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Info #222: Dungeons are divided into ranks from D to S+
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Info #223: The dungeons get their ranks assigned starting from the strongest explored at the moment (i.e. S+) to the weakest (i.e. D). When a new strongest dungeon is discovered, the rank of the previously known dungeons is recalculated using AI algorithms.
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“AI.”
“At your service.”
“Tell me about the players I’ll fly with. Everything available.”
“Searching… collecting all the information... Processing. Completed! The first one is Latludious…”
“Next. I know everything about him.”
“As you wish. The second player is a woman. Her nickname is Maenad. Level 23, 67%, 12th place in the military rating. She is engaged in alchemy and has developed her own flamethrower. She has completed several A+ and S class dungeons. An experienced team fighter. She is active in the forum. Always up to date. She joined the Top Secret guild three months ago, and since then, she has taken part in five sorties on a special task for the guild.”
“If she spends a lot of time on the forum, then there should be information on what she likes.”
“Yes. She leads an aggressive campaign against killing monsters outside the dungeons.”
“Why?”
“Because they are not respawned.”
“What’s her goal?”
“No such information is available.”
“I’ll reformulate: how does she explain this?”
“She believes that this type of monster is sentient and can be potentially useful to the players if they find a common language with them.”
“Why did she switch to Top Secret?”
“Her previous guild did not support her ideals. When the Xuxa player killed the Keeper of the forest, Lantavril in front of her, Maenad went berserk and burned her and all the others involved.”
Ronnie opened the bestiary and looked at what the creature was like. A white horse’s body, ram’s horns, a tail like a phoenix, and legs burning with flames. It can fly short distances thanks to its magical abilities, as well it controls trees that fight on its side. That’s why it got the name “Keeper of the forest Lantavril” (aggressive, sentient, level unknown).
“The keeper of the forest is always one. After those events, it was spotted several more times.”
“Most likely, the monster can respawn. Its character has also changed since it first met the players. Lantavril attacked people rather than trust them.”
“Is that all?”
“No. Every month, Maenad takes newcomers to a dungeon near Otron - Sansocri to help them level up.”
“Her age?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“What about the others?”
“Faolandan (level 24, 8%, 5th place in the military rating) and Sitting Bull (level 24, 53%, 3rd place in the military rating) are the dark horses of the guild. They do not conduct public activities on the forum. Members of Top Secret since its foundation. In the first few months after the release of the game, Sitting Bull topped the list of the best players, after which, together with Vvy (level 23, 80%), he founded Top Secret, but refused a commanding position. He has excellent tracking and hunting skills. Faolandan has completed 98% of the guild’s special tasks.”
“There are too many ‘Dangerous Guys’ around me."
“Because you are one of them.”
“Let’s skip the pleasantries. Apparently, Top Secret supports the interests of its recruits, right?”
“Yes.”
“Or is it just a deception?”
“There have been no complaints about the guild.”
Ronnie could not stop thinking about the incredible speed with which the rating of the best players was changing. A little more than a week ago, Vvy was in sixth place, after the defeat of the WildDron’s const party, rose to third, and a week later fell to eleventh, and who overtook him? His own comrades. Apparently, playing on two fronts: political and military had an adverse effect on both the first and the second.
The dialogue with the AI ended when Ronnie, dressed in a clean field uniform with a filled-to-the-brim backpack and a Barrett M107A1 with a 32-centimeter long silencer, entered the airport’s territory. He walked down a small corridor and saw about a hundred people sitting on plastic chairs in the waiting room. They were all chatting among themselves and noticed nothing around them. Ronnie walked up to the turnstile. The system let him through, the doors opened, and he found himself on the runway. An empty hangar stood a little to the east, a refueling truck drove by, and along the corrugated plates of the airfield pavement, there were many cones and bright white markings. There, just to the west of the entrance, were two aircraft, one of which was a Boeing B-17 also known as “Flying fortress”—a World War II bomber equipped with four engines, nine large-caliber machine guns with a 180-degree viewing angle, an empty cockpit and a dirty green hull color. Four players and a self-propelled ladder were standing in front of the open front door. Latludious noticed Ronnie first and beckoned him.
“Today is a good day,” he said.
“Friday.”
“Good Friday.”
Latludious opened the HUD and looked at the time, and smiled.
“I can check my watch by you.”
“It’s better to get straight to the point.”
“Whatever you say. I’ll introduce you to the team. This is our only female representative - Maenad. She’s an alchemist and a flamethrower.”
“Hi,” said the woman with a gray rag veil on her head and the same color of clothes. On her waist belt hung glass flasks filled with yellow flammable liquid, and behind her was a jet flamethrower.
“She’s shy,” Latludious grinned, “don’t offend her. Next to her is our bodybuilder, Faolandan. The machine gunner and the first on the server who managed to… well... it’s better to see it once.”
The magician whistled and Barahu came out from behind the boxes next to the ladder - a creature somewhat similar to a wolfhound with four red eyes and sharp elf ears (not aggressive, sentient, level 19). The spikes covered the dog’s body. Instead of the usual paws, it had three steel claws. Barahu bared its sharp fangs and growled. Faolandan came up to it, stroked its head and turned to Latludious, and said:
“This is my Tina—the angel of God, the light of my eyes.” He turned to Ronnie and continued, “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Can’t say the same about you.”
“You let the most powerful party die so that it would be easier for you to get to the first place, right? If we had known earlier that you were a rat, we would never have signed a contract with you.”
Faolandan approached Ronnie, noticing that his face had not changed a bit, at the distance of a bent arm and looked at him the way a wild predator looks at a rival and said:
“This trick won’t work with us. Got it?”
Ronnie did not answer. It seemed to Latludious that the sniper was looking through his comrade, as if not noticing his presence.
“Let’s continue. The last one is Sitting Bull. The second machine gunner and Faolandan’s eternal rival. Both have never died yet. Maenad and I have a bet running among ourselves about which of them would be the first to make a mistake and get a checkmate.”
“By the way, she has never died, either. Am I right? My sweety, Tina?”
Barahu turned its muzzle and snorted.
“Yeah, yeah, I agree. She’s a sly one. She also survived two assassination attempts.”
Two assassination attempts?
“AI.”
“At your service.”
“Do you have any information about this?”
“Searching…”
“And I’ll survive another hundred! I am immortal. You guys are good too! Made a bet on what happened to my face! So there’s nothing to complain to your dog here, we’re even,” Maenad replied, laughing. “But I’ll tell you the little things until there are at least... m... ten million CP in the bank!”
“Ten? You’re crazy!” Faolandan said.
“And here I am, such a pest!”
“The only available information says that the assailants missed their fatal shot.”
“Do you think it’s a coincidence?”
“It’s not impossible, but still highly unlikely. I’m operating with facts.”
Ronnie smiled.
“Let’s continue,” Latludious said, and cleared his throat. “Vvy—the guild leader, will meet us at the fortress of Varnasosto and from there will lead us to the dungeon. He is our tank. You’ll meet him later. That’s the general layout. Questions?”
Sitting Bull straightened his poncho and gave Ronnie a distrustful look and said:
“Those who have one foot in the canoe, and one foot in the boat, are going to fall into the river.”
Ronnie looked at Latludious, who shrugged.
“Only Vvy understands him.”
Faolandan and Sitting Bull held DP-27 in their hands. The first one was wearing a green field uniform, like Ronnie. The second was in a classic Indian outfit with an additional weapon on his back—a bow and quiver. Latludious was traveling light, without a backpack, weapons, or elixirs. Maenad was fully equipped.
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The AI invited everyone to board the plane and informed them they would take off in five minutes. Everyone sat down one by one. The dog lay down next to the owner, lowered its head, and a minute later snored. Ronnie sat down by the window next to the wing and watched both engines spin the blades at the same time.
“What a noise insulation they have here!” Faolandan said.
“This is a lie,” said the Maenad, “in fact, the aircraft operates on electric batteries hidden under... whatever the word is called... eh…”
“We get it,” Latludious muttered.
“What about the refueler that drove back and forth for an hour?” Faolandan asked.
The magician clicked his tongue and replied:
“It repairs and recharges the batteries of the aircraft.”
When they were 11 miles above sea level, the dining room opened in the bow. Faolandan took a beef steak for himself and one for the dog. Maenad remained in her place, posting on the forum. Ronnie was looking at the clouds overboard. Latludious went to the back of the plane and began practicing spells of micro sizes.
The approximate flight time was 4 hours.
Maenad was the first to get bored an hour later. She moved to Ronnie and asked:
“Is it true that a level six girl killed you? When I read this story on the forum, I laughed to tears. I’m even surprised how you killed a doppelgänger in the city. Just some kind of miracle.”
Faolandan cut into the conversation, without giving Ronnie a chance to even open his mouth, and said:
“What is unclear here? WildDron’s const party reduced all the HP of the monster, and our great sniper struck the last blow.”
“Let’s ask Ronnie. I’m sure he’ll tell us how it really was. Come on, man.”
“I’ll tell you what, my beauty,” Faolandan continued a second later, following Ronnie’s emotions. “Vvy wanted this brat only because he has a cool gun. I just don’t understand why not just send a first-level killer to him, a girl, for example…”
Maenad smiled all over her mouth, and Faolandan continued:
“Beautiful, with huge basketball-like tits. He’ll drool, drag her to bed, and she’ll finish him. What do you think would it work, Ronnie?”
Ronnie looked up from the window and glanced at Maenad. Her smile spread across her scarred and burned face. Faolandan was sitting two rows ahead. Sitting Bull in the back.
“Do you want my weapon?” Ronnie said and stood up and looked ahead with his crystal blue eyes.
Faolandan turned around in half a turn and put his elbow on the back and answered:
“Without it, you’re a nobody.”
“Let’s make a deal. This weapon results from my many years of work. And it’s not for sale.”
“We'll make it a part of our new deal.”
“But I need to get something out of this too. Do you agree? M?”
Ronnie looked at Faolandan from under his brows, without taking his eyes off, and he shrugged his shoulders.
“We’ll proceed as follows. We’ll play rock-paper-scissors. If you’ll win, I’ll give you the weapon and never ask you to return it.”
“Wow!” Maenad clapped her hands.
Sitting Bull tensed and listened.
“If I’ll win, I’ll kill your dog with a blunt knife in front of your eyes, then I’ll sell its meat at the auction, and will make a scarecrow out of its head.”
Faolandan squeezed the headrest of the seat out of anger, and his face twisted beyond recognition.
“Are you fucked up or something?”
“I just decided to make your dog a part of our new deal. So what?”
Maenad fell silent. She looked from Ronnie to Faolandan.
“Day and night cannot dwell together,” Sitting Bull said.
“Do not think I’m joking with you right now,” Ronnie said, pointing at him with his index finger. “We’ll fix the additional clause in the agreement through AI.”
Faolandan looked at his friends, but they were silent, looked at Ronnie, bared his teeth, and said:
“Fuck you, okay? You’re nuts!”
He patted Barahu on the head and whispered in its ear:
“Let’s get out of here, buddy.”
Maenad turned to Ronnie and said:
“You know how I called you on the forum. Everyone agreed with this. The scavenger of Otron. It suits you very well.”
“Do not judge your neighbor until you walk two moons in his moccasins.”
“I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to him.”
Ronnie sat back down and continued to look out the window. Him ignoring her enraged Maenad, she pushed him and said:
“Are you going to answer me?”
“You have nothing to offer me. And I have nothing to give you.”
“You’re not welcome in this guild.”
“Then why did you call?”
“I wonder why the Doppelgänger copied you, huh? What is your background with it? Are you special?”
Ronnie let out a savage laugh and smiled. He turned in the Maenad's direction and looked at her face, melted like the wax of a burning candle, and asked:
“Is it possible for the ‘special’ to find out what happened to your face?"
“Are you trying to put pressure on weaknesses?”
“You didn’t consciously change anything in your appearance. Are you proud of your past?”
“It reminds me of what I’ve achieved.”
“In my opinion, this is your way of saying ‘have pity on me’. You wanted to turn the world upside down with a clever trick, but the opposite happened. Now you are a servant in the ranks of Top Secret and they will respect your interests until they go against their plans, and if they need to sacrifice you, they won’t even think about it twice. But the little girl inside you refuses to believe it. You are a sheep among a pack of wolves, which naively leads them to get acquainted with their relatives. So instead of trying to figure out who I am, it’s better to think about who you are before you have a breakdown at a stressful moment."
Maenad got up and, twisting her face, threw her answer to him: “You know how to open your shitlips, but there is only one servant in this guild and that’s you.” She went behind the screen to Faolandan. Sitting Bull came up to Ronnie and said:
“After dark, all cats are leopards.”
“I don’t give a shit.”
Ronnie sat in silence for the next hour. He looked at the expanses of the heavenly kingdom, at the endless snowy plain dotted with ice sculptures, like mountains, castles, hills, and canyons. A miniature orange circle went into the sunset, releasing the light of alizarin rays, which spread like lava rivers over the thin ice of the sky. In the epicenter of the volcanic explosion, Ronnie saw a black spot growing larger by the minute. Soon he could see the wings, and a minute later the expanding black hole covered all the light and darkness came. He jumped up from his heated seat and shouted:
“Dragon!”
Red warning lights activated all over the cabin, and a siren howled. Latludious came running from the tail of the plane. The others soon joined in. They buried their faces in the windows and watched with horror the oncoming monster of gigantic size.
“Latludious,” Maenad said. “Can you protect us with magic?”
“I’ll try,” he replied, and the right corner of his lip twitched. “You all put on the parachutes and go to the machine guns. We’ll shoot it. Maybe we can scare the bird away.”
Ronnie ran to the pilot’s cabin, climbed the stairs, and found himself in front of a 12.7mm Browning M2 heavy machine gun in the plane's fuselage. He inserted the tape, pulled the shutter, and watched as the dragon came closer and closer to them. Latludious ran into the machine gun cabin on the right wing and used the “Weight of the rock” on himself so that the wind would not blow him away and went up. The first shots rang out from the left wing. Ronnie looked through the scope and waited. The magician and Sitting Bull (which was in the tail section) did the same. When the dragon was a couple of miles away from them, they could make out its inky black scales, wings the size of their Boeing, a long snake neck, and two sparkling red eyes. It hovered in the air and watched the plane. Latludious bent his knee and laced his fingers and murmured a spell, and his eyes flashed yellow. The rays of the departing sun reached out to the magician and a fiery sphere appeared in his hands, flaming and pulsating. Ronnie fired a hail of large-caliber bullets, aiming at the monster’s chest, and saw a lava ray fly over him. He let go of the trigger in amazement and froze. The dragon put its head under the spell, opened its mouth, and swallowed it. Its neck turned red as if it was about to release the beam back. Everyone prepared for the worst. Yet white steam came out of the creature’s mouth and nothing happened.
Maenad yelled something unintelligible from what she saw and was quiet for a couple of seconds, coming to her senses. On the second wave of fear, she screamed:
“Damn, it swallowed the annihilation ray. Fuck my life!”
“Real girls don’t swear,” Faolandan said over the radio.
“And real men don’t get a dog named Tina.”
Latludious squirmed. The spell took 40% of his total mana. He slowed down and applied “Cutting Lightning”. A high-voltage electric discharge shot from below the sky at supersonic speed but did not cause visible damage to the dragon. Four large-caliber machine guns in a couple of minutes of continuous fire heated to the limit, and the shots stopped. Ronnie, frozen in fear, watched what would happen next. Maenad reloaded the tape and was just getting ready to shower the enemy with lead rain again when the dragon released a fireball from its mouth. Latludious cursed and pulled out a dark bottle from his pocket and used a counter-spell of the water element, but the mana used was not enough. The enemy spell bounced like a ball, changing its trajectory, and hit the left wing, blowing up the first engine. Faolandan and Maenad miraculously remained intact. The plane rocked, and the magician almost dropped but held on.
The dragon soared into the stratosphere and folded its wings and flew headfirst down. Latludious used one attacking spell after another, but to no avail. The monster ate all the magic and to say that it used at least some effort for this was to lie to oneself. Ronnie noticed how each fresh attack made by Latludious became weaker. The poor guy was already at the limit. Faolandan ditched the machine gun, took his dog, and headed for the emergency exit and there attached the wolfhound to his chest and prepared to jump. Sitting Bull stopped shooting and watched with delight in his eyes the transpiring events. The dragon swept past them. The plane rocked from a gust of wind. Then it circled the plane, whizzing a couple of yards to the right, then to the left at an insane speed. It tossed the flying fortress from side to side like a ship during a storm. When the dragon got bored with it, it caught up with the Boeing and examined this mechanical miracle up close, which it had never seen before. Ronnie dropped his machine gun and headed for the emergency exit. Latludious met the dragon’s gaze, and it seemed to him as if some ancient language sounded in his head. Maenad took aim and started shooting at the enemy’s head, shouting: “Take this! You fucking lizard!”
The dragon howled and rose above the plane, and Latludious saw that it was three or even four times the size of their bomber. The monster’s sharp claws dug into the Boeing’s hull and squeezed it, as an eagle would squeeze a newly caught vole, and dragged the prey to the east. Ronnie and Faolandan opened the emergency door and jumped down. Sitting Bull also evacuated behind them. Latludious took off the effect of the gravity of the rock and used the spell “gravity reduction” and flew down headfirst. Maenad got out of the machine-gun nest and crashed into the walls of the inner corridor, barely made it to the exit, and jumped at the very last moment.
Latludious, completely exhausted by the battle, first collapsed to the ground and almost died. At the last moment, he put the last two percent of his mana into the spell and softened the landing. The straps on Ronnie’s parachute got tangled in the branches of a giant coniferous tree. He hung there for several minutes, wobbling like on a swing until he reached the trunk and leaned on a small protruding twig. He pressed the button on his chest and freed himself from the shackles and pulled out the belt and tightened it around the rough bark and went down to the middle, where the trunk turned out to be too wide, and had to jump from branch to branch, and then settle for magic moss. Maenad and Faolandan landed just south of Ronnie and Latludious, but soon they all met. Sitting Bull was nowhere to be found.
“We’ll fly quickly and without adventures, won’t we? Uh?” Ronnie asked.
“Sorry, the dragon, somehow it wasn’t part of my plans,” the magician replied and wrote to the lost comrade in PM and received the coordinates and a request for help. The Indian reported: I have a broken leg and several ribs. I’m lying on the ground, God knows where, and I can’t move. A ten-minute countdown for disconnection has begun. All hooting and groaning and swearing, with a good obscenity in one word, went to look for Sitting Bull.
Darkness covered the dense thicket. Everything was dark. They did not move away from each other by a yard. Latludious ran first, followed by Maenad. Faolandan, out of breath, was moving third, and next to him, his faithful friend Tina was spraying drool on the grass and baring its teeth. Ronnie was closing the column. His stamina decreased by 0.3 every minute because of the heavy weight of the cartridges and the rifle. Running cross-country was not part of his plans. Latludious turned on the interface and noticed how endurance dropped to zero. The body stopped obeying. He tripped over a bump and collapsed.
“How did this happen?” Ronnie asked.
“Magic spends not only mana but also strength and stamina,” Faolandan replied.
Maenad took an elixir out of her backpack with a quick movement of her hand and gave the magician half to drink.
“Sitting Bull must be somewhere nearby,” Latludious said. “Let’s work in an old-fashioned way and shout.”
They did so. Two minutes later, Sitting Bull responded with a heart-rending scream and a dying man’s groan. They fell silent and, guided by the sound, went to the northeast, bypassing gigantic trees and shaggy bushes. Fallen branches of Hessataule (Information from AI: this is the name of tall black trees, which at first glance seem dead and dried up, but in fact, it is a trick of the eyes. As local loggers claimed in the first months of the game, it was impossible to cut the trunk of the Hessataule, since magic strengthened its bark) and crunched underfoot like frozen snow. A minute later, they saw the twisted body of their comrade lying between snags with his height and stones overgrown with rotten moss.
“Just finish me. I can’t stand it.”
The pain became more and more excruciating for Sitting Bull. A thin stream of blood flowed from his mouth. The veins in his eyes burst, and his skin turned pale. He saw almost nothing, except white spiral circles appearing out of nowhere. His right hand had a bone sticking out through the red human meat. An open fracture.
“What?” Maenad snapped and took out a resuscitating A rank syringe and stuck it into the machine gunner’s shoulder. “This will save you and restore you for a while.”
Latludious approached him next and touched his forehead with his index finger and pronounced the spell “analysis” and said:
“The spine is not damaged.”
Sitting Bull was shaking with throbbing pain. Maenad took out a second syringe filled with a white liquid and inserted it into his shoulder.
“It’s a painkiller. Soon you won’t feel a thing.”
“You’re just prolonging my suffering.”
“Look, he spoke like a normal person. Did you hit your head and your brains fell into place?” said Maenad and set the bone back with a sharp movement, treating the wound and applying a pressure bandage.
“I’m sorry for you, my friend. She just bet that I would die first,” Faolandan chuckled.
“How much time does the HUD show before full recovery?” Latludious asked.
Sitting Bull was silent for a few seconds, his eyes darted, and then he answered in a barely audible voice: “Two days.”
“We can’t wait that long. We’ll have to carry him and recover during breaks. I’ll write to Vvy that we’ll be late.”
Sitting Bull met Ronnie’s cold gaze.
“We use tents,” the magician continued. “It’s dangerous to move at night.”
“I agree. We’ll continue with the first rays of dawn in five hours.”