercloud, from which electrified magical totems fell.
Ronnie found himself in the middle of a trap and cursed himself for his slowness. The first lightning bolts rushed at his back. He dodged in a jump, did a somersault and shot at the totem and it exploded. The next blow landed on his head. Ronnie expected the attack and jumped back in advance. From his belt bag, he pulled out a smoke grenade and threw it under him and tried to escape by firing at the magic pillars from the wild stone ahead.
When Ronnie was at a safe distance, he turned around and pointed the muzzle of the PPSh-41 at the titan’s head. 7.62 caliber bullets flew out faster than a thought, cutting through the air and reaching the target. They ricocheted to the side. The Titan grunted and clutched its face. Ronnie cursed and then shouted: “Fire” and ran back and saw Nika turn around and scream and start shooting left and right with continuous fire. He fell face down after several bullets whistled over his head and waved his arms and shouted:
“Stop! Stop! You’re going to kill me!”
She did not answer and stopped firing. He got up, continued:
“Shoot with short bursts of three or four rounds!”
Ronnie looked back and saw the first soldier pounce on him with a spear. He rolled over. The metal tip of the weapon entered the sand. Nika fired a burst, but never hit. The last bullet hit two inches from Ronnie’s leg and shattered a shard of glass. He got up and hit the soldier on the head with the butt of the PPSh-41. The skull was tough. The strength was barely enough to disorient the enemy for a while.
Ronnie took a step back and raised the submachine gun and aimed at the head, but the monster recovered earlier and, with the help of the long spear, he shifted the direction of the PPSh to the side. The army was getting closer. They were shouting, growling. He could feel them craving his blood, his death. Ronnie continued the attack and pushed the spearman with his left shoulder, snatched the weapon from it in a U-turn and aimed the tip at its red eye at random. The sand soldier blocked the blow, took its weapon back and kicked the sniper away.
Nika fired a few more shots. One bullet hit the creature in the eye, the second in the forehead. It howled, shook and turned into sand. The emperor directed the pommel of the staff in the form of two snakes at Ronnie, collected red energy from the red-hot electrified skies and released it forward as a beam. The sniper managed to jump back. Three feet in front of him, an explosion occurred, spreading shards of glass and drops of mercury. The next two soldiers jumped out of the smoke. Their burning scimitars rose above their heads and then rushed downwards in a chopping motion. Ronnie had no choice but to block the blades with the barrel of the PPSh. The blades of the swords were not sharp enough. After contact, accompanied by a steely sound, they vibrated and fell out of the hands of the monsters. He wasted no time, stuck the butt into his shoulder and sent ten bullets forward. The soldiers’ heads exploded along with their bodies. He ran back, Nika provided cover fire.
“Let’s get out of here!” he shouted.
The next ten minutes followed the same routine: shooting, moving, shooting, moving. They hid behind fragments of incandescent silicon, looked out, sent several bullets to the places of the alleged enemy, focusing only on the sounds of glass bursting, and retreated. Ronnie kept losing sight of Nika, and she, in turn, was bad at directions and screamed at the sight of danger. The red rays of the emperor hit the silicon every thirty seconds, melting the natural shelter and turning it into liquid lava. Besides this, oxygen was no longer enough. Both players were sweating after the first minutes of the fight. AI reported that the melting point of silicon is above 1414°C.
“This attack will turn you to ash.”
“I understood that without you.”
The leapfrog game was drawing out more and more stamina. More so, harpies appeared above their heads. They used the magic of a heart-rending scream, releasing sound waves that threw off and disoriented for a few seconds. Nika hid behind another silicon pillar and did not notice how a sand soldier jumped out at her from the other side, she dodged the blade of a flaming sword, made a roll and fired five bullets into its head and smiled and said, laughing: “Take this, fucker!” The fog was clearing. At that moment, the harpy flew up behind her and squeaked. Nika lost her balance and hit her head on her cover. Ronnie noticed this, pointed the hand guard of the PPSh and hesitated for a couple of seconds and looked at how far to run to the forest and spat and pulled the trigger three times and the half-bird half-man, which grabbed her hair with its paws and tried to pull her away, fell and twitched in convulsions. He ran up and finished the creature with a control shot to the head and stuck a DNA chip into her body and lifted Nika off the ground and carried her on his shoulders. Ronnie’s stamina dropped to one. The weight limit had risen to 101%, there was not enough strength, despite the passive skill of the first modification “double increase in weight limit”. Fortunately, a couple of minutes was enough for Nika to come to her senses and run on her own.
The Titan howled. Lightning flashed in its raised hand and shot forward. The explosion threw Nika and Ronnie in different directions. They flew like plush toys, and on landing, cooled fragments of glass crashed into their backs, causing small puncture wounds. The cartridges were running out. Ronnie asked Nika for her Colt Anaconda, put the PPSh on the ground, caught the revolver, aimed the sighting slot just below the Titan’s torso, and fired. A bullet of .45 caliber colt hit the solar plexus and bounced to the side. Ronnie raised the gun a little higher, and this time aimed at the head. Taught by bitter experience, the opponent stretched out its bent arm in front of its face. The bullet hit the forearm and ricocheted again.
“Our shots are like mosquito bites to it. Stop wasting my bullets!”
Ronnie said nothing, threw the gun back and ran, she continued to suppress the enemy with fire. The soldiers did not lag; the archers showered them with arrows. Nika dodged each one, and Ronnie, with a heavy load on his back, was less mobile. A message popped up in the HUD:
Your kidney is punctured! Critical damage!
Nika noticed this and took out the last resuscitating B rank syringe from her pocket and stuck the needle into the wound and pressed the plunger and temporarily restored Ronnie’s combat capability. For the next couple of minutes, both ran without looking back, while mushroom clouds of explosions rose from all sides, and arrowheads crashed into the glass.
When the red flashes on the clouds disappeared, the emperor stopped casting its spell. Ronnie felt a terrible cold pass through him. The archers also ceased firing. Without resting, he looked back and analyzed the situation.
Of course, magic doesn’t come out of nothing. He took the heat from the incandescent clouds, and when they cooled down, there was nothing to draw the spell power from. The Emperor is no longer a threat.
Ahead, through a thick layer of clouds, several rays of sunlight broke through to the ground, illuminating the border between the forest and the desert. The nearest representative of this race was at a distance of ~ 400 yards. The soldiers fell far behind. Only the harpy flew tirelessly after them and screamed. Ronnie ordered to stop and turned in the enemy's direction and sat down, bending his leg at the knee and fired a dozen bullets. The bird crashed to the ground. He asked Nika to get the last alchemical flask from his backpack from the outer pocket.
“Cheers!” she said and laughed as if she was ten years younger and drank exactly half.
“Cheers!” he replied and drank the rest.
Stamina had recovered to the five-point mark. They reached the forest and felt a pleasant, coniferous smell. From the side of the desert, where the emperor was standing, an earthquake began and a piece of soil, the size of a football field, rose eight meters up and froze in the air. The Titans were the first to enter the underground, followed by soldiers, and the emperor was the last to disappear, closing the passage behind him.
“Saved,” Nika breathed out and sat down on the nearest stone. “What an adventure!”
Ronnie nodded and took another self-rotating scanner from Nika, which would mark the appearance of a new dungeon on the global map and stuck it into the ground.
“The rest is up to you, AI.”
“Understood.”
Ronnie looked at Nika and noticed that her level had increased to 9. Only one and a half percent had been added to his experience lane. Both also received a reward of 53.300 CP for finding a dungeon and 11.000 for a Harpy and a Sand Soldier. Ronnie’s legs gave way and he almost fell. The burning pain in the lumbar region shot out with renewed vigor. He dropped his backpack to the ground and the aluminum and titanium parts of the broken rifle rattled.
“What do you have there? Why can’t you part with those pieces of iron?”
“That’s my rifle. Barrett M107A1.”
Nika fell silent.
“If you’re looking for it in the Vanguard arsenal, you won’t find it. I made it myself.”
“By yourself?”
“My father taught me.”
“So not only are you a sniper, you’re also a gunsmith.”
Ronnie nodded. She smiled and asked what he intended to do next. He replied he did not know yet, but the farther he got away from the territory he’d explored, the better.
“I can keep you company,” she said.
“I’m sorry. I walk alone.”
“You won’t survive on your own.”
“We’ll see.”
Nika turned her back to him and looked at the coniferous forest, leaning sideways from the strong wind, and thought: Fuck. Even though the trees resemble Earth’s, but there was still a difference: the trunks were completely overgrown with green moss, which emitted a faint emerald light day and night. Their height reached fifty yards, as if they were strict Gothic buttresses. It was impossible to see even a speck of the sky behind the dense crowns of the black pines, and in the night's darkness - there were legends - players could hear the snuffling and heavy breathing of horses and the quiet ringing of swords.
Nika sighed and became sad and turned around and saw Ronnie pointing the muzzle of the PPSh at her and said:
“Do you think I’m an idiot?”
Before she could answer, he pulled the trigger. Her eyes did not even twitch in fright. Nothing happened. The PPSh ran out of bullets. Nika tilted her head slightly to the side. Without further ado, Ronnie ran at her and grabbed a hunting knife from a belt pouch. She pulled the Colt out of the holster with a speed that any cowboy in the Wild West would envy, cocked the hammer and pulled the trigger, and blew Ronnie’s head off. The system instantly disconnected him from the gaming network.
“Fuck!” she shouted at the top of her lungs and looked at the disappearing body of the sniper and the ashes that were blown away by the wind. She started rummaging through his backpack and saw the Barrett’s wreckage and swore again. A minute later, she received a message in the HUD that her level had risen to ten. She sat cross-legged and stared at the gloomy horizon.